Princeton men, women dealt big setbacks with pair of home losses
The women had an opportunity to take over first place in the Ivy League by themselves, and the men were just a win away from solo second.
PRINCETON – Tigers past and present celebrating Princeton’s annual Alumni Day on Saturday were greeted with a rare sight at Jadwin Gym: consecutive losses by the women’s and men’s basketball teams.
For the women, it marked the end of a 29-game home winning streak (excluding Ivy Madness games played at Jadwin), their first home defeat since Jan. 6, 2023.
For the men, well, it’s become less rare to see them lose at home. The luck I wrote about in January did finally run out, to a degree. The awful starts have taken their toll.
Entering the day, the Princeton women had an opportunity to take over first place in the Ivy League by themselves, and the men were just a win away from solo second. Instead, both teams are dealing with the aftermath of home defeats and what it could mean for March.
Columbia super sophomore Riley Weiss poured in a career-high 34 points as the Lions beat Princeton 64-60, marking the first time any Ivy League opponent has swept the Tigers since all the way back in 2016-17.
Princeton got off to a slow start but flipped the game in its favor by the end of the third quarter, taking a six-point lead into the break. What swung the game was a disastrous sequence to start the fourth: Columbia three, Princeton turnover, Columbia three, Princeton turnover, Columbia free throws, Princeton turnover, Columbia three-point play. The Lions scored 11 points before Princeton even attempted a shot.
The third turnover was on a soft pass inside to Parker Hill that she tried to corral with one hand. Weiss ambushed from behind, poking the ball to herself and speeding away for a layup, and-one.
After Princeton figured out Columbia’s press in the first quarter, it was a different story in the fourth.
“Yeah, they came out in like a different press and I think they turned us over. I think in the first two minutes, I think we did get frazzled a little bit and that gave them a little bit of a boost,” Fadima Tall said. “But we just got to be better overcoming that.”
It was a jubilant scene for the ladies in blue and their coach, Megan Griffith, a former Princeton assistant who’s strived for years to bring Columbia up to that same lofty standard. This game actually featured more media coverage than the men’s game, with multiple seats reserved for the New York Post, attracted by Columbia’s dominance this season.
Columbia’s Kitty Henderson, whose late 3-pointer was definitely the dagger, said she could hear Princeton alumni seated courtside chirping at her during the game.
“It was a great rivalry game. It had everything – the fans, the talking crowd, all that stuff,” Henderson said. “It was just a lot of fun and I think we really did just do a good job of just staying together. We knew how much this game meant. We weren’t beating around the bush this week. We knew this was a big game and we needed to execute.”
As for Griffith, she hasn’t withheld her opinions on the rivalry. She (correctly) pointed out after the Lions beat the Tigers 58-50 in New York that Columbia’s advantage this season is having more experience “in all the right places.” On Saturday, she went a bit further.
“We started the game, I think it was 7-2 or 10-2, whatever it was to start,” Griffith said. “And that’s a team that needs to throw the first punch to feel really good.
“They’ve always been like that. And I know them well. We’ve been coaching against each other for a while now, and I have a lot of respect for what they do here, and I know their players well. I think I was just proud of us for throwing that first punch because it allowed us to throw this punch we needed in the fourth quarter.”
Tall led Princeton with 17 points on 7-of-10 shooting and was the most composed starter handling the ball, committing just one turnover. Ashley Chea had 16 points, four rebounds and four assists while playing all 40 minutes. Princeton outshot Columbia 52.2% to 42.9%, but allowing 15 points off 16 turnovers did the Tigers in.
Princeton coach Carla Berube was asked postgame about the possibility of a three-bid Ivy – a world where Princeton, Columbia and Harvard all qualified for the NCAA Tournament despite the Ivy League never having managed this in women’s or men’s basketball.
“I think we have to take care of business for the rest of the regular season,” Berube said. “In our sights right now is Harvard, that’s the next game on our schedule … I think it will be important for us to win the Ivy League tournament to get that opportunity to be in the NCAA Tournament.”
No coach wants to leave it up to chance; the certainty of the auto bid is far preferred. That’s just Berube dealing with reality. Princeton will control its destiny insofar as it can make the NCAA Tournament by winning out, but to do so requires going through Harvard and Columbia a third time.
Meantime, that’s still a better position to be than the men’s side, which is hanging on for dear life with three games to play.
Saturday’s 76-61 loss to surprising Dartmouth left Princeton 6-5 in the Ivy, tied with Cornell and just one spot ahead of Harvard and Brown. The Tigers have not missed Ivy Madness since 2018.
I don’t need to rehash some of the issues with this team after covering the waterfront in last Sunday’s edition. The start, though, was particularly ugly. The Tigers missed 14 of their first 15 shots and did not get an offensive rebound on a single miss in that span. They trailed Dartmouth by as much as 21-4.
