Men's hoops handles Monmouth despite Jadwin-record 40 points from Johnson

Saturday night, Monmouth's Rahsaan Johnson exploded for 40 points against Princeton men's basketball, but his record performance was not enough as the Tigers beat the Hawks, 76-70, in inter-conference, intra-state play in Jadwin Gym.

Johnson stole the show in the Tigers' second home game. The Princeton fans taunted him whenever he got the ball, sometimes deriding him for his smaller stature — he is listed, quite generously, at six feet. While he could not come out with the victory, the D.C. native gave the crowd — and Princeton basketball — a show it did not want to see.

"I figure this, those Gonzaga [Washington, D.C.] high school boys can play," men's basketball coach John Thompson '88, a graduate of Gonzaga himself, said of Johnson. "He put on a hell of a show, there's nothing else I can say. He made a lot of contested tough shots. We should have run stuff at him sooner, but they had other guys we didn't want to get off. That's unbelievable."

Although Johnson came into Saturday's contest averaging 15 points a game, few expected him to control the game the way he did.

Despite taking most of his team's shots and scoring most over half of the points, Johnson could not be classified a ball-hog. He led both teams in assists, often creating those assists by driving to the basket, bringing the Princeton defense in on him, and then passing it to one of his open teammates. On defense, he also had the game high in steals, blocked shots, and minutes played. Afterwards, he admitted that he would give it all back for a win.

"Any time I score a lot of points, I'd take half of them for a win," Johnson said. "I wouldn't mind scoring eight points tonight for a win. With a win, I can go home and sleep. Even though I scored 40, I won't be able to go home and sleep tonight."

To counter Johnson's performance, the Tigers had a couple players of their own step up.

"Ray Robins, he's been kind of in a funk recently," Thompson said of the junior forward who piled up 20 points on the night. "You knew he was going to come on, so hopefully the lightbulb will go off with him.

"I also thought [freshman guard] Will Venable came up big. A stretch with him today reminded me of a stretch in the Maryland game, in which the other team would come up with a few loose balls that we wanted, and then Will came up with them today."

The game started with Princeton gradually building up a lead and trying to control Johnson to keep it. The Tigers went five for 12 on three pointers in the first half to build the lead to 35-25 at intermission.

Venable, though, made perhaps the biggest individual play of the half at the very end of the period when he stole an inbounds pass intended for Johnson, stopped his forward momentum, jumped and hit a very long two pointer with two seconds left in the game. His play increased the Princeton lead to ten going into intermission.

The Tigers extended the lead over the next five minutes, building it to a 17-point differential, 49-32, with 15:46 left after a dunk by Robins and then a steal by Logan which led to a layup by senior guard Ahmed El Nokali.

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Johnson gradually brought the Hawks back into the game. He scored eight of his team's next 10 points after the El Nokali layup and also assisted on the other two to narrow the game down to a 10-point differential.

Princeton led by between 10 and 6 for the rest of the game, but Monmouth was never able to make it closer, as the Hawks fell by a final score of 76-60.

Saturday night's performance was probably the strongest offensive effort by the Tigers this season. The team was hitting the cuts and, more importantly, hitting the shots.

Princeton shooters shot 21 for 41 from the field (51.2 percent) and 7 for 17 from three-point land (41.2 percent). At the free throw line, the Tigers were 27 of 32 (84.4%).

"They ran their offense as well as I've ever seen them run it," Monmouth head coach Dave Calloway said. "We couldn't guard them today, they were very, very good."