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Yale starting point guard and star of last season’s historic NCAA tournament run, Makai Mason will miss the entire 2016-17 season with a foot injury.
Mason was injured in a scrimmage this weekend and will need to undergo surgery to repair his foot. It’s unclear at this point whether Mason will withdraw from Yale to preserve the year of eligibility.
The news is a crushing blow to James Jones’ Bulldogs who will kickoff their title defense this coming weekend at Washington.
The injury was first reported by Erik Dobratz of News 8 in New Haven.
If Mason does not withdraw from school this semester, the junior will lose a year of eligibility at the program, per Ivy League rules. If he does withdraw this semester, he can return for fall 2017. If he decides to stay in school, then he would graduate in spring 2018 and have a year of eligibility as a graduate transfer.
What happened last year (23-7, 13-1): Nothing to see here, just the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in 54 years and a thrilling NCAA first-round win over Baylor. Now graduated forward Justin Sears picked up a second straight Ivy Player of the Year award and now-junior guard Makai Mason established himself as a potential Ivy Player of the Year in future seasons with his clutch play all year, including a 31-point performance against Baylor.
For a deeper look back at Yale’s banner year, read our Ian Halpern’s comprehensive chronicle from April of the Bulldogs’ rise to championship history.
Last year, the Elis won their first outright Ivy title since 1962 and their first NCAA Tournament game ever. They narrowly lost to Duke in the round of 32 in Providence. This year’s version will present more of a challenge to heralded head coach, James Jones, who enters his 18th year as Elis coach and the dean of all Ivy coaches. Jones won the coveted mid-major Coach of the Year honor last year, along with a host of other honors.
On October 1, eight members of the Yale men’s basketball teams of 1962, 1963 and 1964 met at Payne Whitney Gymnasium for a reunion dinner.
The author was lucky enough to be in attendance, having watched those teams play as a youth growing up in New Haven. Some of the team members present were All-American Rick Kaminsky, highly successful Ivy Funds originator Dennis Lynch and Connecticut resident and star guard Bob Trupin.
The evening was composed of a very well-done slide show and talks to the crowd by Kaminsky, 93-year-old former head coach Joe Vancisin and myself.
Justin Sears, 2016 Yale graduate and two-time Ivy Player of the Year, was named to Great Britain’s preliminary roster for this summer’s EuroBasket 2017 Qualification Games, according to British Basketball.
Sears is one of 24 players named to the preliminary roster, from which 16 will attend training camp next month.
Sears signed a professional contract with Germany’s Giessen 46ers in June after having helped lead Yale to its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1962 in March.
British Basketball players and coaches will convene at a training camp in Portugal in early August.
Sears’ former teammate, junior Makai Mason, is currently training with the German National team, as is Columbia 2016 graduate Maodo Lo.
Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv reported Friday (and our own Richard Kent confirmed) that Yale junior guard Makai Mason will play with the German national team for the next two months and then in the World Games 2017, joining Columbia 2016 graduate (and fellow All-Ivy first-teamer) Maodo Lo.
Lo has played for the German national team for the past two years and remains an “intriguing prospect from an NBA standpoint” on the Philadelphia 76ers’ Summer League roster per The Sixer Sense.
Our Richard Kent caught up with Yale junior guard and March Madness standout Makai Mason and talked to him about what Yale fans can expect from next year’s Bulldogs team as the program defends its 2015-16 Ivy championship and much more:
Ivy Hoops Online caught up with Onaje Woodbine (Yale ’02) for an in-depth conversation about his new book “Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball,” a book exploring the transcendent experience that the game has provided as lived religion for young black males playing basketball on the same playgrounds in the Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan sections of Boston where he’d played as a teenager.
In the book, Woodbine chronicles quitting the Yale basketball team in 2000 to pursue “the higher aims of divine purpose and truth” and a disconnect between himself and his players at coaches and Yale that took on cultural and racial overtones. Most centrally, he illustrates how playing basketball represented a religious experience for young black males in Boston dealing with grief and tragedy in their neighborhoods and families.
Just three days before leaving for South Africa, where a play based on the book will be performed, Woodbine talked to Ivy Hoops Online about what Yale basketball fans should take away from his book, why Yale coach James Jones (also Woodbine’s sophomore-year coach in 1999-2000) reached out to him recently, and the power of religious consciousness.
Former Yale men’s basketball captain Jack Montague filed a lawsuit against the university Thursday, arguing that the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct (UWC) unjustly made him a “poster boy” by expelling him in February for violating university policy on sexual misconduct.
Deputy Title IX Coordinator Angela Gleason and Senior Deputy Title IX Coordinator Jason Killheffer are also named as defendants in the lawsuit in addition to the university. The suit alleges that the university’s expulsion was a breach of Yale’s contractual obligations and a violation of his Title IX rights.