BOSTON – There were plenty of mistakes, their shooting was inconsistent, and closing the game out was a mess. But in the end, it was a 68-64 road victory for Princeton over Harvard to open Ivy League play Saturday afternoon.
The Tigers will gladly take it and be on their way.
“The league is so even this year. Even this game, next weekend at Dartmouth, it’s going to be hard. On the margins, that’s where we’ve been really trying to get better,” Princeton coach Mitch Henderson said. “I think it’s kind of going to be whomever is needed on a night that’s going to get us through.”
The Crimson (5-9, 0-1) were coming off a game they trailed by double digits and nearly lost to Division III Bowdoin last week. But with the Ivy season starting and a sellout crowd at Lavietes Pavilion, Princeton (12-4, 1-0) knew it would see Harvard’s best and for most of the contest, it did.
After the first 8:05 of the game went without a whistle, the teams settled in and it was Harvard that grabbed a 23-19 lead with five minutes left in the first half thanks to some excellent defense, poor shooting by Princeton, and Chandler Pigge scoring 10 points – including a pair of three-pointers – in the early going.
But Caden Pierce, who was not quite 100 percent, but healthy enough to log 37 minutes, started to find his form. Xaivian Lee and Philip Byriel finally got threes to fall and when Pierce scored at the buzzer, the Tigers grabbed a 37-33 halftime lead they would never relinquish.
After forcing no turnovers in the game’s first 18 minutes against one of the most turnover prone teams in the country (Harvard was 306th nationally coming in), Princeton stepped up its defensive pressure coming out of the break. Veterans Thomas Batties II and Louis Lesmond (who hit three triples for the first time this season) made big shots to keep Harvard close for a while, but a 15-7 run over a five-minute span finally brought the Princeton lead to double digits, 58-47, with 7:44 remaining.
“We said we have to take care of the ball. No excuses, but both Caden and Xaivian were banged up,” Henderson said. “We were just a little sloppy, but in that middle part of the second half, we got it done.”
Still, the Crimson did not go away quietly. Back-to-back threes by Pigge and Lesmond immediately cut the advantage to five, but Princeton – with Lee, Pierce, and Dalen Davis all getting buckets – had it back at 64-53 with 2:30 left. It was still a slog from there to the finish for the Tigers, but they did enough to hold on by their proverbial fingernails.
“We’ve tried to place a premium on getting the ball in the paint,” Harvard assistant coach Mike Sotsky said. “We did that better in some ways, but I think that led to a couple turnovers well. But if you say we’re going to turn it over nine times, I think we’ll take that definitely.”
Robert Hinton, who played a very good second half in his first Ivy League contest, scored seven straight points (a stretch that also included a couple of bad Princeton turnovers) to bring Harvard within 66-64. But Dalen Davis calmly knocked down a pair of free throws with 10 seconds left to finally seal it.
Lee, despite battling the remnants of the flu, led all scorers with 22 points, including 3-for-5 from behind the arc. In addition to the Celtics scouts who came to Cambridge, Lee was extremely popular among fans after the game who wanted autographs and pictures.
No other Tiger finished in double figures, although six players had six points or more (Pierce had nine points and eight rebounds in his return). Harvard’s defensive gameplan was largely to run Princeton off the three-point line and it worked, the Tigers finishing 7-for-21 from behind the arc, with at least two of them the deep variety from Blake Peters. In all, Princeton finished at 1.08 points per possession in a very slow 63 possessions.
“They’re a very good three-point shooting team,” Sotsky said. “Peters specifically and Davis shoot it really well and don’t need much time to shoot. And they have other players that always take the right ones, so we thought that was a big key to limit their three-point attempts and their makes as a result, I thought we did a great job.”
Henderson is still fiddling with his rotations. Jackson Hicke was impressive again on the stat sheet scoring eight points and collecting five rebounds in just 17 minutes. Princeton has another long bus ride next Saturday to play Dartmouth (which beat Penn on Saturday) before playing Columbia at home on Jan. 20.
The Crimson nearly stole the game but still saw a lot of positives going forward. They had four players in double figures (Pigge 15, Hinton 14, Batties 13, Lesmond 12) and were 9-for-22 from behind the arc while turning the ball over just nine times. But they were only 12-for-28 from inside the arc, and their bench only played 31 minutes total. They have a big weekend coming up, at Brown and home for Penn, games they might need to have to be in contention for the Ivy League Tournament in March for the first time since 2019.
“I was really proud of our team’s fight,” Sotsky said. “Princeton’s obviously a very good basketball team and have a lot of veteran guys, so we were knew we were in for a major test, especially coming off of our last performance. But we met that challenge in a lot of ways and I think took a pretty big step forward defensively.”
Notes:
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Tommy Amaker left right after the final buzzer to get to South Carolina for a memorial service for his father, Harold, who died in November at age 86. It looks like Harold had an amazing life. It’s no wonder his son has always been so complimentary of the lessons he taught.
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Two of Harvard’s freshmen – Hinton and Ben Eisendrath – are from Los Angeles. Sotsky said after the game neither’s family has been directly affected by the wildfires in the area, but both have friends who have been and are watching closely.
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It was the seventh straight victory in the series for Princeton, which now leads 140-51 overall.