Princeton shows off its chemistry and Seton Hall topples another ranked team
On Xaivian Lee and Caden Pierce's chemistry, Seton Hall's "togetherness," Saint Peter's latest win and so much more.
PRINCETON – Xaivian Lee may not have scored for the first 12 minutes of Saturday’s game against Harvard, but Princeton’s rising star was plenty involved as a distributor. Six of his seven assists on the day came in the first half, including a dart through a tight window to get sophomore classmate Caden Pierce an easy layup under the basket.
During the second half, Pierce slipped behind the defense unguarded and Lee fed it to him almost automatically. Pierce met contact at the rim, his layup fell through and Lee’s fist pump might have been the biggest of all.
It was that kind of afternoon at Jadwin Gym, a far cry from last season’s Ivy League opener that saw Princeton edge Harvard by three. The Tigers ran roughshod over the Crimson, 89-56, and flaunted the chemistry that makes their starting five so dangerous.
Individual relationships exemplify the whole. Take Lee and Pierce, who have been teammates since arriving at Princeton in the summer of 2022 in the same freshman class. They always seem to be in sync with one another, and Lee said that’s developed off the court as well as on it.
“For sure, Caden and I have good chemistry,” Lee said. “We take like all of our classes together, too. We’re both econ majors so we spend a lot of time together.
“That’s something we’ve been working on, that screen slip and then I throw it to space. It feels like a comfortable pass to me, and when he catches it I trust that he’s going to finish. Just trusting what we know. I think he got one and-1 off it, he got fouled a couple times. If he’s open I’m gonna give it to him every time.”
Princeton’s win would have been impressive enough if the final margin were 16 or 21 points rather than 31. Instead, Lee caught fire from deep and shot 5-for-6 on threes in the second half, including three straight to end his day. Enjoy this highlight reel, particularly the late-game high-stepping at the start of the clip.
Lee finished with 33 points and eight rebounds to go with his seven assists. And remember – he did not start scoring till 12 minutes into the game.
“The first half, I don’t know what I started, like 0-for-5 from three,” Lee said. “I was shooting it terribly. But we kind of got going towards the end of the first half and I was getting to the rim. Zach (Martini) was hitting a lot of shots, everyone was hitting shots. When I feel like I play like that in the first half and we’re still up nine, it gives me a lot of confidence.”
I wrote about Lee after he dropped 30 on Northeastern in late November. He topped that total Saturday for a new career high and treated both Princeton fans and at least seven NBA scouts to a show.
“I don’t try (to put on a show), I just think it’s kind of like my play style,” Lee said. “Sometimes it can come off as a little crazy, but when it works it obviously looks good sometimes.”
“He might say he plays crazy but I think he’s always at his own pace,” Martini said later. “Those stepback shots look hard but I’ve seen him make them every day. It was just about time the avalanche was about to unload.”
The best evidence of the Tigers’ chemistry came in the turnover column. The box score will show four, but for the first 35 1/2 minutes of the game, they had committed just one.
“It doesn’t happen,” Mitch Henderson said, astounded.
Henderson said senior guard Matt Allocco has been a little banged up – Allocco also appeared to pick up a knock during the second half – and the coach was clearly grateful for how his teammates have stepped up.
Pierce finished with 19 points and 10 rebounds, and Martini knocked down four of his five 3-pointers to wind up with 14 points.
“Guys are rising to the occasion, because (Allocco has) just been a force for us, a force of will, and everybody else has responded in a great way,” Henderson said.
The win moved Princeton’s record to 13-1, but after last-place Dartmouth comes to town on Martin Luther King Day, the schedule calls for four games away from home at Columbia, Cornell, Yale and Brown.
How long can the Tigers keep it up? It’s entirely in their hands.
“For me it’s like, they’re gonna have to guard me one way, and it’s either I’m gonna be able to get off or my teammates are going to be open,” Lee said. “So either way I think we’re at an advantage.”
Here comes Seton Hall?
Up in Newark, Seton Hall grinded out its third win over a ranked Big East opponent — and its second this week.
The Pirates are forcing their way into the national conversation after beating No. 7 Marquette 78-75. And with Villanova losing to St. John’s on Saturday, the Pirates are tied with UConn, St. John’s and Villanova for the Big East lead at 3-1.
Cue Shaheen Holloway, who certainly won’t let his team be satisfied yet: “We’re striving to be a good team. We’re not there yet.”
If the Pirates will be striving for greatness the rest of the campaign, they’ve at least hit the “very good” checkpoint by now. I don’t think this is what anyone had predicted after Seton Hall’s rivalry loss to Rutgers about one month ago, but the Pirates have now shot better than 50 percent in three of their last five while clamping down defensively on the likes of UConn, Providence and Marquette.
There were imperfections, no doubt, the biggest problem being 22 turnovers that Marquette turned into 32 points. And it was another slow start for Seton Hall, a pretty familiar sight by now, but Holloway’s solution with his team down 10 was to remove Kadary Richmond and Dre Davis for Isaiah Coleman and David Tubek.
