Men's Basketball: Tigers still playing for postseason

After losing a tight game against Harvard last Friday, Princeton bullied Dartmouth on the Big Green’s home court the following night. Seven Tigers scored eight points or more, with senior forward Patrick Saunders leading the pack. Princeton scored at a rate of 70.6 percent from deep, 65.4 percent overall, as it simply incinerated the scraps of defense that Dartmouth could muster.

Penn beat the Crimson that same evening to pull even with its opponents in the loss column, keeping the Tigers technically alive in the race for the title. However, Princeton will realistically be looking at other possibilities come the end of the season, such as the National Invitation Tournament, which operates on a ballot basis to select the best teams that are not playing in the NCAA men’s basketball championship or the College Basketball Invitational.

“We still have a lot to play for,” freshman forward Denton Koon insisted. “Mathematically, we’re not out of the league — but we have a lot to play for as far as still winning games in the league and possibly playing in other post-season tournaments, so everyone’s positive, and we’re just going to continue playing as well as we can.”

Princeton should fancy its chances in this weekend’s games since, although it lost to the Bulldogs in New Haven in February, the team has begun to replicate its title-winning form from last year. After a rocky 2-3 conference start, the Tigers have come alive in the confines of Jadwin Gymnasium, winning five of their last six games overall.

“We just want to keep improving,” head coach Mitch Henderson ’98 said in an interview with GoPrincetonTigers.com on Tuesday. “I think that there’s been marked improvement for us the last three weeks of the season. I don’t think we’ve played our best basketball yet, but we’re getting better.”

Princeton’s offense, in particular, has been central to the team’s renaissance. The players have converted over 50 percent of their field goal attempts in all but one of their last five contests and have made three-point shots at a rate of 47 percent or better in four of their last six.

“I think we just started to gel more as a team throughout the year,” Koon said, “and with the new situation I think finally things are starting to come together, and you’re right, we have been playing a lot better so it’s good.”

Yale comes into this matchup knowing that a solitary slipup by Harvard and a Penn loss could thrust the Bulldogs into the mix as a potential conference winner. The Bulldogs sit within striking range of the top two and remain a notch above the Tigers in the league standings.

On the other hand, the Bulldogs’ home success and relatively easy schedule so far hide a grim away record. Yale has played five conference games on the road, winning only against Columbia, Brown and Dartmouth, the teams that currently occupy the bottom three spots in the league. With a game at Penn to follow, the Bulldogs will need monumental effort and fortune to retain their league position, let alone a shot at the title.

Brown, which had just one league win this season before beating Columbia in its most recent game, should pose no significant threat to Princeton on Saturday evening. It hangs onto seventh place in the standings by virtue of the existence of a struggling Dartmouth squad, and the Bears have the worst point differential in conference play.

The Tigers play Yale at 7 p.m. tonight and Brown at 7:30 p.m. the following evening. On Tuesday, they host Penn for what could potentially be a thrilling game, with the Tigers certainly not wanting to concede an Ivy League title on home court.