Men's Basketball: Shooting woes upset Princeton

At the brink of a one-point loss in the final seconds, senior guard Doug Davis just couldn’t do it again.

With the men’s basketball team down by one to Elon with 13.6 seconds left in the game, head coach Mitch Henderson ’98 reinserted the senior guard into the game, hoping for the same sort of last-second heroics that pulled the Tigers over Harvard and into the NCAA Tournament last March.

“I knew that at some point they would kick me the ball, and I was just trying to set my feet up before the buzzer went off,” Davis said.

Davis’s three-point attempt bounced off the rim and backboard as the buzzer rang, and the Tigers (1-3) suffered a close 56-55 loss to the Phoenix (3-1). But in the end, it won’t be that missed shot that haunts the Tigers as they contemplate this loss to a Southern Conference team that came into the game 1-4 all time against Ivy League opponents. Instead, Princeton will be most afflicted by the 22 it missed in a dismal first half.

The Tigers made just 10 field goals out of 32 attempts in the first period for a 31.3 shooting percentage. Junior forward Ian Hummer, who entered the game averaging a team-best 17.3 points per game, shot just 2-14 from the floor before halftime.

“Most of my shots were shots I should have taken, around the rim, shots I usually make,” Hummer said. “There were three or four that I forced myself that I should have passed out.”

While the team made up for it somewhat with nine offensive rebounds, including three off the bench from freshman forward Denton Koon, Princeton often failed to convert on these extra chances as well.

Elon, by contrast, shot 12-23 from the floor and was shooting above 60 percent for the first 15 minutes of the half. In particular, the Tigers couldn’t quite figure out what to do with guard Drew Spradlin, who went 3-3 from the field to lead his team with nine total points in the first half. At first, the 5-foot-11-inch Davis guarded the 6-foot-5 Spradlin, but neither sophomore guard T.J. Bray nor senior forward Patrick Saunders, two longer defenders, had much more success shutting Spradlin down.

Princeton headed into the locker room down 33-25, a merciful eight-point deficit considering its shooting performance. The Phoenix quickly extended its lead to 10 before the Tigers launched one of their two major runs of the second half in a bizarre play.

After Elon was called for three non-shooting fouls in a row while up 37-29 around three minutes into the half, Saunders missed a long jumper. Hummer grabbed the offensive rebound, got fouled on the jump-shot attempt and sank both free throws.

Though the Tigers were pleased to break the Phoenix’ momentum, the play was emblematic of their struggles throughout the game; it took four separate shot clocks for Princeton to score two points, and even so it was off free throws.

But converting on this play gave Princeton momentum. On the other end, Koon blocked Spradlin’s jumper and Bray brought the ball down the court. Saunders’ layup pulled Princeton to within four, the closest it had been since the middle of the first half, to continue a 7-0 run.

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Down by three with 12 minutes left, junior forward Mack Darrow found the open lane and dished inside to Koon, whose dunk brought the Tigers to within one point, ignited the crowd and appeared to give Princeton the momentum it needed.

Koon finished the game with five offensive rebounds and seven points in 19 minutes, though he shot just 1-for-4 from the foul line.

“We’ve got to get him in there,” Henderson said of Koon’s performance. “He’s helping us. I would have liked to have seen his free throws go in. I saw him around the rim. He’s doing competitive things to keep us in the game.”

The Princeton defense held Elon to without a single point in the final four minutes, but the Tigers' 6-0 run in that time span fell just short. In the play that brought the hosts back within three points with two minutes, 32 seconds remaining, Davis picked off a pass and launched it down the court to Hummer. Hummer missed the layup, but Koon got the offensive rebound and tipped it in.

However, Princeton did not score for almost another two minutes, stifling this momentum. Despite a strong comeback effort that helped them pull to within one point four times in the second half, the Tigers were never able to tie it.

“It wears on you when you’re trying to come back, but we can’t use that as an excuse tonight,” Davis said. “We’ve done that in the past, we’ve come back. They played well, they beat us.”

Henderson said he was impressed with the Tigers' defense — which limited the Phoenix to just 23 second-half points — but the offense just couldn’t capitalize. Hummer shot just 7-14 from the line in the half, and the team shot just 15-29 overall.

“We had many opportunities to get back in the game, and we just couldn’t get a lead,” Henderson said. “It was unfortunate with the opportunities that we had that we couldn’t pull away. Our defense was so good, but that’s not good enough to win the game.”