NJIT Men's Basketball Gameday Information
 

Game 18	Yale (10-5) at NJIT (8-9)
Date/Time	Friday, January 9, 2015/7 pm
Location/Arena	Newark, NJ/Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center
Live Video/Audio	Highlander Sports Network w/Matt Provence pbp (subscription charges apply)
Live Stats	In-game statistics (free)
Social Media	@njithighlanders
All-Time Series	Yale leads, 2-0 (last game, January 9, 2010; Yale won, 79-48)
Game Notes	NJIT Notes / Yale Notes

 
NEWARK, NJ—Fellow giant slayer Yale is set to visit NJIT's Fleisher Athletic Center Friday at 7 pm in a matchup of two teams that each shocked the world of men's college basketball in a span of less than 24 hours back on the first weekend in December.
 
First, on the evening of December 5, the Yale Bulldogs went across their home state, from New Haven to Storrs, and stunned defending national champion University of Connecticut, 45-44, on a last-second 3-point basket.
 
Aside from an Ivy League program defeating the reigning national basketball champion, it was the first time the UConn men lost to another Connecticut-based team since December 29, 1986, a span of 68 games over 28 seasons.
 
Needless to say, the Yale win at UConn was all over the sports news, a lead story on ESPN's SportsCenter programs well into the following day, December 6.
 
Then, around 2 pm on the 6th, the buzzer sounded in the University of Michigan's Crisler Center and the final score read: NJIT 72, Michigan 70.
 
Within moments, there was a new "Upset of the Year" as the Highlanders, 2-5 entering the game and never having previously played a nationally-ranked team, let alone beaten one, in their eight-plus seasons of Division I competition, toppled the #17/#16 Wolverines. And in the ever-shrinking news cycle, it was NJIT's turn in the national college basketball spotlight for the rest of the weekend.
 
Friday, a bit more than a month after those monumental upsets, the two giant slayers will meet.
 
Yale comes to Newark with a 10-5 record, while NJIT is 8-9, having beaten Maryland Eastern Shore on Wednesday night, giving the Highlanders a season-best three-game winning streak in the process.
 
The specific win at UConn may have been a surprise, but Yale's strong showing this season is not a surprise at all. In 2013-14, Yale finished 19-14 in season that ended with a loss in the championship game of the national postseason CollegeInsider.com Tournament.
 
Two of the Bulldogs' five losses came in double overtime, including the most recent game, 79-74 (2 ot) loss at Vanderbilt, a team from the powerful Southeastern Conference, Vandy upped its record to 10-3 with the win over Yale on January 3 in Nashville.
 
Yale's head coach James Jones is in his 16th season in charge of the Bulldogs. He is the winningest coach in program history.
 
Coincidentally, James Jones' younger brother, Joe, headed the staff at fellow Ivy Columbia, where Jim Engles served an assistant coach from 2003-04 until being named head coach at NJIT in April 2008. Further, NJIT assistant coach Jesse Agel matched wits in the Ivy League with James Jones when Agel was head coach at Brown for four years and Brown's top assistant coach for two years before that.
 
Yale's top player, 6-foot-8 junior forward Justin Sears, is from Plainfield, NJ. He leads the Bulldogs in scoring (13.7 ppg) and rebounding (7.7 rpg).
 
Guard Javier Duren, a 6-4 senior, averages 13.4 points and 5.4 rebounds, while 6-7 guard Amani Cotton gets 5.5 rebounds per game. As a team, Yale is outrebounding its opponents by an average of 36.2 rpg to 30.1 rpg.
 
Junior guard Jack Montague is just under double-figure scoring, averaging 9.9 points, including a team-best 38 3-pointers. It was his three that beat the  final buzzer, sending UConn to defeat.
 
The other starter, 6-7, 240-pound senior Matt Townsend contributes a solid 8.4 points per game and is also worthy of notice as one of 32 college students nationwide named in late November as a Rhodes Scholar. He has a 4.0 cumulative GPA majoring in molecular, cellular and developmental biology.
 
NJIT, which didn't get any of its first four wins of the season by more than four points, has had more breathing room since. The Highlanders won by eight at Central Connecticut on December 20 and then by 12 over Saint Francis U on the 30th and by 15 at UMBC on January 2. They continued the winning streak with a 69-60 decision over Maryland Eastern Shore.
 
Guards Damon Lynn (17.1 ppg), Ky Howard (12.1 ppg), and Winfield Willis (10.6 ppg) all average double-figures and Tim Coleman, the top frontcourt scorer is closing in on that distinction, as well, at 8.9 ppg.
 
Coleman, has been hot, scoring at least 12 in each of the last five games. The sophomore tied his season high with 14 points at Lafayette and then tied his career-best 15 vs. Saint Francis in the next game. Two games after that he set a new career high with 17 points vs. Maryland Eastern Shore. Coleman is shooting 63 percent from the field (27-43) in the last five games with a 14 ppg average in the same span.
 
Yale and NJIT have two opponents in common, Lafayette and UAlbany. Yale belted Lafayette, 82-60, while the Highlanders lost a close one at Lafayette, 76-71, which also happens to be that last defeat for NJIT before the current winning streak began. UAlbany topped the Highlanders by 17 points in mid-November and the Great Danes beat Yale by four points on December 20.
 
The programs have met twice before, first on January 7, 2009 in the downtown Newark Prudential Center and the following year on January 9 at Yale. The Bulldogs won decisively both times.
 
Matt Provence will provide play-by-play on the live streaming audio, accompanied by live streaming video on the Highlanders Sports Network here on www.njjthighlanders.com. Programming is scheduled to begin around 6:45 pm (subscription charges apply).