Yale – Page 38 – Ivy Hoops Online

Justin Sears nabs Great Britain roster slot

July 23, 2016 by Mike Tony

Justin Sears, 2016 Yale graduate and two-time Ivy Player of the Year, was named to Great Britain’s preliminary roster for this summer’s EuroBasket 2017 Qualification Games, according to British Basketball.

Sears is one of 24 players named to the preliminary roster, from which 16 will attend training camp next month.

Sears signed a professional contract with Germany’s Giessen 46ers in June after having helped lead Yale to its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1962 in March.

British Basketball players and coaches will convene at a training camp in Portugal in early August.

Sears’ former teammate, junior Makai Mason, is currently training with the German National team, as is Columbia 2016 graduate Maodo Lo.

Makai Mason joins Maodo Lo on German national team

July 16, 2016 by Mike Tony

Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv reported Friday (and our own Richard Kent confirmed) that Yale junior guard Makai Mason will play with the German national team for the next two months and then in the World Games 2017, joining Columbia 2016 graduate (and fellow All-Ivy first-teamer) Maodo Lo.

Lo has played for the German national team for the past two years and remains an “intriguing prospect from an NBA standpoint” on the Philadelphia 76ers’ Summer League roster per The Sixer Sense.

Q&A with Yale’s Makai Mason

June 25, 2016 by Richard Kent

Makai Mason posted 31 points, six rebounds, four assists and just two turnovers in 39 minutes in Yale's NCAA first-round win over Baylor, the program's first ever NCAA victory. (Fansided) — Makai Mason posted 31 points, six rebounds, four assists and just two turnovers in 39 minutes in Yale’s NCAA first-round win over Baylor, the program’s first ever NCAA victory. (Fansided)

Our Richard Kent caught up with Yale junior guard and March Madness standout Makai Mason and talked to him about what Yale fans can expect from next year’s Bulldogs team as the program defends its 2015-16 Ivy championship and much more:

Q&A with Onaje Woodbine, author and former Yale basketball standout

June 19, 2016 by Mike Tony

woodbinebook

Ivy Hoops Online caught up with Onaje Woodbine (Yale ’02) for an in-depth conversation about his new book “Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball,” a book exploring the transcendent experience that the game has provided as lived religion for young black males playing basketball on the same playgrounds in the Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan sections of Boston where he’d played as a teenager.

In the book, Woodbine chronicles quitting the Yale basketball team in 2000 to pursue “the higher aims of divine purpose and truth” and a disconnect between himself and his players at coaches and Yale that took on cultural and racial overtones. Most centrally, he illustrates how playing basketball represented a religious experience for young black males in Boston dealing with grief and tragedy in their neighborhoods and families.

Just three days before leaving for South Africa, where a play based on the book will be performed, Woodbine talked to Ivy Hoops Online about what Yale basketball fans should take away from his book, why Yale coach James Jones (also Woodbine’s sophomore-year coach in 1999-2000) reached out to him recently, and the power of religious consciousness.

Tracking Yale’s rise to championship history

April 5, 2016April 5, 2016 by Ian Halpern

The Yale basketball team celebrates its selection in the 2015-16 NCAA Tournament, in which it defeated Baylor in the first round in Providence, 79-75. It was Yale’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1962. (Hartford Courant)

It would be easy to point back to last season’s heartbreaking collapse and say that this year’s title run started simmering from the moment Javier Duren’s runner rimmed out at the Palestra on March 14, 2015. Certainly, that would be a convenient starting point for this narrative of redemption that culminated in this year’s seeding upset of the Baylor Bears. But anyone who’s been following the Bulldogs knows that this journey towards a title to call our own started long before that.

How did we get here?

There have been countless close calls since James Jones took the reins back at the turn of the century: the three-way tiebreaker in ’02 with Penn and Princeton, the thrilling up-tempo ’07 squad led by Eric Flato and Casey Hughes that started 9-2, beating undefeated Penn and sparking the only (non-Princeton) court storming I’ve ever witnessed at John J. Lee, the dangerous Greg Mangano-Reggie Willhite-Austin Morgan trio that raced out to fast start in ’12. But it wasn’t until Justin Sears arrived in New Haven that following summer that Jones could finally build around a true superstar in blue. And while getting to the Promised Land required contributions from everyone on this year’s squad from Blake Reynolds to Khaliq Ghani to Makai Mason, this was clearly Sears’ team.

But first, let’s go back to where it all began, back to a time when Yale basketball conjured up images of January hope and February despair, not the March ecstasy that we’ve come to know.

Makai Mason to declare for NBA Draft

April 20, 2016March 22, 2016 by Mike Tony

Pete Thamel of Sports Illustrated reported Monday Yale sophomore guard Makai Mason is declaring for the NBA Draft.

Under new NBA Draft rules, players can see where they are projected to be chosen and subsequently decide to return to school at their discretion.

“We want to take advantage of that new rule, show people beyond the Ivy League what he’s capable of,” Mason’s father Dan told Thamel.

Mason scored a career-high 31 points in No. 12 Yale’s 79–75 upset of No. 5 Baylor in the first round Thursday and went 2-for-12 from the floor in Yale’s 71-64 loss to No. 4 Duke Saturday.

No. 12 Yale outlasted by No. 4 Duke, 71-64

March 19, 2016March 19, 2016 by Mike Tony

So very close.

No. 12 Yale came up just short in its bid for the first Sweet 16 appearance in program history, falling to No. 4 Duke, 71-64, in front of a pro-Yale partisan crowd at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence.

No. 12 Yale vs No. 4 Duke: What to watch for

March 19, 2016 by Richard Kent

Little did anyone expect Yale and Duke would meet for a second time after the Blue Devils handed Yale an 80-61 loss in November. But that exact scenario is taking place Saturday afternoon in Providence in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Duke beat Yale on that night, 80-61, but the game was much closer. Yale raced out to a 9-0 lead and trailed 38-36 at the half.

How No. 12 Yale can defeat No. 4 Duke, part 2

March 19, 2016 by Ian Wenik

With the exception of a few high-profile bloviators, most people around college basketball (and everyone that regularly reads this blog, for that matter) knew that Yale had a solid shot against Baylor on Thursday.

We all know that the Bulldogs delivered — and have about as favorable a matchup as they could possibly get in the round of 32, getting a Duke team they’ve already faced.

Having had the opportunity to watch both teams play in the round of 64 on Thursday in Providence, I’ve come up with a bit of a game plan for Yale to become the first Ivy team to reach the Sweet Sixteen since Cornell made its magical run in 2010.