Yale’s Jordan Bruner out for season, Makai Mason to miss up to two months

As first reported by NBC Sports, Yale has lost sophomore forward Jordan Bruner and Yale senior guard Makai Mason to injury, Bruner for the entire season and Mason for up to two months.

Mason is reportedly dealing with a stress fracture in his right foot, the same foot that was broken in a scrimmage against Boston University before the start of the 2016-17 campaign, causing him to miss the entire season.

Mason was wearing a device in his shoe to take pressure off the area that he hurt last year, the New Haven Register reported, adding that he likely wound up putting more pressure on the rest of his foot, where he developed the stress fracture.

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Yale gets snubbed by NIT, won’t (can’t) participate in postseason

Proving further that there is little justice in how NCAA basketball teams are evaluated, especially mid-major squads, Yale was left out of the NIT Sunday evening despite a No. 74 KenPom  ranking, No. 63 RPI and  22-10 record that finished with a gut-wrenching loss to Harvard in Saturday’s Ivy playoff game at the Palestra.

Yale’s losing out on a NIT bid so late prevented the Bulldogs from grabbing a spot in the CBI or CIT, which filled quickly. The Elis will not be one of 148 teams involved in this year’s postseason.

“It was a great year. One of the best years Yale has had,” Yale coach James Jones told Chris Hunn of the New Haven Register. “If we can’t get in this year, I don’t know how we can get in. It’s disheartening.”

It is disheartening, but the NIT has done this to the Ivy League before. In 2011, Harvard garnered only a 6 seed despite beating Colorado, Boston College and George Washington before finishing with a 12-2 conference record and a 63-62 loss in the Ivy playoff game to Princeton.

With Princeton declining a postseason bid, the number of Ivies in the postseason has dwindled to two: Harvard in the NCAA tournament and Dartmouth in the CIT. The Ivies appeared to be loaded preseason and did provide one of the most outstanding conference slates in league history. For many reasons, in Yale’s case chiefly a bias against mid-major teams and comparatively low Ivy visibility, the Ancient Eight postseason won’t reflect those efforts.