MEN’S BASKETBALL: Picked first in preseason poll, Yale eyes a third straight Ivy crown amid uncertain conference landscape
Looking to claim its fifth conference title in the last seven seasons, the Bulldogs open nonconference play next week with two new assistant coaches and significant experience on the perimeter but lots of open minutes in the post.
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With the college hoops season set to officially kick off next week, the Yale men’s basketball team sits atop the Ivy League as the conference emerges from a dormant year of no competition due to the pandemic.
Members of the media picked Yale to finish first in the Ivy League’s preseason poll released last month. But the Bulldogs have plenty of company at the top. Five different squads — Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Penn and Brown — received first-place votes, proof of a heightened sense of uncertainty around this season’s Ivy landscape. Twenty months have passed since Ivy teams’ most recent competitions, and a mere seven points separate first-place Yale from third-place Princeton. Harvard is second in the poll, which consists of 17 total voters — two members that cover each school and one national media member.
Yale has captured the Ancient Eight’s regular-season championship in four of the last six seasons, including the two most recent in 2019 and 2020. For Head Coach James Jones, the pandemic-driven distance from competition, practice and his team last year reminded him of just how sweet another title would be.
“It made me hungrier to do what I do,” he told the News in an interview Tuesday morning. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so to speak. I missed being around the gym, I missed the smell of the basketball, I missed talking to my guys and seeing them face to face and the relationships that you have and being able to work with my assistant coaches and get into a room with a group of people to try to fight for a common goal. I mean, that’s truly special when you do that.”
“And when you win a championship,” he added, pointing to a large poster of the 2019 team — decked out in gray T-shirts and posing on Yale’s home court after beating Harvard in the Ivy Madness championship — in the corner of his office on the second floor of Ray Tompkins House. “When you get to that level after being in a room all day and in a gym all day, that’s special, and that’s what you try to achieve every time you go out to the court.”
The Elis and their Ancient Eight peers return to a league that looks substantially different than it did when the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly forced the cancellation of Ivy Madness in March 2020. Though Yale retains two starters from its last season, guards Azar Swain ’22 and Jalen Gabbidon ’22, only four of the 11 players on the 2020 All-Ivy First and Second teams remain on league rosters this winter.
Nine first years and sophomores on Yale’s team of 19 enter the season without any college basketball experience.
“I think what I have to do a better job of is slow down and do a little more teaching with the younger guys,” Jones said. “Because, you know, in years past where you just had four new guys in the program [at the start of a season], it was much easier for them to pick up, but when you have nine, that’s half your team that’s trying to figure out what you’re doing who haven’t done it yet.”
Despite the nine rookies, Yale returns with more experience than several of its Ivy League counterparts. According to statistics compiled on the college hoops analytics website run by Bart Torvik, Yale ranks second with 52.7 percent of minutes returning behind Princeton’s 61.4 percent. The “returning minutes” metric captures the share of last season’s playing time that came from players who remain on the roster this season.
Still, Jones, who enters his 22nd season and 23rd year as the program’s head coach, has never acclimated nine effective rookies at once. Because the pandemic forced coaches to recruit remotely, he had actually never seen guard Bez Mbeng ’25 and forward John Poulakidas ’25 play in person before this fall. In fact, he said he only met Mbeng face-to-face for the first time when the first year moved on campus in late August.
“We have a lot of guys that I think are gonna surprise some people,” Jones said during the league’s men’s basketball media day on Zoom last month. “I suspect there’ll be two or three guys you really haven’t heard of yet who jump up and help us be successful.”
Two new coaches on Jones’ staff — assistant coach Al Paul, who replaced Tobe Carberry after he took a job at Columbia, and Director of Basketball Operations Matt Elkin, who replaced Rey Crossman — will also make their first appearances on the Yale sideline this season.
Even with all the new faces, several players familiar to Yale fans are set to lead the team, especially out on the perimeter. Team captain Gabiddon, who was the 2019–20 Ivy League Co-Defensive Player of the Year, and Swain, an All-Ivy First Team selection in 2020, were both originally members of the class of 2021 before taking full gap years last season.
