“Well that was pretty wild!,” Jack Montague tweeted after the game. (yalebulldogs.com)
Yale hadn’t beaten UConn in 28 years. UConn had won 68 games in a row against in-state rivals.
But it took only one play to flip that script.
Trailing 44-42 with 3.2 seconds left on the game clock, Yale inbounded the ball. Just a second and a half later, junior guard Jack Montague nailed a three-pointer that clinched the Elis the win, only the second for an Ivy over a defending national champion since Princeton trumped UCLA in 1996.
Leading the way for the Bulldogs (8-2) was junior forward Justin Sears, who notched 12 points and 15 rebounds, just 10 fewer boards than UConn (3-3) posted as a team. Senior guard Javier Duren also contributed 15 points.
Alex Mitola and the Big Green have a chance to jumpstart its season against Maine Saturday.
You could call Dartmouth’s 1-4 start a big disappointment, or you could call it the norm since the Big Green have struggled mightily under Paul Cormier, going a combined 31-83 over the last four seasons. If they don’t turn it around soon, they could be looking at yet another long, unbearable season.
On a more positive note, besides a 20-point blowout loss in the season opener against St. Bonaventure, most of their games have been close. Three of Dartmouth’s four losses have been by five points or less, including the most recent loss (by one point) to Longwood.
Poor free throw shooting has been the difference between a winning record and the abysmal 1-4 start for Dartmouth this season. In their two-point loss to New Hampshire, the Big Green shot just 11-for-18 from the charity stripe, or 61.1 percent. Against Longwood, a game decided by one point, Dartmouth shot a grim 57.9 percent from the line compared to Longwood’s 79.2 percent. This kind of foul shooting wouldn’t help a high school team win games, much less a division one basketball program. Turnovers have also been a major issue. In order for this Dartmouth team to have any success at all, it will need to do a much better job of protecting the basketball.
Although early in the season, Dartmouth has a lot of work to do if it hopes to be competitive in Ivy League play. While its defensive play has been solid, it must also improve on the offensive side of the ball. The Big Green currently rank second to last in the league in scoring, and most of their offense comes from junior point guard Alex Mitola. Dartmouth’s starting center, Gabas Maldunas, a second-team All-Ivy selection his sophomore year, has been inconsistent at best in his return from tearing his ACL last January. While understandable since it has only been 10 months since the injury, Dartmouth is going to need him to make an Adrian Peterson-like recovery and return to full strength as soon as possible. Unless Mitola gets some offensive help fast, it could be another long season for Cormier and the Big Green.
Time for a new Ivy Hoops Online feature – #TweetWatch will round up some of the best Ivy hoops-related tweets in a given week. Ancient Eight, meet 21st century:
Lots of good stuff going on here. First, I’ve never seen Jerome Allen smile that wide at a postgame presser, win or lose. Second, everyone who bet that Allen would win a “pop-a-shot” arcade competition between City 6 basketball coaches before Penn basketball won its first game can collect. Still, props to Allen and his City 6 counterparts for shooting hoops to raise money for the nonprofit food bank Philabundance, which does fantastic work. The Camp Out for Hunger campaign was sponsored by the Preston and Steve morning radio show from local Philadelphia station 93.3 WMMR. Keep making it rain, Jerome.
Wesley Saunders notched 10 second-half points following a scoreless first stanza against Northeastern. (gocrimson.com)
In the Crimson’s fourth game against a fellow Boston team, Harvard pushed its record to 5-1 overall and 5-0 at home with a scrappy (and interesting) win against Northeastern. After leading 16-4 just seven minutes into the game, Harvard allowed Northeastern to claw its way back. Second-chance opportunities burned the Crimson, accounting for 10 of Northeastern’s 22 first-half points. In the last 13 minutes of the first half, Harvard scored a mere 11 points. Given that Harvard was favored to win by eight points, its five-point lead going into the break should have felt encouraging, but considering Northeastern’s weak play, it was actually a disappointment.
Tavon Blackmon is averaging 7.4 points and 2.9 assists this season. (providencejournal.com)
So what’s up with Brown?
The Bears have always been a solid defensive unit under coach Mike Martin. They boast a frontcourt that features two-time Ivy Defensive Player of the Year Cedric Kuakumensah and fellow defensive stalwart Rafa Maia. Sophomore guard Steven Spieth also came into this season with a bit of a reputation as a strong backcourt defender as well.
And yet the Bears also have what is comfortably the worst defense in the conference statistically at this early stage of the season. They can’t defend in transition at all.
“You are what your record says you are.” – Bill Parcells
Princeton’s record says “we are not very good.”
Unable to hold an eight-point lead at the half last night at Fairleigh Dickinson, the Tigers surrendered an unfathomable 64 second-half points, losing to the Knights, 89-85. In one eight-minute stretch in the second period, the teams combined for 29 points, 25 of which were entered in FDU’s ledger.
Gary Walters and his classmates celebrate Princeton’s Final Four bid in 1965.(paw.princeton.edu)
Very few people have had a stronger impact on Princeton basketball than Gary Walters, who served as his alma mater’s athletic director for 20 years before retiring earlier this year and was a point guard for the Tigers from 1964-67. He was starting point guard on Princeton’s 1964-65 Final Four Team, and we caught up with the Ford Family Athletic Director Emeritus to ask him about his memories of that legendary squad for its 50th anniversary.
Q: What were your expectations going into the 1964-65 season?
A: Very high based on any number of factors, including having the national player of the year and Olympic captain in Bill Bradley and a strong sophomore class, all recruited by coach Butch van Breda Kolff.
Kyle Castlin’s scoring and rebounding impact has been felt immediately, but the Lions still have major depth issues. (onebidwonders.com)
The saying is that your home gym is a fortress; for Columbia, Levien Gymnasium — literally and figuratively — is better called a bunker. The Lions lost just four games there last year: a defeat at the death to Manhattan in the home opener, a double-overtime loss to Harvard assisted by the officials, a 10-point loss to Princeton and the CIT quarterfinal against Yale. Total margin of defeat: 18 points.
It comes as a shock now when the Lions lose in their bunker, as they did last night. It was another close game, as Loyola (Md.) scored a buzzer-beater to finish off the Light Blue after the home side’s furious fightback. Final two minutes aside, the result exposed some fairly major issues with a still congealing squad.
Although the Tigers went 1-2 in the Wooden Legacy tournament, Mitch Henderson believes his young team made progress on the West Coast trip.
“[Freshman point guard] Amir Bell is settling into the position, showing a better understanding of what we expect from him and getting more comfortable in each game,” Henderson said.
Bell’s work in the tournament earned him Ivy Rookie of the Week recognition in Big Apple Buckets’ Ivy weekly roundup. The rapidly maturing freshman, cast as “the heir apparent to T. J. Bray,” averaged 11 points per game in Anaheim and, impressively, committed only one turnover in the three games. Henderson said that he was pleased with how freshman center Alec Brennan responded while getting significant minutes in the Golden State. Sophomore Henry Caruso from San Mateo, Cal., came off the bench in each game to spark several Tiger rallies. His 15 points in 20 minutes against UTEP in the opener on Thanksgiving afternoon led all Tigers.
The week that was in Ivy roundball, power rankings included:
8. Penn (0-5)
Sigh. More on Penn here, but suffice it to say that the Quakers’ loss to Wagner made their tangible improvements against Lafayette and Temple look like a mirage.
7. Dartmouth (1-3)
Meh. The Big Green let a four-point lead with 7:04 left slip away at home to New Hampshire, which trumped Dartmouth, 65-63, via a game-winning bucket by Daniel Dion with four seconds left. Dartmouth beat IPFW, 68-67, earlier in the week but entered the New Hampshire game with the lowest-scoring offense in the conference and second to last in turnover margin. This offense just isn’t very good and somebody besides Alex Mitola needs to step up as a consistent weapon. Prior to New Hampshire, Connor Boehm was shooting just 43.8 percent from the field, and his scoring was down to 6.7 points per game from 10.9 last season. Boehm was the Big Green’s leading scorer against the Wildcats and will have to be even more impactful going forward for this offense to lift itself up.
