Yale Beats Brown on a Buzzer Beater to Win Ivy League Championship
The Yale Bulldogs earned an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament yesterday when they defeated the Brown Bears on a buzzer-beater made by senior forward Matt Knowling in the Ivy League Conference Championship in Francis S. Levien Gymnasium in New York, NY. This year’s NCAA tournament will have Yale’s name on the bracket for the first time since they last won the Ivy League Conference Tournament in 2022 when they defeated the Princeton Tigers 66-64. While this March will be the Bulldogs' seventh NCAA tournament appearance of all time (1949, 1957, 1962, 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2024), they have only been fortunate enough to win one NCAA tournament game in their school history when they beat the Baylor Bears 79-75 in the first round of the 2016 NCAA tournament. However, every Bulldog fan is hopeful that this will finally be the year Yale can turn that one win into more. Let’s take a look at how the Bulldogs won the Ivy League Conference Championship!
At the beginning of this game, there was not a whole lot of scoring from either team as by the halfway mark of the first half the Bulldogs were up only 11-8. However, both teams' offenses would be able to pick it up as by halftime it was a higher-scoring game with Yale still up 26-22. By the halfway mark of the second half the Bulldogs still had a four-point lead 44-40 on the Bears. However, Brown would soon take the lead in this one, and with twenty-seven seconds left in regulation, it was looking bad for Yale as the Bears had a six-point lead up 60-54. The Bulldogs were not done yet though as they were able to cut Brown’s lead down to one with the score of the game being 61-60 before they had one last possession to try to win the game. On the final play of the game, Knowling would sink a short jumper to win this one for the Bulldogs 62-61 and send them to March Madness. Yale was led in this game by junior guard John Poulakidas and senior guard August Mahoney with 18 and 15 points, respectively as they will head into the NCAA tournament with a 22-9 overall record.
Last night it was announced that the Bulldogs will be a thirteen-seed and will take on the four-seed Auburn Tigers in the first round of the NCAA tournament on Friday afternoon in the Spokane Veteran Memorial Arena in Spokane, WA. While the Bulldogs will certainly have their hands full with an extremely talented team as long as they play their game this one should not be a blowout. On the season the Bulldogs as a team shoot an average of 47% from the field and 34.7% from behind the arc which is very similar to the Tigers team shooting averages of 47.8% from the field and 35.1% from three. The only big problem for Yale in this matchup is going to be the very talented defense they are going to have to score on that Auburn has that is significantly better than most defenses the Bulldogs have seen so far this season. Can Yale pull off an upset against Auburn?
