The Princeton men’s fun and fearless start to the 2021-22 season

Princeton men’s basketball’s Twitter hashtag reads “#MakeShots”.

So far, the 2021-22 Tigers men’s basketball team has done just that. 

The Tigers just completed their nonconference schedule with a 10-3 record, Princeton’s best start since the 2013-14 season.

What’s behind Princeton’s promising start?  The short answer is hot shooting.  In their first 13 games, the Tigers have canned more than 400 field goals, tops among Ivy teams.  The Tigers have been pinpoint precise from inside the arc, hitting better than 56% of their two-point shots, which is good enough to rank 18th in the nation.  From behind the arc, the Tigers have been downright deadly, draining more than 11 bombs per game, which ranks eighth nationally.  

Overall, this is not your father’s Princeton offense.  The Tigers are playing uptempo basketball, scoring a gaudy 82 points per game.  The Tigers haven’t been afraid to run and gun, converting turnovers and stops into fast break buckets with frequency.  In past generations of Princeton basketball, the offense was coached to work the shot clock until ball movement yielded a high percentage shot.  This season, the Tigers are so skilled at moving the ball, they find quality shots right away, and rarely have to wait until late in the shot clock to launch.  Moreover, the scoring has been incredibly balanced with four different players averaging better than double-digits in points per game. 

Leading the way has been Jaelin Llewellyn, the senior point guard and heralded four-star recruit from Mississauga, Ontario.  Llewellyn is Princeton’s field general and playmaker extraordinaire.  Early in his Princeton career, Llewellyn mostly earned his chops as a slashing dribble penetrator who could get to the rim no matter how well he was defended.  This season, Llewellyn has added three-point accuracy to his repertoire and enters Ivy play as a bona fide Ivy Player of the Year candidate.   

Llewellyn has been steady as a rock so far this season, but he has received plenty of support from his backcourt partner, Ethan Wright, a senior from Newton North High School in Massachusetts.  Wright has been a revelation this season, skying for rebounds and canning clutch three-pointers from every spot along the arc.  Against Minnesota, Wright grabbed an astounding 18 rebounds.  His average of 7.8 rebounds per game leads the team and ranks second in the Ivy League even though Wright is a 6’ 4” shooting guard, not a center or a power forward.  He’s also registering 14.8 points per game, which makes him Princeton’s second-leading scorer (behind Llewellyn) and the seventh-leading scorer in the Ivy League.  

The third dynamic threat on this Princeton team is Tosan Evbuomwan, a junior center/forward from Newcastle, England.  At 6’9”, Evbuomwan gives the Tigers a presence inside the paint. He can also dribble the ball coast-to-coast and is developing into an elite passer and playmaker around the basket. 

In Princeton’s epic overtime win against Drexel, Evbuomwan battled a duo of Dragon forwards, including fellow countryman Amari Williams.  Williams seemed to get the better of Evbuomwan for most of the second half until crunch time arrived and the Princeton center laid in a left-handed, highly contested shot for the game winner. Evbuomwan is third in scoring for the Tigers, tallying just shy of 14 points per game, which is eighth-highest in the league.  Yet his greatest contribution comes not from scoring but from the scoring opportunities he creates for his teammates.  Evbuomwan leads the Ivy League in assists with 5.5 helpers per game.  He’s also Princeton’s second-leading rebounder.  

So far, everyone is talking about Princeton’s torrid shooting as the key to the team’s early success. But after watching most of the Tigers’ nonconference contests (thank you, ESPN+), my assessment is that the winning has been about far more than sharpshooting. 

This team has played with a fearless grit in every game I’ve seen so far. 

It began with a satisfying win over South Carolina in the first round of the Asheville Championship in North Carolina.  The Tigers were not at all intimidated by South Carolina’s superior size as they gutted out a see-saw contest with a 66-62 triumph.  The win, which echoed another preseason tournament win over South Carolina in 1988, earned the Tigers a matchup with Big Ten powerhouse Minnesota in the championship game.  The Gophers sprinted to an eight-point halftime lead, but the Tigers clawed back and forced two overtimes before bowing, 87-80.  Though the Tigers lost the game, there was no doubt that these Tigers could scratch and claw against any opponent.

A week later, the Tigers traveled 3,000 miles to face another power-five opponent, Oregon State, who reached the Elite 8 in last year’s NCAA tournament.  The Tigers harnessed the karma of Corvallis to upset the Beavers, 81-80, in the first ever meeting between the two programs.  Princeton had previously prevailed on the same court in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in 1983, when future Oregon State coach Craig Robinson, Rich Simkus, and Gordon Enderle led the Tigers to a shocking upset win over No. 19 Oklahoma State.  The win over Oregon State on Nov. 21 was Princeton’s second triumph over a power-five opponent in nine days, again revealing the gritty character of this Tigers squad.  The Ivy Leaguers outmuscled and outhustled the bigger Beavers and responded to every counterpunch the home team mustered.

A month into the season, it had become clear that this Princeton squad is not only fearless on the court but also capable of having a lot of fun.  There is a joyfulness in the way this team plays, a quality that seems to derive from the tight chemistry among the coaches and players.  Mitch Henderson and his coaching crew have done a brilliant job of blending athleticism with scheme.  While the basic elements of Princeton’s offense remain intact – the backdoor cuts are plentiful and every player on the floor can and will launch three-point shots when they are available – there is something wonderfully new in this edition of Princeton basketball.  The players have the freedom to run the floor and make athletic plays, and they are doing so with great frequency.  

If there is a weakness evident in this team, it may be the defense.  The Tigers are yielding over 70 points per game, a statistic that likely is causing former coach Pete Carril to tear out whatever remaining threads he has on his head.  Yet I have seen the Tigers lock down when the game is on the line, as they did late in the game against the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) on Dec. 13.  UMBC of the American East Conference is the program that famously became the first No. 16 seed in history to upset a No. 1 seed in the men’s NCAA tournament.  With 7:25 left in the game, Princeton and UMBC were deadlocked at 71 in a game that was nip and tuck from the opening tip.  But Princeton shut down the Retrievers over a critical three-minute stretch and cruised to a 89-77 victory.

As the Tigers prepare to begin the Ivy League season, anything seems possible for this squad.  Although Yale remains the favorite and Cornell enters conference play with the best overall record, the Tigers have played the best basketball of any Ivy team so far by my reckoning.  The various ratings services, including Ken Pomeroy, seem to agree as Princeton is currently ranked the highest of any Ivy team entering conference play.  Their first, big Ivy test arrives on Jan. 2, as Princeton travels to Lavietes Pavilion to face their bitter rival, the Harvard Crimson.  A road win on the same floor where the Ivy League Tournament is scheduled to take place in March 2022 would do wonders for the Tigers’ hopes of winning their first league title since the 2016-17 season.  Regardless of how it plays out, Tiger fans can be assured this team will approach every contest with a fearlessness I haven’t seen since that 2016-17 squad cut down the nets down at the Palestra.