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Yale men’s basketball owns Brown.
The Bulldogs have now won 10 out of their last 11 games against the Bears under coach James Jones, whose team won another road contest in the series Tuesday night, 80-70. Brown never led.
“Great way to start league play,” Jones said. “Always tough to win on the road, especially with our travel partner. The team is starting to come together. We’re close to playing Bulldog basketball.”
Junior guard John Poulakidas delivered a season-high 23 points on 8-for-14 shooting to lead Yale to a hard fought 86-78 overtime win at Howard Wednesday.
Yale (9-6) played the game with team scoring and rebounding leader sophomore center Danny Wolf out with an illness.
The Bulldogs squandered a 16-point lead (67-51). A trey by former Harvard nemesis and grad forward Seth Towns, the 2017-18 Ivy Player of the Year, plus a dunk by junior guard Bryce Harris dunk in the last minute of regulation sent the game into overtime.
But the visitors dominated the extra session.
It was a game of runs by both teams.
Yale went on a first-half 11-point run to lead by 17-7, and the Bison answered with their own 7-0 run to knot the score at 20.
Howard (5-10) switched to a 2-3 zone, which flummoxed Yale for portions of the first half.
Yale led 36-31 at the half. Poulakidas posted 16 first-half points.
The Bulldogs were in control for most of the second half until Howard (5-10) went on an 18-4 run to send the game into overtime.
“Great team effort, really rebounded well, which made all the difference in the game,” Yale coach James Jones said.
Yale won the rebounding war, 47-28, hauling in 21 offensive boards that led to 31 second-chance points.
Senior forward Matt Knowling notched 14 points, eight rebounds and five assists, while junior guard Bez Mbeng registered 14 points. Sophomore forward Casey Simmons pitched in with 11 points and a game-high 11 rebounds off the bench.
Nine Yale players logged 10 minutes or more, as Jones is still searching for a rotation for the Ivy slate.
Junior guard Marcus Dockery led Howard with 21 points. Towns contributed 17 points and six rebounds.
Yale opens Ivy play at Brown on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
Princeton women’s basketball dominated its in-state rivals Wednesday night, casting aside the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, 66-55, at Jadwin Gymnasium.
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.
Penn avoided a second consecutive disastrous loss thanks to some heroics from its upperclassmen Friday.
The Quakers opened the Cathedral of College Basketball Classic with a narrow 74-72 win over Lafayette after junior guard George Smith buried a go-ahead three-pointer from the right wing with 33 seconds to go on a broken play.
Smith and the rest of the Quakers (4-2) definitely owe senior guard Clark Slajchert a big thank you. Slajchert set Smith up for the game-winning shot after he recovered a deflection in the backcourt and found the open shooter following a mad scramble for the ball.
Slajchert finished with a team-high 18 points and tied a career high with five assists. The senior played 37 minutes, so load management for Slajchert will be something to monitor as the Red and Blue play three games in as many days this weekend.
It’s (mostly) happy Quakeaways for the day, led by how …
Penn followed up one of its best victories in years with one of its worst defeats.
The Quakers failed repeatedly to put away host and KenPom No. 352 Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) in the second half and eventually got burned in a 83-80 overtime loss.
UMES is the worst-ranked team Penn (3-2) has ever lost to in the KenPom era (which has data going back to the 1998-99 season).
Penn’s loss was sealed by a three with nine-tenths of a second to play in overtime from UMES’ Elijah Wilson on a play that strongly resembled Kris Jenkins’ shot to win the 2016 national championship game for Villanova.
The shot spoiled a furious Penn rally that was led by freshman Sam Brown, who buried two three-pointers in an eight-second span to tie the game before the final sequence.
Penn should have sealed up a win easily well before Wilson’s shot, mostly because …
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.
Ivy Hoops Online contributor Steve Silverman caught up with first-year Dartmouth women’s basketball coach Linda Cimino Monday to discuss her key influences on the path to taking over in Hanover, plans to strengthen the program, takeaways from her team’s home loss to Siena Sunday, first-year guard Nina Minicozzi’s strong work ethic, how she’d define a successful first season as coach and much more: