As reward for finishing outright first in the league, Yale gets to play a true road game at 11am this Saturday. I really think this comes down to shooting. Cornell doesn’t really play a true big, which means they need to double the post whenever Samson or Nick get the ball down there. Trevor and Nick were 1-9 combined last time in Ithaca, and Yale still lost by only three. Hit shots, and I like our chances.
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Would love Samson to be a factor on the offensive glass, Cornell’s style limits his impact otherwise. I’m confident, Townsend was rusty after missing a game before Ithaca last time and he’ll be more ready for the doubles after seeing it. I’d guess we’d see more small ball and surround him with shooters.
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I’m guessing the Yale contingent is pretty small for Ivy Madness this year, we’re in it every year and driving 4+ hours for a weekend isn’t an appetizing endeavor.
comes down to finishing in the paint.
yale struggled against princeton 1, first half of cornell 2 and first half of princeton 2.
defense is better. jj didnt listen to me on switching it up but so far he has been correct
this being said cornell slow rolls the offense and the press now relative to before. they also borrow from princeton 1 and harvard playbook defensively
if you squint you see some harvard in their personnel. small stout and quick. the coaching job on this tweak is impressive. reduce offensive possessions to dig in defensively
been a good formula for them. we have to finish over them efficiently for 40 mins not 20
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Yale should not settle for 3s. If they play in the paint, Cornell will get in foul
trouble.
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cornell philosophical tweaks are also smart when you consider you must win two games in 25 hrs
defense and physicality matters more in this format esp if you win round 1
We’ll find out Saturday morning, but I’m hopeful yesterday’s second half was a real boost going into this one.
- Despite a bunch of wins, Yale had been clawing through games in the last month. H2 yesterday was the first plus-ten-point half since H2 v Brown, Feb 6. Maybe that unstops the bottle or something.
- I think that had the game yesterday stayed close – even had Yale still won – that might’ve been cause for consternation. Especially given a.) how Princeton’s season has trended, and b.) Yale’s struggles to put together a really fluid half in the past month.
- I hope it helps to see the scoreboard after beating a team they lost to earlier. (And really, erase the memory of that loss by beating them thoroughly.) They could still have drawn on Harvard for some of that, of course, but maybe there’s an extra boost doing it the week before you’ll need to do it again, or by doing it by winning by 25 rather than 1.
All that to say: don’t love the draw, don’t love the situation. But I feel a bit more hopeful than I would have had it been a 65-61 game yesterday.
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Also, Joe Jones to the Patriot final. Onions!
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Joe Jones being at BU since 2012 blew my mind. Time flies.
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With his son at Penn in the ILT
I think Yale has to keep this a half court game. If they let Cornell run, it could be a long day for the Bulldogs. Objectively Yale is the better team. But Cornell can be very streaky and if they get on a roll with their shooting from outside they can be very hard to stop.
I agree. Yale should use their advantage in size to put pressure on Cornell’s interior defense, and hopefully get them into foul trouble early.
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spent a few minutes on adv statistics. too difficult to format the takeaways for this forum but the above points i made were valid.
if you squint you see Cornell’s improvement on defense show up in the statistics. but, observationally they simply took a page from Princeton I and Harvard I/II. leverage unique personnel to get underneath us and make us finish over the top through contact.
we did a poor job of that in cornell II, particularly in the first half.
“must finish in the paint”
townsend was 4-13. samson wasnt a factor.
i presume cornell will shoot well in their home gym because it is their identity. if you run Samson he must be aggressive on offense to offset the defensive mismatch. he did this against Princeton even in half 1 when shot wasnt falling. clearly that was the directive from the coaches. not sure how they will approach this.
we rebounded awfully on defense in half 1 of cornell II. it was our death knell.
stats also show a big improvement in yale defensively in conference. we saw this in cornell I but not really Cornell II as they slow rolled and we shot better to get back in. they beat us on the boards and generally clawed us to death in the paint.
hat tip to casey simmons. he has had a stellar back half of the Ivy season when you dig in to the statistics. he should be honored for it.
let’s keep it rolling, young man.
and thank you, Claude AI.
We need Samson to hit the offensive glass hard, he hasn’t had an impact in the first 2 cornell games but if he hits it hard he could be the difference. I haven’t see him handle many quick doubles in the post which cornell threw at us a lot last matchup.
I imagine he’ll have his pick of the litter if he’s indeed transferring. he’s been a bit inconsistent in Ivy play whether that’s due to injuries or what have you. every team in the country would take a 6’10 athletic big guy who clearly has good shot blocking chops and started on a 23-5 top 100 type mid major. On top of that it seems like he has great character. It’ll be up to him where he goes and what role he’ll be expected to fill
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i just hope he is aggressive as you note.
he is an adept passer in 1x1 situations. he has improved as a rebounder overall this year.
i him a lot in high school his junior summer. he has improved overall. he wasnt asked to do much offensively bc he played w a future lottery pick.
my guess is he is 250 now and at a true 6’10 at worst he would get taken by the same schools that offered him his first time around.
he is an elite blocker as you note and dunk lob guy. and he has a reliable jump hook and one counter
If there were ever a circumstance to hate the Ivy tournament format for selecting the Ivy League’s automatic qualifier, this would be the circumstance. Yale has won the Ivy League Championship and is ranked 65th in the NCAA NET rankings, compared to 139th for Cornell, 148th for Penn and 149th for Harvard. Yale could be a 12th seed, I understand, compared to a likely 15th seed for the others, with a greater chance to win some games in March Madness and make the League proud. And Yale is playing at Cornell for the opening tournament game, having lost against the Big Red in Ithaca several weeks ago. So the reward for winning the regular season is a true away game. But I still support the Ivy Madness format. Only allowing the top four into the tournament makes for meaningful games for all the teams throughout most of the season (this year is the first I can recall where the last weekend was irrelevant to Ivy Madness seedings). And the tournament itself is a great experience for the participants and their fans. An improvement would be to locate the games at the home of the regular season champion. An even better improvement would be to locate a central, neutral location. And an optimal improvement would be something in New York City, where fan bases exist for all eight schools.
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I think most fans would prefer a true neutral site of 6000-10000 seats that is reasonably easy to access and get a hotel room. The Jersey Mike’s Arena (Rutgers) is an 8000 seat arena fitting that meets that bill, as does the Total Mortgage Arena (Bridgeport) of 10,000. The MassMutual Center (Springfield MA) is 8000 if a northern centrally located facility was desired. Any of these would be fine and a lot better than what we have had to deal with the last 4 seasons and next year as well.
Bridgeport and New Brunswick would fit my middle improvement scenario - not so sure about Springfield. But there’s New York and not New York and a huge difference even if we’re talking about 30 to 50 miles.
The only mid-size arena in New York is the Carneseca Arena, which is in the low 5000s and has no easy access by public transit or nearby hotels. I don’t see why NYC is necessary to an Ivy Tournament, though.
i tend to agree with all posts on this subject.
It will be a tough out for Yale if it comes to that especially if in round 1.
I would be less concerned about it if we had been more dominant and/or consistent from half to half, game to game. But it is what it is. There was a vote and need to run out the string. We got the advantage once so now Cornell does.
I also feel like if we can’t beat Cornell after just seeing them on the same court then it was meant to be. Round 2 a little different. Anything can happen on tired legs in a championship game. anything.
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