Men's Basketball: Jadwin hosts battle of unbeatens

Cornell (14-6 overall, 4-0 Ivy League), the lone Ivy League team with a longer winning streak than Princeton’s (7-8, 2-0), visits Jadwin Gymnasium on Friday.

“Everyone is ready to go in practice,” sophomore guard Dan Mavraides said. “We’re especially excited to play Cornell; there’s no other team we’d rather play. Everyone’s excited, ready to go and confident.”

That confidence manifested itself in the Tigers’ first Ivy League road trip, which resulted in a pair of impressive wins against Dartmouth and Harvard.

Mavraides led the charge for Princeton, pouring in 35 points over the two contests, an achievement that netted him Ivy League Player of the Week honors. Still, if anything stands out about the way this Tiger team has played lately, it’s been the squad’s versatility and balance: Five different players scored eight points or more against the Crimson.

“I think in general it’s the whole team,” junior guard and captain Nick Lake said of his team’s improved play. “It’s all the coaches and all the players. We’re more comfortable playing with each other.”

Earlier in the season, Princeton could never seem to fit the pieces together. The Tigers would commit crucial turnovers or fail to execute their plays at the end of games, errors that ultimately resulted in a number of painful losses.

But they learned from those mistakes.

“The Ivy League is very important, but the preseason was really important for us to prepare for it,” Lake said. “We made a lot of mistakes, and we learned from them. We’re a much better team now.”

Mistakes were in short order last Saturday against Harvard, while execution was the norm. There were assists on 18 of 25 field goals, but only six turnovers, an impressive 3:1 ratio.

“We’ve been hitting shots and making the big ones that we need to hit,” Mavraides said. “We’re getting used to playing with each other. We’re kind of a young team, we have a lot of freshmen getting a lot of minutes, and it just comes down [to] getting used to playing with each other. The more we play together as a team, the more everyone is gaining confidence and improving their own games.”

The hot start in 2009 has inevitably led to cautiously excited chatter about a potential lead in the Ivy League standings that the Big Red currently possesses.

If Princeton is hot right now, then Cornell is flat-out scalding. The Big Red has a number of impressive streaks in the works, including one of nine straight wins and another of seven straight victories by double-digit margins.

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Perhaps the most impressive run is Cornell’s 19 consecutive Ivy League wins, dating back to last year’s 14-0 season-long romp through the conference.

The Big Red is coming off a pair of blowout victories over Brown and Yale. Cornell dominated both games offensively and defensively, winning 90-58 and 64-36, respectively.

A threesome of All-Ivy players forms the Big Red’s nucleus: guard Louis Dale (14.8 points per game, 3.6 assists per game), forward Ryan Wittman (18.7 points per game, 3.8 rebounds per game) and center Jeff Foote (12.3 points per game, 7.0 rebounds per game).

With Cornell doing so many things right, there isn’t really any one player or one part of the game for the Tigers to focus on. Instead, they will attempt to play their game to perfection.“We’ve got to play our game. That’s what has been working for us,” Lake said. “If we focus on defense, and we’re able to get stops, we’ll be in the game.”

It will be important for Princeton, however, not to get too caught up in the hoopla surrounding the matchup of Ivy League unbeatens on Friday night. The Tigers will take on Columbia (7-11, 2-2) on Saturday night.

Columbia also played Yale and Brown last weekend, and it swept both games. Defense was critical in those contests, as the Lions held the Bulldogs to 42 points, only 15 of which came in the second half. Columbia forced 18 turnovers against the Bears.

Offensively, forward Jason Miller has been driving the Lions recently. Miller had 16 and 14 points against Yale and Brown, respectively. He leads the Ivy League in field-goal percentage at 62 percent.

The Lions have already been beaten by the Big Red this season.

“The main thing this year that the coaches have been pushing for is the focus is on us, on our team,” Mavraides said. “We go over scouting reports for both teams, we spend the same amount of time on each team, but the focus is on us. We’ve just been working on our games, working hard on defense.”

This weekend should reveal whether that focus has turned the Tigers into serious title contenders. The players know that they haven’t accomplished anything yet, as last year’s results show.

“Everyone’s really excited,” Mavraides said. “I mean, we have a good little streak going, we’re playing well, but we haven’t done anything yet; 2-0 is nothing different from last year.”

Indeed, Princeton beat Dartmouth by a score of 57-53 and Harvard by a convincing score of 68-54 to open the Ivy League season last year, only to finish 3-11 in the conference.

Mavraides noted that the Tigers still can improve.

“We’re getting better,” Mavraides said. “But I don’t think we’ve reached our potential at all yet.”

The race to the top heats up this weekend.