What promised to be a chaotic weekend for the Tigers got off to a troubling start when the head coach had to leave the team after a failed COVID-19 test.
Mitch Henderson handed the reins to his trusted assistant Brett MacConnell, saying, “I’m sure you’ll think of something.” Once before MacConnell was pressed into service, at Dartmouth a few years ago when Henderson was laid low almost at game time. MacConnell brought the Tigers home an overtime winner.
“At least this time I had 12 hours notice,” MacConnell said prior to Friday night’s visit to Newman Arena. “In Hanover it was about 12 seconds!”
After a very tough and not entirely unexpected loss to Brian Earl’s club, Princeton headed out into the bitter upstate New York winter on the way to Manhattan for a Saturday night visit to Columbia’s Lions.
MacConnell’s career mark of 1-1 was squarely on the line.
Remembering Henderson’s words of encouragement, MacConnell devised what he felt was an airtight plan for victory: make 16 threes! Executing the game plan to perfection, the Tigers did can 16 bombs, a season high on a whopping 42 attempts, and rolled over the Lions, 85-63. Henderson is feeling better already. MacConnell is now 2-1 lifetime.
The Lions started strongly, mirroring their first half performance at Jadwin a month ago. Behind freshman sensation Geronimo Rubio De La Rosa, Columbia took an early 8-0 lead before Ethan Wright had his warmups off. When he did report for duty, the results were swift and stunning.
A Wright three-pointer put the Tigers on the board and ignited a 12-0 run, to which the senior from Newton Centre, Mass., contributed nine points. Wright’s grandfather, a Tiger legend in the 1950s, was surely smiling in heaven. So was his mother Ellen (DeVoe) back home, a fantastic player for Princeton in the 1980s.
Wright’s night was just getting started. He was on fire throughout the contest, registering 27 points (after 26 in Ithaca) on 10-for-19 from the field, 7-for-14 from beyond the arc. Senior Drew Friberg canned five of 13 attempts from deep, adding another field goal, to join Wright in double figures with 17.
Sophomore Ryan Langborg shook off recent shooting doldrums to can three from deep on the way to 13 points. Slow-starting Jaelin Llewellyn joined the party late but still managed 10 points and nine rebounds. Sophomore Tosan Evbuomwan had a tough time with the Lions’ big and strong frontcourt duo of Patrick Harding and Ike Nweke (Ike’s sister, first-year player Chet, is coming into her own as a member of Carla Berube’s brigade.) Evbuomwan contributed on the glass with 11 caroms, while adding to his league lead in assists with six.
Princeton led by 16 at the break. In the second half, the Tigers continued their hot shooting, never allowing the Lions to mount any kind of assault on the lead. MacConnell put freshman Blake Peters on the floor with a minute left under orders to complete the game plan. He did, canning a long-range bomb at the 59-second mark.
This was a consequential weekend in terms of jockeying for position in the race for a berth in the Ivy League Tournament. Yale (7-1) and Penn (7-2) are clearly in the driver’s seats at this point. The Tigers, at 6-2, are very much in the thick of things. Harvard and Cornell, with four losses each, are locked in a death struggle for the fourth slot. Wednesday’s Harvard-Yale tussle in Cambridge is a “game of the year” contest for the Crimson. Tommy Amaker’s charges had a shot to beat Yale earlier this evening but fell just short in a terrific comeback effort.
Brown remains in the conversation, but with six losses and a very narrow win at home against Dartmouth, it would appear that Bruno is fading. Dartmouth needs to run off six wins in a row to get in the battle, but even that might not be enough.
At first glance, Tosan Evbuomwan’s and Jaelin Llewellyn’s performances look sub-par in this game. Tosan only scored 7 points and Llewellyn tallied only 10. Yet the duo combined for 11 assists, more than all Columbia players combined! Tosan had a lot to do with Princeton’s prodigious 3-point shooting. When Columbia collapsed on him, he dished to the open long-range shooter. I thought he was very unselfish against Columbia yet still played a huge role in facilitating a much-needed bounce back win for the Tigers.