Princeton returns home to build on the best kind of 'gut punch'
After Minnesota, it's fair to say the Tigers would rather have played and lost than never to have played at all.
PRINCETON – As he described Princeton’s takeaways from its trip to the Asheville Championship in North Carolina, Mitch Henderson might have begun piecing together Taylor Swift’s next hit lyric without realizing it.
“We lost a double overtime loss, and I said to the guys, ‘This is what you missed: the gut punch,’” Henderson said Wednesday. “Sometimes you forget about how that feels.”
Put another way, the Tigers would rather have played and lost than never to have played at all.
There’s no question this team is grateful to be back on the court after COVID-19 wiped out their 2020-21 season, even when that includes some heartache.
The Tigers first took out South Carolina 66-62 last Friday before nearly turning the tables against another high-major opponent, Minnesota. They trailed the entire second half but clawed back despite an uncharacteristically poor shooting night from three (6 of 28), forcing the turnovers and making the shots they needed to force both overtime sessions.
The Golden Gophers pulled away, 87-80, but the rest of the Ivy League surely took notice.
“I think it was a great test starting off to go down there and beat South Carolina, who’s a really good team,” Ryan Langborg said. “It was a great test and a great outcome for us. Of course we wanted to get that Minnesota one, that would’ve been really nice. Coach was saying that it taught us a lesson. At least we fought back and were tough enough to get back in the game, send it to two overtimes. I think we’ll be able to use that lesson throughout the year and if we get in that situation again, we’ll be ready for it.”
Princeton returned to the court Wednesday and overpowered Marist 80-61 at Jadwin Gym.
The Tigers’ defense held Marist to 36.1 percent from the floor. Their shooters warmed back up, hitting 53.7 percent overall and 13 of 28 from the arc. It was never a particularly close call once a few threes fell for Princeton during the first half.
Henderson added Keeshawn Kellman to the starting five for the first time this season, and the muscle-bound forward responded by going 5-for-5 from the floor for 11 points in about 11 minutes of work. Henderson continued to rotate through frequent subs, but Kellman always popped whenever he took the floor, adding four rebounds and a pair of blocks.
Henderson had previously used bigs Mason Hooks and Zach Martini in starting lineups next to Tosan Evbuomwan. It was time for Kellman to take a turn, the coach said, now that he’s recovered from an injury.
“I never coached anybody like him,” Henderson said. “Physicality is next-level. He’s a physical specimen of a kid and unbelievably hard worker. He’s just been away and out for so long. He was dominant when he was healthy, so we really want to get back to that, give him that confidence.”
Once Langborg rotated in on the wing, he made it difficult for Henderson to take him out of the game. He posted a career-high 14 points on 5-for-6 shooting with four 3-pointers.
Questioned about his mixed-and-matched lineups, Henderson joked that he wasn’t smart enough to be altering them with some grander strategy in mind. But later on, he acknowledged how many options he has in front of him.
“We sort of know Jaelin (Llewellyn) and Tosan are gonna get keyed on, too, and I think we haven’t really even seen how deep we actually can be,” he said.
It’s hard to say if Princeton currently owns the biggest resume-building win in the Ivy League; Dartmouth’s victory over Georgetown was a true road game as opposed to Princeton’s neutral-site win. As of Thursday the Tigers hold the second-best KenPom ranking in the Ivy at No. 151, 11 spots south of Yale.
Now Princeton heads west for its next trial at Oregon State, which made a surprise run to the Sweet 16 last March. It could be another statement upset. It could be another gut punch. Henderson and his players will be ready for it either way.
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Thanks for reading as always. Wednesday’s game completes my early-season tour of Seton Hall, Rutgers and Princeton. It’s exactly what I wanted to accomplish during my first month of writing this newsletter, and I’m beyond grateful to be back out there reacquainting myself with live reporting after COVID-19 changed the landscape for a while.
I’ll be back out to see some teams in early December once they have some home games on Wednesdays and Saturdays that I’m able to get to. Of course, I’ll continue to write this newsletter twice a week throughout the season. Now let’s clean the glass with stray news and notes, and where else would I start but Seton Hall?
Pirates 67, No. 4 Wolverines 65. On Monday I remarked that Seton Hall, which received seven votes in the first in-season AP poll, ought to crack the Top 25 next week should they take down Michigan. That may be where we’re headed now. Seton Hall turned heads around the country, and while the season is a long, long grind, this sort of performance on a national stage is bound to help the program in both the short term and the long haul.
Once again, it was Hall’s bench that stole the show. I don’t know if we’re talking about Tray Jackson enough. He barely played for the Pirates last year after a decent freshman season at Missouri. Now he’s averaging six rebounds a game and just stunned Michigan with a 5-for-5/3-for-3 shooting night, knocking down buckets like these.
I don’t want to go overboard and say Juwan Howard was outcoached Tuesday. But Kevin Willard has been in the coaching game for a much longer time, and his players were clearly prepared to grapple with, on paper, a more talented team. Just a lot of smart basketball plays during the second half with the heat turned up. It goes without saying that Seton Hall doesn’t win that game if Bryce Aiken doesn’t draw consecutive fouls off the same opponent. Earlier in the half, there was a one-minute span where the Pirates forced both a shot-clock violation and a 10-second violation, which really helped sap some of Michigan’s momentum when it led by eight.
Rutgers plays its first road game of the season tonight at DePaul, looking to move to 4-0 with a win. Slow starts continue to plague the Knights, but they do have the second-best scoring defense of any Big Ten team so far (55.3 ppg) and will put that to a test against a Big East foe that scored 97 and 99 points in its first two wins of the season.