The Princeton Tigers men’s basketball team entered Friday night’s contest against the Cornell Big Red with two unusual streaks on the line. The Tigers hadn’t missed a free throw in two full games. They also hadn’t won a road game the entire season.
Only one streak ended, and it wasn’t the one Mitch Henderson’s club was hoping for as the Big Red streaked past Princeton, 87-64, at Newman Arena in Ithaca.
Cornell won the opening tip and scored right away when Jake Fiegen drove to the cup and finished a layup to give the Big Red a 2-0 lead.
After a missed jumper by Dalen Davis on Princeton’s first possession, a quick trigger triple by Adam Hinton gave the Big Red a 5-0 lead. Cornell never looked back from there as the Big Red coasted to a wire-to-wire win over the Tigers.
Princeton’s road woes continued tonight in the front end of a back-to-back weekend for both teams.
The Tigers are now 0-12 in games played away from Jadwin Gymnasium this season and winless in their last six contests at Newman Arena.
The win lifted Cornell (10-9, 3-3 Ivy) into a tie for third place in the Ivy standings with Princeton and Dartmouth.
After dropping its first three contests in conference play, the Big Red has now won three straight Ivy clashes and are back in the thick of the race to qualify for Ivy Madness.
Cornell’s potent offense, sixth best in the nation in scoring, lived up to billing in this one as the Big Red shot a sizzling 64% on 35-for-55 shooting from the field.
All five of Cornell’s starters tallied in double-digits, including Fiegen who led all scorers with 17 points on a very efficient 7-for-10 shooting effort from the field. The 6-foot-4 senior from Wilmete, Ill. also hauled down four rebounds for the Big Red.
“They were sharing [the ball] beautifully,” Cornell coach Jon Jaques told ESPN+ after the game. “Especially in the second half, we were making the right play. No one was trying to be a hero.”
Big Red players dished the ball for 22 assists on 35 buckets while committing only 12 turnovers.
But as efficient as the Big Red were on offense, the real story of the game was Cornell’s defense, which has been spotty at times this season.
“I’m so proud of the guys defensively,” said Jaques. “I think our defensive issues the first few games were pretty obvious and they went back to the drawing board a little bit and tried to figure out what would be great for our team and they’re buying in.”
Cornell’s collapsing defense kept Jackson Hicke, Princeton’s leading scorer, in check most of the game, although Hicke did manage to tally 13 points on 4-for-10 shooting in 27 minutes of playing time.
Princeton’s other big guns, Dalen Davis and Jack Stanton, never got on track.
Stanton came up empty on the score sheet in the first half, missing both of his field goal attempts and finishing with only two points in 19 minutes, his lowest output of the season.
Davis, who averages a team-high 16.4 points per game, didn’t fare much better, scoring only six points on 1-for-6 shooting in 23 minutes of playing time.
In other bad news the Orange and Black, Princeton’s astounding streak of made free throws came to an end tonight, but not until late in the first half.
After eight consecutive conversions from the charity stripe had pushed the Princeton streak to 46 straight made free throws, Malik Abdullahi missed the front-end of a one-and-one with 1:53 to play in the first half.
The Tigers (7-14, 3-3 Ivy) will lick their wounds, endure a long bus ride to Manhattan and look to register their first road win of the campaign Saturday evening at Columbia.
Cornell will host Penn Saturday at Newman Arena in a game that tips at 6 p.m.
A Cornell win coupled with a Harvard loss against first place Yale could boost the Big Red into sole possession of second place in the Ivy standings as we reach the halfway mark of the 2025-26 Ivy season.