After Princeton punches back at Yale, ‘we want to see them again’
Saturday’s 73-62 result placed the Tigers right back into contention for the regular-season title and the top seed in Ivy Madness.
PRINCETON – Mitch Henderson has to scream and shout and strain his voice to reach his players these days. Not because their heads are in some far-off galaxy and they’re tuning him out, but because Jadwin Gym has gotten that loud.
A week after Princeton’s sellout against Penn, the official attendance for the Tigers’ Saturday night showdown with Yale was 4,358, but it looked far closer to 5,000, with only the top several rows of the upper bowl unfilled. Princeton’s tournament run 11 months ago and its 15-1 start to this campaign naturally injected new swarms of enthusiastic fans into the building, more than it’s seen in years.
Henderson doesn’t want it any other way.
“Somebody asked me yesterday, said I was a screamer. And I’m like, I’m just trying to get to my guys to say, ‘This is the play that we’re running,’” the coach said. “I just absolutely love it and I love it for them. When I played here this is what it was like. It’s been a long time coming and it’s because of the players. I’m so proud of them.”
In a game shown in primetime on ESPN2, Princeton ended Yale’s 10-game win streak and handed the Bulldogs their first loss of Ivy League play. The 73-62 result placed the Tigers right back into contention for the regular-season title and the top seed in Ivy Madness.
The Princeton-Yale series has featured three meetings in each of the past two years as they continue to run into one another in the Ivy championship game. Yale beat Princeton by a bucket in 2022 at Harvard’s gym, and the Tigers got revenge last year on their home floor.
“That’s a great team and I think we want to see them again,” Zach Martini said. “We love playing them. Yeah, I think we were locked in for 40 minutes today, which was great.”
The Tigers have reason to be encouraged not just because they won this game, but because of how they did it. In a 70-64 loss in New Haven three weeks ago, they let Yale 7-footer Danny Wolf help himself to 21 points and 12 rebounds. Wolf didn’t play many minutes last season as a freshman, but he gives the Bulldogs a new dimension on offense. Between his skill as a dribbler and passer and his size that few Ivy Leaguers can hope to touch, there isn’t a player like Wolf anywhere in the conference.
Princeton held Wolf scoreless on 0-for-8 shooting (and 0-for-2 from the foul line) Saturday.
“I thought 1 through 5, we just knew where to find help,” Martini said. “He’s a tough cover one-on-one and we know that we can kind of help off some guys and try to make it an (easier) job for Cade or whoever’s guarding him and I thought we were pretty consistent in our double-teams down there. I thought it was not a one-man effort, it was a good collective effort.”
The plan worked. The Tigers let John Poulakidas have his nine 3-point tries (he made three). They lived with Bez Mbeng going for 18 points. But the interior defense – not necessarily known to be one of Princeton’s strengths – took away Yale’s most unique threat.
“We’re not the tallest group, but man, we’re gonna fight until the clock ends,” Martini said. “There’s no quit in us.”
Martini deserves massive credit for the defensive effort; the senior forward also scored all 10 of his points in the first half to get Princeton going. After sinking two threes, Martini teamed up with Xaivian Lee to catch some skip passes on the cut for two easy layups.
Lee went for 19 points, seven rebounds and five assists and Matt Allocco had his second straight big night with 18 points. But Blake Peters also stood out in uncommon ways.
A 3-point specialist, Peters had only made two shots from inside the arc all season before this two-game weekend. He had a nice roll to the basket during Friday’s win over Brown, then decided to make two more layups against Yale. In one of the game’s pivotal moments, he found position on the low block, got his shot to roll in and drew Mbeng’s fourth foul of the night. A four-point game was suddenly a 54-47 Princeton edge.
Peters also finished with a career-high eight rebounds, his eighth coming on the offensive glass with 2:10 to play as the Tigers wanted to wind the clock down while up 10. They were able to bleed another 18 seconds before Allocco hit a dagger.
