Men's basketball comes alive after loss of Gloger

It is said that when a person goes blind, his other senses are heightened. If a person loses a finger, the rest of the hand gets stronger to compensate for the loss. Now, after losing junior swingman Spencer Gloger late last week to academic ineligibility, the men's basketball team will have to come together in order to make up for the absence of its most heralded star.

"I don't think anything has changed in terms of our chemistry," head coach John Thompson '88 said. "On the court, collectively, we have to focus on everyone working to get a little better as opposed to one person trying to step up."

If this past weekend is any indication, the transition may not be as difficult as many expect. Against Dartmouth and Harvard, Princeton executed on offense as well as it has all season, hitting nearly 70 percent from the floor on Friday and 56 percent on Saturday.

Against Dartmouth, the Tigers played smart and unselfish basketball. Led by senior captain Kyle Wente's seven dimes, the team recorded assists on 20 of 25 field goals for the game.

"I don't think anything changed a lot this weekend," Thompson said. "The change started in the shootaround before the Yale game [two weeks ago]. Our offense had not been as efficient as it can be, and we have focused on our offense for the last week. It's crisper now. I don't think it has anything to do with the timing of Spencer leaving. There is just a heightened sense of awareness, which is something we've been stressing all year."

Against the Crimson last Saturday, Princeton again distributed the ball well, chalking up assists on more than half of the squad's 29 field goals. Had it not been for a late meltdown at the free-throw line, fans would not have had to chomp down on their fingernails so much while watching the Tigers eek out a one-point win.

Poor free-throw shooting, however, can sometimes be symptomatic of a larger problem, a problem Princeton will likely face coming down the stretch: fatigue and lack of depth.

With two of its preseason stars gone — Gloger and junior forward Andre Logan — the Tigers now boast just six players on the roster that average more than 20 minutes per contest. While that statistic may not surprise, the team also has just six players that average more than ten minutes per game. No one outside of the top six plays more than freshman guard Scott Greenman, who plays nine minutes on average. Coach Thompson, however, does not view depth as a pressing issue.

"This time of year I am concerned with fatigue, however many people are playing," he said. "At this point in the season, the bodies just start to wear down on a night-in-night-out basis. But we have [junior forward] Konrad [Wysocki] coming off the bench, and I feel comfortable with Scotty [Greenman] and [sophomore forward] Mike Stephens.

"I don't think we're limited to six guys by any stretch of the imagination."

If one player has exerted his will on the game more than the others since Gloger left, it is senior forward Ray Robins. Starting in place of Gloger, Robins has led the team in scoring in all three games Gloger has missed.

Against Yale, he notched 15 points and 12 boards, then scored 17 against Dartmouth, and capped off this past weekend's play with 22 points against Harvard on 10-for-16 shooting.

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"He's a senior coming down the stretch," Thompson said. "At some point you realize that there is a finite number of games that you can play here, and Ray wants to win."

Winning this year, however, will be an uphill climb the rest of the way. Though Thompson says he and the team are not looking at the big picture, if Princeton is to win the Ivies, it will be one of the most unlikely upsets in the program's recent history. After losing its two best players, the team now has to make up a two-game deficit on league-leader Penn with just five games left. This requires the Tigers winning out the rest of their games, and receiving help from another team in beating the Quakers.

"One game at time," Thompson warns. "We can't look beyond one game, one possession. That's all we can control anyway."