Tim Tai, Staff Photographer

For the second night in a row, the Yale men’s basketball team was fighting off the Ivy League’s second-place squad, facing Princeton in another battle of Ancient Eight heavyweights. 

Yale (15–10, 9–2 Ivy) dispatched Penn (12–13, 9–3) on Friday to ensure it would end the weekend still in first place, but an 81–75 loss to Princeton (19–5, 9–2) on Saturday means it now has company at the top of the standings. The Tigers defeated Brown (12–15, 4–8) on Friday to sweep their weekend back-to-back. 

Princeton, which boasts the conference’s best offensive metrics, fired away three-point shots in the first before turning inside after halftime, as senior guard Ethan Wright and junior forward Tosan Evbuomwan combined to score 49 points. Wright, who shot nine-of-13 from the field, scored 15 of his 23 in the first, while Evbuomwan operated around the rim to finish with 26, 18 of which came during the second half.

Yale still delivered stops — the Elis blocked a season-high seven shots — but at times struggled to consistently turn that defense into points on the other end. The loss snapped the Bulldogs’ seven-game winning streak and marked their first league loss at home since falling to Harvard by one in Feb. 2020.

“I thought that offensively we settled and rushed,” Yale head coach James Jones said, alluding to some of Yale’s shot attempts when it found itself down double digits — Princeton’s largest lead of the game was 13 with 9:27 to play — in the second half. “Eight minutes to go, you’re down by 10; that’s plenty of time to win a game.

“I thought we gave away some possessions,” he added. “We shot it poorly in the second half. We turned it over. We had 0 turnovers in the first half — I can’t remember the last time that’s happened — and we have eight in the second. So you know, that kind of sowed your doom, and even at that you had a chance to win the game.”

Yale guard Azar Swain ’22 led the Elis with 18 points but shot six-of-21 from the field. First-year point guard Bez Mbeng ’25 finished with a career-high 17 points. 

Yale was down 11 with six minutes to play and trailed by seven with two minutes to go, but relied on free-throw shooting and a deep three-pointer by guard and captain Jalen Gabbidon ’22 to cut Princeton’s lead to 77–75 with 1:12 remaining. The Tigers prevented Yale from converting looks around the rim in the final minute and hit four free throws to secure the six-point victory.

Frustration with officiating, which began with a couple heated conversations in the first half, lingered postgame. Teams made constant trips to the free-throw line late in the game. After each shooting just four free throws in the first half, Princeton attempted 19 in the second, while Yale shot 15. Mbeng and forward EJ Jarvis ’23 both fouled out in the final minute. 

“I don’t know how many fouls [Mbeng] actually had,” Jones said. “There were two phantom calls on him that put them on the free throw line. You would expect that you’ll have a better opportunity in your building, but it is what it is.”

Princeton leads the league in points per game, field goal percentage and three-point percentage. Yale, on the other hand, leads in field goal percentage defense and three-point percentage defense. Scoring was the early norm for both teams, and the game opened at a rapid pace. The Tigers connected on their early three-point attempts, with guard Jaelin Llewellyn sinking an open shot in the corner and Wright hitting a shot from the top of the key.

Yale started one-of-7 from deep, while Princeton went on to hit eight of their 16 three-point attempts in the first half. A three from Friberg, Princeton’s seventh of the game, put Princeton up 39–30 with 5:04 to play in the first. 

Yale responded with a Gabbidon three-pointer and a fast-break, as forward Matt Knowling ’24 tipped a pass and raced to retrieve the ball in the backcourt, turning his steal into a two-handed dunk that put Lee Amphitheater fans on their feet. He swung off the rim and jogged back to play defense with Princeton’s lead down to four.

With 1:36 to play, Yale took its first lead since the opening minutes with a deep Mbeng three to make it 42–41. The momentum swing — Mbeng’s shot capped an 12–2 run for the Bulldogs — forced Princeton head coach Mitch Henderson to call a timeout. Mbeng bounced back to the Yale sideline, slapping hands on his way to the bench. He kept the ball in his hands on Yale’s final possessions of the half, driving to drop in another two, and led the Elis with 12 points on five-of-six shooting at the break. A starter since Yale’s last nonconference game on Dec. 28, Mbeng had hit only one three-pointer entering the weekend, but his 12 first-half points included two successful shots from deep.

