PRINCETON
GETTING INSIDE
It's bad enough for Princeton that the gap between Penn and itself grows wider by the week.
It's even worse that the gap between the Tigers and the rest of the Ivy League continues to widen the deeper into the conference season Princeton travels.
Either Penn or Princeton has won at least a share of the Ivy League championship 42 times in the past 50 years. However, Penn has won six of the past eight, including the past two, and Princeton already finds itself out of the league race this season with seven games left on its schedule.
With a 48-35 loss at Penn on Tuesday, the Tigers dropped to 10-11 overall, 1-6 in the Ivy League. Now they sit all alone in last place. If not for a 74-68 double-overtime home win over Harvard last Friday, things would be even worse for the Tigers in their third season under coach Joe Scott.
"It's hard to win," said Scott. "We've got to get back to learning how to win."
The Tigers appeared to be on the right road at one point during their non-league schedule, winning five of seven at one point, including wins over Marshall, Rice and Iona.
"The non-conference (schedule) was about us learning how to win. And we were doing that," Scott said. "We got derailed. I could list about five reasons. (Kyle) Koncz, our best guy (leading scorer), getting hurt. A whole bunch of things I could say. And what you learn is, boy, you really have to ingrain that habit of winning into your bodies and into your heads because it leaves you pretty quickly."
While the Tigers still hold a mathematical chance to win the league, it doesn't take an Ivy League mathematics professor to see that those odds are somewhere between slim and none. That means the Tigers are now playing for pride and for the future.
"We've got good young players," Scott said last week. "We start three freshmen (guards Lincoln Gunn and Marcus Schroeder and center Zach Finley). So we've got to learn how to get better, we've got to learn how to win, we've got to learn how to win consistently."
NOTES, QUOTES
? By scoring just 35 points against Penn on Tuesday Princeton has scored 35 points in three of its six Ivy League losses this season. Over seven games, the Tigers are last in the league at 1-6 and rank last in the league with 48.7 points per game and a team field-goal percentage of .375.
? The Penn game was all too typical for Princeton, with the Tigers making only 14-of-45 shots (.311) and 4-of-19 3-pointers. The Tigers even missed half of their six free throws and committed 17 turnovers. "We get some pretty good shots," coach Joe Scott said. "We get some layups. We struggle to score. I'm happy with our effort. I thought we executed pretty well there."
? One of the worst things about the Penn loss was the way the Tigers fell apart in the second half. With the game tied at 29-29 Penn seven missed shots and six turnovers over its next 10 possessions. Penn scored the next 12 points and the Tigers never threatened again. "I thought we competed hard and did what we had to do to give ourselves a chance to win," said Scott. "It was 29-all, and we struggled to score after that."
? Even though the schedule favors Princeton with five home games among its seven remaining games, that's not the advantage it could be. The Tigers are 4-2 at home this season, 1-1 in Ivy League home games.
QUOTE TO NOTE: "When I say what can we do better as a staff to help these guys in situations, I'm encouraged. ... We're doing things that are supposed to be the things that make you win. Now we're going to sit there and see what we can do to try to develop guys who do those things and what can we do to help them do the other things too that finish off that stuff." ? Princeton coach Joe Scott.
STRATEGY AND PERSONNEL
Princeton's current starting lineup includes three freshmen and a senior former walk-on (Justin Conway) who had played one career minute prior to January 29, 2006. Luke Owings' 53 career starts and 98 career games are the most on the team. Noah Savage is second on the team in games played with 76.
PLAYER ROTATION: Usual Starters ? G Marcus Schroeder, G Lincoln Gunn, F Noah Savage, F Zach Finley, C Justin Conway. Key Subs ? F Kyle Koncz, F Luke Owings, F Michael Strittmatter, G Edwin Buffmire.
GAME REVIEW: Princeton 74, Harvard 68, 2OT
Dartmouth 45, Princeton 44
Penn 48, Princeton 35
GAME PREVIEW: Vs. Cornell, Friday, Feb. 16
Vs. Columbia, Saturday, Feb. 17
At Dartmouth, Friday, Feb. 23
At Harvard, Saturday, Feb. 24
KEYS: The Tigers don't score a ton of points but they don't always have to when they're playing defense for the full 35 seconds and making opponents do the same on the other end. That hasn't happened in their past five games, all road losses. The Tigers are young and still making the adjustment to coach Joe Scott's offensive system, but they won't get things turned around in the Ivy League until they play better defense, execute better on offense and hit a higher percentage of their 3-pointers.
ROSTER REPORT: With Princeton looking for some kind of a spark, junior forward Noah Savage earned his first three starts of the season and scored in double figures against both Harvard and Dartmouth. He had a season-high 16 points in the win against Harvard, going 5-of-9 from the field, and then had a team-high 12 points against Dartmouth in addition to three assists and four rebounds. He then slipped to 2 points and played only 12 minutes in the loss to Penn.
Even though junior forward Kyle Koncz is back in the rotation he's still less than 100 percent because of the nagging effects of a stress fracture in his foot. Koncz, who leads low-scoring Princeton with just 8.8 points per game, scored 6 points in 23 minutes during the double-overtime win over Harvard on Friday but did not play at all on Saturday against Dartmouth. He came back to play 20 minutes against Penn on Tuesday and finished with 6 points and seven rebounds.
With Koncz out of the lineup, Princeton has started three freshmen through the past four games, with Marcus Schroeder and Lincoln Gunn at guards and Zach Finley replacing Koncz in the frontcourt. While Schroeder and Gunn have started all season and combine to average 13.6 points, 4.5 rebounds, 4.7 assists, 3.6 turnovers and 2.6 steals per game, Finley has started 10 of 21 games with mixed results. It remains to be seen just how long Finley will continue to start after playing only 23 minutes over the past three games, with 4 points and no rebounds in that span.
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