Home of the Roundball Poets
It was billed as a battle between the two top Ivy scorers. And it lived up to expectations.
Senior guard John Poulakidas notched 29 points, one off his career high, to lead Yale to a 92-88 win over Columbia at Levien Gym Saturday.
“I take my work and my craft very seriously,” Poulakidas said. “We have a team full of dogs.”
Two teams with strong revenge motives met at John J. Lee Amphitheater Saturday.
Brown had defeated Yale on the last day of the regular season last year (84-81) to prevent Yale from sharing the regular season Ivy title with Princeton.
But then Yale overcame a six-point deficit with 27 seconds left to defeat Brown in the Ivy League championship game in March, 62-61.
It was Yale that prevailed Saturday in the rematch, 79-58.
“Really good team win for us. We got contributions from everyone,” Yale coach James Jones said.
Ivy Hoops Online correspondent George “Toothless Tiger” Clark reflects on Princeton men’s basketball’s 10-4 start to the 2024-25 season with Ivy League play slated to start on Jan. 11 at Harvard:
James Jones’ team is growing up quickly before his eyes – both out of skill and necessity.
With leading scorer and senior guard John Poulakidas still sidelined with a foot injury, senior guard Yassine Gharram off the team and junior forward Casey Simmons injured, the Bulldogs staged a ferocious second-half rally and fell narrowly to UTEP in the final of the Sun Bowl Invitational Saturday, 75-74.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Yale broke a two-game losing streak with an impressive second half Saturday afternoon at Lee Amphitheater, allowing exactly half as many points as the last time we saw the Bulldogs at Mohegan Sun two weeks ago in a 65-50 win over Vermont, albeit a struggling and undermanned Catamounts team.
The big personnel news of the day was that Yale’s leading scorer (and 16th nationally) John Poulakidas was not in uniform. The Bulldogs’ offense struggled mightily without him in the first half, scoring just 22 points and turning the ball over 13 times. Sophomore Trevor Mullin got his first career start, but it was Bez Mbeng who had six of those turnovers.
No one ever accused Yale men’s basketball coach James Jones of playing an easy out-of-conference schedule.
Yale traveled to Kingston, R.I. to take on the 7-0 Rhode Island Rams Monday night.
Rhody won 84-78 to start the season 8-0 for the first time since the 1946-47 season.
Jones called it “a tough loss on the road.”
UNCASVILLE, Conn. – The day after a lopsided 400th career victory over Fairfield, James Jones saw his Yale team give one of the worst defensive performances in his storied career, leading to a disappointing 100-94 loss to Delaware in front of a sparse crowd at the Hall Of Fame Tip-Off at Mohegan Sun Arena.
Yale came close to playing the perfect first stanza en route to a convincing 86-64 road win over Stony Brook Wednesday evening.
Yale (3-3) held a 48-28 lead at the half. The Bulldogs were 8-for-13 from three and held a 22-16 rebounding edge. They outscored Stony Brook (2-3) in the paint, 16-8.
Senior guard John Poulakidas, the game’s leading scorer, had 15 points at halftime and hit his first six shots.
A second-half Minnesota surge led the Golden Gophers to a 59-56 win over Yale at Williams Arena before 8,205 fans Saturday.
The Bulldogs had led by as many as 14 (25-11) in the first half and held a 29-19 halftime lead.
Minnesota came out far more aggressively in the second half and spread the floor effectively. The hosts also made a concerted effort to get the ball to preseason All-Big Ten senior forward Dawson Garcia. Garcia registered 19 second-half points after managing only five in the first half.
“We are bending but not breaking,” Minnesota coach Ben Johnson said.
Yale men’s basketball owned the paint, but Purdue owned the perimeter, as the No. 13 Boilermakers defeated Yale 92-84 at a sold-out Mackey Arena Monday night.
Yale (1-2) outscored Purdue (3-0) 50-24 in the paint and 11-5 on offensive rebounds.
Bulldogs coach James Jones called his team’s showing a “tough gritty performance, a few costly possessions from a great road win.”