Yale guard Jalen Gabbidon ’22 (0) celebrates with guard Bez Mbeng ’25 heading into Princeton’s timeout late in the first half. (Tim Tai, Staff Photographer)

“I’m just trying to win,” Mbeng said. “That’s it. Do anything on the floor to win.”

Mbeng’s running heave at the halftime buzzer did not fall — he thought he was fouled — and while Yale’s coaches stayed on the court longer than usual to talk with the referees, each side left the court with the score tied at 44. 

Princeton dished the ball to Evbuomwan to start the second half, and the junior forward scored the Tigers’ first eight points. Jones called a timeout once Princeton built a 54–47 lead. It stayed ahead for the rest of the game.

“We did a better job at closing out and taking away some of those [three-point] looks in the second half,” Jones said. “They only took six threes in the second half. They took 16 in the first. They were more of an inside-oriented team trying to get the ball to Tosan.”

An and-one for Evbuomwan made it 66–56 with 11:06 to play before the teams fell into a scoring lull later in the second half. Princeton went more than three minutes without a point, and neither team added points to the board between the 8:05 and 6:03 marks.

But Yale struggled to find the scoring it needed to follow its defensive stops. With less than five minutes to play, four-fifths of a dense student section was on its feet, chanting “de-fense, de-fense” as Evbuomwan maneuvered around the basket. Jarvis delivered the block Yale fans were hoping for — attendance was listed at 1268 — but Mbeng’s foot slid after he raced out in transition, leading to a traveling violation and a turnover. 

Yale clawed its way back with free-throw shooting, as its five points between a Matthue Cotton ’23 layup with 8:05 to go and a crucial Gabbidon three with 3:40 to play came at the stripe. 

“Just playing with more energy throughout the game,” Mbeng said of the team’s postgame locker-room discussion. “The first half, we didn’t come out with energy and it was still [a] tie ballgame going into the second half. We even came out dead in the second half, but towards the end of the second half we picked it up.”

Two more Swain free throws cut the lead to 74–70 with three minutes to play, and “de-fense” chants continually recurred in the final minutes. Gabbidon’s third three of the night, this one with a minute and 12 seconds left, made it a two-point game, and after Evbuomwan missed one of two free throws on the following possession, Yale was down 78–75 with the ball. The Princeton defense, however, came through with a stop and two free throws to seal the win. Gabbidon’s two triples were Yale’s only field goals in the final eight minutes, and the Bulldogs’ 40.6 percent shooting mark was their third-lowest of the Ivy League season.

Two more weekends of regular-season play remain, and the Bulldogs, Quakers and Tigers have all already clinched spots in Ivy Madness, the postseason tournament featuring the conference’s top four teams. For Yale, however, splitting back-to-back games against its top competitors this weekend means that the result of its quest for a third consecutive regular-season championship and the no. 1 tournament seed may not be clear until the last night of the regular season on Sat., Mar. 5, when Yale hosts Brown. Swain was quiet after Saturday’s loss, but said Yale’s approach to the end of league play is not affected by this weekend’s split result: “We try to win every game.”

“I’d be lying to you if I said the thought doesn’t go through my mind, but I don’t allow it to linger,” Jones said Friday when asked whether he had considered the championship and seeding consequences of Yale’s Penn-Princeton weekend. “It’s out quickly in terms of what goes on and I refocus on what I’m doing. I’ve always been very good at that. I’m a very rational person, I don’t understand the people that are irrational. So I think logically, and … thinking about what can happen doesn’t help me one bit.”

With the loss, Yale and Princeton are now tied for first place in the Ivy League. (Tim Tai, Staff Photographer)

Yale travels to New Hampshire this week for its third game in five days. In a game that was postponed from Jan. 7 because of the Yale program’s early January COVID-19 pause, the Elis visit Dartmouth (7–15, 4–7) on Tuesday night.

WILLIAM MCCORMACK
William McCormack covered Yale men's basketball from 2018 to 2022. He served as Sports Editor and Digital Editor for the Managing Board of 2022 and also reported on the athletic administration as a staff reporter. Originally from Boston, he was in Timothy Dwight College.