MONCTON, New Brunswick, Canada (COLGATE ATHLETICS) –

Colgate’s offense never got going and Yale built an early first-half lead that was too much to overcome in a 68-50 loss on Friday night inside the Avenir Centre.

“We knew going in that Yale was a really good team,” head coach Matt Langel said. “They’re really well coached and they’ve been a championship program. We tried to prepare our guys for the mentality that they were going to play with. As hard as we tried to prepare, we weren’t ready and that’s my responsibility. Yale outcompeted us. They were more disciplined in a lot of areas of the game. They are playing at a very high level.

“I hope that we can learn from getting beat pretty good tonight. Our schedule is extremely challenging and it’s not going to get any easier. Gardner-Webb had a really good win today against a team that beat St. Mary’s last week. We’re going to have our hands full this weekend. We’ll have to play a lot better for sure.”

HOW IT HAPPENED

Yale used a 16-4 run over 5:44 to turn a 15-13 lead into a double-digit margin, which the Bulldogs held on to for the remainder of the game.

Colgate’s only 3-pointer of the opening stanza (1-for-13) came by Ryan Moffatt at the end of Yale’s run, cutting the margin to 31-20 late in the first half. The Raiders were just 9-of-32 from the field in the first half and trailed 36-20 at halftime.

Colgate unfortunately couldn’t build momentum in the second half, allowing Yale’s lead to grow to 50-29 six minutes into the stanza. The Raiders closed within 11 points (53-42) on the heels of a 3-pointer from Kyle Carlesimo, but they wouldn’t get any closer.

The Bulldogs responded with an 11-4 surge, capped off by a triple from August Mahoney to bring Yale’s lead to 18 points, 64-46, which was the final margin in the 68-50 decision.

Braeden Smith was Colgate’s only double-figure scorer with 12 points. Colgate’s 50 total points were its fewest in a game since February 2017. Yale is only the third team to beat Colgate with less than 70 points over the past three seasons (Wisconsin 3/8/22 and American 2/4/23).

UP NEXT

Colgate (1-2) continues Atlantic Slam action on Saturday when the Raiders face Gardner-Webb at 4 p.m. ET from the Avenir Centre. Gardner-Webb defeated Weber State 62-61 in the tournament opener earlier on Friday.