Lessons from Princeton’s first loss in two months: ‘I want to keep the vibes, but we can learn so much’
Princeton's slow starts "should've been a wakeup call a long time ago," Jaelin Llewellyn said.
PRINCETON – Time finally ran out on the Princeton Tigers in Saturday’s 80-74 loss to Yale. During a 10-game winning streak, they had charged back from halftime deficits to beat Drexel, Columbia, Cornell and Brown.
Not this time.
Yale stood firm in the face of Princeton’s usual late-game efforts and handed the Tigers their first loss since Dec. 1, their first Ivy League defeat and their first defeat in Jadwin Gym all season. In Jaelin Llewellyn’s eyes, this loss was not some new red flag.
“It should’ve been a wakeup call a long time ago with our slow (first) halves,” Llewellyn said.
Though Mitch Henderson’s program did run the table in the Ivy League just five seasons ago, it was highly unlikely the Tigers would get through the conference season spotless. Now with just eight games to go in the regular season – six of them on the road – Princeton is scrutinizing what it can learn from Saturday’s loss that wouldn’t have stuck out as much during the previous 10-game run.
“We’ve enjoyed some really good vibes, so I want to keep the vibes, but we can learn so much,” Henderson said. “There’s so much that happens when you lose that you can’t really emphasize as much when you’re winning. There’s a difference in a half-step or a foul here.”
There are three main categories where they can start:
1. Slow defensive starts
The constant falling behind has been as much about Princeton’s defense as its offense. Princeton ranks worst in the Ivy in allowing 46.2% shooting to its opponents. Game after game, the Tigers have clamped down after halftime and held their opponents to fewer points and fewer shots in the second half than the first, including Saturday. Can that start sooner?
To a man, Henderson and his players have said all season that their defensive performance will determine how far they can go. It needs to start showing up earlier in games, because not everyone is as beatable as, say, Columbia. Henderson praised Yale forward Matt Knowling for being “physical and intimidating and unafraid of us,” which just as easily could have described the rest of the Bulldogs.
Princeton is still searching for what it has to do to buck the trend.
“Maybe how we warm up, how we prepare athletically and mentally,” Llewellyn said. “Getting ourselves in the right headspace.”
2. Free throws
I hate to be the “make your free throws” guy. It’s easier said than done, or else every team would be at 100 percent. But Princeton is nowhere close – 65.9 percent, to be exact, 316th in the country.
On Saturday, Princeton left 10 points on the board by going 8-for-18 from the foul line. I asked Henderson whether that was something that truly could be fixed by drilling it more in practice, or if it came down to shooting talent at the end of the day.
“I think you’ve got to have the courage to get on the line and make yours,” he replied. “We work on it. I mean, we try to emphasize it as often as possible. It really bit us tonight.”
There’s also something to be said for getting to the line more. In free throw rate – defined as total free throws attempted divided by total field goals attempted – Princeton ranks 347th out of 358 teams, according to KenPom.com. Generally it implies very little of the Tigers’ offense is coming from free points at the stripe, which can make a giant difference in close games. And if they got to the line more, maybe more shots would start to fall.
3. Variety on offense
It’s no secret that Princeton is a 3-point shooting team. They get 38 percent of their offense from behind the arc, per KenPom, and they continue to hang inside the top 10 nationally in effective field goal percentage, which weights 3-pointers more proportionately. But cold starts happen when the Tigers don’t jump out of the gate making a bunch of their shots. Saturday, they made 3 of 15 from deep in the first half and fell behind by 17.
Clearly, they have other ways to score. This offense also loves to get Tosan Evbuomwan the ball in the post, and Llewellyn can make anything happen when he drives the lane. Either that hasn’t been enough options, or the Tigers don’t try to mix it up enough early in games.
Princeton still controls its destiny and the four-game closing stretch that lies ahead could prove crucial: rematch at Yale, home-and-home with Harvard, season finale at the Palestra.
“We’ve been on an elevator on the way up to the penthouse all season for a while now,” Henderson said. “So a great opportunity to see how we can rebound here and respond.”
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Let’s clean the glass and finish up with a fresh set of power rankings:
Kudos to Mawot Mag, who had a career day to help Rutgers beat a Nebraska team starving for a win. A few weeks after suffering a dental injury, he came off the bench, shot 100% from the field and stripe and posted career highs in points (13) and rebounds (seven). “It meant a lot. I feel like not only me, but our team has been through a lot of adversity,” Mag told reporters. “Our shots weren’t falling at the beginning of the game, but we stayed together, stayed connected and we pulled it out.”
Iona fended off another New Jersey challenger, this time beating Saint Peter’s 85-77 in New Rochelle. I’m disappointed I can’t find any video of Jaylen Murray’s bank-shot triple that gave the Peacocks a 30-29 halftime lead; written description can’t really do it justice. I owe Saint Peter’s a big mea culpa after I left them off a list of Jersey schools that have realistic hopes of making the tournament last month. If anyone is going to unseat Iona in the MAAC, it will be either Monmouth or Saint Peter’s. The former gave up a late three in overtime and fell to Niagara by one point yesterday; the latter has been winning more consistently on the whole.
League power rankings
Big Ten
1. Wisconsin
T-2. Illinois
T-2. Michigan State
4. Purdue
5. Ohio State
6. Indiana
7. Iowa
8. Michigan
9. Rutgers
10. Minnesota
11. Penn State
12. Maryland
13. Northwestern
14. Nebraska
I’ve reversed course on Illinois entirely. It wasn’t a surefire result for all 40 minutes against Michigan State, but when you can grind out a win against a top-10 team like the Illini did, you get a pass for losing on the road to Maryland with your brightest star, Kofi Cockburn, in concussion protocol. Wisconsin at Illinois, Wednesday night at 9 p.m., is appointment viewing. It’ll hopefully help us further delineate the top of this league. Wasn’t enough surprising movement to make me consider changing anything in the 4-11 range.
Big East
1. Villanova
2. Providence
3. Marquette
4. UConn
5. Xavier
6. St. John’s
7. Seton Hall
8. Butler
9. Creighton
10. DePaul
11. Georgetown
Somebody has to be No. 3 in this league, though it might be unfair to kick Marquette down two spots just because of one two-point road loss. The truth is, Villanova is back to its winning ways and Providence seems to have fate or some higher power on its side. I really don’t know what to make of Creighton this season – I’m not sure that anyone does. For the purposes of these rankings, the Bluejays are 2-4 in their last six with their wins coming over similarly weak St. John’s and DePaul teams, so they’re getting dropped pretty far for now.
Ivy League
1. Yale
2. Princeton
3. Penn
4. Cornell
5. Harvard
6. Dartmouth
7. Brown
8. Columbia
After Yale toppled Princeton and Penn won a close one at Harvard, these top three should be self-explanatory. That’s the No. 1 tier of this league until Cornell or Harvard can prove otherwise. I slid Dartmouth ahead of Brown for the time being, despite Brown’s unusually high NET and KenPom ratings; I wonder how much of that has to do with the Bears’ nonconference strength of schedule.
MAAC
1. Iona
2. Saint Peter’s
3. Monmouth
4. Siena
5. Quinnipiac
6. Fairfield
7. Marist
8. Niagara
9. Manhattan
10. Rider
11. Canisius
Rider is out of the MAAC cellar by shooting 51.9 percent against Canisius and avenging a one-point road loss for its second MAAC win in three games. The metrics seem to relatively like Marist, but they’ve lost four straight and have the league’s worst record, so I don’t know what’s going on there exactly. The upshot: The top three here have remained the same, in spite of the Hawks’ overtime loss.