Home of the Roundball Poets
James Jones’ team is growing up quickly before his eyes – both out of skill and necessity.
With leading scorer and senior guard John Poulakidas still sidelined with a foot injury, senior guard Yassine Gharram off the team and junior forward Casey Simmons injured, the Bulldogs staged a ferocious second-half rally and fell narrowly to UTEP in the final of the Sun Bowl Invitational Saturday, 75-74.
Penn hasn’t won consecutive games since its 2-0 start to the season in early November. The Quakers will have to wait a little longer to put together a winning streak after familiar problems torpedoed a solid early effort against host George Mason in what ultimately wound up as an 85-53 loss.
For about 15 minutes of game action, Penn (4-8) saw its efficient outside shooting carry over from Friday’s win over Rider. The Quakers started out 6-for-10 from deep and were all level at 23 with the Atlantic 10-contender Patriots with 6:49 left in the first half after senior guard George Smith drained an open transition three from the right wing.
It wound up being Penn’s high-water mark. Penn squandered three chances to take the lead — including a tough-luck moment when junior wing Ethan Roberts just barely missed an open reverse layup following a backdoor cut — before George Mason (8-4) restored order with an extended 12-2 run to end the first half that surely delighted this writer’s father-in-law, a Mason alum.
The Patriots are one of the better defensive teams in the country, and they lived up to that reputation when they held Penn to a paltry 32.2% field goal percentage for the afternoon.
How did it happen? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but …
Ivy Hoops Online correspondent George “Toothless Tiger” Clark reflects on an unforgettable 83-82 win for Princeton (9-4) over Rutgers (7-5) Saturday at the Prudential Center:
Rutgers went undefeated in the regular season in 1975-76. The following fall, I ran into then-Michigan coach Johnny Orr and asked him why his team thrashed Rutgers, a one-point favorite in the national semis. His response was to the effect that Michigan guard Rickey Green was faster than the Rutgers star who was known as fast Eddie Jordan. He was right.
Mitch Henderson entered the Rutgers game Saturday tired of having to talk Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper pregame.
“I wanted to talk (Xaivian) Lee and (Caden) Pierce,” Henderson said postgame.
For the Princeton women’s basketball team, there’s no place like home.
Playing in the friendly confines of Jadwin Gymnasium for the second game in a row, the Tigers swept aside the Vermont Catamounts with ease, 60-45, in a Saturday matinee.
Nine days ago, the Tigers returned home after a grueling road stretch to defeat the Rhode Island Rams, 66-54, in a game Princeton never trailed. On Saturday afternoon, the Tigers turned in a near carbon-copy performance, jumping out to an early lead against Vermont and never looking back.
PHILADELPHIA — Playing for the first time after an 11-day layoff, Penn turned in its cleanest offensive performance of the season against Rider.
The Quakers never trailed in a 79-66 home win over the Broncs on Friday and put up a blistering 1.27 points per possession, according to KenPom. In a season that has been defined on the offensive end by long outages and poor shot-making, Penn (4-7) finally played at a high level for a full 40 minutes.
There were standouts both familiar and unexpected. Senior forward Nick Spinoso finished with 22 points, one off a career high, while junior wing Ethan Roberts dropped in 20 on 13 shots, including a four-point play that after he drained a straightaway three midway through the first half while absorbing heavy contact from Rider’s Jay Alvarez.
Meanwhile, Rider (4-8) appeared to be asleep at the wheel defensively for stretches. The Broncs repeatedly forgot to cover sophomore wing Niklas Polonowski when he spotted up from distance. Polonowski responded by dropping in 14 points on four made threes to record his first ever double-figure scoring effort against a Division I opponent.
For the first time in a while, it’s all happy Quakeaways:
The bad news is that Yale had 18 turnovers.
The good news is that Yale outrebounded the Akron Zips, 47-25, in the first round of the Sun Bowl Invitational en route to a convincing 74-58 win at the Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas Friday. Yale (6-5) will face the winner of the UTEP-Jackson State game Saturday night for the tournament championship.
“Great team rebounding effort tonight,” Yale coach James Jones said.
The Penn women’s basketball team got an early holiday present Friday: a young Delaware State team it could beat soundly while giving some first-year Quakers time in the spotlight.
With a game-high 14 points off the bench for center Tina Njike (a sophomore sidelined by injuries last season), Penn beat Delaware State, 72-45, at the Palestra for its fifth win in a row, and Del State’s fifth straight loss. At a muscular 6-foot-2, Njike showed strong moves to the rim for Penn (8-3) as well as a good touch from midrange with 6-for-8 shooting and four rebounds, plus 2-for-2 from the free-throw line, in 16 minutes on the court.
Princeton and Rutgers are separated by 17 miles on Route 1 in New Jersey. Rutgers is one of Princeton’s most familiar foes. The Tigers lead the overall series, 77-45, but Rutgers has won six out of the last 10 meetings.
The game has held major significance for Princeton and Rutgers players across the decades, a history sure to grow when the teams play Saturday at the Prudential Center in Newark at noon.
“It was for the establishment of New Jersey dominance,” former Princeton star and athletic director Gary Walters said.
For the first time in nearly a month, Princeton’s women played a basketball game at home. The Tigers made the most of their homecoming Wednesday, holding off the Rhode Island Rams, 66-54, in a game the Orange and Black led wire to wire.
The win snapped a two-game losing streak for Princeton and avenged a frustrating loss to the Rams a year ago in Kingston.