The Yale Bulldogs and the Cornell Big Red meet Friday in college basketball action from Newman Arena. Yale is 11-5 overall this year. The Bulldogs beat Harvard in their last game. As for Cornell, they’re sitting at 12-4 on the season after a loss to Princeton on Saturday. Check back all season long for free college basketball picks at Sports Chat Place.
Yale posted a 9-3 run through their first 12 games this year, losing to Colorado, Kentucky and Butler. The Bulldogs are 2-2 since then with wins over Monmouth and Harvard around losses to Columbia and Dartmouth.
In the Harvard game on Saturday, the Bulldogs were up 28-24 by halftime. Yale kept the pace from there and won it 58-54. EJ Jarvis led the team on 18 points with eight rebounds and Matt Knowling added 11 points.
Over on the Cornell side, they were 9-3 through 12 games as well, losing to Boston College, Miami and Syracuse. The Red would then win over Binghamton, Dartmouth and Penn before a loss to Princeton.
Back on Saturday versus Princeton, Cornell took a 37-34 edge into the second half. The Big Red were outscored 41-31 from there and fell 75-68. Chris Manon led the team on 15 points with five rebounds.
PICK: I’m going to stick with Cornell in this one. The Big Red had a bad second half against a pretty talented Princeton team in their last outing, but overall they’ve been playing solid basketball over the last half-dozen games. Cornell has hit 68 or more points in all six of those outings, going 5-1 in the record column. As for Yale, they’ve held opponents to 64 points or fewer in four of their last five outings so this matchup could get interesting. I like Cornell better on the potential cover/win, though.