PROVIDENCE, R.I. – “Pass the ball.”
Those are three words often uttered by coaches and even fans at basketball games everywhere. For much of Saturday night’s game, Yale had some difficulty with that, at least doing so for the desired end result of a basket. The end result: 32.8 percent shooting from the field in a 65-51 loss in the Ivy League opener at Brown.
Yale didn’t have a single assist in the first half of Saturday night’s game. In fact, their first one didn’t come until nearly seven minutes into the second half, and they finished the evening with just four. While that number will jump out at you from the box score, the reasons for it go beyond simply passing the ball or not. The problem wasn’t that they had ball hogs or shot the ball too early; it wasn’t simply the ball not going in on some good looks, as sometimes happens. Both ball-handlers and those without the ball were at fault.
“We didn’t do a good job of moving, our movement was stagnant,” said head coach James Jones. “We didn’t move enough to get good shots. We don’t move, you don’t set good screens, you don’t run good offense.”
Jones has said since the beginning of the year that this team has to share the ball to be successful. That showed in the season opener, and it showed on Saturday night. The bottom line is that this team isn’t loaded with players who can get their own shot, so ball movement is of utmost importance, and for that players have to move well without the ball.
With the lack of ball movement, Austin Morgan didn’t get the kind of shots he needs to get. Justin Sears didn’t get the opportunities near the basket, nor did Jeremiah Kreisberg. And they weren’t alone. It simply made the game more difficult offensively, and while some credit goes to Brown, that doesn’t explain it all.
“It’s always tough to win games when you don’t have any assists,” said Morgan, the team’s leading scorer. “We have to work on spreading the court and trying to look for each other, and I think that’s something we’ll take into next week.”
A look at the stat lines for several key Bulldogs tells the story. Morgan scored just eight points on 2-7 shooting. Second-leading scorer Justin Sears took just five shots on the night and had two points. Kreisberg also took just five shots. Javier Duren was 1-5 from the field. Armani Cotton had a game-high 11 rebounds, but was just 2-8 from the field on the evening.
“We made a lot of baskets that were tough shots, and it’s hard to make a lot of tough shots,” said Jones. “We’re not good enough to make a lot of tough shots.”
Besides that, the Bulldogs were 4-22 from long range and had 12 turnovers. That did a lot to neutralize their 40-34 edge on the glass.
Yale fought back in the second half, but they dug themselves too deep a hole. They were down 49-28 before running off 14 unanswered points to make it a ballgame. But Brown pulled away after that, leading by double digits most of the remainder of the game.
Jones said he felt the team progressed well through an uneven non-league slate in which they were never able to win consecutive games. He felt they had a good week of practice, noting that “all the practices were good except for one.” They felt like they were as ready for league play, and in particular the league opener, as they could be.
Yale hosts Brown next weekend in the last weekend before the back-to-back weekends of Ivy League play commence. Their big issue remains offense, and it remains centered on the team needing to share the ball and run good offense to score given their personnel. They are taking the right mindset that Saturday was just one game and 13 more remain, and on Saturday they will get to put that and some adjustments to work.
