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Casey Simmons is a 6-foot-6 sophomore at Yale from Milton, Mass. averaging 3.7 points and 2.2 rebounds in 13.9 minutes per game. The forward transferred from Northwestern, where he played in 27 games and made seven starts in 2021-22. Simmons sat down with Ivy Hoops Online Monday:
Yale men’s basketball put together its best defensive effort and perhaps most complete game of the season to defeat Dartmouth, 76-51, Saturday at Leede Arena.
Dartmouth (4-12, 0-3 Ivy) put up some early resistance and led 12-11 on two free throws by sophomore forward Brandon Mitchell-Day. But Yale (12-6, 3-0) went on a 10-0 run and led 38-28 at the half.
With the score 45-32, Yale went on a 16-0 run, culminating in a jumper by sophomore forward Casey Simmons.
The Bulldogs’ largest lead was 68-36.
Dartmouth mustered just 28.8% shooting from the field and 27.3% from three-point land.
“Extremely happy with our defensive performance,” Yale coach James Jones said. “Hope we can build on this effort.”
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.
Yale men’s basketball has not been a second-half team this season, but that changed at the M&T Bank Arena in Hamden, Conn., Monday night as the Bulldogs used a 17-2 second-half run to fuel a 73-66 win at Quinnipiac.
Matt Knowling is a Yale senior from Ellington, Conn. who was a unanimous All-Ivy first-team selection last season. Ivy Hoops Online sat down with him to discuss the upcoming season and other issues:
Seems like you can never have too much money or happiness in life.
The same goes for depth in team sports.
We’ll find out about this last adage in March, as Yale men’s basketball may actually have too much depth. Sound impossible? Not really.
Yale men’s basketball went 3-0 on its summer three-game, 10-day trip to Greece it wrapped Monday, led by a surprise leading scorer, sophomore forward Nick Townsend. The Bulldogs opened play by besting the Thessaloniki All-Stars, 91-75, before 89-79 and 100-94 wins over the University of Calgary, wrapping . We caught up with coach James Jones, who is entering his 25th year at Yale’s helm, upon his return:
For only the second time in the 23-year tenure of James Jones as Yale’s head basketball coach, the Elis are adding a transfer student. Casey Simmons, a 6-6 swing from Milton, Mass., will join the Elis for the 2023-24 season. (Dominick Martin in 2002 marked the first such occurrence.)
As a senior at Milton Academy, Simmons was rated as the No. 1 prospect in Massachusetts and the No. 92 player in the country by 247Sports.
Yale recruited him out of high school, but he chose Northwestern over Yale, Penn, Boston College, Georgetown, Miami and Penn State.