the best part abt this yale team is even given its vulnerability in places…townsend is a better interior passer than even danny wolf.
you’d rather take your chances man up given he is short and his shot can be bothered.
bc the man can find ppl.
Nick made a great pass on the final play (which was very well designed). Coach Jones took advantage of Steve D’s aggressive trapping of the post there, which happened for much of the night.
I don’t know that Princeton has the players to replicate Penn’s approach. Spinoso is a legitimate center, and when the refs let him play, he can protect the rim and really be physical underneath. Donahue has always preferred to overplay the perimeter and funnel drivers to the rim.
Princeton also doesn’t have a plus point-of-attack defender, unless I’m forgetting someone. (They really miss Allocco.)
you cant trap townsend or double him off the block.
you can double him on the block if you can get there…
penn did it the last 2 plays of the game.
he essentially had 2 assists to celiscar.
they are very well versed in leveraging his vision and celiscar is laser quick in cutting off ball to the rim.
cornell did this also. and aletan also took adv.
the sub of celiscar was designed to exploit it.
look for a change in how they play this.
i expect man up or full zone. townsend is too good.
unlike wolf who you cld play w a guard and get under the dribble…you cant play townsend this way. he is too low to the ground and powerful.
at 8 i aint touching this one. shldve hit it when i could but i was indecisive at 10.5 after fri results for all
tempted to jinx the junx bf it becomes a hex but
i expect princeton to mix pressure and defenses and play pissed.
they arent that athletic but they can be scrappy in what is now a rivalry game.
so if they make shots for once we have problems.
oerhaps they might learn to use gimmick defenses on townsend and not the obvious off block trap.
or just make yale a jump shooting team outside of townsend and bother him w size.
to iogys point not sure they have that personnel. but they can shoot well and pull a penn and go 11-18 on 3 balls
conversely this will show where this yale team stands in a flawed ivy
so who knows. take the gifts when u see them
as an aside brown looked good again.
they look athletic and desperate.
i dont think that good brown tells us much princeton.
it tells us that good brown is a problem for anyone should they make the tournament bc all these ivy teams are flawed.
The Ivies all have flaws, although Yale has the fewest. Second trip through the league the flaws get exposed. And with more back-to-back weekends in the 2nd half of season, teams have to go deeper into their benches or risk running out of gas on Sat. night.
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vegas sees that yale was forced to gas down their starters in a fri dogfight.
and the spread hates it bc they effed up the friday action
haha
Dominant showing so far. No one in the Ivy can currently match Yale.
our ability to toss Townsend on Pierce and Bez on Lee and princetons lack of size is a beautiful combo.
Going into this weekend I was most fearful of Cornell in Ivy Madness due to their ability to speed the game up and play 10-12 deep on the second half of the playoff weekend but them getting the doors blown off by Dartmouth has me reconsidering. March can’t get here soon enough.
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what night!
i got big timed on this site.
i watch daniel ogunyemi go off.
yale decapitated princeton on natl tv as
mitch guarded townsend the way you cant and poula was off
but i fumbled the bet. there is room for growth for all!
One week ago Cornell was 5-1 in the league. Now 3L in a row, and in a dogfight to even make Ivy madness with a back to back road trip to Yale/Brown next weekend. Time to see what they are made of.
This was, shall we say, not a great weekend for Cornell and Princeton. Yale weathered an off weekend from John and beat Princeton by 30(!) in the process. Scary stuff for the rest of the league.
Yale’s magic number for a playoff spot is 1, and their magic number for the 1 seed is 2. Great stuff.
Cornell will be absolutely desperate next weekend - very important to take the fight to them.
Yale actually already clinched an Ivy Madness spot
i fear “good” brown at home maybe 2x
if they make it. they look good.
and dartmouth is onto something it appears
and princeton just bottomed out. they shld bounce now
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Have the clinched the tiebreaker with Brown? My instinct was that they hadn’t - if Cornell finishes second, Yale could still conceivably lose TB2 to Brown. But I defer to the expert.
In any case where Yale and brown have a tie (Yale loses out and Brown wins out) Yale would at least win ties vs any other teams involved based on losses other teams would take if Brown were to go 5-0 (namely, I think, Cornell).
I have worked with the Ivy League in developing a tool which checks tiebreaks for various sports (including basketball) so they are in a spot to call these clinches like this much more easily and confidently than in the past.
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Ahhhhh, gotcha. Right, makes sense — I didn’t play the sequence out in my head enough.
Even better then!
i will have visions of mitch slow trapping a sagging townsend 18 ft into the corner as celiscar dives to the bucket dancing in my head until game 3.
surely someone in this league will realize the kid who might win a rhodes knows thats coming and play it dofferently.
until then, champagne!
and watching another IL big besides the penn kid try to back down townsend or molloy in the post brings joy to my soul.
Scattered postgame thoughts:
- How nice to have a joinable forum.
- What a joy to watch Bez on offense. (My 2021 self could never have imagined writing that.) Not only is he really, really quick, but he’s confident in his shot in a way that makes you confident, too. Those two threes in the second half? Two years ago, I would have buried my head in my hands as soon as he jumped. Tonight I knew they were going in, and he did too. The other part of that - the first half drive where he just went right by Lee. Skates for days.
- My favorite possession on either end was Princeton’s first offensive one of the second half. Lee got free and into the lane, but he tried a spinning reverse when he could have gone straight up for an easy layup. To me, that he thought he had to do that (instead of going straight up) says worlds about what Princeton went through tonight. Shout out to Sam and Nick and Casey and Bez, etc., etc., etc.
- Always fascinated by the late game rotations. Who gets the time? Glad Fox got in for a bit longer at the end. Keep the frosh minutes coming.
- Teo!
- Celiscar can move, man. Excited to see where he goes.
- Maybe it was the Pepe’s, but the students were awesome tonight. I thought we were pretty good when I was there, but I don’t think we ever started filling in the 300s like that. Also, don’t we all wish we could have a cheer squad like Jack Molloy has in the far section of football guys.
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all points, good.
celiscar has a unique combo at this level. he is crazy strong and twitchy.
as i noted above he is a poy type with a jumper. but we must keep him to find out.