Yale blew a 15-point lead but managed to make all the plays down the stretch to knock off Columbia on Friday night.
The victory keeps Yale in a tie with Penn for second place in the Ivy League. Harvard survived a scare from Princeton on Friday and is about to close out the Bulldogs.
Penn faces Harvard on Saturday night in a huge showdown. If Harvard wins they'll clinch at least a share of the title and Yale could move into second place all alone in the standings.

Here are some highlights from Friday's win:

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
Sunday night is the reward for the Yale volleyball team.
After battling through a rugged Ivy League schedule and winning the league title for the fourth time in eight years, the Bulldogs get a chance to sit down and watch TV.
No practice. No running. No endless diving on the floor digging balls.
The Bulldogs will watch NCAA volleyball selection show on ESPNU (6 p.m.) knowing that there name will be called among the field of 64.
“It’s really exciting. Everyone’s like,’ Shhhh. I want to hear,” Yale coach Erin Appleman said. “It’s not like were on the bubble. We know they’re going to call our name. Then it’s usually crazy.”
And followed by a lot of noise.
Yale (18-6, 12-2 Ivy) made plenty of noise during the season. Led by setter Kendall Polan, a sophomore who was named the league’s Player of the Year, Yale won seven straight games down the stretch to wrap up the title before the final match of the season getting huge contributions from freshmen Allie Frappier (238 kills), Mollie Rodgers (267 kills) and Maddie Rudnick (375 digs).
The championship came a year after Yale lost to Penn in a heart-breaking one-game playoff last season to determine the conference’s NCAA representative.
The 2011 title is Appleman’s fourth Ivy League crown in her nine years at the school. Appleman has gone to three NCAA tournaments compiling a 2-2 record with wins over Albany and Ohio. The win over Albany came at New Haven but the Bulldogs won’t have a chance to host this year’s tournament as the NCAA changed its format for selecting host sites giving the top 16 overall teams in the tournament the right to host the tournament regardless of the region that they come from.
All 16 venues will host four teams and Appleman said that because of geographical considerations she thinks there is a 60 percent chance the Bulldogs will play at Penn State and 40 percent chance they’ll be shipped somewhere else in the country.
Said Appleman: “The first night you have a good chance of winning and the second night you go out there and swing for the fences.”
Yale is still a bit handcuffed in its effort to compete with the nation’s powers because it doesn’t offer scholarships and Appelman said that most of the best players in the country commit to schools as early as sophomores when Yale can’t even being to talk to potential recruits.
But that hasn’t stopped her from bringing in talent from all over the country including the volleyball-affluent state of California. The Bulldogs feature eight players from Calif. And they’re so young they should be an NCAA player for years to come.
“Volleyball is just a part of the culture in California,” Yale senior captain Taylor Cramm said. “You go to the beach and you see girls walking along with their volleyballs and there’s always games going on.”
Appleman said that this year’s team certainly has the potential to be the best she’s ever fielded. She feels that her teams in 2008 which beat a top 25 Ohio team in the NCAA first round and 2009 which failed to make the tournament had superstars like Alexis Crusey and Cat Dailey.
“This year’s team is so balanced,” Appleman said. “(Polan) is just a great player. She’s the glue who keeps us together basically because of the position she plays but everyone has taken over the leadership role on the floor at some time. It’s been a different player all the time.”
Appleman and Cramm were proud of how the youngsters didn’t cave under the pressure.
“We start three freshmen and three sophomores,” Appleman said. “What I’m very proud of is how well they handled things during the season. They didn’t get distracted. They followed the game plans and they managed the stress of the long season.”
Said Cramm: “The chemistry on our team has been the biggest key. We love being together. We have so much fun playing together and from the first day everyone always wanted to work and were excited to be together.”
If Yale does get sent to Penn State for the first and second rounds, Appleman feels that Yale could meet conference winners Albany, Sacred Heart, Niagara, Delaware or Maryland Eastern-Shore in the opener. She believes Yale could get seeded third in that region.
And with a win they’re virtually guaranteed to play one of the nation’s elite squads.
“I’m 6-1 so I don’t usually look up to anyone but those teams obviously have a physical advantage,” Cramm said. “They’re all so tall and athletic. At first it’s a little intimidating because these are the girls that you watch on TV and you hear all about. They’re the girls trying out for the national team.
“But when it starts you just play your game.”
Cramm was part of the Yale’s last tournament that was also sent to Penn State. She’d love to get the opportunity to travel somewhere else for the her finale.
“I’d love to go to the Midwest or even California,” she said. “But where ever we go it’s going to be great. This is the best possible way to end my career. Emotionally it’s going to be pretty rough. I’ve been playing volleyball for 10 years so it’s really going to be tough to think about this being my last match but it’s the best way to go out.”
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