Men's Basketball: Tigers hang on for victory

They don’t score often or quickly, but at least the men’s basketball team wins games, and the Tigers aren’t going to apologize for that.

“A couple years ago, and last year, we were fighting and scrapping for every game, and this year might be the same,” head coach Sydney Johnson ’97 said. “We’re not going to apologize for coming up on the winning side … We will try to carry this momentum to the next game. We don’t feel down or anything like that. There are some things we could do better, but we’ll take the win.”

Last night, scraping past Monmouth 46-42 in its third straight win of the season, Princeton (5-4 overall) proved that, as much as fans might enjoy the high-scoring antics of Lebron and Kobe, a strong defense is all you need to win games. Though the Tigers averaged an underwhelming 30.4 percent from the field, a strong defensive effort forced the Hawks into 33.3 percent shooting. Even worse were Monmouth’s three-point statistics — the Hawks went zero-for-11 throughout the game.

“It was a pretty sloppy game, but a win is a win,” freshman forward Ian Hummer said. “We came out pretty slow in the beginning, but we kind of picked it up a little offensively, and definitely defensively. It really showed that we could play good defense for the whole game and not just parts of it, and we need to take that into the games coming up in the season.”

The only reason Princeton managed to come away with the win was because of its outstanding defensive effort — the Tigers had 12 steals to Monmouth’s six, kept the Hawks’ number-one scorer Travis Taylor from getting to the basket and played scrappy overall defense. Leading Princeton’s defensive effort was senior center Pawel Buczak, who earned two steals and tied with junior guard Dan Mavraides for a team-high nine rebounds.

Initially, the only player who seemed capable of getting on the board was sophomore guard Douglas Davis, who scored the Tigers’ first 10 points of the game — the only points Princeton would earn for the beginning 15 minutes, 39 seconds of play. Additionally, after Davis had a good jumper to expand the Tigers’ lead to 10-5 at 13:29, Princeton went on a scoring drought for the next 9:08. The Tigers’ inability to score stemmed in part from the fact that they rarely drove to the basket, limiting the number of fouls they drew.

After those first 15 minutes, Davis got a little more support in scoring from his team — Mavraides had 11 points, and Hummer, adding to his strong rookie season, had eight. But even the top scorers struggled — Davis, who earned 20 points overall, was just 6-19 in field goals, and Mavraides went 3-12.

The question on every fan’s mind after last night’s game is how far this defense can carry the team once it reaches the Ivy League.

“I see us growing. I see us playing some good defense,” Davis said. “Defensively, we’ve grown more than anything. Like tonight, the shots aren’t always going to fall, but if we continue to play defense I think we can play with anybody. As long as we lock up on defense, the sky is the limit for our team. Our shots are going to fall, the offense is going to get open for some shots, and I just think we have the ability to play with the best competition out there. We just have to bring it every night.”