Yale Athletics

The Yale Women’s Basketball team was picked to finish in sixth place this season in the Ivy League’s preseason media poll. 

The poll, released on Oct. 10, favors Princeton to win, with 10 of 16 first-place votes. Columbia secured five first-place votes and came in at No. 2. In the 2023–24 season, both teams had excellent records and secured bids to March Madness. 

Only the top four teams make it to the Ivy League tournament for a chance at a bid in March Madness.

“We’re really excited about the year,” Head Coach Dalila Eshe said. “We have an incredible team. Part of the rebuild process is rebuilding your culture and we feel like we’re finally in the spot where our culture is where it needs to be. Now we can focus on basketball.”

This year, the team begins in a deficit. Jenna Clark ’24, the star point guard, and Brenna McDonald ’24, a leading post, both graduated last season.

As last year’s captain, Clark was the 24th player in Yale Women’s Basketball history to notch 1,000 points, which she secured in the final game of the season against Brown. She ranks second in Yale history for career assists at 483 and was the second Ivy League player in history to lead the league in assists for three consecutive seasons. She was also a 2023 Nancy Lieberman Award finalist for national point guard of the year. 

McDonald also put her name in the history books. She ranks 10th in Yale history with 65 blocks in her career, during which she led the Ivy League two seasons in a row in blocks per game at 1.5. Taking advantage of her COVID-19 eligibility, she now plays her fifth year at the University of Washington.

Without these two, a significant gap remains in both the offense and the defense for Yale. 

Coach Eshe, however, views this less as a gap and more of an opportunity for her current players to step up.

“With college athletics in general, it’s always kind of this ‘next man up’ … you have players that have been working and grinding day in and day out that people from the outside don’t see—the work that they’re putting in waiting for their opportunity,” Eshe said. “You think about the players that were guarding Jenna and guarding Brenna the whole year, we have a lot of really good pieces ready to go and step right in and take that role.”

She said her team will look different because of the losses of McDonald and Clark, but this is not out of the ordinary. Every year she “revamps the offense depending on the pieces [she] has.” To her, this will culminate in moving the ball around more between players. Defensively, she credits the strength of the practice squad in helping her team keep opponents “out on the perimeter and navigate ball screen action.”

Notably, Nyla McGill ’25 is absent from the roster this season. Coach Eshe had little to say on this matter, only that “Nyla is no longer a part of our Women’s Basketball team.”

She said the adjustment for her team in McGill’s absence will mirror that of Clark’s and McDonald’s, and the losses do not come without replacement. New to the team are four incoming first years and a transfer student, as well as the return of Avery Lee ’25, who was missing from the 2023–24 roster.

Eshe brought in three more first years that she did last year: Ciniya Moore ’28, Abigail Long ’28, Magdalena Schmidt ’28 and Ke’iara Odume ’28. She also brought in transfer student Ana Guillen ’27, an international student who played her inaugural season of college basketball at the University of Wisconsin. She competed for the Spanish national team in 2021.

“The freshmen and our transfers have been very eager to just be led by our upperclassmen,” Eshe said. “It has made a world of difference. The energy when we walk in the gym every day is different and it’s what we have been building over the last two years.”

Kiley Capstraw ’26 echoed Eshe’s excitement. She noted to the News that the first years are “gym rats” and “hoopers” who are eager to learn from both the coaches and the upperclassmen. She said their receptiveness has made her transition into an upperclassman much easier. 

Capstraw said her two years of experience have prepared her for her leadership role.

“Coming into my third year, I’m more focused than ever on making sure I’m facilitating the offense from whatever position on the court I am at and making sure I’m finishing and scoring at a more efficient rate than I have in years’ past.”

Grace Thybulle ’25, who appeared in and contributed to every game last season, spoke about the methods she is honing in on to get the ball back to the defense — an emphasis on “turning defensive stops into offense.” Last season, she was second on the team in blocks.

“I think something that I’ve been personally looking to do is finding energy in that defense, finding energy in those rebounds and in the way our offense is moving,” Thybulle said. 

She emphasized that she wants to find confidence in “pushing the ball in transition” and in “her offensive game.” This is all in preparation for a league that only continues to increase in their domination.

The team faces a challenging but balanced schedule before facing their Ivy League competitors. In their non-conference battles, the Bulldogs will take on top basketball teams like Michigan State and Syracuse. Coach Eshe believes this will be a significant factor in their ability to compete with and beat in-conference foes.

Thybulle said winning the league comes down to who wants it. 

“We’re such a talented league and it’s so much fun to be a part of,” she said. “This is a year for us where we have a culture where we really want it and people are working really hard. Pushing through those tough non-conference stretches coming into league play really strongly, we have the mindset to do that and we have the capability to do that and there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to.”

Like Thybulle, a tough schedule and great additions to the team have increased Capstraw’s confidence in her team’s ability to find success this season.

She told the News that every single player is willing to do whatever it takes to win.

“I think we have so many key pieces that are really going to shock the Ivy League,” Capstraw said.

The Bulldogs’ first game is Nov. 4 against Monmouth University (0–0, 0–0 CAA).