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Off the Bench: Mateen Rafiq of Cornell men’s basketball

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Ivy League hoopsters are Division I athletes on the court and exceptionally accomplished and eclectic humans off it. Ivy Hoops Online presents the latest edition of our Off the Bench series that takes fans inside the stories that you might not otherwise know from the stands or through your screen. 

Mateen Rafiq ‘28, a rising junior on the Cornell men’s basketball team, is our next featured player. Rafiq’s humility, discipline and ambitions are outsized (no matter that he is a 6-foot-0 guard), and there’s no doubt he is building toward something bigger.

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Yale men’s basketball really is as good as advertised – and maybe better

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So much for a nip-and-tuck game with arch-rival Princeton.

And so much for a trap game at Penn in between playing at Princeton and Cornell.

Yale answered those bells emphatically with a 77-70 win at Jadwin Gym and a 90-61 win at The Palestra.

In fairness to Penn, it was a 12-point game with a little under six minutes t0 play and then Yale closed the game out with a 23-6 run. But the game was never in doubt.

If consistency is a virtue, then Yale was more than virtuous. The Bulldogs shot 57% from the filed in both games and held both Princeton and Penn to 34% shooting.

“That’s a really good Yale basketball game,” Yale coach James Jones said. “A really good game from us from start to finish.”

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