Princeton plays host to Ivy League champion Big Red

While sporting an 0-16 record in games played everywhere else, Princeton (5-21 overall, 2-9 Ivy League) has been a far superior team at home this season, managing a .500 record. The Tigers will have their work cut out for them this weekend as they try to push their Jadwin record past the break-even point, with two of the Ivy League’s top three teams coming to town.

Columbia (14-13, 7-5) visits first tonight, having won six of its past eight contests to move into third place in the Ancient Eight standings. After getting off to a slow start in conference play, the Lions used an early-February home sweep of Princeton and Penn to jumpstart their recent surge.

The Tigers’ Saturday opponent, Cornell (20-5, 12-0), has encountered no such ups and downs in Ivy play. The Big Red clinched its first league title since 1988 with a blowout win over Harvard last weekend, and with a sweep of its final two games this weekend, it would complete the first undefeated Ivy campaign since Penn’s perfect 2002-03 season.

Princeton, meanwhile, is fighting to end its nine-game losing streak and avoid its second-straight last-place finish in the Ancient Eight. The Tigers are currently half a game behind Dartmouth and Harvard, with three games left to move out of the cellar.

This weekend’s matchups will force Princeton to revisit the point in its season when things started to slip away. Back on Feb. 8, the Tigers were 2-0 in the Ivy League and had a sweep on their minds going into their New York road trip against the Lions and Big Red. Instead, Princeton dropped both games and fell into the tailspin that has plagued them ever since.

Columbia bedeviled the Tigers with scorching three-point shooting and a scrappy second-half comeback during a 58-53 win. Leading by four points with just over nine minutes left in the game, Princeton went scoreless over a decisive eight-minute stretch and watched as its defense repeatedly failed to shut down the Lions’ perimeter marksmen. Columbia shot eight-of-14 from downtown for the game, led by three three-pointers each from guards KJ Matsui and Niko Scott.

The Tigers also hit eight threes against the Lions but on 27 attempts. In Ivy play, Columbia has limited opponents to under 28 percent shooting from beyond the arc, the best in the league. Friday night’s rematch between the two teams could very well be decided on the perimeter.

To top Cornell on Saturday, Princeton will have to excel in more than just one area. The Big Red boasts one of the most deadly offensive attacks in recent Ivy memory, leading the conference in field-goal percentage, three-point percentage and free-throw percentage, as well as — not surprisingly — points per game.

Forward Ryan Wittman — last year’s Ivy League Rookie of the Year and the son of Minnesota Timberwolves’ head coach Randy Wittman — remains a favorite to win Ivy League Player of the Year honors, leading Cornell in scoring with 15.3 points per game. Fellow sophomore Louis Dale, a five-foot, 11-inch guard, is right behind him at 13.1 points per game and is the reigning Ivy League Player of the Week.

Wittman and Dale are surrounded by a quartet of other Cornell standouts who each average more than seven points per game, including guard Adam Gore, who took home Ivy League Rookie of the Year honors two seasons ago before missing all but one game last year with a knee injury.

With Princeton going up against such a bevy of Big Red stars just one night after taking on the streaking Lions, the Jadwin Gym advantage may well have its work cut out for it.