Home of the Roundball Poets
Yale men’s basketball picked up where its scorching hot hands left off last Saturday against Princeton, building a 19-point second-half lead and surviving a late comeback rush from Harvard to notch a 68-57 win at Lavietes Pavilion.
Harvard (12-10, 3-5 Ivy) had trailed 48-29 with 16:25 remaining but in the next 14 minutes of game seized enough momentum to trail by just five points, 62-57. Yale salted away the game from the free-throw line in the final minute after a defensive clampdown.
At the midpoint of the Ivy League season, the Princeton men’s basketball team sits in a familiar position: tied for first place in a crowded field of evenly matched teams. At 5-2 in conference play, the Tigers are tied atop the league standings with their new rival, the Cornell Big Red. Lurking not far behind is an upsurging Dartmouth team and resurging Yale squad each at 4-3, while three other teams – Brown, Harvard and Penn – remain within striking distance with a record of 3-4. Only one team in the Ancient Eight – Columbia – appears to be out of the running with a conference record of 1-6.
Editor’s note: Ivy Hoops Online writers George “Toothless Tiger” Clark and Richard Kent deliver audio and written recaps, respectively, of Yale’s stunning second-half offensive outburst that secured a win over Princeton:
Our George “Toothless Tiger” Clark weighs in on Princeton men’s forward Caden Pierce being named Ivy Rookie of the Week after coming through in the clutch in the Tigers’ overtime win over Dartmouth Saturday:
A few things had to go well for Yale to beat Penn last night at John J. Lee Amphitheater and keep its Ivy League title hopes alive.
They did.
Sophomore guard Bez Mbeng played lockdown defense on Penn’s dynamic Jordan Dingle in the second half, holding him to nine points after intermission en route to Yale’s 70-63 win over Penn.
”I love guarding the best player on the other team,” Mbeng said.
”Bez is the best on-ball defender I’ve ever coached,” Yale coach James Jones said, offering high praise in his 24th year at the Bulldogs’ helm after coaching other standout defenders like Trey Phills and Jalen Gabbidon. “He did a fantastic job in the second half on the league’s best offensive player and one of the best in the nation.”
Yale men’s basketball needed a strong performance from a shot-maker against Brown.
Junior guard August Mahoney provided that spark with a team-high 20 points on 7-for-9 shooting, including 4-for-5 shooting from deep, helping will Yale to an 81-78 victory over Brown in a near must-win situation at John J. Lee Amphitheater Monday.
“I know my shots are going to fall,” Mahoney said.
“It’s Yale-Harvard. There is no other game like it.”
That quote from Yale men’s senior forward EJ Jarvis was spot on, and so was another:
“This was a must-win game.”
Yale men’s basketball was the clear favorite to claim a fifth Ivy League regular-season crown in the last seven seasons under James Jones.
Suddenly, though, the Bulldogs are 0-2 in Ivy play.
“For the last two hours, I did not see anything which resembled Yale basketball, and tip your cap to Dartmouth,” Jones said after his Bulldogs lost to Dartmouth, 81-77, at John J. Lee Amphitheater Friday night.
Yale had not given up more than 72 points in a game all season.
In fact, Yale (10-5, 0-2) hadn’t lost consecutive Ivy games since March 2019 and had not lost to Dartmouth since March 7, 2015, a game that opened the door for Harvard to tie Yale atop the Ivy standings and win an Ivy playoff game to nab its most recent NCAA Tournament berth.
Dartmouth (5-11, 1-1) held a narrow 34-33 lead at the half. Yale’s shooting woes from three-point land carried over from the Columbia loss last Friday, as the home team shot 0-for-8 from deep in the half. The Bulldogs finished 2-for-14 (14.3%).
Yale fell behind by as many as seven in the second half (54-47) but knotted the score at 58 on a Matt Knowling shot from close range.
Dartmouth then pulled ahead, 77-71. Yale cut it to 79-76 with junior guard August Mahoney on the free throw line with under five seconds remaining. Mahoney made the first and intentionally missed the second, but he committed a lane violation. Then the visitors added two free throws to seal the win.
“Winning games on the road is extremely hard,” Dartmouth coach David McLaughlin said. “We executed well.”
Dartmouth junior forward Dusan Neskovic posted 24 points on 7-for-10 field-goal shooting, including 4-for-4 from three-point range, in a standout performance. Sophomore guard Ryan Cornish contributed 18 points in just 23 minutes.
There were nine ties and nine lead changes.
“We tried to mix up our defenses,” Jones said. “Our team defense was not there.”
Yale was led in scoring by Knowling with 17 points. Sophomore guard Bez Mbeng had 15 and Mahoney 13. Both Mbeng and fellow sophomore guard John Poulakidas fouled out.
Yale is next in action Saturday night at home against Harvard. Dartmouth visits Providence to take on Brown after its overtime loss to Harvard there Friday night.
With conference play in the 2022-23 Ivy League men’s basketball season fast approaching, let’s take a look back at the nonconference results for each team and examine each program – listed by season winning percentage:
Wire-to-wire wins are always satisfying.
Yale men’s basketball got one Thursday night at Monmouth, throttling the Hawks, 76-44, at the OceanFirst Bank Center in West Long Branch, N.J.
The game wasn’t even that close, as Monmouth mustered a 9-0 run toward the end of the game with the result well in hand and Yale reserves on the floor.