Eight of the ten Yale players who played during the 2019–20 season and remain on this winter’s roster took at least a semester off last year, and many took full gap years, spending time working at a startup, tutoring, studying for the MCAT, working out and more.
Various decisions around pandemic enrollment puts each Ivy League school in a slightly different roster position, and the conference’s last-hour, one-time eligibility exception for graduate students further complicates teams’ lineups this year. Some major contributors originally in the class of 2021, like Dartmouth’s Chris Knight and Princeton’s Ryan Schwieger, had already announced their decisions to transfer after graduating from their respective institutions — both Knight and Schwieger happen to now be at Loyola Chicago. Others, like Brown star and 2020 All-Ivy First Team selection Tamenang Choh, are back this winter as some of the league’s first graduate student-athletes. Dartmouth guard Brendan Barry transferred to St. Joseph’s in the middle of last season as a graduate student — making him one of the few players in the league who competed last winter — but is now back in Hanover for one final season.
“[The] guys were in their own respective places during COVID and the break,” Swain said. “Personally, [when] I’m home training, I don’t really play against people when I’m home, so the competition is something I’ve missed out on. I’ve been competing against myself a little bit in workouts, but that’s much different than a game. … I’m definitely itching to just compete and be in the mix of a game and feel that energy again.”
The senior guard duo of Gabbidon and Swain will enjoy help from fellow returning guards Matthue Cotton ’23 and August Mahoney ’24, both of whom averaged between 10 and 20 minutes a game off the bench during Yale’s pre-pandemic season. Guard Eze Dike ’22, a true senior and one of two returners along with forward EJ Jarvis ’23, who did not take time off last school year, also made appearances in about two-thirds of Yale’s games last season.
Jones’ larger lineup hole sits below the rim. Forwards Jordan Bruner ’20 and Paul Atkinson ’21, who each averaged more than 30 minutes a game in 2019–20, both graduated. Wyatt Yess ’21, who became a consistent presence off the bench in 2020 and whom Jones said he initially thought might be able to return this winter as a graduate student, opted to wrap up his college basketball career after completing his undergraduate degree. Jones called the allocation of open minutes in the post a “work in progress.”
Injuries to returning forwards Jameel Alausa ’22 and Jarvis, who each averaged a handful of minutes last season but had experience playing down low in practices, has complicated the situation, Jones added. He classified Alausa’s status as unknown after the forward had double hip surgery last year and said Jarvis was expected to return to playing “sooner than later.”
During men’s basketball media day, Gabbidon touched on a similar sense of uncertainty that stems from the long hiatus.
“Over the past 18 months, a lot of guys on the team have played a lot of basketball, but it doesn’t come close to the intensity [of real games],” the captain said. “Even for the guys who’ve played, there’s a little imposter syndrome when you haven’t touched a basketball on the court in 18 months. You’re like, ‘Am I actually as good as I think I am?’ Being in live competition those first few minutes are going to be really great to be back out there and get a good feel for the game again.”
Yale starts the season ranked 19th in the CollegeInsider.com Mid-Major Top 25 poll. Its nonconference schedule includes bouts with fellow ranked mid-majors St. Mary’s, Iona, Vermont and Southern Utah. Power-conference opponents include Seton Hall, whom the Bulldogs visit next Sunday, Nov. 14, and Auburn, where Yale will play in early December.
A slightly revised format for the conference schedule, which was initially slated to take effect last year, will extend the 14-game slate over an additional two weeks in January and reduce the number of weekends teams play “back-to-backs” on Friday and Saturday nights. And of course, Yale hopes the league season will culminate with a trip up to Ivy Madness, which Harvard is set to host in mid-March. Winning the postseason tournament in Boston would guarantee a March Madness berth.
Yale will officially open its season next Tuesday at the John J. Lee Amphitheater, where the Bulldogs host Division III opponent Vassar College at 7 p.m.