Yale will Win the NCAA Tournament - Reasons Why By Keith Spillett

• This wouldn't just be a cute little David overcoming 6 Goliaths story. The Ivy League has become a regular giant killer in the Big Dance.  Arizona was the hip pick to win it all two years ago.  Princeton ran them ragged with backdoor cuts and bounced them in the first round.  Last year, this Yale team knocked off a fantastic Auburn squad that has morphed into the #1 team in the country for several weeks during this season.  Ivy League kids regularly transfer to power conference teams and become immediate contributors and, in some cases, stars.  The Ivy League isn’t a bunch of intramural level groups with 6 foot 3 centers who make sure to throw at least 5 passes before they take a shot; it’s a premier mid-major and this is one of the best teams it has ever produced.

  
  

• James Jones is a fantastic coach.  His teams regularly win about 20 games a season and are frequently participants in the NCAA tournament.  He’s the third longest tenured active coach in college basketball and there isn’t a scenario he hasn’t seen and isn’t ready for.

  
  

• As Yale alum, former President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft stated in his widely cited Ex Parte Grossmann decision “Defense wins championships”.  Taft was suffering from a case of severe hallucinatory gout during the writing process and legal scholars have long puzzled over what defense has to do with the Separation of Powers as outlined in the US Constitution, but his words have been prophetic.  Every team to win a National Championship since Taft issued the ruling has played defense.  A Yale National Championship would continue this long and storied tradition of success for teams who try to stop the other team from scoring when they don’t have the ball.

  
  

• They have really good players.   Bez Mbang is not only a fun name to say, he is a shutdown defender who excels in every area of the game from scoring to distributing. The nickname "The Bez Dispenser" has not stuck, but that didn't stop him from earning both the Ivy League Player of the Year and Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year awards this season. Nick Townsend is a tremendous rebounder and scorer who averaged 15 points and 7 boards a night.  John Poulakidas is one of the best three-point shooters in the country averaging over 40 percent from behind the arc for the last three seasons.  The roster is stocked to the gills with outstanding players who contribute to a balanced and battle-tested team.

  
  

• Weird things happen. In 1876 in Olympia Springs, Kentucky, gigantic chunks of red meat fell from the sky for nearly 15 minutes.  Some say it might have been beef.  Others believe it was goat.  But as completely improbable as it sounds, The Great Kentucky Meat Shower really happened.  It has been well-documented but never explained to this day. In a world where meat can simply fall from the sky in the middle of an average Kentucky morning in March, does a Yale National Championship really seem THAT improbable?

  
  

Keith Spillett