Congratulations to Yale senior forward Matt Townsend for being named Rhodes Scholar this weekend. Townsend interviewed for the prestigious award in New York on Saturday and then notched 12 points on perfect 5-for-5 shooting in a win over Kent State on Sunday. Now that’s a productive weekend.
“It makes me understand that I’m at the right place,” Yale coach James Jones said of Townsend’s honor to Yale’s basketball program in a statement. “Basketball is important and academics are important. Yale is the best of everything.”
Townsend becomes the fourth Yale men’s basketball player to be named a Rhodes Scholar, joining Robert McCallum (1968), Mike Oristaglio (1974) and James McGuire (1976).
Yale starting senior forward Matt Townsend will miss the next two games for a pretty good reason.
Townsend will interview for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship as one of eight Yale students selected as finalists for the award. Townsend, the first Yale basketball player since 1999 to earn Academic All-America honors, has maintained a 4.0 GPA average through six semesters at Yale as a molecular, cellular and developmental biology major.
He’ll interview in New York this weekend and won’t play Friday against Illinois-Chicago or Saturday against Southern Illinois. According to the Associated Press, Townsend plans to rejoin the team for a Sunday game against Kent State.
Townsend averaged 4.9 points and 3.2 rebounds per game last season. He would be the fourth Yale basketball player to earn a Rhodes Scholarship.
There is a changing of the guard in the Ivies and nowhere is that more obvious than in New Haven. Yale has been picked by many to finish second only to Harvard by many preseason magazines. Over Princeton and Penn no less.
James Jones, the dean of the Ivy coaches, is not surprised. He is a confident guy to begin with, also noting that “top to bottom [this is] the best the league has been in my tenure.” That says a lot, considering Jones has helmed the Bulldogs since 1999.
Yale is coming off a loss in the finals of the CIT at Murray State. The Elis won 19 games in 2013-14 and if they take a page from Mercer, the CIT winner the year before, Yale could see NCAA action in March.
Optimism abounds in New Haven as the Yale Bulldogs return most major pieces from a team that advanced all the way to the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament (CIT) final last March. Let there be no mistake: led by Ivy League Player of the Year favorite Justin Sears, the 2014-15 Bulldogs have their best shot at an Ivy League title in the last decade. Despite the media’s unanimous crowning of the Bulldogs’ arch-nemesis up in Cambridge, Yale was voted second in the preseason poll and already proved last year that it can hang with the big boys in Lavietes, notching a dominant, league-rattling 74-67 victory over the Crimson in the midst of a seven-game winning streak that brought dreams of March glory to southern Connecticut. Coach James Jones has done a remarkable job of keeping Yale competitive consistently during every season he’s had at the helm, but he’s still looking for that elusive NCAA berth to hang his hat on. If it’s going to happen, it will probably be this year with his hard-working point guard Javier Duren in his senior season and the team building off the momentum of last year’s thrilling postseason run. After exploding in 2013-14, Justin Sears will get a lot of defensive attention this year, so it remains to be seen if the rest of the squad will be able to take advantage of their opportunities.
We all know this conference is loaded this season. Columbia, Yale, Brown and Dartmouth return nearly everyone. Even Cornell will be more dangerous with Shonn Miller back, so the Big Red will be poised for an upset or two. So what does that mean for prohibitive conference favorite Harvard?
Tough sledding, obviously, enough for Harvard to drop three conference games this season. Of course, all the Ivies will have to endure that tough sledding, meaning 11 league wins will be enough for Harvard to win a fourth straight conference championship, the same magic number that allowed Harvard into the 2013 Big Dance.
Murray State 65, Yale 57. Without Justin Sears, the Bulldogs battled hard, dominating the boards as usual. But cold shooting was too much to make up for as the Racers claimed the CIT title at home.
Yale put forth a valiant effort with high-usage star forward Justin Sears sidelined with a hand injury, but the Bulldogs were unable to create enough offense to keep up with the Murray State Racers, falling 65-57 on the road in the CIT championship.
