Blowout blues creep back

For the first seven minutes of the men's basketball team's game against Evansville on Wednesday night, it seemed as if the first team to reach 30 points was destined to win. Princeton (2-6 overall) held the Purple Aces (2-4) to five points in that time span while only scoring six itself.

The prediction turned out to be true. Unfortunately for the Tigers, they were not the first to reach 30. With 13 minutes, five seconds remaining in the first half, Evansville forward Shy Ely nailed a jump shot, and things spiraled out of control. The resulting 17-0 scoring run stunned Princeton, which could not recover from the barrage and ultimately fell, 53-32, to the Purple Aces.

Ely scored four more points during the Tigers' five-and-a-half minute scoreless drought and finished the game as his team's leading scorer and rebounder, with 12 points and eight boards.

Evansville guard Jason Holsinger also played a crucial role in the offensive onslaught, nailing two three-pointers. Holsinger's shots from long range seemed laser-guided — he finished three-for-five from beyond the arc en route to an 11-point night.

In contrast to Holsinger's precision, Princeton suffered from a collective inability to dial in from behind the three-point line. It was a disappointing performance from one of the three teams in Division I history that has never failed to make a three-point shot in a game. In fact, the streak was in danger as late as four minutes into the second stanza, when senior forward and co-captain Noah Savage spotted up on the left side and connected from downtown.

As a team, the Tigers hit just 25 percent of their 12 three-point attempts.

Sophomore center Zach Finley, who entered the matchup averaging a team-leading 12 points per game, found himself mired in foul trouble in the early going and only played 19 minutes. Finley, whose presence in the paint has opened up space for Princeton's perimeter players early in the season, scored just four points.

Playing without Finley in the low block, the Orange and Black offense suffered. Savage stepped up to erase some of the scoring deficit and hit a layup to snap the Purple Aces' 17-0 run with Princeton trailing 22-6.

Evansville's offense, however, already smelled the blood in the water. Purple Ace guard Jay Cousinard immediately responded with an easy layup of his own. Despite Savage's best efforts — he scored all six of Princeton's points in the last 13 minutes of the first period — the Tigers returned to the visitor's locker room trailing 29-12.

The senior co-captain was the team's only player to net more than four points in the game, finishing with 12.

Overall, Evansville nearly doubled Princeton's shooting percentage — 55 percent compared to 29.

The Tigers began the second half with a difficult, if not impossible, task ahead of them. Savage again took the lead, making a jumper and a three-point shot after Evansville center Pieter van Tongeren scored the first points of the half.

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No sooner had Savage reduced t lead to 31-17, however, than the Purple Aces' top aces struck again. From 13:36 remaining in the game to 12:32 remaining, Holsinger connected on another three-point shot, Cousinard made one of two free throws, and Ely nailed a midrange jumper to stretch the lead to 20.

The Tigers have now lost six straight games, a streak that has seen the team sputter on the offensive end. No matter how successfully they slow the game down — neither Princeton nor the Purple Aces had any fast break points Wednesday — the Tigers will not be able to win unless their moribund offense starts showing signs of life.