Men's Basketball: Davis’ 23 points set tone in victory

After arresting a four-game losing streak and proving that its offense is capable of keeping up with the competition, the men’s basketball team may have a new strategy for winning games: Get the ball to sophomore guard Doug Davis.

“[Davis] has put his time in, and he is playing, [but] there is no real weight on his shoulders,” head coach Sydney Johnson ’97 said. “We obviously have situations where he is going to get shots, and we want to put him in those situations … Doug had a couple of tremendous passes just driving it in and then kicking it to other guys, so I like that balance, but I definitely want him to be confident in his shot because that’s a great strength that he brings to our team.”

A key factor in the Tigers’ (3-4 overall) 62-48 win Sunday night against Lafayette (4-5) was Davis, who led the offense with 23 points, including seven three-pointers — a feat only three other Princeton players in history have achieved.

We have all just been getting some shots in at practice, and it is helping us a whole lot,” Davis said. “I’m making some shots right now, and it feels good … The pressure is not on me. I just let the game come to me … and know that when it’s my time to step up, I won’t get distracted.”

In fact, it was only once Davis started lighting up the board that the rest of the offense started finding the bottom of the net more often as well. After the Leopards surged to a lead midway through the first half — thanks largely to their skill in the paint — Davis made a jumper that cut the deficit to 13-18 and seemed to spark something in junior guard Dan Mavraides and sophomore forward Patrick Saunders.

Though both were relatively quiet during the first half, the second period saw them not only controlling the game more, but also sinking more shots.

“The difference was just making shots,” Mavraides said. “We’ve put in a lot of work shooting the ball at practice, and I think we just felt comfortable in this game and just knocked them down.”

If Mavraides and Saunders hadn’t stepped up, though, it is questionable whether the Tigers’ second string would have been able to pick up the slack. Though relying heavily on starters got Princeton the win, getting zero points from the bench does not reflect well on the Tigers’ depth.

“We needed a win,” Johnson said. “The bench did not play, but the bench helped us prepare for this victory. The bench helped us get ready for this game, and we talked about that. Sometimes you are going to get to play, and sometimes you’re not.”

Princeton averaged 47.8 percent in field goals and 52.2 percent in shots from outside the perimeter — numbers that are remarkable not only because the Tigers had field-goal completion rate of just 28.8 percent last weekend against Rutgers, but also because of how poorly they shot in the opening minutes.

Fans of the Orange and Black might have thought that there could not be a slower game than the Tigers’ match-up against Rutgers last week — in which the two teams combined for less than 20 points in the first 10 minutes of play — but the Lafayette game proved that assumption wrong.

Neither offense was exactly lighting up the board in the beginning of the first half — Princeton made just six of its 18 shots, while Lafayette clearly struggled with the Tigers’ man-on-man defense, sinking two-of-11 shots. While Princeton had a tenuous 8-4 lead with 11 minutes left on the clock, the game was undeniably ugly.

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“[Playing prettily] is probably the least of our concerns, to be honest,” Johnson said. “We had a tough stretch [of games], and I think when you’re grinding things out like these guys did, it might not always look pretty. Even against Rutgers, I told them that nobody is really going to talk positively about that game because we came up short … I thought they were tremendous defensively, and I didn’t want them to go too long without knowing that. Today, they tried to continue that effort, and it was good. Not pretty, but good.”

With plenty of preseason still left, the Tigers have time to smooth out their offense and develop some of the younger players. One thing that Princeton can rely on heading into Ivy League play, however, is its defense.

The Tigers smothered the Leopard shooters, holding their on-court rivals to a 38.8 field-goal percentage and allowing them to make just four-of-12 three-pointers. Even with Davis’ hot-shooting, the defense is clearly the most effective and lethal aspect of this year’s squad.