Men's Basketball: No looking back as Henderson ’98 takes charge

How do you follow a historic season?

That is the question facing the men’s basketball team this winter. Coming off a 25-7 campaign that included the program’s first Ivy League title in seven years, two comeback victories in the final week of the season, a buzzer-beating playoff victory and a last-second loss in the NCAA Tournament, it seems almost impossible for this season’s group to match that excitement. The 2011-12 Tigers, led by new head coach Mitch Henderson ’98, will instead form their own identity in an increasingly competitive conference.

“This is a totally different team from last year,” senior guard and co-captain Doug Davis said. “We’re Princeton, but don’t expect last year’s team.”

Davis, of course, provided the signature moment of 21st-century Princeton basketball last March when he hit an off-balance jumper as time expired to beat Harvard and send the Tigers dancing. But the odds are stacked against a repeat championship in 2012, as the rest of the league keeps getting better and better.

The Crimson returns all of its players from last season and adds a highly-touted group of freshmen, becoming the clear favorite to win the Ivy League and reach its first NCAA Tournament in nearly 70 years. And the rest of the conference will be no cakewalk — Penn and Cornell are on the rise, and Yale, featuring two forwards that played for national teams this summer, tied Princeton for second place in the preseason media poll.

Eight of last year’s 10 first- and second-team All-Ivy players are back this season. The two exceptions? Dan Mavraides ’11 and Kareem Maddox ’11, the proverbial heart and soul of Princeton’s memorable run.

“We miss two really good guys, and it’s really hard to pick up the slack from those two,” Davis said. “But we’ll find other players — the coaching staff is doing a good job of that — and we all have to step up in huge ways to make up for the loss of Dan and Kareem.”

Henderson said he was confident that others would fill the role left by the two graduates — who are now both playing professionally in Europe — citing the prior development of Mavraides and Maddox as examples.

“Kareem and Dan graduated; they were 40 percent of our offense, and both of them were leaders in their own way, but neither of them played much when they were young guys,” he said. “Our personnel just improves, and guys step in. If we’re still talking about those guys [during the season], we’re in trouble.”

Junior forward Ian Hummer, who averaged 13.8 points per game last season and was named second-team All-Ivy, and Davis, the first Tiger since 1990 to begin his senior campaign with more than 1,000 career points, will still be featured on offense. But those stars already shared a high-scoring load last year, leaving little room to expand their production.

Princeton will need a breakout player on that end of the court — much as Maddox was last season — and junior center Brendan Connolly will have the first chance to fill that role. Connolly was one of Princeton’s most efficient offensive players as a sophomore playing limited minutes — especially in the playoff victory over Harvard in which he contributed nine key points on perfect shooting.

“Brendan Connolly — it’s time for him, in the line of Princeton centers that have a better junior year,” Henderson said. “Where Kareem touched the ball [last year], it should hopefully go to Brendan.”

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“Brendan’s probably the toughest guy to guard in practice; it’s real hard to guard him,” senior forward and co-captain Patrick Saunders said. “He has the ability to step up, and I think he will for sure. He gets better every day in practice.”

Whether or not Connolly makes that leap, Henderson will not have to search hard for options inside. A remarkable 11 Tigers stand at 6’7” or taller, including Saunders, junior forward Mack Darrow and junior forward Will Barrett, who took part-time roles in a crowded frontcourt rotation last year but should be capable of playing more minutes this season. Henderson also often mentioned freshman forward Denton Koon as the rookie most capable of playing right away.

With so much size on the roster, Princeton will likely maintain one of last season’s biggest strengths — rebounding. The Tigers were the best team on both the offensive and defensive glass in conference play, and for the entire year, they grabbed 73.4 percent of opponents’ misses, ranking fifth among 335 Division I teams.

“I’d like to play big; we rebound the ball better when we’re bigger,” Henderson said. “But when you go big, can you still guard teams that are small? We’ve really been trying to study what lineup we can play that gives us the most success on offense and defense.”

Beyond Davis, however, the roster is thin on true guards. Junior Jimmy Sherburne will get more opportunities at the point, and sophomore T.J. Bray played a competent backup role as a rookie, but the Tigers may also try some more creative alignments. Even with a big lineup, Princeton can score from the outside — Saunders and Darrow both shot better than the D-I average on three-pointers last year, and Barrett and Hummer will spend more time on the perimeter — but the Tigers have yet to resolve the issue of ballhandling, which Henderson said will initially be done “by committee.”

As he juggles his rotation early on, all eyes will be on Henderson, who is a head coach for the first time after assisting Bill Carmody on the Northwestern sideline for 11 years. The four-year Princeton point guard replaces former teammate Sydney Johnson ’97, who endeared himself to players and fans until he surprisingly left for Fairfield less than three weeks after the NCAA Tournament loss.

“You’re always shocked when your head coach leaves for another school,” Hummer said. “We kind of saw a couple signs coming, which kind of prepared us for the worst. But Coach Henderson’s a great fit, I think. The guys love him.”

Saunders said it was “too early to tell” whether or not the coaching change would affect the team’s style of play, but the players agreed that adjusting to Henderson — who worked in a similar system under Carmody, a former Princeton head coach — has not been difficult.

“They were Tigers, just like us, so they expect the same things out of us,” Davis said. “That was an easy transition, because we knew what Coach Johnson expected out of us, and Coach Henderson expects the same things.”

When Princeton opens play against Wagner on Saturday, it will test a 15-game home win streak, which included three overtime victories last season and three other conference games decided by five points or less. In any venue, the Tigers have been difficult to beat recently — the program’s record over the last two seasons is 47-16.

“For the junior class ... a history of winning is one thing, and we have that, but a current history of winning is the way to go,” Henderson said. “These guys don’t know any other way, and that’s the way it should be.”