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GOING DANCING — Ivy League universities are known more for their brains than their brawn, but it was the Yale Bulldogs men's basketball team that stole the show Sunday with a dramatic win over the Brown Bears to clinch the conference title and a spot in the 2024 NCAA tournament.
Yale trailed Brown University by 6 points with less than 30 seconds to play in the Francis S. Levien Gymnasium in New York City on Sunday, but managed to pull within 1 after a 3-pointer with only 14 seconds on the clock. After a pair of missed free throws by the Bears, Yale had a chance to inbound the ball with 6.1 seconds remaining in hopes of making magic happen.
They did just that. After probing the Brown defense, the Bulldogs found Matt Knowling open under the basket and the senior forward floated in a game-winning bucket as time expired — clinching the school's third Ivy League title and seventh appearance in the NCAA tournament.
The buzzer-beater was described by the Yale athletics departments as one that "will likely go down as one of the biggest shots in the long history of Yale men's basketball."
"I just wanted to put myself by the basket in case of a miss," Knowling said. "We were trying to get a play for someone else, but they found me. I didn't think I was going to be that open. I work on that shot every day. I didn't overthink it, I just let it go and it went in."
"The fact that the last basket was scored off an assist on a kid trying to make a play for someone else; it's just so meaningful to me as a coach," Yale head coachJames Jones said.
As a reward, Yale will face the No. 4 seed Auburn Tigers in Spokane, Washington, on Friday.
