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Yale men’s basketball owns Brown.
The Bulldogs have now won 10 out of their last 11 games against the Bears under coach James Jones, whose team won another road contest in the series Tuesday night, 80-70. Brown never led.
“Great way to start league play,” Jones said. “Always tough to win on the road, especially with our travel partner. The team is starting to come together. We’re close to playing Bulldog basketball.”
Junior guard John Poulakidas delivered a season-high 23 points on 8-for-14 shooting to lead Yale to a hard fought 86-78 overtime win at Howard Wednesday.
Yale (9-6) played the game with team scoring and rebounding leader sophomore center Danny Wolf out with an illness.
The Bulldogs squandered a 16-point lead (67-51). A trey by former Harvard nemesis and grad forward Seth Towns, the 2017-18 Ivy Player of the Year, plus a dunk by junior guard Bryce Harris dunk in the last minute of regulation sent the game into overtime.
But the visitors dominated the extra session.
It was a game of runs by both teams.
Yale went on a first-half 11-point run to lead by 17-7, and the Bison answered with their own 7-0 run to knot the score at 20.
Howard (5-10) switched to a 2-3 zone, which flummoxed Yale for portions of the first half.
Yale led 36-31 at the half. Poulakidas posted 16 first-half points.
The Bulldogs were in control for most of the second half until Howard (5-10) went on an 18-4 run to send the game into overtime.
“Great team effort, really rebounded well, which made all the difference in the game,” Yale coach James Jones said.
Yale won the rebounding war, 47-28, hauling in 21 offensive boards that led to 31 second-chance points.
Senior forward Matt Knowling notched 14 points, eight rebounds and five assists, while junior guard Bez Mbeng registered 14 points. Sophomore forward Casey Simmons pitched in with 11 points and a game-high 11 rebounds off the bench.
Nine Yale players logged 10 minutes or more, as Jones is still searching for a rotation for the Ivy slate.
Junior guard Marcus Dockery led Howard with 21 points. Towns contributed 17 points and six rebounds.
Yale opens Ivy play at Brown on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
No. 2 Kansas beat Yale, 75-60, at fabled Allen Fieldhouse Friday night, but that hardly tells the story of the game.
Xaivian Lee is a 6-foot-3 sophomore guard at Princeton from Toronto who did his prep years at the Perkiomen School in Pennsburg, Pa. Lee recently sat down with Ivy Hoops Online for an interview at Jadwin Gym:
There is no denying that Yale men’s basketball has tremendous talent. From the one through eight slots, Yale may have the best talent in the Ivy League.
But there is also no denying that another adjective applies to the Bulldogs. Coach James Jones used that word very pointedly in his postgame comments after a 75-71 loss to Fairfield at John J. Lee Amphitheater Wednesday night.
Yale had a 5 point lead on Vermont with 3.8 seconds left. They lost. Here’s how. Absolute insanity. pic.twitter.com/52z3UiOklb
— Mike McAllister (@McAllisterMike1) December 3, 2023
Yale men’s basketball snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in stunning fashion at Vermont Saturday night, suffering a 66-65 loss after having led 65-62 with six-tenths of a second left to play.
Then madness ensued.
It was the Nick Townsend show at John J. Lee Amphitheater Wednesday night, as the sophomore forward posted a career-high 22 points and 15 rebounds to lead Yale men’s basketball to a 79-71 win over Stony Brook (2-4), in a rare out-of-conference home game.
Yale (5-3) trailed 29-28 with less than five minutes to play in the first half but were kept in the game up to that point in part by a burst of offense from junior guard Bez Mbeng (10 points) before charging ahead to grab a 41-35 halftime lead. Yale was outrebounded 18-17 at the half after being decimated on the boards in a loss at Rhode Island Sunday.
Yale men’s basketball held a 12-point halftime lead at Rhode Island after having led by as many as 18 points in the first half.
And then Yale’s wheels fell off.
Ooooovertime north of the border. Think Weber State was trying to foul but August Mahoney’s first field goal of the game ties it at 59. pic.twitter.com/WSZQQBwfW9
— Ray Curren (@currenrr) November 19, 2023
MONCTON, New Brunswick – This ain’t James Jones’ first rodeo.
It’s also not the first time around for the majority of the players in his regular 2023-24 rotation, which is why Yale was picked nearly unanimously to win the Ivy League this season, despite Princeton going to the Sweet 16 last March.
The Bulldogs reached as high as No. 55 in KenPom after destroying Colgate Friday night at Avenir Arena north of the border. But Yale followed it up with a couple of lackluster performances, having a late comeback come up short in an overtime loss to Weber State Saturday, and then blowing an 18-point lead against Gardner-Webb Sunday, although they pulled out the game out 71-70 in overtime.
Although still 4-2 (with one of those losses at Gonzaga), Yale has dropped to No. 76 in KenPom, five lower than where they started the campaign, and nine spots behind Princeton, which has started impressively.
It was the Bez Mbeng show at Gersten Pavilion in Los Angeles.