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Richard Kent
Yale had a 5 point lead on Vermont with 3.8 seconds left. They lost. Here’s how. Absolute insanity. pic.twitter.com/52z3UiOklb
— Mike McAllister (@McAllisterMike1) December 3, 2023
Yale men’s basketball snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in stunning fashion at Vermont Saturday night, suffering a 66-65 loss after having led 65-62 with six-tenths of a second left to play.
Then madness ensued.
It was the Nick Townsend show at John J. Lee Amphitheater Wednesday night, as the sophomore forward posted a career-high 22 points and 15 rebounds to lead Yale men’s basketball to a 79-71 win over Stony Brook (2-4), in a rare out-of-conference home game.
Yale (5-3) trailed 29-28 with less than five minutes to play in the first half but were kept in the game up to that point in part by a burst of offense from junior guard Bez Mbeng (10 points) before charging ahead to grab a 41-35 halftime lead. Yale was outrebounded 18-17 at the half after being decimated on the boards in a loss at Rhode Island Sunday.
Yale men’s basketball held a 12-point halftime lead at Rhode Island after having led by as many as 18 points in the first half.
And then Yale’s wheels fell off.
Editor’s note: Dan Gavitt is NCAA senior vice president of basketball.
Hey Dan, I’m back. It’s been a few weeks since my last note to you on the repugnant new NIT policy eliminating the automatic bid for mid-major conference champions who do not win their conference tournaments.
I have another request. It’s about that NET thing. Time to scrap it, or at least modify it. It only favors the big boys. You know that. We know that. Everyone knows that.
The biggest problem is the TVI (team value index), which is meant to reward teams for beating quality opponents. How does it work with teams who can’t get quadrant-one and even quadrant-two-type games out of conference, even on the road?
It took almost 14 years to the date for Yale men’s basketball to get to play Colgate, and it took a trip to Moncton, New Brunswick to do it.
It was the Bez Mbeng show at Gersten Pavilion in Los Angeles.
Statistics don’t lie, and two of them stand out in Gonzaga’s 86-71 home win over Yale Friday night.
When two teams play and one team has three players who would be stars on the other team, the former team normally wins. Form held true in Trenton Monday night as Princeton men’s basketball defeated Rutgers, 68-61, in Princeton’s first meeting with the Scarlet Knights since 2013 in what was called the “Jersey Jam.”
Those three players? Matt Allocco, Caden Pierce and Xaivian Lee. All three Tigers would start for Rutgers and probably five or six other Big Ten teams.
Editor’s note: Dan Gavitt is the son of the great Dave Gavitt, the driving force behind the creation of the Big East. The younger Gavitt is NIT board chair and NCAA senior vice president of basketball, and he has backed a new NIT policy which eliminates the automatic bid for mid-major conference champions who do not win their conference tournaments.
Dear Dan:
What would your father say?
Matt Knowling is a Yale senior from Ellington, Conn. who was a unanimous All-Ivy first-team selection last season. Ivy Hoops Online sat down with him to discuss the upcoming season and other issues: