
It was just another day at the office for James Jones and crew – until it wasn’t.
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It was just another day at the office for James Jones and crew – until it wasn’t.
As we near the halfway mark of the 2022 Ivy League season, here are five thoughts about the state of the race for the men’s league title:
Preseason Ivy favorite Yale returned to one of its comfortable road venues, Jadwin Gym, to upset the Tigers, 80-74. The Tigers have shown a propensity to dig themselves into early holes. This time the hole was too deep, the Eli sharpshooters too deadly. Yale’s 17-point lead at the half, boosted by the Tigers’ surrendering an inexcusable 1-on-2 layup after holding for the last shot, proved to be insurmountable.
In the second half, the Tigers played much closer to their preferred game, making nine of 12 from deep to get back into contention, at one point closing within two. Even when Azar Swain and Jalen Gabbidon were rested in the middle of the second half, the Tigers failed to take advantage. Yale actually added to its lead.
Jaelin Llewellyn dismissed injury concerns to fuel the Tigers’ comeback effort, canning six of 12 shots from deep and scoring 23 points. Ethan Wright and Drew Friberg went a combined 3-for-14 from beyond the arc, with most of those misses coming in the first half.
After a disappointing loss at Penn on Saturday set up by a subpar performance by Azar Swain, Yale got just what the doctor ordered Tuesday night: a visit to Payne Whitney Gym from Ivy bottom-dweller Columbia.
But Yale did not play down to the opposition.
Ninety-five years after Penn opened up the Palestra with a win over Yale, this edition of the Red & Blue sought another reset Saturday against the team pegged to win the Ivy title in the conference preseason media poll.
Brown coach Mike Martin was 6-2 against Yale and coach James Jones during his storied playing career for the Bears, but the tables have been turned in head-to-head coaching.
It would be logical to expect that Yale would be down at the half to the high-flying Cornell offense if Azar Swain did not score.
It was just a day at the office for Yale Tuesday night at John J. Lee Amphitheater.
The Bulldogs started strong, grabbed a 30-19 lead over Albany at intermission and never looked back en route to a 71-52 win.
Yale (6-5) led at one point by 56-31. Albany (1-7) did go on a 13-0 run to narrow the deficit a bit.
Even with the easy win, coach James Jones found ample room for improvement.
”I didn’t think we were very sharp,” the Albany alumnus said.
A 22-point first-half deficit was too much for Yale to overcome Sunday as the Bulldogs fell at home to Stony Brook, 85-81.
It snapped a 10-game home winning streak for Yale (4-4) which goes back to December 2019 and a home loss to Monmouth.
The Seawolves (2-3) shot 53.7% from the field against a usually tough and reliable Yale defense.
“We were really poor defensively,” Yale coach James Jones said.