NCAA Tournament March Madness

#76 Yale

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Projected seed: 10 (automatic qualifier)

Yale’s resume is built around a headlining neutral-court victory over Akron and a string of road wins at Navy, Quinnipiac and Vermont that prove it can travel and close out games away from home, while an ugly home loss to Rhode Island exposes defensive shortcomings that keep the profile from being untouchable. The bump from those nonconference results is tempered by most of the quality work coming against midmajor opponents rather than blue‑bloods, so the upcoming trip to Alabama represents a rare chance to add a truly high-end win, and the Ivy League slate against the likes of Princeton, Harvard, Penn, Brown, Cornell and Columbia gives Yale plenty of opportunities to both pad its résumé and demonstrate consistency in true road or neutral settings. How the Bulldogs handle those Ivy road tests and whether they can tighten up on defense will determine if the Rhode Island blemish is an outlier or a defining weakness, and that balance of good road work, a signature neutral win, and a damaging home loss is exactly why the team sits where it does in the pecking order today.

Date Opponent Ranking Outcome
11/7@Navy192W97-68
11/11@Quinnipiac154W97-60
11/15Stony Brook223W86-79
11/18Rhode Island102L86-77
11/21(N)WI Green Bay264W73-67
11/23(N)Col Charleston195W74-63
11/24(N)Akron60W97-94
11/30@Vermont184W77-74
12/7IL Chicago193W80-66
12/10(N)SUNY Albany301W93-82
12/29@Alabama1613%
1/5@Brown22779%
1/10@Princeton26883%
1/17Cornell17085%
1/19Columbia12477%
1/24@Penn22879%
1/30Dartmouth25193%
1/31Harvard18788%
2/6Brown22791%
2/9@Howard26783%
2/13@Dartmouth25181%
2/14@Harvard18772%
2/21Penn22891%
2/27@Cornell17069%
2/28@Columbia12457%
3/7Princeton26893%