The Bruins won the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament with an 88-87 win over No. 25 Murray State in Saturday’s championship game. The Bulldogs could have won the Ivy League on Saturday, but fell to Dartmouth, 59-58. Harvard and Yale, which split in the regular season, will play a tie-breaker at Penn next Saturday. The Ivy League is the only conference without a postseason tournament.
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Murray State (27-5) went 16-0 in OVC play during the regular season and now will have to wait and hope it receives an at-large bid for the NCAA Tournament. The Racers fell behind early to Belmont (22-10) but held a 49-41 halftime lead. Led by Craig Bradshaw’s 25 points and five three-pointers, Belmont chipped into the Murray State lead. Taylor Barnette’s trey with six seconds remaining secured the victory and sent the Racers to limbo.
Yale was trying to snag a tournament berth for the first time since 1962. The Bulldogs have been in the tournament three times, but will have to beat the Crimson to receive a fourth bid. Harvard (21-7, 11-3 Ivy League) was a 72-62 winner over Brown on Saturday. Yale (22-9, 11-3) struggled against a Dartmouth team that entered the game with a 13-14 overall mark and was 6-7 in league play.
Yale led 30-29 at halftime, but was never able to pull away from the Big Green. Yale led most of the game. Dartmouth briefly held a 29-28 advantage before halftime and did not regain the lead again until Gabas Maldunas’ layup at the final buzzer. The layup gave Dartmouth a one-point victory after Javier Duren missed one of two free throws with two seconds remaining. Duren, who scored 11 points, was 3-of-5 from the charity stripe. Yale, led by Makai Mason’s 19 points, made just 9 of 17 free throw attempts. Maldunas scored 10 for Dartmouth, which was led by Tommy Carpenter’s 13 points.
