Unfortunately for the Tigers (6-23 overall, 3-11 Ivy League), little else was quite so easy on Senior Night at Jadwin Gym, as Princeton fell to Penn (13-18, 8-6), 60-47, in a sloppy, foul-plagued contest that closed out the Tigers’ losingest season of all time. Princeton ends the season in a three-way tie for last place in the Ivy League, its second-straight finish in the conference cellar.
After a pre-game tribute to Princeton’s quintet of four-year letter-winners, the seniors walked out onto the court in unison for the opening tip. Forwards and co-captains Kyle Koncz and Noah Savage were joined by guards Matt Sargeant, Kevin Steuerer and Zach Woolridge, and the classmates stayed on the court together for the first three minutes of the game.
The senior nostalgia left the Tigers with an undersized lineup, however, and Penn took advantage, scoring three quick buckets from close range to take a 6-2 advantage just over three minutes into the game.
“I felt like all the stuff before [during the Senior Night tribute], the adrenaline was going,” Savage said. “We’ve been ready for this since Sunday, but we came out a little flat at the beginning because of it, even though that’s counterintuitive.”
A youth infusion led by sophomore center Zach Finley pulled Princeton back into the game, with Finley powering inside for buckets on his first two offensive possessions. With 14 minutes, 10 seconds remaining in the first half, Savage swished a wide-open jumper to tie the game, 8-8, and the Tigers and Quakers kept things close from there.
Savage hit a pair of free throws to tie the game at 19 with 4:40 left to play in the half, and after Penn’s Tyler Bernardini missed a layup on the other end, Princeton pushed the ball downcourt for a fast-break three-pointer by Koncz that gave the Tigers their first — and largest — lead of the game. The field goal — Koncz’s only make of the night in his final game as a Tiger — pushed him into fifth place all-time on Princeton’s career list of three-pointers made, with 156. Savage goes into the record books just one spot behind his classmate, finishing his Tiger career with 155 threes.
Penn pushed back ahead for a 29-25 lead at intermission, and Princeton could look largely to its own mistakes as explanation for its deficit. The Tigers turned the ball over eight times during the first half, and though the Quakers sent them to the charity stripe 18 times during a physical opening 20 minutes, Princeton hit just 11 of its free-throw attempts.
Penn continued to build on its lead after halftime, jumping to a 38-31 advantage with 15:20 left to play. But on Senior Night, it was a pair of Tigers who will be coming back next year who kept Princeton in the game. Finley and junior point guard Jason Briggs displayed an encouraging chemistry, taking turns hitting each other on cuts to the basket as the Tigers pulled close. Finley and Briggs scored Princeton’s first 14 points after intermission and combined for 17 of Princeton’s 22 points in the second half.
With 8:01 remaining in the game, Steuerer drained a three-pointer to represent the senior class and pull the Tigers within a basket of the lead at 44-42. The Quakers responded emphatically, however, scoring the game’s next three baskets and closing out the game on a 16-5 run.
As the seconds ticked away with the outcome already decided, Johnson had a chance to get all five of his seniors back into the game and to send them off with some well-deserved ovations.
But Princeton’s overall effort was too riddled with mistakes, as 20 turnovers and anemic free-throw shooting cost the Tigers on a night when they actually outshot the Quakers, 42 to 40 percent.
“It’s always going to be frustrating to look back on my career and see how many times we lost,” Koncz said, “but there are things you’ve got to take, and I’m a better man because of it.”
And considering everything they went through together over their four years as Tigers, there weren’t four better men to join Koncz on the Senior Night floor.
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