Providence, Ri – John Poukidas knocked down five triples in the second half, since the champion of the regular season, Yale, added the Ivy League tournament championship with a 90-84 victory over Cornell on Sunday to win a position in the NCAA tournament for the fourth time in the last five seasons.
The upper guard had a slow start, scoring only two points in the first half and losing the four attempts of 3 points when Yale took an advantage of 37-32 in the intermediate. That changed to start the second half when it exploded for eight points for a period of 90 seconds, burying two 3 and a jumper to push the advantage of the bulldogs to 16 points, 50-34 with less than 16 minutes to play.
Cornell recovered. Guy Ragland Jr., Adam Hinton and Nazir Williams reached the triples each in the period of just over a minute to reach seven and Ragland hit two 3 more to put in 60-58 with 9:18 remaining. Bez MBENG responded with a 3 for Yale and Poukidas Bit of Deep to put the 66-60, but Cornell won a three-point play from Ak Okereke to turn it into a three-point game. Trevor Mullin and Poukidas each hit a 3 and Nick Towsend scored twice during a 10-4 race for the advantage of A76-68 with five remaining minutes.
Poukidas finished 8 of 14 from the floor, including 5 by 9 from distance, while obtained 4 of 4 from the line. Towsend finished with 19 points with four assists and two robberies, MBENG contributed 15 points, seven rebounds and four assists and Casey Simmons added 13 points.
Okereke led Cornell (18-11) with 22 points, eight rebounds, five assists and two robberies. Williams had 8 of 8 from the line and scored 20 points. Ragland hit 4 of 6 deep to add 16 points with seven rebounds and Jake Fiegen contributed 11 points.
___ Get alerts of surveys and updates at the Top 25 AP throughout the season. Register here. AP University Basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-ocalge-basketball-pol and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball
