Men's Basketball: Tigers hold off Hawks

Its roster still has the same players, and the team faced the same opponent. The result, however, was drastically different. That was the story Wednesday night at Jadwin Gymnasium, as the men’s basketball team held off a late rally from the Mountain Hawks to win 73-64.

Princeton (4-8 overall) continued its new-year trend of finishing games instead of allowing itself to be finished. Early in the second half, the Tigers built a comfortable cushion. Sophomore guard Dan Mavraides knocked down back-to-back three-pointers to give Princeton an 11-point lead over Lehigh (10-4) with 13 minutes, 42 seconds remaining in the game. With 5:44 left, however, Mountain Hawks forward Zahir Carrington sank a jumper to close the gap to four points.

“Basketball is a game of runs,” Mavraides said. “Unless you totally wipe a team out, they’re going to make a run. We wanted to stop their runs and keep them to a minimum.”

The Tigers accomplished that mission with aplomb. Holding a narrow lead in the waning minutes for the second consecutive game, Princeton stood firm and made the plays needed to prevent Lehigh from gaining momentum and stealing the game.

Shortly after Carrington’s jumper, Mavraides found junior center Zach Finley in the paint, and Finley made a tough little floater to push the lead back to six at 53-47.

After Carrington converted on a pair of free throws to pull Lehigh back within four, junior center Pawel Buczak found sophomore guard Marcus Schroeder on a backdoor cut for a pretty layup. On the Mountain Hawks’ ensuing possession, Mavraides made yet another big play, securing a steal and racing down the floor for a layup attempt. When the ball did not go down, freshman guard Doug Davis was right there to clean up and put Princeton up 57-49.

Lehigh would close to within five on several other occasions, but it could get no closer. At the end of the game, when it mattered, the Tigers were executing well.

“I think you draw confidence from actually making the play after you’ve made it,” Johnson said. “When the ball actually goes in, we feel better, this is good. We can recall that moment the next time it comes up. They need the results in the game to get some of that confidence.”

Each score down the stretch seemed to galvanize Princeton further. It looked like a completely different team from the squad that let a number of late leads slip away earlier this season.

“This is a really big win in terms of preparing ourselves for league. We have a big break now, and it’s a good feeling knowing we can beat good teams with good records,” sophomore forward Kareem Maddox said. “I think we had some trouble closing games in the past, especially this year. It’s nice to know that we can close.”

Maddox was a huge part of that closing effort, finishing with eight points on two-of-five shooting and two assists.

Perhaps his most important contribution, however, was two spectacular blocks on Carrington, the same Mountain Hawks player that torched the Tigers for 27 points last year in Princeton’s first loss to Lehigh since 1930.

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Last year’s game was an abysmal one for the Tigers, one that certainly weighed on their minds leading up to the game.

“I talked to these guys about last year, and I think they had a feeling about how I felt about last year’s game, and I wasn’t happy with how it played out,” Johnson said of last year’s 68-49 defeat at Stabler Stadium. “It may have factored into our preparation.”

Carrington mustered 20 points Wednesday night, but he needed 16 shots to get there, and he sank only six. It was a tribute to a solid Princeton defense that has been overlooked at times this year.

“I think we’ve been playing pretty solid defense much of the year, to be honest,” Johnson said.

Lehigh connected on only 31.5 percent of its shots over the course of the night. It was a stark contrast to the Tigers’ offense, which knocked down 47.8 percent of its attempts. Even more importantly, Princeton got to the charity stripe, something it has been doing very poorly — if at all — this season. Tiger opponents have shot an average of 9.5 more free throws per game this season. On Wednesday night, however, Princeton made 20 of 28 attempts.

“I think our guys were more attentive to driving the ball and getting some offensive rebounds that might draw some fouls,” Johnson said.

Though the Mountain Hawks got free-throw attempts, many of these were at the very end of the game when the Tigers had a few ill-advised fouls on Lehigh’s three-point shots.

During back-to-back wins to open 2009, Princeton has looked like a team that is starting to build some confidence. While the first victory was against a struggling UNC Greensboro team, Wednesday’s victory was over a squad that had won five in a row and had beaten Rutgers — a team that the Tigers lost to earlier in the season — as well as Columbia and Dartmouth.

“It’s great. We don’t have to be miserable for two weeks,” Johnson said. “These guys can actually focus on their academics, which is important, and not feel this burden that we can’t turn the corner. It’s a tremendous win for us in terms of just getting confidence.”

Mavraides led Princeton with 21 points and filled up the stat sheet with five rebounds, two assists, three steals and only one turnover.

Davis chipped in 14, including a clutch three-pointer down the stretch. Schroeder, who regained a starting role for the game, contributed another 10, along with eight boards.