Home of the Roundball Poets
Matt Elkin joined the Yale men’s basketball staff in Oct. 2020 as director of basketball operations after serving as an assistant coach at the Windward School in Los Angeles. Ivy Hoops Online caught up with Elkin Tuesday:
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:
Matt Knowling’s last-second heroics has @YaleMBasketball 7-0 in @IvyLeague play.#ThisIsYale pic.twitter.com/6oPPQS4fqv
— Yale Athletics (@YaleAthletics) February 10, 2024
Yale men’s basketball coach James Jones described his team’s 80-78 home win over Cornell in a high-stakes clash of Ivy unbeatens Saturday as “helter skelter.”
The last 40 seconds of the game epitomized that.
Letdown? No way.
Yale men’s basketball navigated the treacherous trap game waters with excellence by downing Penn, 74-58, at John J. Lee Amphitheater Saturday night for its eighth consecutive win.
Yale coach James Jones did not see any letdown.
The Princeton-Yale men’s basketball showdown lived up to its lofty expectations as the Ivy League game of the year to date and then some.
The Bulldogs defeated the Tigers, 70-64, before a standing-room-only and boisterous whiteout crowd of 2,532 at John J. Lee Amphitheater.
“[The] atmosphere was tremendous,” Yale coach James Jones said. “There were times when you felt the crowd.”
Remember those Yale trips to hostile environments at Gonzaga and then-No. 2 Kansas in November and December?
Well, they certainly prepared the Bulldogs for a sold-out and raucous crowd at Lavietes Pavilion Saturday as they prevailed against Harvard, 78-65, for their sixth consecutive win and fifth straight over the Crimson.
Yale (13-6, 4-0 Ivy) got the win despite its highest scorer, sophomore frontcourt stalwart Danny Wolf (14.6) being held to a season low and second-leading scorer (13.5) junior guard Bez Mbeng managing only two points.
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.”
Yale men’s basketball has been a first-half team all season.
But don’t tell that to Columbia coach Jim Engles, as the Bulldogs went on a 29-6 second-half run Monday night to turn a narrow 41-39 first-half lead into an 89-70 victory at John J. Lee Amphitheater.
Ivy Hoops Online sat down with Yale men’s basketball coach James Jones after a Yale practice Thursday:
Ivy Hoops Online: How is your team performing relative to your expectations before the season started?
James Jones: We are at 80% of where we should be now. At some points during the season, we were at 50%.We need to be more connected.