All Bets Are Off

"I don't really know what these guys are going to do."

If there has ever been a Princeton men's basketball team about which this could be said — by its head coach, no less — it is Joe Scott's 2005-06 squad.

"These guys," Scott '87 continued, "are going to show what they are going to do."

After all, what good is speculation when, just last year, Scott watched his Tigers post their first losing Ivy League record in school history following a preseason laden with talk of a league title?

What kind of forecast can be made about a team that features one lone senior and just four other players who spent more than 80 minutes on the court last season?

One might quip, "Not a very good one," but then again, Princeton was picked to finish third in the standings in the Ivy League preseason media poll.

So, while sharing his outlook for this season — which starts tonight at Jadwin Gym against Drexel — Scott dodged the hype and revealed that his only concern is internal improvement.

"I think the big mistake that I made last year was talking about all that B.S.," Scott said of last year's talk about an Ivy crown. "What you do is you let your players know what the important things are in your program, and you get better every day."

The team will develop this season around a six-player core, which includes at least one member of each class — from senior guard Scott Greenman to freshmen forward Alex Okafor and guard Geoff Kestler.

"[The freshmen] go out there and attack the ball, go after rebounds, do all the things that you don't really have to know anything about to do," Greenman said, explaining how the two first-year players have worked their way into the regular rotation — and possibly even into the starting lineup. "You don't have to run an offense to rebound and play defense. In terms of the little things and the intangibles, they're doing a very great job."

It is to relatively unproven Tigers like these that Scott plans on giving the bulk of the playing time, even while knowing that not one of them is a finished product.

That even includes Greenman, the only fourth-year Tiger, whose surname — appropriately enough — suggests someone new at what he does. While the point guard is as familiar as any of his teammates with the minutiae of the Princeton offense, Greenman will be expected this season to adapt to the unfamiliar role of goto scorer.

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"Greenman has to score first this year," Scott said. "When he's not getting up 10 or 12 shots a game, something is going on because he can get them off. We need him to do that, and I think he needs the coach to tell him that we need him to do that."

As a starter in every game the past two seasons, the five-foot, nine-inch Greenman has indeed shown that his repertoire includes more than just ball-handling and passing skills. His 52 three-pointers led the team last season by a wide margin, and his average of 8.6 points per game is the best among returning players.

With the graduation of Will Venable '05, Judson Wallace '05 and three other seniors, however, the Tigers lost 55 percent of their scoring production from last season — much more than Greenman can be expected to provide by himself. Someone other than Greenman is going to have to raise his scoring average significantly, and Princeton is lucky to have two players, junior forward Luke Owings and sophomore forward Noah Savage, raring to fill that role.

Last season, Owings and Savage, along with Greenman, gave the Tigers three of the Ivy League's 10 most accurate three-point shooters. This year, the trio should continue to wreak havoc on even the most spread-out of defenses.

"Is there going to be a reliance on outside shooting?" Scott asked, anticipating a potential slight. "Well, maybe, but that's what those guys are good at, and you want to rely on the things you're good at."

It was in league play that Owings was at his best from beyond the arc, leading the Ivies in three-point percentage at a blistering clip of 61 percent.

Savage, meanwhile, started every game last year and, as a freshman, was the fourth-leading scorer for Princeton. Foul trouble was the only thing keeping his scoring average from being higher than his 6.4 points per game. Fouls may be an issue for Savage again this season, though, considering that he is the team's heaviest player at just 230 pounds and will often be used to guard opposing power forwards.

Luckily for the Tigers, the return of sophomore center Harrison Schaen — who took last year off for personal reasons — means that those are the biggest players Savage will have to guard. Schaen, who shot an impressive 60 percent from the floor during his freshman campaign two seasons ago, was also third on the team in blocked shots that year, despite averaging only 10 minutes a game.

At 6'9," Schaen will anchor a Princeton defense that often defied characterization last year. Though the Tigers held opponents to the second-lowest field-goal percentage in the league at 41 percent, they were also prone to colossal defensive lapses, in which they failed to execute their zone coverage scheme and allowed furious second-half comebacks.

In correcting this problem, Greenman believes his role as floor general carries over to defense.

"Similar to our offense," Greenman said, "if a defensive possession starts well, it most likely will end well. So it's important that I know who I have, that I'm talking to guys and telling them who they have, so that after a couple passes we're in the right position."

Sounding like an on-floor extension of his coach, Greenman is justified in looking at things a couple passes at a time. Then a couple possessions, then a couple games, then a couple months.

By that time, armed with a sense of what they can do, the Tigers just might have started winning games and converting outsiders to their inward focus.