Written by David Borges at NewHavenRegister.com
The last time Yale earned a trip to the NCAA tournament, no one in America had heard of the Beatles.
Heck, no one in England had heard of the Beatles.
So you knew it wasn’t going to be easy on Saturday night at Levien Gymnasium, where the Bulldogs needed a win over Columbia to punch a ticket to the Big Dance for the first time since 1962. The Bulldogs were a half-second away from that coveted ticket last year, only to have their hearts broken first by Dartmouth, then by Harvard — of all teams — a week later.
So even when Yale led 27-10 midway through the half on Saturday, and by 14 at halftime, and by a dozen with 11 minutes to play, there was a feeling that things were going just a bit too swimmingly for the Bulldogs. Something had to happen, right? It always does.
It did. Columbia went on a 10-2 run to get within four points midway through the latter half. Here we go again, right?
Wrong. Makai Mason and Khaliq Ghani hit back-to-back 3-pointers, and Yale was back on its way to an eventual 71-55 victory that clinched its first outright Ivy League title in 54 years — and with it, that elusive trip to the NCAA tournament.
“It’s certainly a relief, and a joyous time for Yale basketball and all its fans,” said 17th-year coach James Jones, the longest tenured Division 1 coach without a trip to the dance — until Saturday night.
“Euphoria,” added senior Justin Sears. “That’s the feeling.”
Never once this season, Jones insisted, did he hark back to a year ago, when the Bulldogs found every way possible to squander a lead in the final seconds and lose at Dartmouth by a point. A week later, in a winner-take-all Ivy League championship game at the Palestra in Philadelphia, Yale lost another heartbreaker to Harvard to end its season. It didn’t even get an NIT bid, despite being one of the few teams in the country that actually wanted one.
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