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Richard Kent It took a lay-in by freshman forward Isaac Celiscar off a nifty assist from junior forward Nick Townsend assist with eight seconds remaining to give Yale a 72-71 win over upset-minded Penn at John J. Lee Amphitheater Friday..
“We were trying to iso [senior guard] John [Poulakidas] and Nick,” Yale coach James Jones said. “Nick is as unselfish as they come.”
Ivy Hoops Online recently caught up with Yale junior forward Nick Townsend. The Chappaqua, N.Y. native is coming off a career-high 25-point performance in a win at Cornell on Saturday:
Total domination. There’s no other way to describe Yale’s 103-88 win over Cornell at Newman Arena, in a battle between two of the top three teams in the Ivy League standings.
Cornell (13-7, 5-2 Ivy) led 44-40 in a nip-and-tuck battle in which neither team held more than a five-point lead.
So much for a nip-and-tuck game with arch-rival Princeton.
And so much for a trap game at Penn in between playing at Princeton and Cornell.
Yale answered those bells emphatically with a 77-70 win at Jadwin Gym and a 90-61 win at The Palestra.
In fairness to Penn, it was a 12-point game with a little under six minutes t0 play and then Yale closed the game out with a 23-6 run. But the game was never in doubt.
If consistency is a virtue, then Yale was more than virtuous. The Bulldogs shot 57% from the filed in both games and held both Princeton and Penn to 34% shooting.
“That’s a really good Yale basketball game,” Yale coach James Jones said. “A really good game from us from start to finish.”
I am old enough to remember the Princeton-Penn hegemony in Ivy hoops.
We’re talking 1965-2015. That’s 50 years. That’s a long time. Names like Carril, Dunphy, Bradley, Petrie, Calhoun and many, many more.
Tommy Amaker entered in 2007 and assisted in disrupting the world order. In 2010, Cornell made a run to the Sweet 16.
Since then, it has been mostly Yale and Princeton.
And the rivalry is very heated.
James Jones and Mitch Henderson could not be more different, personally and stylistically. But since 2016, their hegemony is crystal clear.
Yale has gone 88-28 and Princeton 85-31 in the Ivy regular season. Yale has won three Ivy League tourneys and Princeton two. They have each won two NCAA tourney games.
Little to separate them, but Yale has won 11 out of the last 14.
Princeton and Yale have, as a duo, separated from the pack.
This year, Yale sits atop the Ivy standings at 4-0. Princeton is 3-1 after a home loss to Cornell.
Yale has a league-leading NET ranking of 79 and a KenPom ranking of 75. Princeton sits at 130 and 137, respectively.
“I’m excited about the opportunity,” Yale coach James Jones. “That’s what college basketball is all about.”
And he is correct. The 5 p.m. start at Jadwin Gym will be televised by ESPN2.
Keys to the game:
A Tuesday email from Ivy League executive director Robin Harris addressed to league coaches and student-athletes reported the league would opt out of the revenue-sharing element of a pending $2.8 billion NCAA settlement forged last year aimed at paying athletes a share of the revenue colleges made from their performances.
In May 2024, the NCAA announced a $2.8 billion settlement to cover “back pay” to student-athletes from 2016 to 2024 resulting from lost name, image and likeness (NIL) money.
Seventy-seven days is a long time in a college hoops season of about 130 days.
It was an especially long time for Yale women’s basketball coach Dalila Eshe, since that was the length of time between her team’s opening-night win over Monmouth in November and a victory on Monday at Dartmouth.
Yale (2-15, 1-3 Ivy) upset Dartmouth (8-9, 2-2) 70-67 behind 22 points from senior forward Grace Thybulle.
“Grace had an incredible game,” Eshe said.
It was billed as a battle between the two top Ivy scorers. And it lived up to expectations.
Senior guard John Poulakidas notched 29 points, one off his career high, to lead Yale to a 92-88 win over Columbia at Levien Gym Saturday.
“I take my work and my craft very seriously,” Poulakidas said. “We have a team full of dogs.”
Two teams with strong revenge motives met at John J. Lee Amphitheater Saturday.
Brown had defeated Yale on the last day of the regular season last year (84-81) to prevent Yale from sharing the regular season Ivy title with Princeton.
But then Yale overcame a six-point deficit with 27 seconds left to defeat Brown in the Ivy League championship game in March, 62-61.
It was Yale that prevailed Saturday in the rematch, 79-58.
“Really good team win for us. We got contributions from everyone,” Yale coach James Jones said.
“Don’t let up, pedal on the gas,” Carrie Moore said midway through the third period with Harvard women’s basketball building a scoring run against Yale.
Moore’s Crimson defeated host Yale, 61-43, in a surprisingly competitive game Saturday to open Ivy League play.
Consider that Harvard (12-1, 1-0 Ivy) had already defeated Boston University by 60 (86-26) and Yale had fallen to the Terriers, 77-56, just last week.