Ivy League Notebook
by Jay Pearlman
Yale Survives Must-Win Weekend without Hughes
The entire season lay before them, fifteen minutes to go. They were down 9 at home to Leon Pattman and Dartmouth. Sam Kaplan is long gone. Casey Hughes left in the first half with a foot injury. They’d dealt Penn (now 8-1) their only loss earlier at home, lost by one at Cornell (now 7-3), and stumbled badly at home to Brown. Four winnable home games (winnable with a healthy Hughes) remained before the rematch at Penn on March 2. And now this. If ever Coach James Jones’ team needed to show grit, it was this night.
And they did.
Sophomore forward Ross Morin had the offensive game of his life, scoring 15 points including 9-9 at the line. His seven rebounds were three more than anyone else on either team. Junior guard Eric Flato scored 21, including 4-7 in three’s, and had three assists. Caleb Holmes had 10 points and three rebounds, and Travis Pinick 12 and four. And in the last fifteen minutes of play, the team assumed Jones’ personality, guarded Pattman and Alex Barnett, and won their most important game of the year, 69-64 over Dartmouth. Then, after beating Harvard rather easily on Saturday night (86-71), Yale has reached 8-2 in the league, still breathing with two weeks to play.
Having called last night’s Yale-Harvard game on radio, this writer has nothing new to report on Hughes’ injury. If the league’s best athlete can’t come back, or comes back at half-speed, Yale will have trouble beating both Columbia and Cornell at home, and will have little chance March 2 at the Palestra. But not knowing yea or nay on Hughes’ return allows us do what we sports fans enjoy most, play the “what-if” game: what if Casey Hughes can play this coming weekend (or at least at Penn) at or near 100 percent? That makes for a most interesting scenario.
Yes, Penn has been cruising. Yes they have last year’s Player-of-the-Year in Ibrahim Jaaber, and this year’s likely Player-of-the-Year in Mark Zoller. Yes, they hardly ever lose a game in the Palestra, rarely in conference, and almost never against anyone but Princeton. But they’ve been lethargic in recent home wins against Harvard and Princeton, and no less an authority than the Governor of Pennsylvania (Penn basketball’s biggest fan) told this reporter that Glen Miller’s team doesn’t yet guard the way Fran Dunphy’s teams did. And of course, Yale beat them once already, so even though they have two losses, assuming both teams sweep next weekend, the winner of the March 2 game wins the league. Period. Of course, that’s playing the “what-if game.”
So even though conference tournaments will have started (this reporter would love to be in Richmond that day, but won’t be), and all eight Ivies are playing that night, circle March 2 in your calendars. Wherever you are that evening, keep an ear open for the Yale-Penn score from the Palestra. And if Casey Hughes is right, it’s just possible you’ll hear about one of the biggest road wins ever in that hallowed arena, and that James Jones’ Elis will represent this old league in this year’s NCAA tournament.
