NEW HAVEN, Conn. – After six days off for Thanksgiving, a rare three-game week is coming up for the Yale women's basketball team. The Bulldogs host Marist (Tuesday, 7:00 p.m.,
ESPN+,
International Stream,
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Tickets) and UMass (Friday, 7:00 p.m.,
ESPN+,
International Stream,
Live Stats,
Tickets) and then head to Merrimack (Sunday, 1:00 p.m. (NOTE TIME CHANGE),
NESN,
NEC Front Row,
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Tickets).
Last Game
Yale (0-6, 0-0 Ivy League) fell at San Francisco 75-59 last Tuesday. It was the second and final game of the Bulldogs' trip to California. Sophomore guard
Kiley Capstraw (West Orange, N.J.) led Yale with 20 points, while junior guard
Nyla McGill (Charlotte, N.C.) added 17 points and five steals.
Bulldogs Among Ivy League Leaders in Blocks
Senior forward
Brenna McDonald (Natick, Mass.), who led the Ivy League in blocked shots per game last year, is tied for third in that category this year with a team-best eight blocks in six games (1.3 per game). Junior guard/forward
Mackenzie Egger (Mt. Pleasant, Mich.) and junior forward
Grace Thybulle (Irvington, N.Y.) are tied for ninth in the league (0.7 per game).
Bulldogs on the Boards
Yale is second in the Ivy League in offensive rebounding, averaging 15.2 per game.
Capstraw Heating Up
Sophomore guard
Kiley Capstraw (West Orange, N.J.) has been heating up lately, including a 20 point game at San Francisco last Tuesday. After shooting a combined .308 (8-for-26) in the first two games of the season, Capstraw has shot .412 or better in three of the last four games, including a .455 performance at BU Nov. 14. She is second on the team in scoring, averaging 12.7 points per game.
Clark Makes Most of Trips to Pennsylvania
Senior point guard
Jenna Clark (Pittsburgh, Pa.), Yale's captain, has made the most of Yale's trips to her home state of Pennsylvania this season. She opened with a 19 point, nine-assist, six-rebound effort at Pitt. At Lehigh Nov. 17, she scored a career-high 25 points and added six assists and eight rebounds. Clark was a two-time captain at Thomas Jefferson High, where she set the school record for career assists and earned first team all-state honors in 2018-19. She has led the Ivy League in assists for the last two years – including a school-record 160 in 2021-22.
McGill Notches First Double-Double
Junior guard
Nyla McGill (Charlotte, N.C.) posted her first double-double of the year last Monday with 11 points and 11 rebounds at Pacific. McGill had eight double-doubles last year en route to earning Ivy League Co-Defensive Player of the Year. She is currently fourth in the Ivy League in rebounding, averaging 7.8 rebounds per game.
Bulldogs Getting More from McDonald
Senior forward
Brenna McDonald (Natick, Mass.) is averaging 25.0 minutes per game this season, more than double what she averaged last year (12.0). She has seen dramatic increases in her rebounds per game (to 7.0 from 2.7) and points per game (to 7.5 from 3.1).
Astrom Returns to California
The trip to California marked a return to familiar territory for senior guard
Klara Astrom (Menlo Park, Calif.). Her immediate family is in the Golden State, though she is originally from Sweden (Stockholm) and still has many relatives there. She is the first in her family to go to college in the United States. Astrom played high school ball at Pinewood School in Los Altos Hills, where she captained the team as a junior and senior. The Bulldogs practiced at Pinewood Saturday Nov. 18.
The trip to California was the Bulldogs' first trip to the Golden State since November of 2019, Astrom's first year, when they beat Fresno State and LMU at the LMU Thanksgiving Classic en route to tying the school record with 19 wins that year.
Reunited
While in California the Bulldogs attended the Stanford-Duke game on Sunday Nov. 19 at Maples Pavilion. Blue Devils forward
Camilla Emsbo '23 played for Yale, where she was a unanimous first team All-Ivy League selection in 2021-22 and captained the team last season. She is now playing as a grad transfer for the Blue Devils.
Busy Bulldogs
Yale opened the season with six games in 15 days, including five on the road. That led to a busy stretch in which the Bulldogs racked up:
- Stops and/or games in six states and Washington, D.C. (including layovers – California, Connecticut, D.C., Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania)
- Stays in six different hotels
- 1,200+ bus miles
- Nearly 6,800 plane miles
The remainder of Yale's non-conference schedule will be dramatically different. After a six-day break following the game at San Francisco, the Bulldogs' final seven non-conference games take place over a span of 32 days and involve only two more road trips – relatively short excursions to Merrimack (300 miles round trip to North Andover, Mass., Dec. 3) and Stony Brook (160 miles round trip to Stony Brook, N.Y., including a ferry ride, Dec. 6).
Strength of Schedule
Five of Yale's first six opponents were coming off 2022-23 seasons in which they finished in the top 150 of the NCAA NET Rankings. Other than Marist (285) and Merrimack (323), all of Yale's non-conference opponents this season were among the top 200 in NCAA NET Rankings last year.
Food Drive
Yale is hosting a food drive at home men's and women's basketball games from Nov. 28 through Dec. 9. The food will be donated to Loaves and Fishes, a nonprofit in New Haven.
Scouting Marist
Marist (2-3, 0-0 MAAC) is coming off a pair of losses at the Savannah Hoops Invitational in Georgia this past week. The Red Foxes have already faced one Ivy League team, falling at Penn 74-51 on Nov. 11.
Scouting UMass
UMass (1-7, 0-0 Atlantic 10) has lost seven in a row, including three at the Cancun Challenge this past week. The Minutewomen are in their first season under head coach Mike Leflar; their previous head coach, Tory Verdi, was hired away by Pittsburgh. UMass went 27-7 last year, including a win over Yale.
Scouting Merrimack
Merrimack (1-5, 0-0 NEC), which plays at Siena Tuesday and hosts UC Riverside Friday, was picked second in the NEC Preseason Poll. The Warriors finished third in the conference last year and are in their fourth season under head coach Kelly Morrone, who took over a year after the team made the transition from Division II to Division I in 2019-20. The Warriors' previous head coach, Monique Leblanc, is now coaching Yale's Ivy League rival Brown.
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