NEW HAVEN, Conn. – With the final two home games of the regular season coming up this weekend, the Yale women's basketball team remains in contention for one of the four spots in the Ivy League Tournament. The Bulldogs host Cornell Friday (4:00 p.m.,
ESPN+,
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Tickets) and Columbia Saturday (3:00 p.m.,
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International Stream,
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Tickets). Yale will honor its seniors at Saturday's game.
Yale is one game behind the two teams tied for fourth place, Brown and Penn, entering the weekend. Three Ivy League Tournament spots have already been clinched (by Columbia, Harvard and Princeton).
Last Game
Yale (7-17, 4-7 Ivy League)
won 78-42 at Dartmouth last Saturday. The Bulldogs, who never trailed, got double-doubles from senior guard
Jenna Clark (Pittsburgh, Pa.) (17 points, 12 assists) and senior forward
Brenna McDonald (Natick, Mass.) (a career high 30 points, 12 rebounds) en route to registering their largest margin of victory since an 87-40 win over Sacred Heart Dec. 19, 2019.
Senior Class
Prior to Saturday's game, the Bulldogs will honor their seniors. The group includes:
Davidsen has been a big part of the team's practices and games for the last two seasons.
Astrom has been a reliable scorer and defender for the Bulldogs throughout her career. She has played in 100 career games, including 33 career starts. As a sophomore she led the team in steals. Last season she was an Academic All-Ivy League selection and a CSC Academic All-District selection. She has hit two of the team's biggest shots in the last two years: game-tying three-pointers at the end of regulation at Harvard last season and at Penn this season. The Bulldogs went on to win both games in overtime.
Clark, the team captain, has rewritten the Yale record book. She has three of the top five single-season assist totals in school history, and established the school single-season assists record as a sophomore. She ranks second on Yale's career assists list. She has led the Ivy League in assists for each of the past two seasons and is on pace to do so again this season. She is also on pace to lead the team in scoring for the second year in a row.
McDonald has enjoyed the best season of her career this year. She leads the Ivy League in field goal percentage and blocks and is third on the team in scoring. She has established career highs in all of those categories. Last season she was a CSC Academic All-District selection, and she led the Ivy League in blocks per game. She has appeared in 58 career games, including 31 starts.
Sabol has remained a part of the team this season despite being sidelined by injury. She appeared in 25 games last season, starting eight, and scored a career-high 14 points in her first career start. She was a CSC Academic All-District honoree last year.
Clark Nears Mark
Senior guard
Jenna Clark (Pittsburgh, Pa.) enters the weekend with 947 career points. She is averaging a team-best 13.7 points per game, which would put her on pace to score a total of 41 points in Yale's final three regular season games. If she totals 53 points (17.7 points per game) over those three games, she will become the 24th player in school history to score 1,000 career points.
McGill Among Ivy Leaders
Junior guard
Nyla McGill (Charlotte, N.C.), last year's Ivy League Co-Defensive Player of the year, is tied for third in the league in steals per game (1.875) and is fifth in the league in rebounds per game (6.8). Last year she was second in the league in steals per game (2.6) and second in rebounds per game (8.9).
Three's Company
Yale enters the weekend in sixth place in the
Ivy League standings, one game behind Brown and Penn for fourth place. Three games remain in the regular season. The top four teams make the Ivy League Tournament, held at Columbia's Levien Gym Mar. 15-16.
Brown, Penn and Yale all have much in common. They are:
- A combined 9-0 against Cornell and Dartmouth, the two teams tied for seventh.
- A combined 0-14 against first-place Princeton and Columbia and third-place Harvard.
- Brown and Penn split their season series 1-1. Penn and Yale split their season series 1-1. Brown beat Yale when the two teams met Jan. 13 in New Haven, and they meet again in the regular season finale Mar. 9 in Providence.
Ivy League Tournament Tiebreakers
Tiebreakers may be needed to determine which teams make the Ivy League Tournament, and to determine tournament seeding. In general, ties are broken by head-to-head records first, then record against the highest seeded team outside of the tie, then by NCAA NET Rankings. A full list of tiebreakers is on the
Ivy League website. NCAA NET Rankings are available on the
NCAA website.
Ivy League Action this Friday
- 4:00 p.m. Columbia at Brown
- 4:00 p.m. Cornell at Yale
- 5:00 p.m. Harvard at Princeton
- 5:00 p.m. Dartmouth at Penn
Ivy League Action this Saturday
- 3:00 p.m. Columbia at Yale
- 3:00 p.m. Cornell at Brown
- 4:00 p.m. Dartmouth at Princeton
- 4:00 p.m. Harvard at Penn
Double-Double
The games this weekend are part of back-to-back doubleheaders at Lee Amphitheater. Following Friday's game, the Yale men's basketball team hosts Dartmouth at 7:00 p.m. Following Saturday's game, the Yale men's basketball team hosts Harvard at 7:00 p.m.
Scouting Cornell
Cornell (7-16, 1-10 Ivy League) has lost five in a row, including a
66-59 loss to Yale on Feb. 10 in Ithaca. Yale has won seven in a row in the series against the Big Red.
Scouting Columbia
Columbia (19-5, 10-1 Ivy League) earned NCAA.com Team of the Week honors for knocking off Princeton 67-65 last Saturday for the team's first win ever against a Top 25 team. The Lions, who are tied with Princeton for first place in the league, are seeking back-to-back Ivy titles. They bring a seven-game winning streak into their game at Brown Friday night.
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