How tough is it to beat Princeton? Ask an opposing coach
The Tigers improved to 4-0 by pulling away from Monmouth on Saturday. Plus, notes on Rutgers’ and Seton Hall’s latest victories.
WEST LONG BRANCH – Mitch Henderson and King Rice have developed a bond over the past decade-plus. Henderson got the job at Princeton the same year Rice was hired at Monmouth, 2011. Two men part of that small fraternity of Division I head basketball coaches, whose schools are just an hour apart.
Rice once agreed to schedule a game with Henderson at the 11th hour when Princeton had a hole come up on its schedule. When the Tigers drubbed the rebuilding Hawks last year, Henderson played reserves for nearly the entire second half, and Rice remembered and thanked him for not “kick(ing) me when I was down.” Rice visited Henderson in the Princeton locker room before Saturday afternoon’s home opener at the OceanFirst Bank Center to catch up.
So there may be no better coach than Rice to paint the picture of how difficult it is to defeat this Princeton team.
“We talked about being more solid than them, and for 13 minutes I thought we were,” Rice said after Princeton pulled away to win 82-57. “But then they got a little lead, then we started gambling, and this year it wasn’t because I was telling them to gamble. I didn’t want that today because I thought we could out-solid them for 40 minutes. We see we have a lot of work to do.”
To “out-solid” another team can incorporate any number of categories. Princeton held the final edge in rebounds (43-36) with fewer fouls (13-20) and fewer turnovers (8-12).
Rice’s greatest frustration Saturday was his team gambling on defense – players moving off the guy with the ball to try to anticipate a pass and close off a lane.
Before going any further, we should reiterate that this is not last year’s Monmouth team. Last year’s Monmouth team, which went 7-26, was a one-year fluke in an otherwise stellar run under Rice. The Hawks took West Virginia by surprise two Fridays ago and added another Power 6 victory to their mantle.
This game truly could have gone either way – Monmouth beat a good Princeton team that had Jaelin Llewellyn and Tosan Evbuomwan on Thanksgiving Eve two years ago, after all. The Hawks led by as many as five points early on before taking a 22-20 lead into the under-8 timeout.
Then 3-pointers from Xaivian Lee and Zach Martini helped turn the tide in Princeton’s favor, and Caden Pierce tallied the final seven points of the half to turn a four-point margin into a 38-27 halftime lead.
Monmouth’s last-ditch strategy midway through the second half was to try a very young lineup with three freshmen – Cornelius Robinson Jr., Abdi Bashir Jr. and Gabe Spinelli – and sophomores Jack Collins and Amaan Sandhu. All three of those freshmen scored to help cut the deficit to eight or nine points on three occasions.
Rice told me afterward that he made the mass substitutions because, again, his veterans were gambling on defense.
“Jakari (Spence) ran off the ball like three times, and he doesn’t do that,” Rice said. “Jakari’s one of the most solid defenders that we’ve had for the last couple of years. Today once we got down, guys just started trying some different things that, you can’t do that.
“All we talked throughout (practice) was being the most solid group. Play harder than them and be more solid than them, ‘cause that’s what they bring. They’re not gonna wow you, they’re not faster. They’re smarter and they execute every time. And even when we started off well against them, they didn’t change. They just kept running the same stuff.”
Besides drilling down on fundamentals, the other piece that makes Princeton a difficult matchup is its predilection for the 3-pointer. Without Evbuomwan operating and distributing from the middle, the Tigers are playing with all five players around the perimeter.
Per kenpom.com, the Tigers have a 3-point attempt percentage of 47.4%, ranking top-30 in the country.
“They’re hard to guard,” Rice said. “Nobody’s out there huge. Their center (Martini) – he never comes in the lane. Every day you play your center runs to the front of the rim. They run back on defense to the lane. Their guy runs to the 3-point line. You can’t even simulate that in practice.”
This was really a 10- to 15-point game until Princeton’s backups made some baskets in the final four minutes, and Rice said the Hawks aren’t hanging their heads. He just wants to see what Princeton is going to do next.
“I think when you win the way they did last year, you don’t waste any time,” Rice said. “Everybody comes in wanting to repeat what they did last year, so they watched the guys who were the main guys last year, how they carried themselves, and now this group. This team, though – you beat Rutgers on the neutral (court), you go into Hofstra and win, then you go to Duquesne and win. Duquesne’s good good, OK? Great coaching, all that. Then they come in here and really outplay us.”
I asked Pierce, who finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds for his second double-double of the season, how the players felt about starting 4-0 after having the experience of March Madness.
“I think definitely we’re proud with where we’re at, but I think we know that it’s business as usual,” Pierce said. “And I think we approach practice the same way every single day. We know the schedule’s not going to get any easier. I think Old Dominion’s a tough opponent coming ahead (Wednesday), and I think we know we got to come in and practice and get better every single day.”
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Thanks for swinging by on this NFL Sunday. Even as the biggest sports leagues sap casual fans’ attention on weekends in November, I remain confident in my decision to publish on Sundays so I can respond to Saturday’s games in a more timely manner. That, and it helps me spend less time thinking about the New York Jets.
Let’s make like Caden Pierce and clean the glass with more notes from Princeton-Monmouth, plus what to know about Seton Hall’s and Rutgers’ latest wins.
Princeton held Xander Rice to 4-of-13 shooting, though he still led Monmouth with 16 points thanks to eight free throws. After Rice, the next-top scorer with nine points was Robinson, the freshman out of Camden High School, who I think should blossom into a very nice player for the Hawks.
Jack Collins only went 1-of-7 shooting yesterday but he continues to impress in myriad other ways. One sequence I won’t forget from Saturday began when Princeton’s Jack Scott grabbed a steal and went on a fast break the other way. Collins caught up and altered his shot just enough to force a miss. Collins, a guard, also finished with a game-high 12 rebounds, prompting me to ask Pierce his thoughts on Collins’ grittiness. “Absolutely. I think guys like that, you don’t want to play against,” Pierce said. “I think that’s who I try to be and I think that’s definitely who he is. All credit to him, he’s a great player and he’s not very fun to play against when you have to box him out.”
Seton Hall is 4-0, but its 72-51 win over Wagner on Saturday afternoon was overshadowed when Holloway’s postgame handshake with Wagner coach and former Seton Hall player and assistant Donald Copeland turned into an angry disagreement, and Holloway yanked Copeland’s arm down to break the shake. Video can be seen here. As Jerry Carino points out, it was likely prompted by Wagner’s Tahron Allen fouling at the end of the game instead of letting Seton Hall dribble out the final seconds of the win. Both coaches apologized and said they were embarrassed about it, so the feelings have probably already simmered down.
Jaden Bediako, who I briefly wrote about Thursday, shot 5-for-7 again and has made a cool 66.7% from the floor through four games.
I’ll have more thoughts about Rutgers on Tuesday morning, but after a slow start, the Scarlet Knights polished off an 85-63 win over Howard. Derek Simpson put up a career-high 23 points in an electric performance. Now Rutgers heads into an eight-day break after going 4-1 in a jam-packed first two weeks of the season. “I think this team has a really good chance to get better,” Pikiell said. “And that’s the one thing we did from the Princeton game on, every time you saw us, we got better. We plugged some holes we had rebounding-wise. Then turnovers went down. Making open shots, finishing layups above the rim. We’re going to continue to get better.”