And yet Xaivian Lee helped Princeton trim the deficit to 32-28 by halftime and 43-41 with less than 14 minutes to play. The game was not over in the slightest, not until a 15-0 Big Green run that completely deflated the Tigers.
Lee said postgame that rallying from a big deficit is hard enough to do once in a game, let alone twice.
“We’ve pulled some stuff out of our hat the last three months and we don’t have that as much right now,” Mitch Henderson added.
Henderson also used some form of the word “discouraged” six times, so I asked the coach what past experience he may be able to pull from to help his team emotionally.
“I mean, right now I would say, ‘Don’t hang your head, win three in a row.’ You know – what are we upset about?” he said. “We’re not very good. We got beat by a really good team. I think they were better than us tonight. But we can get so much better. We have good players. Let’s keep going. I mean, that’s my approach.
“I want to have three more weeks with this team, not two.”
One of my questions laid out in last week’s newsletter was about the paint protection, and we’re so late in the season that it’s just going to remain one of the Tigers’ main weaknesses. It was made worse, however, by a hamstring injury to freshman Malik Abdullahi in Friday’s win over Harvard. Abdullahi didn’t play Saturday and C.J. Happy and Philip Byriel weren’t effective; afterward, Henderson said he didn’t know if the injury would be long-term.
Speaking of injuries, Henderson was also asked about if Caden Pierce is OK physically.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “We’re trying everything we can.”
After the eye test told us that Pierce hasn’t been his usual self, that response indicates that his ankle injury from Dec. 30 has not fully healed. He once again subbed out earlier than the other starters Saturday, which I observed last week at Yale, and he finished without an offensive rebound for the first time all season (excluding the game in which he got hurt).
Henderson still believes in his group. The Tigers, if they keep their head in the game, may still “win three in a row.” They finish at Columbia, at Cornell and against Penn, and while the first and third games shouldn’t be taken for granted, the trip to Ithaca may do the most to determine their seed in Ivy Madness – if they get a seed at all.
………
Happy Sunday, friends. It was a long night. In fact, it’s been a long season! As New Jersey’s teams struggle to win consistently, let’s clean the glass with other results and notes to know around the state:
FDU nearly stole one on the road but lost 85-80 in overtime to St. Francis. The Knights trailed 24-8 and charged all the way back to a 36-34 halftime lead when Brayden Reynolds made this improbable heave at the buzzer. Then Dylan Jones forced overtime with an even more out-of-this-world triple, but the FDU defense was out of gas by the extra session. The upshot: Central Connecticut and Long Island clinched the top two seeds in the Northeast Conference, so FDU will have a maximum of one home game in the tournament. The Knights, now losers of three straight, find themselves in a big cluster of teams vying for a top-four seed:
Princeton and FDU weren’t the only teams to erase big first-half deficits recently. The difference was that Monmouth actually finished the job. Down 36-20 late in the first at Hofstra, the Hawks stormed back and only pulled in front at the very end on Andrew Ball’s clutch 3-pointer in a 68-62 road victory. On a night when Abdi Bashir Jr. went just 3-for-14, it was a big step for Monmouth’s resilience on the road, and, as covered here, a big moment for its depth. Two huge ones at home against Northeastern on Monday and Elon on Thursday; the Hawks can solidify their grasp on sixth place in the CAA and try to climb even higher.
No one wants the No. 10 seed in the MAAC. Rider’s uncompetitive 69-49 home loss to Fairfield on Friday put both teams at 6-10, and Rider would be the 10th and final team in the MAAC tournament field if this is how it ended. Behind them: Niagara (5-10), Saint Peter’s (4-11) and Canisius (2-13). Luckily for the Peacocks, they end their season with home games against Niagara and Canisius. If they hang in there till the final week, they still have a chance to surpass a team like Rider.
NJIT had some impressive offensive performances at UMBC and still lost 95-91. Tariq Francis went for 27 points, seven rebounds and six assists and freshman Quentin Duncan had 18 points, including 4-for-4 shooting on threes, in 19 minutes off the bench. Three more games to go for NJIT (5-23, 2-11 AEC) in another tough season. From what I can tell, they aren’t mathematically eliminated from the eight-team America East tournament field – there’s a theoretical scenario where they tie UMass Lowell at 5-11 and the tiebreakers work out a certain way – but for all intents and purposes, their season will be over the evening of March 4, the same day I post my final bracketology update of the year.
Seton Hall and Rutgers continue playing out the string this afternoon. The Pirates host a good Xavier team trying to prove its NCAA Tournament worthiness, then Rutgers gets back home from a 1-1 trip to the Pacific Northwest to host USC. We’ll be covering them again soon enough.