Two losses drop Tigers to last place

“Instead of being in the habit of closing out games, we’re in the habit of letting them slip away,” senior forward and co-captain Noah Savage said. “We just need to get better at that. It comes down to more discipline and being tougher.”

Princeton traveled to New England this weekend to face Brown (17-9, 9-3) and Yale (11-15, 5-7). At Brown, the Tigers dropped their fifth straight to the Bears, 64-57. Princeton kept it interesting against the Bulldogs, as it narrowed Yale’s lead to three with less than a minute remaining, but the Tigers came up short with a 67-59 loss. Savage and sophomore guard Nick Lake stepped up as leading scorers both nights.

In Providence on Friday night, Princeton’s greatest fault was inconsistency. After going 0-8 behind the arc in the first half, the Tigers picked it up in the second to knock down six threes. Princeton began the second half with a 16-8 run and built up a six-point lead but then allowed the Bears to score 14 points while the Tigers missed nine straight.

Lake came off the bench to hit two career highs with 16 points and seven rebounds. Savage also dropped 16, but sophomore guard Lincoln Gunn — one of the team’s top scorers — missed all 10 of his shots. Junior guard Jason Briggs and sophomore center Zach Finley added eight points each.

Senior forward and co-captain Kyle Koncz, who had been injured a week earlier in the Harvard game, returned as a starter but picked up only three points, less than a third of his average. He also dished out three assists and fouled out in the final minutes of the game.

On Saturday night in New Haven, Princeton hit just 34.1 percent of its field goals while allowing Yale to knock down 50 percent. The Tigers’ only lead of the night came 18 seconds into the first half after Koncz hit the game’s first shot to put them up 3-0.

Despite this, Princeton stayed competitive until the final seconds. Down by as many as 14 in the middle of the second half, the Tigers narrowed the Bulldogs’ lead to three with Briggs’ steal and three-pointer with under a minute left on the clock. Yale maintained composure, however, as it knocked down a layup along with three free throws for the eight-point winning margin.

Savage once again led the Tigers with 15 points, including four shots from behind the arc. He also fouled out for the sixth time this season with a little over two minutes remaining. Lake added 14 points and picked up his fifth foul with 15 seconds left. Briggs repeated his solid performance from the night before with nine points.

Neither Lake nor Briggs started either game this weekend, but both provided significant contributions off the bench.

“Those guys work really hard at practice and haven’t been given many opportunities in the games until recently,” Savage said. “We’re really happy that they’re producing like that. It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that those guys did well because they both work really hard, and they’re both really tough guys.”

With three home games left on the schedule, it will be interesting to see if the Tigers can reverse their nine-game losing streak and improve on their 2-12 Ivy record from 2006-07. Princeton is currently in competition with Harvard and Dartmouth — who both hold 3-9 league records — for the bottom spot in the league standings.