Men's hoops drops two to fall into tie for Ivy lead

NEW YORK — Men's basketball head coach John Thompson '88 had seen this sort of movie before . . . and didn't like the ending.

The sequel this weekend was even worse. Coming off a rousing victory over Penn at the Palestra on Tuesday, the men's basketball team traveled to Columbia and Cornell — two teams in the lower half of the league.

Much like 1999, when the Tigers fell to Yale the Friday after the Palestra Miracle, Princeton (11-10 overall, 6-3 Ivy) was thrown by the Lions (10-13, 5-5), 59-42, in New York.

It is at this point that the 1999 script and the 2001 version diverge. Two years ago, Princeton managed to bounce back from the upset to defeat Brown the next night. Saturday, however, the Tigers fell to Ivy cellar-dweller Cornell (7-16, 3-7), 66-49, for the first time in the past 15 games with the Big Red.

"It's pretty apparent what happened — [Columbia] outplayed us," Thompson said following the Friday loss. "The same thing happened a couple years ago, we beat Penn and came back to lose to Yale."

The loss to the Lions strongly resembled the Tigers' dissection of the Quakers, only with Princeton on the operating table this time. Columbia limited the Tigers to 13 first-half points, which was Penn's score at the break Tuesday.

The Lions out-worked the Tigers on both halves of the court, hounding Princeton's shooters on one end, and crashing the offensive glass at the other. For the game, Columbia maintained a 38-22 rebounding advantage.

Following an unsightly first period, in which the Lions themselves only scored 21 points, Columbia opened up the final frame with crisp passing that resulted in lay-ups by Lion center Chris Wiedemann. Though only a sophomore, Wiedemann torched the Tigers with six-for-six shooting from the field for 14 points. He also added six rebounds and three blocks.

"He's a very good player," Thompson said. "I don't want to take anything away from [him, but] it was more a lack of play on our part. He's big, he's hard to get around. We allowed him to get [the ball] too deep."

With Columbia boasting a double-digit lead, Wiedemann turned in perhaps the biggest play of the game — at least in terms of the roar it brought from the crowd at Levien Gymnasium. On the play, Princeton senior captain and center Nate Walton intercepted a Columbia pass at the top of the key and took off towards the the opposite end with nothing but hardwood in front of him. Wiedemann, the player for whom the pass was intended, chased after Walton, and as the Tiger center tried to lay the ball in, Wiedemann slammed it against the backboard, shaking its supports and the Tigers' spirit.

Throughout the first half, Princeton had open looks at the basket, but was unable to convert — shooting a paltry 29.4 percent from the floor. In the final frame, Columbia increased its defensive intensity and flustered the Tigers.

"We got open shots, the ball didn't go in," Thompson said. "They worked hard, they didn't give us any cupcakes."

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The trip upstate to Ithaca did little to soothe Princeton's psyche, as a six-point halftime defecit quickly turned to double digits. To start the second half, Cornell went on a 9-0 run, and the Tigers failed to score on their first nine possessions.

Perhaps benefitting from homecourt advantage, the Big Red shot a respectable 46.8 percent from the field, while the Tigers again struggled, converting only 16 of their 43 field goals — 32 percent.

Over the course of the season, Princeton has relied on a sort of "hero by committee" approach to victory. In each Tiger win this season, a different player has stepped up and carried the team. This weekend, there were times when all five Tigers on the floor were looking for someone to bail them out — but no one did.

The losses drop Princeton from its status as the sole leader into a three-way tie with Yale and Penn atop the Ivy League.