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When a team loses arguably two of the top 10 players in its basketball history in John Poulakidas and Bez Mbeng, it is tough to believe that it would be the overwhelming favorite to win the Ivy League.
But don’t tell that to James Jones. You see, Yale merely reloads each season.
Yale doesn’t rebuild. It reloads.
It is trite but true. Yale and Princeton have been the premier Ivy programs since 2015. But it looks as if Yale will hold that mantle this year, as it has the last two regular seasons.
Incoming frosh will be vastly better than their recruiting rankings, and sophomores will become contributors and then ultimately stars. It always happens for Yale.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Faced with a 16-point deficit early in the second half against the conference’s best team, Cornell staged a furious rally to get within a single possession on several occasions. But Yale always found a way to hold on and came away with a hard-fought 90-84 win to claim the 2025 men’s Ivy League Tournament championship.
“You know, it’s a hard game between us and Cornell, what you might expect playing the team a third time,” Jones told the media after the award ceremony. “I thought our guys battled and played really tough.”
Celebrating on the floor of Brown’s Pizzitola Sports Center, the Bulldogs (22-7) hoisted their second straight Ivy League Tournament trophy and fourth overall. James Jones’ squad, the first to win the conference tournament as the top seed since Princeton did it in 2017, will wait a few hours to hear its name called for next week’s NCAA Tournament.
“A tough game, obviously, Yale is really hard to beat, as someone in the tournament is going to find out in a week, Cornell coach Jon Jaques told the media immediately after the game. “You know, I thought we gave him a really good punch.”
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Embarrassing and humiliating were words thrown around by Cornell last week after a brutal thrashing at the hands of Dartmouth, a loss so bad it dropped the Big Red 35 slots in KenPom. More importantly, the defeat put the Big Red in Ivy League Tournament peril because it was their third straight loss and a trip to unbeaten Yale happened to be next.
Another word was prevalent at practice in Ithaca: pride. The Big Red showed plenty of it Friday night at Lee Amphitheater, pushing the Bulldogs around and leading by double digits for most of the first half.
But Yale has plenty of pride as well, of course, and in the end gutted out a 92-88 victory that clinched it a share of its sixth Ivy League title in 10 years in a tremendous showcase of Ivy League basketball.
Another week, another gut-punch loss for Penn.
The Quakers were on the verge of pulling the biggest upset in Ivy League play this season before another sequence of late-game disasters sent Penn to a 72-71 defeat at Yale.
Penn (6-15, 2-6 Ivy), after another flat start, used a pair of deep Sam Brown threes to take two late leads on the Bulldogs (15-6, 8-0), but the Red and Blue never were quite able to land the killshot they needed.
Eventually, Yale made Penn pay. With the game on the line and the visitors clinging to a one-point lead, Bulldogs big man Nick Townsend found freshman wing Isaac Celiscar cutting to the hoop for an easy layup with a little more than eight seconds to play. The Quakers ran both their big men at Townsend, and Brown was just a step behind Celiscar.
Penn couldn’t even get a potential winning shot off. The Quakers had a sideout inbounds opportunity on Yale’s end of the floor with six seconds to play, but no one could get open and Ethan Roberts’ desperation pass to freshman Michelangelo Oberti was easily deflected for a game-killing turnover.
The Quakers’ devastating loss brought back plenty of bad memories, starting with how …
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Bez Mbeng was not in the mood for mincing words after setting Yale’s all-time career steals record in an 83-67 win over Dartmouth Monday afternoon.
“I love defense,” Mbeng, who passed former Yale standout Alex Zampier (2006-10) for the record, said.
And as he has for most of the last three seasons for Yale, Mbeng led the way in that department Monday at Lee Amphitheater, harassing Ryan Cornish, Connor Amundsen, or whomever else he was in the neighborhood of, finishing with three steals to go with 16 points, seven rebounds and five assists.
“It means a lot to me,” Mbeng said. “A lot of credit goes to my teammates and coaches for getting me better and putting me in good positions to get those steals. I’m just really thankful right now.”
The out-of-conference portion of the Yale men’s schedule ended today with an emphatic 93-65 win over visiting Howard.
Yale (7-6) was picked to finish second behind Princeton in the Ivy media preseason poll.
So what have we learned about Yale?
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.
The bad news is that Yale had 18 turnovers.
The good news is that Yale outrebounded the Akron Zips, 47-25, in the first round of the Sun Bowl Invitational en route to a convincing 74-58 win at the Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas Friday. Yale (6-5) will face the winner of the UTEP-Jackson State game Saturday night for the tournament championship.
“Great team rebounding effort tonight,” Yale coach James Jones said.
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.