Another night, another postseason Ivy buzzer beater. This time, it was Yale edging crosstown rival Quinnipiac behind Justin Sears’ last second heroics.
All season, Yale has relied heavily on IHO Player of the Year Justin Sears. So it only made sense that with the season on the line, down two points to Quinnipiac with the game clock winding perilously low, the Bulldogs would find Sears– even if it wasn’t in his natural zone of dominance in the paint.
Instead, Sears caught the ball out on the wing, took a few dribbles, stepped back, and let fly on his 10th three-point attempt of the season (for reference sake, he’s taken 307 two-pointers). The ball hit glass, then net as the Yale crowd erupted in astonished euphoria, while Quinnipiac supporters that had made the trip down from Hamden stood slack-jawed. Yale 69, Quinnipiac 68. The referees reset the clock to :00.7, but the Bobcats’ full-court heave was picked out of the air by (who else?) Justin Sears and the Elis moved on to the second round of the CIT.
The Bears looked sharp on Saturday at the Pizzitola, hammering Yale 73-56 and moving to 1-1.
Last weekend’s Pizzitola Center reversal closed the book on yet another Yale-Brown split, the sixth in nine straight years of Bulldog-Bear back-to-back conference openers. The main man responsible for turning the previous week’s result around for the Bears: the unstoppable Sean McGonagill whose hot hand (29 points on 8-11 FG, 7-9 3PT) singlehandedly stopped a late Yale run and iced the game for Bruno. In what might have been their most complete effort of the year, the home team looked organized, prepared, and sharp– assisting on 19 of 27 field goals, including five impressive dimes from big man Rafael Maia.
The offense functioned exactly the way Brown fans had hoped it would entering this season with freshman Tavon Blackmon doing a solid job handling duties at the point (7 assists), while McGonagill was allowed to focus on pouring in shots from every corner of the floor. Dockery Walker provided an energetic spark off the bench with 10 points on 5-6 shooting, and Steve Spieth was all over the court with 9 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, and 2 steals.
Before Yale’s win over D-III Baruch, the Bulldogs had lost four straight games. What’s ailing the Elis?
Before this season, followers of the Ivy expected a lot out of Yale in ’13-14. This was a team that won seven of its last ten games last season, sweeping both Princeton and Penn twice.
So far though, the Bulldogs have been a disappointment. At 6-8, Yale’s best win is on the road at Hartford, a five point victory against the country’s 263rd best team according to Pomeroy. Opportunities for BCS wins were squandered at Rutgers and at Providence; stinkers were laid against average squads such as Bryant and Albany. So what’s going on? What’s keeping this Yale team from being as good as it should be?
Yale will try to improve upon last season’s 3rd place finish as Justin Sears and the Bulldogs look to resume their domination of the glass in an Ivy gym near you.
In 2012-13: 14-17, 8-6, 3rd place, No Postseason.
A Look Back
After the first weekend of February 2013, it looked more likely that Yale would finish in last place in the Ivy League than 3rd place. The Bulldogs were coming off of a throttling in Hanover at the hands of lowly Dartmouth, and only had an overtime home victory over Brown to show through four league contests. At 1-3 and heading south to face the P’s, the Elis were staring 1-5 right in the face. But something special happened on that trip: Yale developed an identity as a physical, glass-crashing basketball team. Behind 32 offensive rebounds in two nights, the Bulldogs swept the Penn-Princeton road trip for the first time since 1987. That weekend propelled the young team, which was largely considered to be in a rebuilding year, back into the top half of the Ancient Eight for the 13th consecutive season. Freshman Justin Sears emerged as one of the league’s best rookies, crashing the offensive boards as well as anyone in the conference, and showing a knack for getting to the line and scoring. Sophomore Armani Cotton also made a splash, going for a career high 20 points and 12 rebounds in a win against Holy Cross, and earning a more central role as the season progressed. The Elis finished the year with three straight victories, including another sweep of Penn and Princeton, this time in New Haven–shaking up the title chase and sending old Blue into the offseason with some serious momentum for 2013-14.
