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It took a lay-in by freshman forward Isaac Celiscar off a nifty assist from junior forward Nick Townsend assist with eight seconds remaining to give Yale a 72-71 win over upset-minded Penn at John J. Lee Amphitheater Friday..
“We were trying to iso [senior guard] John [Poulakidas] and Nick,” Yale coach James Jones said. “Nick is as unselfish as they come.”
By now it’s a familiar recipe: Start the game with tenacious defense, add a heavy dose of imposing play in the paint and mix in a strong measure of sharpshooting from the outside.
When Princeton women’s basketball succeeds in combining these ingredients, it’s nearly guaranteed to win, as it did on Saturday afternoon in a 74-60, wire-to-wire putdown of Penn at Jadwin Gymnasium.
The triumph was Princeton’s 13th straight win over its arch-rival and the 500th head coaching win of Carla Berube’s career. Berube is 116-22 at Princeton after posting a 384-96 at Tufts for a career .809 winning percentage.
Total domination. There’s no other way to describe Yale’s 103-88 win over Cornell at Newman Arena, in a battle between two of the top three teams in the Ivy League standings.
Cornell (13-7, 5-2 Ivy) led 44-40 in a nip-and-tuck battle in which neither team held more than a five-point lead.
Ivy Hoops Online correspondent George “Toothless Tiger” Clark brings us the audio of the postgame press conference for Princeton after its dramatic 61-59 win at Penn Friday evening:
Audio PlayerClark recaps the action between Princeton (16-6, 5-2 Ivy) and Penn (6-14, 2-5) at the Palestra:
Audio Player
There have been plenty of excruciating losses in Penn’s 12-game losing streak to arch-rival Princeton, but none have inflicted a pain quite like Friday’s 61-59 loss to the Tigers at the Palestra.
With less than a minute to go, there was Penn (6-14, 2-5 Ivy) in the lead despite being forced to play without star wing Ethan Roberts, who sat out the contest with an undisclosed injury. As has happened in so many of these losses to Princeton (16-6, 5-2), every break possible went the wrong way for the Quakers when it mattered most.
After sophomore guard Sam Brown missed the back-end of a one-and-one which would have extended the Penn lead to 59-56, junior forward Johnnie Walter had the offensive rebound in his hands for a split-second but couldn’t quite corral the ball. The Tigers secured possession and then saw sophomore guard Dalen Davis break free to drain a wide-open three-pointer from the left wing, giving the Tigers a 59-58 advantage with just over 30 seconds remaining.
On the next possession, senior big man Nick Spinoso drew heavy contact as he went up for a layup, hit his first free throw to tie the game, but missed the freebie which would have given Penn the lead. Walter then fouled Princeton’s Jackson Hicke as he put up a midrange jumper with six-tenths of a second to play.
There was zero doubt Hicke would miss. The 6-foot-5 sophomore hit both shots at the line to kick Penn fans back into a familiar pit of misery.
What could Penn fans take away from yet another disheartening loss?
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.”
Penn’s Saturday matchup against Yale went pretty much according to script.
The Bulldogs opened the game on a 9-0 run and never looked back from there in a 90-61 dismissal of the Quakers at the Palestra. Penn (6-13, 2-4 Ivy) rallied from that opening punch to the mouth and cut the deficit to as little as seven points with 4:38 to go in the first half after a Niklas Polonowski layup.
Yale (13-6, 6-0) responded with an immediate 10-0 run, which was kicked off by a deep open three from stretch big man Nick Townsend. Penn never seriously threatened after.
Instead of recapping what went into an entirely predictable loss, these Quakeaways will instead be reformulated as questions, which will hopefully establish what’s at stake the rest of the season.
Penn’s renewed Ivy Madness hopes didn’t last for long.
The Quakers are once again behind the eight-ball after a series of late mistakes against Brown led to a tough-to-accept 88-79 loss at the Palestra.
It fell apart for Penn (6-12, 2-3 Ivy) beginning with 5:39 to play in the game. The Quakers had the ball with a 72-69 lead, having erased a 17-point first-half deficit. The first domino fell when sophomore forward Augie Gerhart was correctly called for an offensive foul after he used his elbow to create space in the low post. On their next trip down the floor, the Bears (10-8, 2-3) hit a jumper to make it a one-point game.
Penn had a chance to extend the lead once again, but the otherwise brilliant junior wing Ethan Roberts missed the front end of a one-and-one. Brown’s Aaron Cooley hit a layup after the miss to give the Bears a lead they would not surrender. The Quakers got a clean fastbreak look for Roberts after the Cooley bucket, but it wouldn’t fall.
For Penn, Friday’s loss could quickly snowball. The Quakers will be heavy underdogs in their next three games against Yale, Princeton and Yale again. That 2-3 Ivy record could turn to 2-6 in the blink of an eye.
What did Penn fans learn from a disappointing evening?