Might as well put up one thread for the whole weekend. Yale starts off tomorrow at 12:30 against a UW-Green Bay squad that has been woeful the past several years, but who took Minnesota to OT in their last game.
From there, it depends on results. The Bulldogs will play Saturday against the winner/loser of Charleston vs. UMass, and then the final game will be Monday. This is a good chance to bolster the resume and get games against some feisty teams. The best of the bunch is probably KP 79 Akron, whom Yale thumped last year in El Paso without John Poulakidas, but who looks strong again this year.
Posting this at the 12 minute mark. We need to be better defensively and on the glass. It doesn’t make sense to me given the pieces we have but it just hasn’t come together yet for whatever reason in those two realms.
I agree 100%. Green Bay is not bottom 25 in the country, but this was a really lackluster performance from Yale. Guards got regularly outmuscled on drives, and the DRB effort was poor in the second half. I’ll give them a little break on the offensive end, because it looks like GB was throwing some junk zone concepts out there that I’m sure weren’t much on tape, but this was very disjointed.
“I thought we were just good enough to win today. I thought, for the most part, that Green Bay played really hard, and we lacked that team intensity throughout the game at times, and that hurt us. I give my guys credit for just being able to fight through and being able to come up with the win.”
Yale opens -7 vs Charleston. Cougars are big, go deep in their rotation and play a lot of young guys/transfers. They’ve been absolutely horrendous from the 3 point line. Their SOS has been much more difficult than ours, but they’ve been soundly beat by the competition and needed a comeback vs UMass to advance.
I think this is more of a coin-flip than Vegas does after our last few performances.
Great performance. Lesson learned, don’t be a prisoner of the moment.
Townsend was obviously fantastic but Sullivan gave us phenomenal minutes in a tough spot for his first extend run of his career. Excited to see what he can do when he fills out, he adds another dimension to our offense.
I’m always suspicious of up-tempo teams that feast on turnovers. A slow team should, in theory, win the battle to impose its style with enough discipline, and that usually takes the running team out of its comfort zone.
In some ways, the URI/Green Bay/Charleston games were all good prep for this one. We saw a lot more effort and intensity from Yale in the last game, and that’s what it’s going to take to win this one. Akron is very guard-centric, which will be an interesting change—I would expect them to double Nick pretty aggressively and force the others to make plays.
Not sure what to expect tonight. The team that beat Navy and Quinnipiac looked great. Not so impressive against URI and Green Bay. Townsend carried the team over Charleston. I expect we’ll need a more balanced effort to compete against Akron, ranked 55th in KenPom v Yale’s 83rd. Having Fox get hot from beyond the arc is probably key.
Akron normally plays a 4-guard starting lineup, which is just begging for trouble against Yale. Not sure whether they’ll size up (and possibly ruin their spacing) or just try guarding him with a wing.
Fox only played 12 minutes vs Charleston which was surprisingly less than both Braithwaite and Arlington. Could be an effect of Jones prioritizing size more with Charleston’s bigs. I know Jones has been emphasizing his need to improve defensively
I was impressed by Yale against Charleston. They were big, but Aletan played the biggest of anybody out there with his shot blocking and intimidation. Typical Townsend do-it-all performance, and Simmons was a menace cutting down the lane with or without the ball.
Akron will apply lots of perimeter pressure, and they’re long and pretty athletic, so Yale’s poise and passing game and ability to drive out of trouble will be tested. Their half-court offense is OK but nothing that Yale should have too much trouble with.
Groce needs to go back to the drawing board on defense. The Nick/Isaac two-man game is easy money right now, Nick’s floor vision and passing are just too good for the double to work.