David Tubek? A freshman who had only played eight minutes across two games before Saturday? Yes, and it worked. Holloway found the energy he was seeking from his bench, and the Pirates got right back in the game.
“Any good team, you gotta have players that push each other,” Holloway said. “You gotta have players that, when guys don’t have it – like in the first half, I thought Kadary and Dre didn’t have it, so I went to the bench and guys came in. I gotta have more confidence in all those guys. They’ve been working hard.”
Marquette star Tyler Kolek, the reigning Big East Player of the Year, was held to 1-of-6 shooting for a season-low five points thanks to Holloway’s double-teams. The Pirates lived with Oso Ighodaro going for 22 points and made other Marquette players step up.
As Jaden Daly pointed out in his postgame story, outside observers might have been applying asterisks to Seton Hall’s wins over UConn and Providence, when Donovan Clingan and Bryce Hopkins, respectively, went down with injuries. This was Marquette at full throttle.
It’s going to grab more people’s attention and get them talking about the future – I plan to broach the topic of bracketology in Tuesday’s newsletter for paid subscribers. Yet for Seton Hall’s veterans like Al-Amir Dawes, who shot 4-for-5 from deep and scored a team-high 23 Saturday, they don’t classify this win as an upset.
“Our togetherness is through the roof,” Dawes told reporters. “No matter what we’re going through, ups and downs, we’re just connected.
“When we work so hard and we’ve got a lot of talented guys, we expect to win games like this.”
………
Happy Sunday, and thanks for spending some time here today. It’s one of my favorite sports days of the year – the final day of the NFL regular season, with all its moving parts and implications for both playoff seeding and the draft order. If sports fans are nerds, I’m at the front of my class solving the equation for how high the New York Jets’ first-round pick can go.
While the NFL will dominate several more Sundays, I’m steadfast in my decision to keep publishing Sunday mornings. After a huge Saturday of college basketball, waiting till Monday only makes the content staler. And after football season ends, it’s our turn in the spotlight.
I have some very fun, different content planned for this Tuesday and Thursday, so stay tuned. For now, there’s plenty more to get to, so let’s clean the glass:
Holloway mentioned that Kadary Richmond is fighting a foot injury. That didn’t stop the guard from putting up 21 points and five assists, but monitor this going forward. The Pirates visit Georgetown Tuesday for their third game in seven days. If someone like Coleman or Jaquan Sanders can handle a bunch of minutes against a lesser Big East team, it could give Richmond some valuable time off his feet.
Rutgers is in last place in the Big Ten after losing 86-77 to Iowa. The margin was double digits for most of the second half. When Seton Hall started the Big East slate 0-3 last season, I declared it wouldn’t be an NCAA Tournament team, and I’m dangerously close to the same for the Scarlet Knights. Their season is essentially on the line over the next 10 days, when they host Indiana, visit Michigan State and host Nebraska. Can they win two of three?
One bright spot for Rutgers: Mawot Mag posted career highs of 24 points and 10 rebounds against Iowa. His absence due to an ACL tear made me forget that he was capable of knocking down a clutch 3-pointer here and there. He made three triples Saturday, also a career high. The offense has to come from somewhere.
Rewind with me to Friday for a second. Saint Peter’s scored a big 69-57 win over Iona to move to 3-0 in the MAAC, just ahead of 2-0 Marist for the early lead. If you’re a paid subscriber and missed my Tuesday edition diving into what the Peacocks do best, I recommend it. Saint Peter’s has tended to foul a lot this season, so my biggest takeaway is that Iona went 11-for-14 at the foul line as a team – while Peacocks forward Corey Washington went 11-for-12 by himself. His game should continue to be a problem for MAAC opponents.
The Princeton women also began their Ivy schedule Saturday. They went up to Cornell and demolished the Big Red 79-38. Madison St. Rose and Kaitlyn Chen combined to shoot 16-of-26 for 35 points, and the Tigers had 33 points off 23 Cornell turnovers. Just another day in Carla Berube’s world. Princeton has to play two more road games before finally coming home Jan. 20 to stare down Columbia.
After watching the Seton Hall women shoot less than 30 percent for their second straight game on Wednesday, it’s only fair I give them a shout-out here. The Pirates went exactly 50 percent from the field and made 12 3-pointers in a 64-50 win at Butler on Saturday. Savannah Catalon, who coach Tony Bozzella likes as a scorer off the bench but wished would stay out of foul trouble, drained 5 of 8 from three for 17 points.
Finally, the Rutgers women landed a five-star commit Saturday. Kiyomi McMiller, who plays at the Life Center Academy in Burlington, chose the Scarlet Knights over teams like Ole Miss and Florida State. She’s ranked No. 22 in her class by ESPN. Now, if they can also land No. 10 overall prospect Mikayla Blakes, a guard at Rutgers Prep, the Rutgers women would suddenly match the men in landing two five-star recruits in the same class.