Tigers revisit lost weekend

The men's basketball team is halfway through its Ivy League season, and though a title run is out of reach, there is still plenty for this young team to play for.

Princeton (10-11 overall, 1-6 Ivy League) kicks off the second round of conference matchups this weekend at home against Cornell (13-9, 6-2) tonight and Columbia (13-9, 4-4) tomorrow night.

Team goals of running the offense efficiently and grinding out wins remain salient, but the individual performances of those Tigers building toward next season will be just as important.

Princeton enters the weekend with junior forward Kyle Koncz leading the way in scoring at 8.8 points per game. Having been held out of the Tigers' matchup against Dartmouth this past Saturday with a lingering foot injury, Koncz will look to this weekend as a chance to reestablish his confidence and work towards what looks to be a promising senior season.

Two spots below Koncz in Princeton's scoring column is freshman guard Lincoln Gunn, who is averaging 7.3 points per game on the season. After earning big minutes all throughout the non-conference season without putting up big scoring totals, Gunn posted a career-high 22 points in a 74-68 double-overtime win over Harvard this past Friday, the Tigers' only victory of the Ivy season. Gunn scored only two points against the Big Green the next night, however, and this weekend will be a chance for him to put together back-to-back solid efforts.

Among Ivy League leaders, freshman point guard Marcus Schroeder ranks seventh in assists, third in assist-to-turnover ratio and fourth in steals. Classmates Gunn and Schroeder are also the only two Tigers who have started every single game this season. Schroeder takes the iron-man label to the next level, averaging an astonishing 39 minutes per game.

On the other side of the floor, Cornell is enjoying another in a string of successful seasons, sitting second in the conference standings, a half-game back of league-leading Penn. The Big Red began its Ivy season with a loss to the Quakers but has only lost since to Harvard in a game decided by a buzzer-beater. Cornell's last two wins, over Brown and Yale, have come by a total of just three points.

The first contest between the Tigers and the Big Red was a one-sided affair. After the Tigers jumped out to an early lead, an 18-0 Cornell run that spanned eight minutes of the first half put the home team ahead for good. The Big Red went on to win the game, 55-35.

While Princeton was mired in 30 percent field-goal shooting for the game, Cornell lit it up for 56 percent, including six-of-12 shooting from beyond the arc. The Tigers' 35 points against the Big Red set a record for the fewest points in an Ivy League game in the shot-clock era. Princeton has since matched that low point twice, against Yale and most recently against Penn.

Cornell's leading scorer — both for the season and against Princeton back in January — is forward Ryan Wittman. The freshman sensation's 15.1 points per game ranks sixth in the conference and is tops among first-year players. The young swingman has the highest free-throw percentage in the Ivy League, while he ranks fifth in three-point shooting percentage at a 42 percent clip.

The Big Red has not earned its second-place status by being a one-man show, however. While guard Graham Dow is second in the Ivies in assists, it was his backcourt teammate Louis Dale who burned the Tigers for 14 points and nine assists in the teams' last meeting.

Schroeder — Princeton's speediest perimeter defender — and Gunn will face a tough task in guarding the backcourt duo.

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The Tigers' Saturday opponent, Columbia, currently sits fourth in the Ivy League standings. All of its league losses have come at the hands of the teams ahead of it in the standings, including two close ones against the Big Red.

The Tigers fared better in their first game against the Lions than they did against Cornell but still met the same end. With the game tied at 59 with just over five minutes remaining, the Lions put together a decisive 9-0 run to seal the eventual 64-56 victory.

The Lions have a significant inside presence in forward John Baumann and center Ben Nwachukwu. Baumann ranks fourth in the Ivies in rebounding and leads the Ancient Eight in field-goal percentage.

Nwachukwu is second on the team in scoring behind Baumann and contributed 11 points in his last game against Princeton. Together, the duo should give the Tigers' frontline fits, just as they have to opponents all season.

Princeton's place at the bottom of the Ivy League standings is unfamiliar ground for the program. The Tigers will need a strong run in the second half of the league season just to push their record back to .500.

One of the few things working in Princeton's favor is that five of its seven remaining games will be played at Jadwin Gym, where the Tigers are 4-2 on the season.