NEW HAVEN, Conn. – A chance to claw closer to the top of the Ivy League standings slipped through the grasp of the Yale women's basketball team Saturday afternoon at Lee Amphitheater, despite some outstanding individual performances. The third-place Bulldogs had a three-point lead on second-place Columbia with 5:12 left in the third, and a victory would have pulled Yale even with the Lions in the league win column. But Columbia ended the quarter with a 14-4 run and kept the Bulldogs at bay in the fourth to earn a hard-fought 65-57 win. Senior forward
Alex Cade scored a career-high 20 points and junior forward
Camilla Emsbo had a career-high 19 rebounds.
Emsbo, who last Friday at Dartmouth became the 23rd Yale women's basketball player to reach the 1,000 career point mark, was honored in a ceremony before the game. Down 28-27 at halftime, Yale (13-9, 6-4 Ivy League) fell behind by five early in the third before a three-pointer from first-year guard/forward
Mackenzie Egger sparked a 10-2 Yale run that included five points from Cade. She gave Yale a 37-34 lead with a three-pointer, but Columbia answered immediately with a three-pointer of its own from guard/forward Sienna Durr at 4:59.
Durr later broke a 39-39 tie with a free throw, and the Lions built their lead to 48-41 heading into the fourth. They scored 20 points in the final 9:11 of the third quarter – just eight fewer than they had scored in the 20:49 before that.
"We played great defense in the first half," said
Allison Guth, Yale's Joel E. Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach of Women's Basketball. "But we didn't stick to our game plan defensively in the third quarter."
Columbia (17-4, 8-1 Ivy League) opened the fourth quarter with a 7-0 run before Cade got the Bulldogs back on the scoreboard with a layup off an Emsbo assist with just over seven minutes to play. That duo proved particularly effective against the Lions, with Cade taking advantage of Columbia's defensive focus on Emsbo to put together a career day that also included nine rebounds.
"Cade really worked well off of [Emsbo] and the way they guarded her, and found ways to convert on the offensive end," said Guth.
Egger also enjoyed a big game, reaching double digits in points for the first time in her career. Her three-pointer with 1:08 left pulled the Bulldogs within five, but Columbia hit its free throws – 6-for-6 in the final :32 – to seal the win and remain within a game of first-place Princeton. The Tigers improved to 9-0 in Ivy play with a 70-48 win at Dartmouth Saturday.
Now Yale will face fifth-place Penn next Friday in Philadelphia looking to keep the Quakers from climbing up in the standings. Among the positives to take away from Saturday, the Bulldogs had their third-lowest turnover total of the year and got 64 shots up – their second-highest total in the last nine games.
"We finally took care of some turnovers, turning it over only 12 times, four times in the first half," said Guth. "We just did not shoot the ball well. We took 10 more shots than Columbia but shot 25 percent from three."
Tipoff at the Palestra Friday is 6:00 p.m.
