By Bill Cloutier
Assistant Sports Editor
bcloutier@nhregister.com
NEW HAVEN – Things probably came too easy for the Yale men’s basketball team on Tuesday.
Returning home after playing national powers Wake Forest and 13th-ranked Florida, the Bulldogs raced out to an early 20-point lead against Holy Cross. Then they put things on cruise control and had to hang on for an 82-67 victory in front of 1,326 anxious fans at the Lee Amphitheater.

Greg Mangano, who scored 26 points in his last outing, a nationally-televised contest against the Gators continued his dominating play. Mangano led all scorers with 27 points for Yale including all seven Bulldog points in a 7-2 run after the Crusaders had cut Yale’s whopping deficit to 63-59 with eight minutes left in the game.
“I wasn’t upset (with their comeback),” Yale coach James Jones said. “I always had a good feeling that we were in control. If it got out of control I might have been a little upset but I think that Holy Cross is a very good basketball team and very good teams make runs.
“If you’re going to be a good team you have to combat them.”
Magano scored on a reverse layup, buried a foul line jumper and then topped the run off with a power drive to the hoop which he converted into a three-point play to give the Bulldogs breathing room. Sam Martin then came off the bench and hit back-to-back 3-pointers to put the game out of reach.
“That was definitely a tough game for us,” Holy Cross coach Milan Brown said. “It was great to see us fight back in the second half but we played against a really good team and the caught us early and we ran out of gas but we weren’t going to able to come all the way back.
“You can’t put yourself in a hole that deep against a team as good as they are.”
The Crusaders’ one-two punch of R.J. Evans and Devin Brown led the comeback. Evans, a junior from Salem, Conn., whom the Bulldogs recruited heavily while playing at Norwich Free Academy, led Holy Cross (6-8) with 24 points. He turned two steals of Holy Cross’ six steals in the second half into thunderous dunks.
His sidekick, Holy Cross leading-scorer Devin Brown, chipped in with 22 points on 8-for-15 shooting.
But the Crusaders got little else and they never could stop Mangano.
“Greg’s a very good player and when it’s one-on-one in the post I expect him to score,” Jones said. “He was 11-for-14 from the floor without the 3-pointers he missed.”
Said Milan Brown: “(Mangano’s) really good. He was one of the guys we tried to convey to everybody to give him more resistance and I thought he did a good job of making plays over us when we were there. Once he got going you can’t give a player with that caliber of skills and let him get going.
“Can you imagine Mangano and (Harvard’s) Keith Wright in the same league?”
Mangano also had a game-high 13 rebounds and blocked four more shots to add to his school record total of 178. Against the Crusaders he dominated from the start, registering a quick nine points as Yale led 13-9 in the game’s early stages. The Bulldogs then scored the next 11 points to take a 24-9 lead. It could have been bigger as Yale’s Isaiah Salafia picked off a pass but he flubbed on his attempt at a highlight-reel, 360 dunk.
The Crusaders, however, couldn’t seize the momentum and Yale capped a 22-4 run a pair of free throws by Salafia.
Holy Cross, which saw its two-game winning streak snapped, finally got things going late in the first half led by Evans, who scored eight points in a 15-4 run as the Crusaders got back in the game and trailed 41-28 at the half.
“I don’t think (we were looking past Yale),” Milan Brown said. “We were trying to play aggressive but they got some easy looks early and it got them going. You can’t do that on the road.
“You have to be mentally and physically ready. I told them the only way we were going to get back into it was if we played together and I thought we did that in the second half.”
Yale (9-4) has won the past three games in the series. The Bulldogs outrebounded Holy Cross 44-25 and outscored them 40-22 in the paint.
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By Bill Cloutier
Assistant Sports Editor
bcloutier@nhregister.com
NEW HAVEN — Yale coach James Jones is counting down the days until the Ivy League campaign begins. He’s got nine more practices to get the Bulldogs battle-tested.
Tonight is a classic dress rehearsal as Yale hosts Holy Cross (6-7) at the Lee Amphitheater at 7 p.m.

“Holy Cross is a league game,” Jones said. “Holy Cross is like every other team in our league. It’s like any Ivy League team coming in here it just doesn’t have as much on the line.”
The Bulldogs (8-4) will try to snap a two-game skid against the Crusaders. After winning six straight Yale is coming off losses at Wake Forest and No. 10 ranked Florida.
Despite the setbacks it was a big week for Yale’s Greg Mangano. Mangano broke a long-standing school record and averaged 23 points and 13.5 rebounds in games against Wake Forest and Florida. On Monday he was named the Ivy League Player of the Week for the second time this season.
Against Wake Forest, a 72-71 loss, Mangano poured in 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. In addition, he recorded the 173rd block of his career, breaking the Yale record established by Chris Dudley in 1987.
“We knew it was going to be tough going on the road against a good ACC team and an SEC team,” Mangano said. “We kind of let the one at Wake slip away. We got down by 19 in the second half and then we went on a run. If we would have played them a little tighter in the second half we leave there with a win and that would have bee a real good win for our program.”
Yale lost at Florida 90-70 on New Year’s Eve and Mangano’s numbers were even more impressive. He scored 26 points and had 15 rebounds as the Bulldogs stayed with the Gators for much of the game. He was 11-of-18 from the field, including 4-of-6 from three-point range. Fifteen of his points came in the second half.
“I felt good the whole road trip,” Mangano said. “Those 10 days off were not really 10 days off for me. Me and coach were working out the whole time. Those type of games are easy to get up for. Nationally televised, we only get a couple of those a year so its gives us a chance as a team and myself individually to show much we’ve improved.”
Mangano buried shots from all over the court against the Gators drawing praise from players and coach Billy Donovan alike.
“I hope to see Greg play that hard and that well against everybody,” Jones said. “If he can play that well against Florida, obviously you’re not going to shoot the ball that well every night, but you can get 16 rebounds every night.”
A year ago, Jones handed Mangano a copy of Dudley’s stats from his senior year at Yale.
“Dudley got 15 rebounds every night,” Jones said. “If Greg can dominate like he should he should we’ll be much better for it.”
Both Jones and Mangano agree that the non-league portion of the schedule has proven that the Bulldogs can make a run at the Ivy League crown no matter how well teams like Harvard, ranked 22nd in the nation and Princeton, with wins over Florida State and Rutgers, have performed.
“I wouldn’t say we took a step back (losing to Wake Forest and Florida),” Mangano said. “It’s a building block for us. We still feel good and can start a winning streak tomorrow. We know how well Harvard is doing but we still feel like we can match up with them.”
Jones said playing the nation’s best team helps identify his team’s weaknesses as the league schedule approaches.
“Playing against Florida showed we have to work on our transition defense,” he said. “They exploit your weaknesses like you won’t get exploited by anybody else. They’ll show a crack and against those teams it’s a flood.”
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