BROOKLYN, N.Y. – Losing two starters to foul trouble before the first quarter ended could have derailed the Yale women's basketball team Wednesday night at LIU. Instead, it gave the Bulldogs a chance to showcase their depth – and their defense. When senior forward
Alex Cade and junior forward
Camilla Emsbo both got two fouls in the first quarter, the Bulldogs turned to some of their younger players. Among the many who stepped up, first-year forward
Grace Thybulle stood out. She scored 13 points – 11 more than she had in any previous game – and proved critical in helping Yale pull out a 65-37 win. The Bulldog defense limited the Sharks to 26% shooting. This was the fewest points allowed in a game by Yale since a 62-36 win vs. Manhattan Dec. 1, 2015.
Yale (6-4, 0-0 Ivy League) played part of the first quarter and all of the second quarter without Cade and Emsbo. But a 6-0 run by the Bulldogs at the end of the first – with all the points coming from Thybulle – proved that they had the depth to overcome the foul trouble. The Bulldogs went into the second up 19-13, and their defense kept that lead intact. Yale held LIU to 19% shooting in the quarter, and a late 9-2 run included the first career points from sophomore forward
Haley Sabol. The Bulldogs also got a boost from the return to action for captain
Roxanne Nesbitt, who made her season debut after being hampered by injury in the early going. Yale went into halftime up 30-23.
A dominant half of defense then sealed the win. Yale limited LIU (0-9, 0-0 NEC) to just 14 points in the second half, pulling away in the third by outscoring the Sharks 18-4. LIU did not score its first points of the half until the 4:25 mark of the third. Sophomore guard
Jenna Clark scored six of her 16 points for the night in that quarter, with Cade adding four.
Leading 48-27 heading into the fourth, the Bulldogs would not let LIU get any closer than within 17 the rest of the way. That enabled them to rest their starters for most of the game's final minutes, once again showcasing the team's depth. All told, 11 players played at least six minutes for the game.
The Bulldogs shot a season-best 46% from the field, including a 43% performance from three-point territory. Clark's 16 points – on 7-for-12 shooting – led the team, followed by Emsbo and Thybulle with 13. Cade led the team with 10 rebounds, and sophomore guard
Klara Astrom had a team-best five assists. First-year guard
Nyla McGill chipped in three steals.
"We shared the ball well, with 16 assists," said
Allison Guth, Yale's Joel E. Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach of Women's Basketball. "
Grace Thybulle had a career night for herself."
The win caps a stretch of six straight road games for Yale; the Bulldogs wound up going 3-3 in that span. They host UMass Lowell Saturday at 2:00 p.m.
