The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Bulldogs bow out in semis
Loss won’t spoil a successful season
PHILADELPHIA — Four months ago, the postseason was an improbable fantasy.
The Yale men’s basketball team lost three of its first four games and was facing the season without its two best players. Makai Mason, the preseason Ivy League Player of the Year, was lost to a foot injury, while talented sophomore Jordan Bruner suffered a season-ending knee injury in a preseason scrimmage.
How would he Bulldogs respond?
They did more than salvage their season, winning nine games in the Ivy League and surging through the final stretch of their schedule with seven wins in eight games to secure a spot in the league tournament. The team forced to rely on sophomores and freshmen evolved into a contender.
“I’m extremely proud of this Yale basketball team and what we were able to do,” Jones said after an 80-57 loss to Penn in the Ivy League Tournament semifinals Saturday afternoon at The Palestra.
Yale (16-15) somehow climbed to third place in the league, earning a spot in the league’s second postseason event. The Bulldogs also earned the right to face Penn (23-8), which hosted the “neutral site” event.
Playing at home, the Quakers were dominant from start to finish. Led by 6-foot-8 sophomore A.J. Brodeur (25 points, 10 rebounds), Penn marched to a 19point halftime lead with a stifling defense that held Yale to a 28.6 percent (10 of 35) shooting in the
first half.
It was closer in the second half, but Yale was unable to make a serious run.
So the season ended with Mason and Bruner watching. Jones joked that he often wished throughout the season that his opponents would play without its two best players, sort of evening out the rosters.
“But that’s not the way it’s played,” Jones said. “No one that played Yale is feeling sorry for us so we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We had to go out and play with who we have.”
Without Mason and Bruner, Yale distributed significant minutes to inexperienced players. Freshman Paul Atkinson (6-10) and sophomore Miye Oni started, while freshman Azar Swain came off the bench.
“They’re not Makai Mason and Jordan Bruner, but they did a great job for us this year,” Jones said. “So going forward, we will be better because of the experiences that they had. I look at it from that standpoint.”
Atkinson and Blake Reynolds led Yale with 11 points each. But the offense never found a flow, partly because of Penn’s aggressive defense, partly because the Bulldogs simply missed shots.
At halftime, Jones talked to his players about methodically chipping away at the deficit.
“I really felt like we were going to get back in the game,” Jones said. “I kind of mapped out on the board what we could do at the 16-minute mark, the 12minute mark, the eightminute mark, where we wanted to be.Try to chop it down to like eight points with eight minutes to go and be right there.
“Just try to get them to understand that the lead was not insurmountable. And sometimes my words fall upon deaf ears. We got into a bad groove tonight and stayed there. We just couldn’t get ourselves out.”
Yale was coming off a season-ending overtime win over Princeton. Just eight days before Saturday’s matchup, the Bulldogs beat Penn 80-79 on a basket by Atkinson with three-tenths of a second remaining.
That game was in New Haven and served as motivation for the Quakers was the faced Yale in the tournament.
“When you play a team with a short turnaround with a bad taste in your mouth, I think that played to our advantage,” Penn coach Steve Donahue said.
Yale, though, was riding momentum into the weekend. There was a sense of confidence coming off the win over Penn.
“We were feeling really good coming into this game,” Reynolds said. “We finished up the season really strong, so coming in, not performing up the level that we had been, it’s definitely disappointing. I’m still proud of the guys. We grew a lot this year.”
Mason will be off to Baylor as a graduate student. Bruner, though, will be back to join a team that made significant strides this season.
“It’s always tough, not being able to do something I love and having to watch other people do it,” said Bruner, a 6-9 forward. “I had to watch my team struggle a little bit, but you just have to focus on the positives. We’ve got a good majority of our players coming back, so I’m excited.”