Azar Swain

Yale men fall to Southern Utah in overtime, 88-85

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Yale opened the Rocket Mortgage Fort Myers Tip-Off with a tough 88-85 loss in overtime to worthy Big Sky foe Southern Utah in Florida Tuesday afternoon.

The Bulldogs (3-3) led for much of the game, but the Thunderbirds (2-3) kept clawing back.

Southern Utah senior forward Maizen Fausett made three free throws with 13 seconds to go in regulation to tie the game and force overtime, and redshirt senior guard John Knight III made another three from the charity stripe with 0.8 ticks left in overtime to seal the victory.

Yale led 39-33 at the half. The Thunderbirds went on a 16-2 run early in the second half to tie the score at 51. Yale then went on an eight-point run of its own, but Southern Utah rallied to send the game into overtime.

All five Yale starters scored in double figures, led yet again by senior guard Azar Swain with 21. But Swain was only 1-for-9 from three-point range.

Yale was outrebounded, 42-36.

Yale will face Milwaukee in the consolation game Wednesday at 11 a.m. The Panthers feature freshman sensation Patrick Baldwin, Jr. (son of Milwaukee coach Pat Baldwin), who apparently suffered a slight ankle sprain Tuesday.

Yale men split a pair at Vermont and Albany

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The Yale men fell on the road to a strong Vermont team Friday, 61-53, before a crowd of 2,188.

The Elis clung to a one-point lead at the half, and the second stanza was nip and tuck the whole way.

Senior guard Azar Swain led the way with 22 points, while senior forward Ryan Davis paced the Catamounts with 18.

The Bulldogs were ranked No. 20 in the CollegeInsider.com men’s mid-major top 25 entering the contest, while Vermont was perched just below them at No. 22.

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Layoff, Shmayoff: A solid start for Ivy League hoops

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Announcers and writers around the nation focused a lot of attention to the 600-plus days between games for the Ivy League.  While many expected the teams to be a bit rusty out of the gates, the Ancient Eight acquitted itself quite well in the season’s first week.

Thirteen of the league’s 16 teams had at least one win, with the Princeton and Columbia women notching three victories each.  The Brown men almost upset No. 19 UNC without their top player, and the Princeton men just missed out on winning the Asheville Championship.

Check out some of the highlights from a very successful and welcome week of Ivy hoops:

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Yale men have up and down weekend with dominant win over UMass, blowout loss at Seton Hall

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Yale had an up, then down weekend.

Yale faced a more talented foe Sunday in KenPom No. 35 Seton Hall at the Prudential Center in Newark.
Except for one spurt in the first half which cut the deficit to five, it was never a game. The Pirates won in a cakewalk, 80-44.
The perimeter defense for Seton Hall (2-0) held Yale (2-1) to 24% shooting and a paltry 13% from three.
Gabbidon led Yale with 14 points and a game-high 11 rebounds. Cotton chipped in with 12 points.
Seton Hall faces No. 6 Michigan on Tuesday in Ann Arbor in a battle of teams formerly coached by Tommy Amaker.
Yale’s previous outing was a very different story.
Someone told me a few minutes into the Bulldogs’ matchup against Massachusetts at John J. Lee Amphitheater Friday night that while Yale and UMass may have nearly equal talent, Yale will win because

it has James Jones and a system. Bingo on both.

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Ivy League men’s basketball Media Day roundup

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Two days after the Media Day for Ivy women’s hoops, the men had their turn at the virtual podium.  A day prior, the results of the preseason poll were released.  While five different teams earned top votes, the overall totals showed no changes from the last day of competition in 2020.

Yale, two-time defending Ivy champion, was again picked to come in first with 115 points and seven first-place votes.  Harvard, the 2019 co-champion, was close behind, tallying 110 points and four first-place votes.  Princeton, the 2017 title winner, closed out the top tier with 108 points and two first-place votes.

Penn, the 2018 co-champion, secured the last slot in the upper division with 93 points and two first-place selections.  Brown, which last held the title in 1986, again found itself behind the Quakers for fifth place with 79 points and a pair of title votes.

Dartmouth, which last entered the winner’s circle in 1959, was tabbed in the six slot with 43 points, four points more than Cornell, which last held the top spot in the Sweet Sixteen season of 2010.  Columbia, the 1968 champion, was projected to finish last with 25 points.

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What to expect when Ivy League basketball returns

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As this Ivy non-season progresses, we thought it’d make sense for us to do an Ivy Hoops Online contributors’ roundtable looking ahead to next season, assuming there is one:

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If there would have been a 2020-21 Ivy hoops season, what would have happened?

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Now’s the time of year that an Ivy League hoops slate would be revving up, and since there’s no Ivy hoops action to come this spring, here’s an IHO contributors’ roundtable pondering what might have happened in the 2020-21 Ivy season on the men’s and or women’s sides if there had been one instead of an exodus of much of the league’s top talent via the transfer portal. Behold the one-year Ivy hoops universes we created:

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Yale men well-positioned for another Ivy title run in 2021-22

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Reload, not rebuild. Next man up, as James Jones says. Call it what you want, but Yale remains the best men’s Ivy hoops program looking far ahead to the 2021-22 season.
Sure, Yale loses presumptive Ivy Player of the Year and future NBA possibility Paul Atkinson. And also his backup center Wyatt Yess. And the Elis were the odds on favorite to three-peat as Ivy champions had the 2020-21 season not been canceled.
Next season, the Elis still return ample offense and defense at the wing and guard positions. Much more on paper than any other Ivy.

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IHO 2019-20 Men’s All-Ivy Awards

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Here’s what you’ve all been waiting for: the 2019-20 Ivy Hoops Online All-Ivy Men’s honorees as selected by IHO contributors, which are quite bit different from the selections that the Ivy League released:

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Yale men roll to another Ivy League title

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On Saturday, it will be exactly five years since one of the toughest nights in recent Yale men’s basketball history. Leading by five points in the final minute against a Dartmouth team that was playing just for pride, the Bulldogs lost in perhaps the most excruciating manner possible: a buzzer-beater by Gabas Maldunas off an inbound play. The Ivy League title trophy – set to be awarded to Yale – was quickly covered and hustled out of Leede Arena and Hanover. 

After losing a tiebreaker to Harvard the following week, their NCAA Tournament drought reached 53 years, and – having graduated four contributing seniors – who knew when they would get another chance the way Harvard and Princeton were trending?

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