NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Yale women's basketball team just started Ivy League play Friday night, but the 2019-20 season has already seen a piece of history. With a 79-72 win vs. Brown the Bulldogs improved to 11-3 -- the best start in program history. Four different players scored in double digits, led by 19 points from junior guard
Ellen Margaret Andrews, and the Bulldogs used some suffocating defense in a 26-10 third quarter to help pull out the victory.
The best news for Yale (11-3, 1-0 Ivy League) might be that even with all the positives from Friday's game and the season in general, the Bulldogs still see room for improvement. Brown (6-8, 0-1 Ivy League) cut into a Yale lead that had grown as large as 20 by outscoring the Bulldogs 29-18 in the fourth. The Bears got as close as three with 34 seconds left before Yale put the game out of reach with free throws from senior guard
Roxy Barahman (17 points, eight steals, five assists) and sophomore forward
Camilla Emsbo (17 points, nine rebounds).
"The positive takeaway is that was most definitely not our best basketball, but we still came away with the 'dub'," said Emsbo. "The fact that we lost the lead that we had is inexcusable, though."
Junior guard
Tori Andrew scored 11 of her 13 points in the third quarter, helping the Bulldogs turn a 38-33 halftime lead into a 57-37 lead with 1:49 left in the quarter. She played almost the full 40 minutes.
"As a shooter, a lot of it is repetition," said Andrew, who now has scored double digits in back-to-back games for the first time since Nov. 23. "I'm in the gym whenever I can be."
Barahman's eight steals represent the most this season by a Bulldog and proved just as critical as her offensive contributions -- perhaps even more so. She nabbed a Brown in-bounds pass with 47 seconds left to help protect what was a four-point lead at the time.
"Defense is where we really used her tonight," said
Allison Guth, Yale's Joel E. Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach of Women's Basketball, of Barahman.
The Bulldogs and Bears play again Saturday Jan. 25 in Providence.
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