Yale Athletics

Yale, ahead of two road battles with Penn and Princeton, is playing for more than just league dominance this weekend. At a perfect 7–0 in Ivy play, they’re on the cusp of history. 

A win over Penn (9–13, 1–6 Ivy) on Friday and Princeton (17–3, 5–2 Ivy) on Saturday night would elevate the Bulldogs to a 9–0 conference start, the best in the team’s 128-year history. 

“I don’t see any bad right now,” head coach James Jones said after last week’s win over Cornell. “But what we have to understand as a team right now is that all those teams that we beat in this gym, we have to go beat them in their gym.”

The opportunity to rewrite the record books likely won’t serve as extra motivation for the Bulldogs — even faced with the prospect of playing Princeton in their home court, where their Ivy League tournament aspirations were cut short last season, they will aim to tackle this weekend’s matchups as if they are just like any other game.

Still, clinching two wins this weekend would be a symbolic testament to the strength of this year’s team, and signal a positive momentum ahead of the Elis’ March Madness aspirations.

Almost as remarkable as the team’s nine-game win streak, though, is the road they’ve taken to get there.

Back in November, the News highlighted Yale’s uncharacteristically poor defense through the team’s first seven games, especially their rebounding and interior presence. At the time, the worst was still yet to come: their next two games, back-to-back losses against Vermont and Fairfield in early December, brought the Bulldogs to a 5–5 record and led Jones to say, “We are not playing Yale basketball, and we’re not where we need to be.”

But since then, Jones’ squad has flipped the script defensively, a feat that’s been the driving force behind his team’s success. Yale has won 11 of their last 12 games since losing to Fairfield on Dec. 6, the only loss coming on the road against nationally ranked Kansas. 

In the Ivy League especially, the Bulldogs have been the conference’s top defense by a wide margin through the first seven Ivy games of the season, boasting a kenpom.com defensive efficiency rating of 97.9, two points greater than Princeton, the next closest team. In particular, they lead the league — and are eighth nationally — in keeping teams off the offensive glass, with a 17.8 offensive rebounding percentage allowed. 

Yale has also been extremely stout on the offensive interior, holding teams to a conference-leading 48.8 percent on 2-point shots — the only team in the league to boast a sub-50 percent figure in that category. 

Where Yale stands to improve, however, is its perimeter defense. In the Ivy League, the Bulldogs rank fourth of eight teams in three-point shooting percentage allowed. Their season mark of 34.8 percent is 251st in the country and a regression from last season’s 32.6. 

If the Elis intend to make history Saturday night at Princeton, they’ll have to clamp down on three-point shooting: the Tigers hit 32 of 76 threes — 42.1 percent — across three separate matchups vs Yale last year, and shot 39.4 percent against them two weeks ago.

Or, they could dare to follow last week’s recipe for success against Cornell, in which Yale hit just 3 of 14 threes to the Big Red’s 10 of 25, but managed to come away with a two-point victory.

Penn, on Friday, is an easier matchup on paper. The Bulldogs enter as a five-point favorite and beat the Quakers 74–58 in a home matchup two weeks ago. Still, if the Bulldogs hope to make history, they’ll have to learn from it first: last season, they lost an away game at Penn the night before playing Princeton, their only loss in an otherwise unbeaten two-month stretch. Princeton is the headline matchup, but the Elis must still bring their A-game to the Palestra on Friday night.

As it stands, Yale’s 2016 team holds the record for the longest winning streak to begin an Ivy League season, at eight games. That year’s team became the first in school history to make the NCAA tournament and then scored an upset victory over Baylor in the first round. Still, they are the only Yale team to ever make the second round of the tournament.

For the 2024 Bulldogs, this weekend is a chance to claim the first of those milestones, and in doing so, inch closer to the second one. 

Friday night’s game will tip off at 7 p.m. at the Palestra.