After defeating Penn and Princeton over the weekend, the Yale men’s basketball team clinched both their best start to Ivy play in program history and a spot in Ivy Madness.
Sienna Tejpaul & Spencer King
Staff Reporters
Yale Athletics
The 2024-25 season has had a special feel for the Yale men’s basketball team (16–6, 9–0 Ivy), with the team going unbeaten nine games in.
Over the weekend, the Bulldogs beat Penn (6–16, 2–7 Ivy) and Princeton (16–8, 5–4 Ivy), marking the best start to an Ivy season in Yale history, while also already securing their spot in the Ivy Madness four-team playoff.
Moreover, at the Yale-Princeton game, a near-capacity crowd at JLA remained loud until the very last whistle, leaving Yale head coach James Jones hoping to see more like it for the Bulldogs’ last two home games of the season next weekend.
“This is what college basketball is supposed to be like,” Jones said. “You’re looking at a team that just did something that no other Yale basketball team has done. We should have a crowd like this in every game that we play and we don’t. Again, sometimes you feel underappreciated of the product we have.”
The weekend started with a surprisingly close win over Penn, with the Bulldogs finishing only one point ahead of the Quakers in a 72-71 game. The Bulldogs were projected to beat the Quakers by a mile as they are currently sitting at number one in the Ivy League while their opponents are second to last.
Yale struggled to contain Penn’s top scorer, Sam Brown, who put up 23 points, a significantly higher number than the Bulldogs usually allow a single player to drain. Brown also outscored the Bulldog’s top scorer, Bez Mbeng ’25, who only put up 18. John Poulakidas ’25, a star for the Bulldogs this year, put up 10 points, lower than usual for him.
Despite these shortcomings, the Bulldogs held the lead for the majority of the game, only allowing the score to narrow at the end of the second half. Penn took the lead for the first time with under two minutes left to play after Brown hit a three-pointer making the score 71-69.
The last minute of play was filled with intensity as Yale scrambled to regain the lead. In the last eight seconds, Bulldog freshman Isaac Celiscar ’28 drowned a lay-up, assisted by Poulakidas. Celiscar was able to keep his cool and perform when the stakes were high, a particularly positive sign as the Bulldogs were headed into their most important game of the year against Princeton only a few days later.
Saturday night was the scene of one of the most anticipated games in recent history. Heading into the game with a two-game lead over the rest of the Ivy League, the Bulldogs had a chance to clinch a berth in Ivy Madness with five games remaining on their schedule, and they played like they knew it.
After a brief run by Princeton to start the game, the Bulldogs completely took over and dominated both ends of the floor en route to an 84-57 win that saw Yale take multiple 30-point leads throughout.
While the offense was strong, with four players scoring double digits, it was the defense that truly sent Princeton packing.
The Tigers often struggled to find open shots, with all five Yale defenders on the court staying active and denying any clear looks at the basket. By the end of the game, the Bulldogs had held Princeton to a dismal 26.8 percent field goal percentage and an even worse 22.9 percent three-point percentage.
Leading the way, as he always does on defense, was Mbeng, who drew the assignment of Princeton star guard Xaivian Lee all night.
“[Lee is] a super talented player of course, but I view every matchup the same,” said Mbeng. “I don’t care who’s on the other side, I want to dominate you, especially on the defensive end. Y’all know I take pride in that, and he’s a very talented player, but I don’t care who I’m up against, I want to dominate that dude.”
Lee ended the night with 19 points but appeared uneasy for much of the game, unable to find the open space he usually does on the dribble and doing most of his damage on off-ball screens that forced Yale to switch a different defender onto him.
The Bulldogs will take the floor at John J. Lee Amphitheater next on Friday when they welcome fourth-place Cornell and will try to push their home record to 10–0 on the season.
Ben Raab contributed reporting.
