Box Score Yale-Harvard Meet Sunday In Championship Game, Winner Goes To NCAA Tournament
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Yale's experience was never more important than the final five minutes of Saturday's IvyMadness semifinal game vs. Princeton. Led by their upperclassmen, the Bulldogs overcame a seven-point deficit, playing nearly flawlessly down the stretch in outscoring the Tigers 21-8 to earn a hard-fought 83-77 victory before a big crowd at the John J. Lee Amphitheater.
"That was a really good college basketball game," said James Jones, The Joel E. Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach of the Bulldogs. "Our guys really fought hard. They really made some great plays down the stretch, so we could come out on top."
Yale, the No. 2 seed, advances to meet No. 1 Harvard in the championship game on Sunday at noon on ESPN2. The two teams shared the Ivy League regular season title, both finishing with 10-4 records.
The Crimson beat Penn 66-58 in the first semifinal.
Miye Oni paced the Bulldogs with 23 points, eight rebounds and five assists. Blake Reynolds and Alex Copeland each added 16 points. Jordan Bruner had 10 points and seven rebounds, Trey Phills had eight points and three assists, Azar Swain scored six points, Paul Atkinson had four and Eric Monroe had an assist and a rebound.
Oni was dominant over the last five minutes, scoring 10 points, grabbing two rebounds and dishing out an assist.
The game featured eight ties and six lead changes.
The final tie was at 74. That's when Reynolds then hit the biggest shot of the game, a three-pointer that gave the Bulldogs the lead for good with 39 seconds left.
"We set a high ball screen and both guys went with Alex [Copeland] when he drove baseline, and I was hoping he saw me out of the corner of his eyes at the top of the key," Reynolds said. "He made a great pass, and I was able to knock it down."
Copeland, who has been among the Ivy leaders in free throw shooting all season, made four in the final 28 seconds to help seal the win.
"I feel really confident at the free throw line at the end of games, and the reason for that is my teammates. They are confident in me, and Coach Jones is confident in me," said Copeland, who is shooting 84.8 percent from the line. "At the end of the game when I know they are going to foul, I just try and go get the ball and hope I knock them down."
Early on, it didn't look like the Bulldogs would need heroics down the stretch. Yale shot 60.6 percent from the field in the first half in building a 46-34 lead after 20 minutes.
The Tigers, though, opened the second half with a 17-2 run to take the lead. Princeton then built the advantage to seven, 69-62, with 5:07 left before Yale rallied.
"My teammates and I have a lot of faith in each other as a group," Oni said of the comeback. "We've been in close games before. We're mostly all juniors and seniors, and we came together and knew we had to focus on each and every possession. We got key stops and key scores and made all our free throws. It was a great end to the game."
And it sets up a meeting with Harvard. The two teams will be playing in the post season for the third time in the last five years.
"One game in our building against Harvard to go to March Madness, against Harvard - that's kind of a dream come true," Copeland said. "I don't think it could be written any other way."
Report filed by Tim Bennett (timothy.bennett@yale.edu), Yale Sports Publicity
