NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Yale women's basketball team opens the 2022-23 season Monday at Fordham (5:30 p.m.,
ESPN+, WFUV, Live Stats). The game starts a stretch of five games in 13 days for the Bulldogs, with four of those games on the road. It is part of a doubleheader, with the Fordham men hosting Dartmouth at 7:30 p.m.
Winning at a Record Pace
Yale is coming off a 2021-22 season that saw the Bulldogs go 16-10 overall and 9-5 in the Ivy League (third). The Bulldogs' 70 wins in the past four seasons are the most in school history for a four-season span.
Poll Position
Yale was among the teams receiving votes in the USA TODAY Sports/WBCA NCAA Division I Preseason Top 25 Coaches Poll. The Bulldogs got 10 points in the poll. Defending national champion South Carolina was No. 1 with 798 points, including 30 of 32 first-place votes.
Road Warriors
Yale is 18-11 in road games in the past two seasons.
Starting Experience
Yale has three players with 20 or more career starts:
- Junior guard Jenna Clark (Pittsburgh, Pa.): 28 career starts
- Sophomore guard Christen McCann (Port St. Lucie, Fla.): 24 career starts
- Junior guard Klara Astrom (Menlo Park, Calif.): 23 career starts
Captain Camilla Emsbo
Senior forward
Camilla Emsbo (Lakewood, Colo.) will miss this season due to injury, but she will still provide all-important leadership as captain. Emsbo was a unanimous first team All-Ivy League selection last year, when she led the league in blocks per game (2.2, 26th nationally), double doubles (13) and field goal percentage (.514). She was second in rebounds per game (10.2), third in free throw percentage (.704) and seventh in points per game (14.1).
Clark on Lieberman Award Watch List
Junior guard
Jenna Clark (Pittsburgh, Pa.) is on the watch list for the 2023 Nancy Lieberman award. Clark was a second team All-Ivy League pick last year while establishing a Yale single-season record with 160 assists. She ranked among the league's top 20 in assists per game (5.9, 1st) (11th nationally), three-point field goals per game (11th, 1.5), points per game (14th, 11.2), rebounds per game (18th, 4.8) and steals per game (18th, 1.4).
Meet the New Kids
Yale's roster includes three first years, all guards.
Kiley Capstraw (West Orange, N.J.) was a second team all-state pick at West Orange High, where she was a 1,000 point scorer and also had more than 600 rebounds. She led the program to its first county championship.
Lilah Grubman (Syosset, N.Y.) was a two-time defensive player of the year selection for Syosset High, where she led the team in points, assists, rebounds, steals and blocks in both her junior and senior years.
Lola Lesmond (Sanary, France) was ranked No. 92 in the ESPN Top 100 for the Class of 2022, captaining her team at Worcester Academy. She had been a second team all-state pick at Evanston Township High; her family moved to Evanston from France in 2018.
Start of the Dalila Eshe Era
This marks Yale's first season under
Dalila Eshe, the team's Joel E. Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach. Eshe comes to Yale from Princeton, where she spent three seasons as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. She helped the Tigers to a No. 24 national ranking, an Ivy League title and a win over then-No. 15 Kentucky in the 2022 NCAA Tournament. A star player at Florida, Eshe earned first team All-SEC honors as a senior in 2006 and was selected 25
th overall in the WNBA Draft by the Seattle Storm.
History Lesson
This is Yale's 50th season as a varsity team. The Bulldogs opened the 1973-74 season with an exhibition game on Dec. 4, 1973, beating Amity High School 45-19. Their first regular season win came Mar. 2, 1974: 32-23 vs. Trinity. They won their first Ivy League title in 1979, beating Princeton 63-55 in the Ivy League Tournament championship game Feb. 11.
Scouting Fordham
Fordham went 18-11 in 2021-22, including an 8-6 mark in Atlantic 10 competition. The Rams lost in the A-10 quarterfinals but earned a berth in the WNIT, where they fell to Bucknell. They finished 72nd nationally in the NCAA's NET rankings, better than all but two of Yale's opponents this coming season (Princeton finished No. 20 and UMass finished No. 46).
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