In recent times, Princeton would be on the losing end of this game. Last year’s home date against Yale saw Princeton squander a 19-point lead and lose in overtime (its last loss until the Sweet 16). Even accounting for the fact that Princeton got revenge in the Ivy League title game, Yale has had the Tigers’ number for years.
“It’s great for the league to have a marquee game at this point in the season (with) two teams that have really gone head-to-head,” Henderson said. “I mean, ESPN picked this game for a reason. That said, this group, what are we, 19-3? This group really has a very strong will to win and I think people are appreciating that. They like to see that.”
Henderson knows what comes next. Five regular-season games remain – three on the road – with his squad still one game behind Yale and Cornell. The Tigers host Cornell on March 2.
The coach was asked whether it’s fair that the Ivy League is pigeonholed as a one-bid conference for NCAA Tournament purposes.
“I think these guys sign up knowing that we’ve got to win the league and we’ve got to win the tournament,” he said. “It stinks, because there’s multiple teams in this league that could do a lot of damage. But that said, there’s something about how hard you have to work there that gets you ready for that moment. It’s what happened to us last year. … We know what we signed up for.”
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Happy Sunday. Thanks for stopping by. We have four weeks left till the NCAA Tournament Selection Show, preceded by the Ivy League title game by a few hours.
This Tuesday is a bracketology Tuesday for me, so I’m saving a lot of bigger-picture analysis for then, but for now let’s clean the glass with some other happenings around New Jersey:
When something extraordinary happens in this sport on a Thursday night, my current publication schedule means I can’t get to it until three mornings later. I’m OK with that – this newsletter is not a full-time job for me – but man, this past Thursday warranted an edition unto itself. 1.) Rutgers rallies from a slow start to beat Northwestern for its fourth straight win, officially resuscitating its season. 2.) FDU beat Long Island in overtime despite players getting stuck in an elevator in LIU’s weird, problematic arena before the game. 3.) Xander Rice does THIS shortly after doing THIS, finishing with 37 points and one of the greatest moments in Monmouth history. I wish I had something witty or insightful to add, but these shots speak for themselves, do they not? Consider yourselves up to date!
Staying with Monmouth for a second, Nikita Konstantynovskyi put up 22 points and 20 rebounds Saturday in the Hawks’ 84-61 laugher over Stony Brook, completing a 2-0 week. Now, both those games were at home, and for weeks I’ve been documenting Monmouth’s dominance at home and absolute inability to win on the road. Three of the four regular-season games left are away, including at Hampton and Elon, some of the worst teams in the country going by KenPom. Monmouth must win those two games, at least, or else be buried in the CAA tournament as something like a No. 8 seed.
Here’s a fun score: Princeton 70, Yale 25. That comes to us from the women’s game up in New Haven. It’s hard to limit your opponents to 25 points in a 40-minute game of basketball. You know what’s harder? To get them to finish with more turnovers (27) than points scored (25). Or to get them to score fewer and fewer points in each successive quarter, especially when you’ve given your starting five the fourth quarter off. Hang it in the Louvre:
It was never in doubt, but Princeton has already clinched a berth into Ivy Madness with four games to go. The Tigers are ahead of Columbia (8-1) and Harvard (7-2), who play Sunday. They’re also Princeton’s next two opponents.
All five starters scored in double figures in the Seton Hall women’s 91-78 win over DePaul, but let’s focus on Savannah Catalon. The freshman has been coming on strong for the Pirates in a bench scoring role, and after recently exploding for 21 points against overmatched Xavier and 12 against St. John’s, Catalon got her first career start Saturday with Amari Wright not available. Catalon went 11-for-11 at the foul line on her way to another 21 points, plus seven rebounds. Seton Hall is solidly in sixth place in the Big East at 7-8, clearly better than the teams below it but with only one victory against a top-five team — St. John’s in overtime.
That ais good news. Thanks
How is the tie breaker for seeding determined if there is a three-way tie for first, with each of the three having defeated every team but each other?