Comeback kids: Men's hoops wins twice

Yale's biggest lead? 14. Princeton's biggest lead? 14.

The difference in the game? The Tigers took their lead in the second half and didn't let it slip away, dominating the latter half of the game for a 70-58 victory.

Princeton men's basketball (15-7 overall, 8-1 Ivy League) hosted the Elis (9-14, 4-6) on Friday in a key contest for the Tigers as they tried to maintain their league lead.

It was yet another schizophrenic game for the Tigers, who had experienced periods of sloppy play against Harvard and, of course, Penn over the course of their season. In the first half, the Elis were able to penetrate Princeton's usually outstanding defense with easy over-the-top passes. The Tiger offense began to panic, missing four three-pointers in a row. As the Elis went on a 21-7 run, the score went from 14-14 to 28-19 to 35-21 in Yale's favor.

Down by 14 with less than two minutes remaining in the half, the Tigers desperately needed someone to step in and shift the momentum back in their favor to avoid a Penn-esque uspet.

And thus began the Will Venable Show.

To begin his uninterrupted seven-point run, Venable hit a three with 1:19 remaining and then drove inside 30 seconds later for a layup off a Yale turnover. With the clock winding down, Venable stole the ball and narrowly beat the buzzer for one last layup to cut the Elis' halftime lead to seven, 35-28.

Venable called the Tigers' 14-point deficit a wakeup call.

"Whether they're throwing off drifts or pounding it down inside, we've still got to be attentive to what's going on," he said.

Princeton still had ground to make up when the second stanza began, but the Tigers scored the first four points of the half to cap off an 11-0 run spanning the intermission.

Though Venable left the game for three minutes with a rolled ankle, Princeton solidified the comeback he had started. With 14 minutes left to play, the Tigers took the lead for the first time in over 20 minutes on a layup from junior center Judson Wallace. Just seconds later, Venable made his glorious return — he stole the ball from Yale's Casey Hughes and took it the other way for an easy layup.

After the Elis' Alex Gamboa tied the game at 44 with a three, senior guard Ed Persia and Wallace each put up a trifecta of their own to help the Tigers to pull away. Princeton led the rest of the way by as much as 14 before coasting to the 70-58 win.

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Princeton kept the momentum in the second half largely because of a tightened defense. Yale shot 64 percent from the field in the first stanza, but the Tigers held them to just 33 percent in the second.

"They were hurting us in the post in the first half," coach John Thompson '88 said. "We altered a little how we guarded that — starting in the backcourt, we started putting more pressure on them so they couldn't get the ball where they wanted to."

A key part of the Tigers' offensive success in the second half was their ability to find Wallace inside. Twelve of his 18 second-half points were layups, and he posted a game-high 29 on the night.

"Scotty and Andre stick out in my mind as making some good passes and getting me some open layups," Wallace said.

Yale's leading scorer, junior Dominick Martin, put up the first points of the game on a wide-open layup. But two fouls within 18 seconds of each other with 18:26 on the clock took Martin out of commission for the rest of the half.

Princeton battled back and forth with the Elis for the next seven minutes, holding a three-point lead on three different occasions. A 9-6 Tiger advantage was Princeton's last lead of the first half before Yale took control of the game's pace — at least until the end of that stanza.