Brought back to earth

The weekend opened with a battle of Ivy unbeatens, as Princeton looked to build on its season-opening wins over Dartmouth and Harvard with a road upset of league powerhouse Cornell (14-5, 6-0) on Friday night. The Tigers hung tight with the Big Red until the final minutes but ultimately couldn’t keep up with the balanced efficiency of Cornell’s offensive attack, falling 72-61.

The next night in New York, Princeton looked ready to bounce back, holding a four-point lead against Columbia (10-11, 3-3) with under 10 minutes remaining in the second half. But late turnovers and defensive lapses on the perimeter allowed the plucky Lions to seize control of the game and send the Tigers home with a 58-53 loss.

“It’s definitely frustrating,” sophomore guard Lincoln Gunn said of the 0-2 weekend. “I think we had a solid, like, 30 minutes in both games, but it was just a couple breakdowns here and there that didn’t help us out in the end.”

Against the Big Red on Friday, the Tigers went into the second half needing to play near-perfect basketball, having been blitzed by Cornell’s league-leading offense during the first 20 minutes. Princeton led 24-17 just under 12 minutes into the game, but the Big Red made eight of its next 10 shots, closing out the half with a 20-5 run to go up 37-29.

Cornell shot 65 percent from the field in the opening stanza, including 11 points each from reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Year Ryan Wittman and seven-foot St. Bonaventure transfer Jeff Foote.

The Big Red continued to increase its lead over the second half’s first five minutes, going ahead 46-34 on a Foote free throw with 15 minutes, 24 seconds to go.

With things slipping away, Princeton’s senior leaders took it upon themselves to hoist the Tigers back into the game, as guard Kevin Steuerer and co-captain forwards Noah Savage and Kyle Koncz combined to score 17 of Princeton’s next 20 points.

A Savage three cut the Big Red lead to two points with 10:30 remaining on the game clock, and after Cornell responded with a run of its own, a pair of back-to-back Koncz three-pointers made the score 58-54 in Cornell’s favor with 6:17 to go.

But Princeton went cold from there, scoring just seven points the rest of the way, while the Big Red showed why it has become an enormous favorite to grab the Ivy League’s NCAA Tournament berth. Big shots by Wittman and Foote helped Cornell build its lead back up to 10 points over the next 3:34, and the league’s top free-throw- shooting team closed it out with seven consecutive hits from the charity stripe.

Early Ivy League Player of the Year frontrunner Wittman finished with 20 points, while Foote added 18. Koncz hit five of seven three-pointers to pace Princeton with 19 points, while Steuerer netted a career-high 17 thanks to a combination of aggressive drives and clutch long-range shooting.

Such offensive displays were in short supply for the Tigers during the first half against Columbia the next night, as Princeton shot just 33 percent from the floor over the game’s first 20 minutes, allowing the Lions to grab a 25-23 halftime lead. Rebounding and defense, however, kept the Tigers in the game, as 13 of their 23 first-half points came off offensive rebounds or turnovers.

After intermission, Princeton’s scorers finally woke up, hitting six of their first seven shots in the second half to stake the Tigers to a 38-31 lead with 14:15 left to play. But Princeton couldn’t close Columbia out, immediately allowing back-to-back threes that pulled the Lions back to within one.

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With 7:36 remaining, Columbia finally surged ahead on a deep, well-defended three-pointer by K.J. Matsui that made the score 45-43. The Lions would never trail again, continuing to find holes in the Princeton defense and force Tiger turnovers down the stretch.

“There was a little bit of an effort breakdown, a little bit of a mental breakdown,” head coach Sydney Johnson ’97 said.

The costliest of the Princeton turnovers came with 24 seconds remaining and secured the game for Columbia. After Gunn nailed a big three to pull his team to within four points on the previous Princeton possession, Columbia’s Kevin Bulger missed a pair of free throws to leave the door open for the Tigers.

But on the other end, sophomore center Zach Finley’s ill-advised pass at the top of the three-point arc was intercepted by Lion forward Mack Montgomery, who raced down the floor for a layup to seal the win.

It was Princeton’s 12th turnover of the night and the team’s fifth in the final seven minutes. After the game, Johnson emphasized the importance of concentration.

“You gotta stay locked in,” Johnson said of the turnovers. “You see here tonight, we just kind of checked out a little bit.”

Gunn, who finished with 17 points on seven-for-13 shooting to lead the Tigers, echoed his coach’s frustration.

“I felt like we were the better team,” Gunn said, “but we didn’t have it in the last six minutes.”

Princeton indeed looked like the best team on the court during a number of stretches over the course of the weekend but could never quite come up with enough big plays down the stretch to make up for a pair of slow-starting first halves.

With an early road bump in their league season, the Tigers now know that there is no room for lapses the rest of the way. With Cornell steam-rolling through the first three weekends of Ivy competition, nothing short of perfection from here on out is likely to carry Princeton’s seniors to their first career postseason bid.