Dartmouth tops Yale; Harvard-Yale face playoff for NCAA tournament berth
HANOVER, N.H. — Gabas Maldunas hit a game-winning shot with .5 seconds remaining, as Dartmouth stunned Yale 59-58 Saturday night and prevented the Bulldogs from claiming an outright Ivy League championship.
The loss moved Yale into a first-place tie with Harvard as the regular season came to a close, and sets up a one-game playoff between the two rival schools on Saturday in Philadelphia. The Ivy League is the only Division I league without a postseason tournament.
Yale beat Harvard 62-52 in Cambridge on Friday to temporarily gain sole possession of first place in the conference, but Saturday's loss, coupled with a Harvard win against Brown, has left the teams tied once again.
The challenge now for Yale coach James Jones is to get his team to regroup after letting Saturday's game slip away in the final second.
"You have ups and downs, and now we have a chance to continue to play," Jones said. "We won a championship, and no one can take that from us. Now we have to go out and play for the right to go to the NCAA tournament. There's nothing wrong with that."
"We didn't make free throws down the stretch," Jones added. "We had a chance to have a seven- or eight-point lead, but instead it was down to one."
The Bulldogs were only 9-for-17 from the foul line on the night. Yale's Javier Duren hit one of two free throws with 2.3 seconds left to put Yale ahead by a point.
But then an improbable length-of-the-court inbounds pass from Dartmouth was tipped out underneath their basket by Yale's Justin Sears, giving the Big Green one last chance for a victory. And that set up the game-winning play.
Dartmouth's John Golden found a cutting Maldunas, who hit the game winner while getting fouled. He missed the free throw, and time ran out on Yale.
Darmouth Coach Paul Cormier credited good fortune and great playmaking by his two seniors, Golden and Maldunas, for the dramatic winning play.
"The length-of-the-court pass, we had no timeouts so we had to get it down the length of the floor," Cormier said. "We were just very fortunate for that going out of bounds and them touching it. We can take no credit for that. The last play that we ran, we had run it before but we put a little wrinkle in it. Our first option was Gabas being our tallest player, and that situation, senior to senior, was kind of fitting. Everything just worked and the pass was perfect."
Maldunas finished with 10 points and five rebounds for the Big Green. Tommy Carpenter added 13 for Darmouth, and Miles Wright had 12.
Yale was led by Makai Mason who had 19, and Sears who added 14 points and nine rebounds. The Bulddogs fell to 22-9, 11-3 in the Ivy League.
Dartmouth finished its regular season at 15-15, and is eligible for a postseason tournament.
Philip Tortora writes for the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press