Yale Men’s Basketball Success
Arguably no team in the Ivy League was playing better basketball in March than Yale and no coach has done a better job than James Jones. Yale ended the season by sweeping Princeton and Penn at home, and in the process, won all four games against these Ivy rivals. Yale had never done that in league history going back to the start in 1956.
Yale finished the season at 8-6 in the Ivies and in the top half of the league for the 13th straight year despite graduating Greg Mangano, one of the top players in Yale history. The Bulldogs had two narrow losses to Harvard, the eventual Ivy Champion.
Jones does not have an easy job. His team plays in a stately but antiquated gym. The admissions office is probably less generous to basketball players than any such office in the Ivy League and there is little heritage at Yale, with the team making its only NCAA appearance in 1963. They have never won an NCAA tournament game, and under Jones, won their only NIT game at Rutgers in 2002.
Jones returns a lot next year in sophomores Armani Cotton, Javier Duren, Will Childs-Klein, Brandon Sherrod and Matt Townsend. They will certainly be in contention for the Ivy Championship. They will also get a shot at local rival UConn, playing them for the first time in years, most likely in Hartford.
