Ivy League basketball hosted a midseason teleconference last week with each head coach speaking about the state of their teams going into conference play. The Back Page brings you the most interesting and relevant statements by each coach.

Yale coach Chris Gobrecht on freshman stepping up because of injuries:

“The biggest thing for us has just been bringing our freshman up to speed and getting our team healthy. We have not been a whole team yet this year.… We have a way that we play that is a very fast, very aggressive game, and it’s not an easy thing for a freshman to jump right in and play it. There’s nothing conventional about what we do, so it takes a while to catch on.”

(Continued)

The Ides of January brought no relief to Jeremy Lin ’10 and his Houston Rockets team as they lost their fourth game of the week, falling this time to the Los Angeles Clippers, 117-109.

It was a tale of two halves in Tuesday’s contest as Houston controlled both the tempo and the score in the opening 24 minutes and, accordingly, held the lead at the break. But intermission seemed to be a breaking point in the game as only 50 seconds into the third quarter Los Angeles took the lead on a Blake Griffin put-back and never looked back. The Clippers would go on a 25-to-six run in the next 5:39, putting the game to bed long before the end of the third quarter.

“Honestly, I think we just couldn't get a rhythm,” explained Lin in his post-game interview. “[The Clippers] were getting everything but we were not getting any stops. I think we just lacked the ball movement and the energy and the thrust and pace that we played with in the first half.”

While his team struggled, Lin notched the only double-double of the night, putting up 12 points and 10 assists, 40 percent of the Rockets total dimes for the game. Though his efficiency rating was still in the negatives, -12, the Harvard alum was uncharacteristically low in turnovers, recording only one mistake in 35 minutes of playing time.

While the Clippers’ star point guard Chris Paul was out for the second consecutive game due to a bruised kneecap, LA’s backup guard, Eric Bledsoe, tied a team-high of 19 points. Bledsoe was one of four Clipper players to go 100 percent from the charity stripe, a marked contrast from the 56 percent free throw shooting of Lin’s Rockets.

Houston will have a chance to break its losing streak when it heads to Dallas for another intra-conference matchup against the Mavericks. That contest will be the first of a four-game road swing for this Rockets team, on which it will play only one squad boasting a winning percentage higher than .500.

With the spring semester already having begun at Dartmouth but around the corner for the rest of the Ancient Eight, The Crimson takes a look at the fall semester for each athletic program and the season that was in each major fall sport. Next up, the Cornell Big Red.

(Continued)