NEW YORK, N.Y. – It will likely go down as one of the biggest shots in the long history of Yale men's basketball.
Matt Knowling's one-handed floater at the buzzer lifted Yale to a thrilling 62-61 victory over Brown in the championship game of the Ivy League Tournament.
The shot and the win sends the Bulldogs to the NCAA Tournament as the Ivy League's automatic qualifier. Yale is headed to March Madness for the third time in the last four seasons, the fourth time under
James Jones, The Joel E. Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach of the Bulldogs, and the seventh time in school history.
Trailing by one with 6.1 seconds left,
John Poulakidas inbounded the ball to
Danny Wolf, who found
Bez Mbeng. Mbeng drove to the basket, drew the defense and found Knowling, who hit the winning shot, setting off a wild celebration at Columbia's Levien Gym.
"I just wanted to put myself by the basket in case of a miss," said Knowling, a senior. "We were trying to get a play for someone else, but they found me. I didn't think I was going to be that open. I work on that shot every day. I didn't overthink it, I just let it go and it went in."
Yale trailed by six, 54-48, with three minutes remaining but rallied.
August Mahoney hit a pair of three-pointers and Poulakidas drilled one to spark the comeback. Still, the Bulldogs were down six with 27 seconds remaining.
Poulakidas finished with 18 points to pace the Bulldogs. Mahoney added 15 and Knowling scored 11. Wolf had nine points and 13 rebounds, and Mbeng contributed five points and six assists, including the one that sends Yale to March Madness.
"The fact that the last basket was scored off an assist on a kid trying to make a play for someone else; it's just so meaningful to me as a coach," Jones said.
Wolf was named the tournament's most outstanding player and was joined on the all-tournament team by Poulakidas.
The Bulldogs won the Ivy Tournament for the third time. Yale is the only school to have appeared in all six tournaments and has advanced to the championship game in five of them.
Yale will learn its seed and opponent when the 68-team is field is announced on Sunday at 6 p.m.
