Home of the Roundball Poets
Don’t call it an upset.
No. 11 Princeton led No. 6 Kentucky for all but 2:18 in the first quarter, maintaining a single-digit, multiple-possession lead most of the game en route to a 69-62 win in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Assembly Hall in Bloomington Saturday.
The win is the Tigers’ second NCAA Tournament victory in program history and sets them up for a second-round clash with No. 3 Indiana at Assembly Hall Monday at a time to be announced.
“This is the business we’ve chosen.” – Brian Earl and Hyman Roth
“We played for, I would say, a good 15 minutes tonight, but that’s not good enough against a good program.” – Columbia head coach Megan Griffith, following the Lions defeat to top-seeded Princeton
No matter what the coaches who did not earn victories on Saturday thought, I felt there were three really good games of college basketball on display at Lavietes Pavilion, including a fantastic opener that saw Princeton escape an upset big from Cornell, 77-73. Hopefully, West Coast fans woke up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning to catch it.
Here are some random thoughts and observations from the Ancient Eight’s Super Saturday:
The Princeton women showed off all the things that make them the cream of the Ivies Saturday as they declawed the No. 2 Columbia Lions, 77-59, in the Ivy Madness final.
The Tigers (24-4) head to the NCAA tournament undefeated in Ivy play, having won all but one league game — the dramatic semifinal against Harvard, this year’s tournament host — by double digits.
“The Tigers were just locked in to the game plan, to the scouting report, what we needed to do, what we thought would make us successful out there,” Princeton coach Carla Berube said. ”
Guard Kaitlyn Chen — in her first year of college play, like other Ivy sophomores — scored a career-high 30 points for the Tigers on 9-for-13 shooting plus 11 of 14 free throws and was named the tournament MVP.
Chen was just listening to her teammates.
“It definitely helps knowing my teammates have my back and they’re always there for me, and they keep telling me to shoot,” Chen said.
“I’m just glad, coach, thank you, that we got Kaitlyn Chen, because she’s an absolute baller at both ends of the court,” Ivy Player of the Year Abby Meyers said.
Meyers and Julia Cunningham had 16 points apiece, and Grace Stone had 12. The Tigers shot 48% from the field and collected 23 points on free throws as the Lions struggled to catch up.
Coach Megan Griffith’s Columbia team (22-6, 12-2 in the regular Ivy season) managed to come back twice. After facing an early deficit, they finished the first quarter tied at 16 and pushed to a three-point lead early in the second. And after Princeton built a 17-point lead in the third quarter, Columbia’s Abbey Hsu and Jaida Patrick combined for key baskets to make things interesting. Hsu finished with 16 points and Patrick with 13, and Columbia had a more than respectable 42% shooting night. That included 36% on threes — but the Tigers were more efficient there, too, at 46%.
What Columbia couldn’t do for any stretch of time was evade Princeton’s relentless defense, and frustration also seemed to contribute to the Lions’ 20 turnovers (to just eight for the Tigers). Princeton blocked six shots and committed nine steals.
“I’m not happy with that effort. They shouldn’t be either,” Griffith said of her players. “We played for, I would say, a good 15 minutes tonight. That’s not good enough against a good program. You’ve just got to want it more and you’ve got to show up, and we didn’t do that today.”
Meyers was the game’s only starter not expected to return next season, positioning Princeton and Columbia well for future matchups with more Ivy hardware on the line.
“I think you’re going to see a lot of great competitions between Columbia and Princeton in the future,
Griffith said. “I’m personally looking forward to that. I love a good rivalry … Penn and Princeton kind of had that in the last decade or so, but I do think that we are right there and you will see us in this rivalry for a long time to come.”
“They really have a great nucleus that [was] out there,” Berube said. ” … Yeah, I think it could be a really good rivalry for a lot of years.”
For now, though, the Tigers are top cats in the Ivy League, and they now turn their attention to the Big Dance.
“I’m just thinking about all these pieces that have been so monumental to get us at this place and it’s been such a great journey,” Berube said. “And I just don’t want it to end.”
When hostilities got underway in the first Ivy League Tournament action in three years, it was obvious that the Crimson were inspired by the gravity of the situation. They gave the Tigers all they could handle.
In the end, however, the Tigers held on in the closest Ivy game in Carla Berube’s two-season career at Princeton, 72-67. The Tigers needed six straight free throws from Kaitlyn Chen and Grace Stone in the closing moments.
Senior Night at Jadwin Gym attracted a nice crowd to bid farewell to Abby Meyers prior to the Tigers taking on their nearby rivals, the Penn Quakers. The Tigers and their superstar senior did not disappoint.
Princeton responded with a resounding 69-43 win to claim the outright Ivy League regular season title.
Congratulations to Carla Berube and her Tiger quintet upon clinching at least a tie for the Ivy League regular season championship, her second in two seasons. The Tigers achieved their goal by soundly thumping their closest pursuers, the Columbia Lions, 73-53, at a delightfully packed Levien Gym on Wednesday afternoon. Can Kyrie’s return to Brooklyn be far behind?
Carla Berube’s minions continue to amaze.
The Yale Bulldogs arrived at Jadwin Gym Saturday hoping to stop what has become a runaway freight train of a basketball team.
No dice.
Both Tiger teams fared well against their Dartmouth opponents Saturday.
The overmatched Brown Bears were spanked by Carla Berube’s Princeton Tigers on Saturday in Providence, 72-39.
The vaunted Tiger defense had single-digit yields in the first (nine) and third (eight) quarters, holding the Bears to under 10 per period for the game.
Consistent with her strategic plan to challenge her team, Carla Berube squeezed in a very difficult matchup for the Tigers’ final out-of-conference game of the season. She invited to Jadwin Gym another group of Tigers, the Towson Tigers of the Colonial Athletic Association – a top 50 club nationally.