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What do Hofstra, Colgate, Siena, Loyola Chicago, UMass and Vermont all have in common? They are all solid mid-major men’s basketball programs and willing to travel to the home gym of a top Ivy team.
It doesn’t seem like a big deal on the surface, but it is.
Consider Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights have one natural rival in their 153 years of playing college sports. Not Penn State. Not Syracuse.
Princeton.
The Yale men’s basketball team improved to 3-0 for the first time since the 2015-16 season that it finished in the NCAA Tournament round of 32 with an 80-51 thrashing of Mississippi Valley State Sunday.
The game in the Outrigger Rainbow Classic in Honolulu wasn’t even that close.
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Yale is next by request of Ivy Player of the Year Justin Sears.
Yale made some history at the 1969 Rainbow Classic in Hawaii by defeating LSU in the championship game, 97-94.
LSU was anything but a pushover that year, led by senior Pete Maravich, who averaged 44.5 (!) points per game, still the highest scoring total in NCAA history. But Yale’s Jim Morgan (who turned in 21.3 points per contest that year himself) outscored Maravich head-to-head 35-34 on Dec. 30, 1969, giving the Elis the edge they needed. LSU went on to finish second in the SEC that season, making Yale’s victory even more impressive. Yale finished 11-13 (7-7 Ivy, good for fourth in the conference), but beating Pete Maravich (and having a player outscore him) validates any season.