Slow start dooms Bryant in loss to Yale

Thursday, December 09, 2010

GoLocalProv Sports Team

A sluggish first half left Bryant with too deep a hole to dig out of in Wednesday’s battle of the Bulldogs.

Reggie Willhite led a balanced scoring attack with 17 points as Yale cruised past Bryant, 75-53, at the Chace Athletic Center.

Yale shot 53 percent Wednesday and hit 13 of its 25 field-goal attempts in the first half to build a comfortable 14-point lead. Yale (5-3) led by as many as 26 points down the stretch before Bryant (1-7) closed the gap.

Cecil Gresham led Bryant with 19 points on 6-of-12 shooting, including three 3-pointers, while sophomore point guard Frankie Dobbs added 13 points. While Yale shot 52 percent in the first half, Bryant hit just eight field goals. Bryant picked up the pace in the second half, but not enough to erase Yale’s lead.

Yale also beat Bryant on the boards, 45-30, and dominated in the paint with a 28-12 scoring margin. Yale’s bench also chipped in with 24 points, compared to just seven points for Bryant’s reserves. Austin Morgan finished with 14 points for Yale while Greg Mangano scored 11 points and grabbed seven boards.

Wednesday marked just the third time Bryant and Yale have played one another. Bryant won the initial meeting in Smithfield in 2009 before Yale evened the series on its home floor last season. The win over Yale in ’09 remains Bryant’s lone victory against a Division I school.

Yale is above .500 after securing its second consecutive win Wednesday while Bryant lost its fifth consecutive game. Wednesday’s game was the first of two home games for Bryant this month. Bryant will return to action Saturday for the start of a three-game road trip beginning at Columbia and continuing at Boston College (Dec. 19) and Michigan (Dec. 23).

Settling into a groove

Greshman, who led Bryant with 19 points Wednesday, also reached his season-high with 28 points in last year’s loss to Yale. The fifth-year senior is the lone holdover from the Max Good era. Good’s last season with Bryant was Gresham’s freshman year.

Gresham ultimately led the Bulldogs in scoring as a junior and got off to a strong start last year until an injury wiped him out just eight games into the season. Gresham red-shirted and is back this year as Bryant’s elder statesman.

“Cecil’s a good jump shooter,” Bryant head coach Tim O’Shea said. “He was one of the very best players in Division II [before Bryant began its transition to Division I], so his skills have carried over.
“I had a lot of guys my first and second year who were recruited in that D-II window, but have found their way at the D-I level.”

Entering Wednesday, Gresham was third on the team in scoring with 12.1 points per game and second in minutes at 32.4.

Heading south

The Bulldogs will travel to New York on Saturday to take on Columbia as they search for just their second victory over an Ivy League program. Bryant is 1-15 lifetime against Ivy League teams and 0-2 against Columbia, which won last year’s meeting between the two schools, 69-57. The Lions are 5-4 this year after beating Wagner on Tuesday. … Bryant’s loss at Lehigh on Nov. 28 began a stretch in which the Bulldogs will close the calendar year with six of their eight games on the road, including another Ivy League showdown against Brown on New Year’s Eve. … Although the Bulldogs have only played four home games this season, O’Shea feels the fan support at Bryant is starting to build slowly but surely. “Now that we’re more athletic and playing above the rim a little bit, the students have shown a lot of support,” O’Shea said. “I think the student athletes as a whole are excited about playing at the D-I level. The kids want to compete against the best. It doesn’t matter what level they’re recruited at – they just want to play.”