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Eurobasket.com reported Saturday that 2015 Yale graduate and All-Ivy first-teamer Javier Duren has signed a contract with Holland’s Aris Leeuwarden in the Eredivisie League.
Duren averaged 10.2 points per game for his career, as well as 14.0 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.3 steals per contest in 2014-15 as he led the Bulldogs to a share of the Ivy League championship.
Shams Charania of RealGM reported Friday night that former Harvard standout Wesley Saunders has agreed to a partially guaranteed deal by the New York Knicks. Further details have not yet been released.
Saunders, 2013-14 Ivy Player of the Year and a 2015 graduate, averaged just 3.4 points per game during his NBA Summer League stint with the Utah Jazz.
Partially guaranteed contracts signed mid-summer usually result in a training camp audition, which is still great news for Saunders, who now has the chance to follow Jeremy Lin, a 2010 Harvard graduate, as a former Crimson star turned Knicks standout.
Saunders averaged 12.6 points, 4.1 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.5 steals per game for his collegiate career, including 16.6 points and 6.1 boards per contest last season.
Knicks blog Posting & Toasting notes that the Knicks have plenty of backcourt minutes available, meaning that “Saunders can gun for a full guarantee and perhaps a share of those minutes.”
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. We did Yale next by request of Justin Sears:
Hey @IvyHoopsOnline , would it be too much to ask if Yale could go next? We need some good vibes in New Haven right now. #WorthAShotToAsk
— Justin Sears (@Jussears5) July 10, 2015
We all know the 2014-15 Yale men”s basketball season didn”t have a storybook ending. Just four months ago, Harvard edged out Yale at the Palestra, 53-51, in an already legendarily back-and-forth Ivy playoff game after the Bulldogs let a last-second lead literally slip away at Dartmouth that would have clinched the Elis” first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1962. Then the NIT online casino inexplicably slipped away too.
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Yale is next by request of Ivy Player of the Year Justin Sears.
Yale”s run through the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT) first round in 2014 was quite the roller coaster. First, a three-pointer banked in by Justin Sears with 0.07 seconds left gave Yale a 69-68 squeaker over Quinnipiac. Then in the second round, Yale prevailed at Holy Cross, 71-66, overcoming a 66-65 deficit with 1:43 remaining to make James Jones online casino the winningest coach in Yale basketball history (surpassing Joe Vancisin). Yale”s next win came by a 72-69 at Ivy rival Columbia, which had beaten the Bulldogs 62-46 on the same Levien Gym floor.
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Yale is next by request of Ivy Player of the Year Justin Sears.
Yale won its first ever postseason game on March 14, 2002. It took a while, but the payoff was sweet.
Yale earned a NIT appearance three years removed from a 4-22 campaign in 1998-99 by virtue of its share of the Ivy title (part of our No. 9 moment). The Elis drew a road matchup with favored Rutgers at the Louis Brown Athletic Center (better known as the RAC), a notoriously difficult place for visitors to play where the Scarlet Knights were 15-1 prior to facing Yale.
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Yale is next by request of Ivy Player of the Year Justin Sears.
Yale made some history at the 1969 Rainbow Classic in Hawaii by defeating LSU in the championship game, 97-94.
LSU was anything but a pushover that year, led by senior Pete Maravich, who averaged 44.5 (!) points per game, still the highest scoring total in NCAA history. But Yale’s Jim Morgan (who turned in 21.3 points per contest that year himself) outscored Maravich head-to-head 35-34 on Dec. 30, 1969, giving the Elis the edge they needed. LSU went on to finish second in the SEC that season, making Yale’s victory even more impressive. Yale finished 11-13 (7-7 Ivy, good for fourth in the conference), but beating Pete Maravich (and having a player outscore him) validates any season.
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Yale is next by request of Ivy Player of the Year Justin Sears.
The 1961-62 Yale Bulldogs are undoubtedly one of the greatest teams in school history, finishing 13-1 in Ivy play and 18-6 overall while securing the Ivy League championship, the program’s second in a six-year span.
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Yale is next by request of Ivy Player of the Year Justin Sears:
Yale had suffered seven straight losing seasons, including a 4-22 finish in 1998-99, when it hired James Jones as its head coach on April 27, 1999. Things got better quickly.
Jones, a former Yale assistant coach (1995-97), led the Elis to a share of the Ivy title in 2002, though Penn would trump Yale in the league playoff game for a NCAA Tournament berth.
Yale has finished in the top half of the conference every season without fail since 2000. True, no NCAA Tournament appearances in that span (though a share of the title this season brought Yale as close as it could possibly get without getting over that hump), but still incredible consistency for a program that lacked it for decades before his arrival.
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Yale is next by request of Ivy Player of the Year Justin Sears, who had 12 points, 15 rebounds and three blocks in our next all-time moment…
On Nov. 30, 2014, Yale did something it hadn’t done before: Defeat a defending national champion. And it did so in the most dramatic way possible.