Men's hoops stays unbeaten in league

Princeton played two Division III caliber teams over Intersession. One of them was Cornell.

During the break, the Tigers (9-7 overall, 4-0 Ivy League) defeated Div. III Western Maryland (6-14) on Monday, and Ivy foes Columbia (10-10, 3-3) and Cornell (3-16, 0-6) on Friday and Saturday, respectively.

In a season that has had a different player step up for each game, junior guard Kyle Wente was the go-to man against Columbia, scoring 17 points on 6 for 12 shooting and forty minutes of playing time. The Illinois native also paced both teams in steals and was behind only senior forward Mike Bechtold with four rebounds.

"Kyle was terrific, and he made play after play," Thompson said. "He went to the floor when we needed it. That was a pretty impressive performance tonight."

"They know our plays, so they jumped on Kyle when he got to the perimeter," El-Nokali said. "And he was able to drive right by them to the basket so many times."

While Wente was the player of the game, the story of the week was Princeton's defense, as it held its opponents to under 35 points per game. The game of the week, though, was the Tigers' 49-41 win against the Lions, a team that beat Princeton's basketball rival Penn on Saturday night.

Princeton started out very slowly against Columbia, as the Lions built an 8-0 lead before junior guard Kyle Wente put the Tigers on the board with a three-pointer after 2 minutes, 48 seconds of play. Sophomore Konrad Wysocki then came off the bench to hit a two-pointer that started a Princeton comeback. Junior Ray Robins highlighted the Tiger run with a beautiful dunk to give his team a 10-8 lead with 12:19 left in the half. After his dunk, however, the Lions stormed back and built a 25-12 lead with 3:43 left in the half.

While Columbia seemed to outplay the Tigers in the first half, the second half was about as orange as a P-Rade. In the second half alone, Princeton forced Columbia to turn the ball over 12 times, leading to 15 points off turnovers compared to two from the Lions. The Tigers took the lead 3:48 into the second half and never looked back. The lead floated between five and eight points for most of the rest of the game, and the final was 49-41.

The Tigers had been utilizing the full-court press after scoring during the first half, but the Lions managed to get the ball past half-court for most of the first stanza. In the second half, however, on three separate occasions, Columbia's backcourt failed to get the ball across half-court within the allotted 10 seconds. Moreover, the guards turned the ball over seven times in transition. The most telling statistic about the second half, though, was Columbia's shooting just 35.7 percent from the floor. By keeping the ball in the hands of the Columbia guards, Princeton was able to keep it out of the hands of big men Chris Wiedemann and returning Ivy Player of the Year Craig Austin.

Besides forcing turnover after turnover, Princeton was also able to dominate down low. In the second half, the Tigers scored 18 points in the paint compared to Columbia's four, and Princeton also scored five second chance points, while the Lions had none.

The next evening's game against Cornell was another one of those matches that is close until the tip-off and leaves the spectator without the satisfaction of a close contest. The route started with Princeton amassing a 22-2 lead after 12 minutes of play. At that point, with the game pretty much in the bag, Thompson began experimenting with a number of combinations, giving nine players at least 12 minutes of playing time. The lead stayed about the same for the rest of the game, and Princeton won 60-38.

Saturday night's hero was junior forward Ray Robins, who shot a hellishly hot 10-13 from the field, 5-7 from behind the arc, and 3-3 at the line. The junior finished with a career-high 28 points.

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Robins' efforts helped the Tigers to a 32-9 lead in the half. Because the massive substitutions came twelve minutes into the first period, Cornell did not even score a basket against the Princeton starting five until the second half.

Princeton's other game of the week was a 78-24 blowout of Western Maryland. A Div. III team, the Green Terror never really had a shot against Princeton, and scored the lowest total ever in Jadwin Gym.