M. hoops looks to sweep Harvard, Dartmouth

The two weeks spent away from home by the men's basketball team, which returns to Jadwin Gym tonight after a five-game tour of the Ivy League, did little to clarify just how fully the once miserable Tigers are ready to turn around their season.

Princeton (8-14 overall, 6-3 Ivy League) finished with a 3-2 record over the road stretch, but was outscored by an eight-point margin. The Tigers managed a double-overtime win at Cornell on the same night first-place Penn lost to cellar-dwelling Columbia, only to turn around the next night and succumb to the Lions themselves, falling two games behind the Quakers in the Ivy race.

Prepared to host Dartmouth (3-7, 5-18) tonight at 7:30 p.m. and to welcome Harvard (4-6, 12-11) at the same time tomorrow, Princeton can assert itself as the second-strongest team in the league with a pair of wins over teams it has beaten already this season, albeit by the slimmest of margins.

A sweep is very much a realistic goal for the Tigers — who boast a 3-1 home record in the Ivies — on this, their final home weekend of the season. Princeton's only other remaining home game is the season finale, which will be on Tuesday, March 7 against Penn.

Two Fridays ago, in an exhilarating 60-59 victory, the Tigers proved one bucket better than the Crimson, as a fade-away jumper by sophomore forward Noah Savage won the game with two tenths of a second left. The next night, in Hanover, N.H., Princeton came out sluggish and clearly ran out of gas late — making just one field goal in the final ten minutes — but still managed to hold on for a 52-49 win over the Big Green.

This weekend, however, the order of the matchups is reversed and, as much as the Tigers will want to put it all out on the floor for their homecoming against Dartmouth, they will be well served to keep a little energy in reserve for their second game against Harvard, the stronger of the two opponents.

Harvard strong inside

While the Crimson has failed to live up to pre-season predictions and contend with Penn for the Ivy crown, it continues to present a match-up nightmare for any team in the league, and for undersized Princeton in particular.

The statistics show that Harvard's big-man duo of center Brian Cusworth and forward Matt Stehle is far-and-away the best in the league, and few would be willing to make an argument to the contrary. Stehle and Cusworth boast the thirdand fourth-highest scoring averages — and the highest and second-highest rebounding averages — in the league, respectively.

Against Princeton on Feb. 10, Stehle erupted for 13 points, 15 rebounds, and four blocks, while the seven-foot Cusworth punished Tiger defenders inside all night long, scoring 20 points on six-of-10 shooting. The challenge of containing them will again fall to junior center Justin Conway and junior forward Luke Owings, each of whom is likely to give up four inches to his man throughout the night.

A look at the Crimson would not be complete without accounting for shooting guard Jim Goffredo, the team's leading scorer, at 15.4 points per game. And, based on the job Princeton did against him in the teams' first go-round, it looks like the Tiger scouting report did exactly that. Goffredo was held by an effective Princeton zone to just six points on one-of-nine shooting.

Lang leads Big Green

To put too much focus on Harvard neglects the fact that Princeton's first match-up this weekend is against Dartmouth, a team with a few unique weapons of its own. Overlooked was exactly what the Big Green appeared to be the first time it met Princeton this year, with the Tigers seemingly thinking ahead to their game against Penn later that week.

Last-place Dartmouth, however, is coming off back-to-back, convincing victories at home over Brown and Yale. The Big Green was able to hang with the Tigers for the entire game in their last meeting, led by 13 points from guard Mike Lang, the team's leading scorer.

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Lang, who ranks third in the Ivy League in three-point shooting accuracy at more than 42 percent, missed a desperation shot from beyond the arc that would have tied the game as the game clock hit zero.

Lang is surrounded by a complement of capable role players, any one of whom can really get going on a given night and put Dartmouth in line for an upset. The most likely candidate is guard Leon Pattman, who has bounced back from an injury-plagued campaign last year — during which he quit the team — to average 10.4 points per game off the bench this season.

The Tigers must also find an answer for the quickness of Big Green backup point guard DeVon Mosely, and for the defensive presence inside of forward Calvin Arnold, who leads the league with 1.9 blocks per game.

Like every Ivy League team this year, Dartmouth and Harvard have proven themselves worthy of Princeton's full attention. If they get that attention, though, they may well find themselves in the midst of another Tiger winning streak.