MEN’S BASKETBALL: No. 14 Yale set for No. 3 Purdue in first round of March Madness
Purdue enters the matchup with a major size advantage in the post and one of the nation’s best offenses, but the Bulldogs are hoping their defense creates the opportunity for a first-round upset.
William McCormack, Contributing Photographer
MILWAUKEE — It all happens quickly in March. The Yale men’s basketball team learned its NCAA Tournament seed and opponent just a few hours after beating Princeton in the Ivy Madness championship last Sunday, made it back to New Haven for two days and then took a chartered flight from Hartford to Milwaukee on Wednesday.
The Bulldogs practiced in the Milwaukee Bucks training facility after landing, and on Thursday morning, they took to the real court — across the street at Fiserv Forum — where first-round March Madness action will tip off on Friday.
“In terms of the celebration, it was fast and furious,” Yale head coach James Jones told the media during a Thursday morning press conference at the arena. Bright stage lights shone as he sat on a makeshift stage in front of a backdrop dotted with the NCAA’s March Madness logo. “What’s great about the world now is everything’s on Instagram, so I got to relive some of the moments of my players,” Jones added. By Sunday night, he started watching film on Purdue.
This NCAA Tournament routine — with league titles, team watch parties for the Selection Sunday show and media obligations on the brightest stage in college sports — is growing familiar for Jones, who is taking the Elis into their third NCAA Tournament appearance and fourth game since 2016. Many of Yale’s upperclassmen are making their second run through the tournament regimen as well, though Yale guard Azar Swain ’22 is the only player on this season’s roster to appear in the Bulldogs’ 2019 game vs. No. 3 LSU — he scored 12 points off the bench in a 79–74 loss to third-seeded LSU.
For Yale, the main event in Milwaukee still remains: the No. 14 Bulldogs (19–11, 11–3 Ivy) tip off against No. 3 Purdue (27–7, 14–6 Big Ten) Friday at 2 p.m. eastern time and 1 p.m. local time in Wisconsin. In the Boilermarkers, the upset-minded Bulldogs are up against one of the nation’s best offenses and tallest rosters. Highlighted by 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey, Purdue’s average height ranks 17th out of 358 Division I teams in men’s college basketball, per college basketball ratings site KenPom.
“Everybody knows that they’re big,” Swain, Yale’s leading scorer averaging 19.2 points per game, told the media during a student-athlete press conference in which he and Yale captain Jalen Gabbidon ’22 participated before Jones took the stage. “And they’ve been one of the top teams all year, so they’ve been on a national stage and in the limelight. So their size isn’t something that’s been hidden or anything like that. As far as us, we’re looking kind of inwards and making sure that the little things like toughness and physicality aren’t going to lack, and we’ll be ready to compete regardless of size.”
Jones was asked how Yale was trying to prepare to face a post player like Edey, who stands half a foot higher than the tallest player in the Elis’ rotation — 6-foot-8 forward EJ Jarvis ’23. Purdue forward Trevion Williams, the Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year, also stands 6-foot-10-inches. Jones joked that he went out, got a dump truck, put it in the middle of the floor at practice and tried to get his players to move it while in park. “You can talk as much as you can, [but] you can’t simulate it,” he said.
The challenge is exacerbated by Yale’s smaller lineup this season. In terms of average height, this year’s Bulldogs are the shortest team Jones has coached since the 2010–11 season, per KenPom. That size disparity has caused many to count out Yale as a potential bracket-buster in this year’s tournament. Only 7.5 percent of ESPN brackets have Yale beating Purdue; in 2019, when Yale was also seeded fourteenth, the Elis were a more popular upset choice — about 16 percent of ESPN brackets predicted they would beat LSU.
On Thursday, Yale was the first team to shoot around at the Fiserv Forum, the 17,341-seat arena that is home to the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and where the Yale men’s hockey team played two games over winter break in late December. Players had 40 minutes to warm up and acclimate themselves to the rims where teams will shoot tomorrow. A massive jumbotron displayed Yale’s blue “Y” for the duration of the practice, which was free and open to the public.
Seven other teams playing first and second–round games in Milwaukee followed with their own press conferences and practices: No. 11 Virginia Tech, No. 3 Purdue, No. 6 Texas, No. 6 LSU, No. 3 Wisconsin, No. 11 Iowa State and No. 14 Colgate.
“A lot of people will kind of go overboard about our centers and size,” Purdue head coach Matt Painter said. “But there’s still four other positions out there, and [Yale has] great positional size in those positions — those combo forwards that are athletic and strong, they can cause a lot of problems for you by taking away things and getting into passing lanes.”
Yale emerged as the best defensive team in the Ivy League and has held opponents to a conference-best 42.3 percent shooting from the field and 30.4 percent shooting from three-point range. Its defenders will be tasked with containing Purdue’s Jaden Ivey, a projected top-five pick in the 2022 NBA Draft and an explosive guard whom Jones called “one of the fastest human beings I’ve ever seen with the basketball going up and down the court.”
Jones coached Ivey, along with Purdue forward Caleb Furst, last summer with the U.S. team at the FIBA U19 World Cup in Latvia. Ivey said the two had coincidentally exchanged text messages a couple weeks ago. Jones told Ivey he was playing well and wished him luck with the rest of the season. The Purdue star said Jones taught him a lot “from an emotional standpoint” about attitude and positivity.
Yale, of course, has its own star in Swain, whose ability to score the ball on seemingly any shot commanded attention from Purdue.
“Swain is one of those guys that’s a threat right as he steps on the court,” Painter said. “He can shoot off the dribble, he can play in the mid post. He can obviously catch and shoot. He can dribble into threes. He’s just got a real mature pulse to his game … When you have a guy out there that can get 30, 35 points in a game, as a coach, that always scares you,” Painter said.
Describing him to reporters who have never seen Yale play up close before, Jones called Swain, who is 6-foot-1, the “best player in the entire country that can’t dunk a basketball.”
TBS is set to broadcast Yale’s first-round matchup on Friday.
