West Virginia vs. Georgetown - 7:00 pm ET - ESPN
Oregon State vs. Cal - 10:30 pm ET
Northwestern (10-6) ended Michigan State's 28 game home winning streak, shocking the #7 ranked Spartans 70-63. The win could very well be the biggest of Bill Carmody's coaching career. Highlights are above. It was also the first time in school history the Wildcats won back-to-back games versus ranked teams.
Georgetown welcomes West Virginia to the MCI Center.
Operating on little sleep, Craig Robinson is back on the west coach with Oregon State, who visit Cal this evening.
The Princeton Athletic Department is counting down the Top 40 Moments In Jadwin Gym History this week. Here's 30 through 21 and 20 through 11. How many did you attend over the past four decades?
Noah Savage appears to be fully recovered from his injury and back on the floor, scoring 15 points for SAM Massagno Basket in a 93-76 loss to BBC Monthey.
Former Princeton standout and Delsea assistant women's basketball coach Dave Orlandini has been reinstated after serving a six day suspension for throwing two desks during halftime of a game on January 13th.
Around the Ivy League: Penn (4-9) fell to 0-3 in Big 5 play with a 79-70 loss to LaSalle.
Pete Carril is having mixed feelings about his new job.
The Princeton Athletic Department is counting down the Top 40 Moments In Jadwin Gym History this week. Here's 31 through 40.
Princeton recruiting news - Will Barrett scored 12 of his 16 points in the first half of Central Bucks South's win over Pennridge and Brendan Connolly went for 32 in a two point double overtime loss.
For this Inauguration Day, two articles on Oregon State coach Craig Robinson, who is in DC for the festivities - one in USA Today and the other from the Oregonian.
The 10th installment of the Schuylkill 16 has been released.
Congratulations to Princeton assistant coach Brian Earl, who will be inducted into the Al Carino Memorial South Jersey Basketball Hall of Fame on February 9th.
Thanks to a reader's tip, I was able to watch a broadcast of Princeton recruit Ian Hummer and Gonzaga High School playing St. Mark's in the 8th Annual Spalding Hoop Hall Classic, which took place this afternoon in Springfield, MA.
This was my first chance to see an entire game of Hummer's. Detailed notes and video highlights follow after the jump.
Minnesota vs. Northwestern - 2:00 pm ET - Big Ten Network
Georgetown (12-4) fell 76-67 at Duke. Dad, if you're reading this, here's Exhibit A of why I don't want you yelling at officials from behind the bench!
St. Bonaventure outscored Richmond (9-8) 11-0 over the final three minutes of their 71-67 victory over the Spiders.
Oregon State (6-10) was no match for Washington in the second half. The Huskies pulled away from the pack for the 85-59 decision.
How many close games can one team lose? Denver dropped another one possession game, 59-57 at FIU.
Good news? Princeton recruit Mack Darrow scored 22 points and grabbed 9 rebounds for Barrington. Bad news? The rest of his team scored a total of 17 in a 53-39 loss to Conant in the High School Hoops Showdown.
Around the Ivy League: Penn (4-8) became the latest Ancient 8 team to beat still-winless NJIT, sending the Highlanders to their 51st straight loss, 59-40. Dartmouth (2-13) fell for the eighth straight time, 68-59 to New Hampshire. Cornell (11-6 / 1-0) began the defense of its conference crown with a 71-59 win at Columbia (5-10 / 0-1).
"Unfortunately, success tends to make guys let up," said Mercer County Community College head coach Howie Levy.
"It happened in the Northwestern game [when the Wildcats could not hold a double digit halftime lead versus Purdue]. It happened in [Oregon State's] game against Washington State," added Levy. "You get a big lead and you forget to do the things that got you the big lead."
The same story played out for Mercer on Saturday afternoon, as Manor climbed out of an early 26-9 hole and pulled themselves up from a 43-30 deficit with under 15 minutes to play to pass and fend off the Vikings.
The newest members of the Garden State Athletic Conference's Region XIX ended Mercer's four game winning streak with the 56-52 win and evened the Vikings' record at 8-8.
"The big message that I send to these guys is that every basketball game is decided by a handful of possessions," Levy stated after his team's loss.
"It turned from a game played our way to a game played their way. Our offense doesn't work when we don't cut hard and our guys aren't good enough to play without it." The hard work on defense to come over screens as Mercer built their advantage and the attention to assistant coach Roger Gordon's scouting report that limited the touches of the Blue Jays' sharpshooters came undone midway through the second half.
Back-to-back threes by Stefan Thompson, who had been shut out up to this point, gave Manor their first lead, 47-46 with six minutes to go. "They have shooters that just catch the ball and shoot it. All you have to do is not let them get any shots off, just being attentive. They got two," said Levy of this stretch. "A three point shooter can have a great game and have the ball in his hands for four seconds. You can make three threes, catch and shoot, and he had a great game."
Despite the setback, Mercer has made significant strides since the last time I saw them in action in mid-November. "I think they're starting to enjoy to play this way," Levy said of his team, "but when things are tough they haven't been doing it long enough to not revert to what they did previously."
Mercer hosts Essex on Tuesday night at 7:00 pm ET.
Georgetown vs. Duke - 1:30 pm ET - CBS
Manor vs. MCCC - 3:00 pm ET
St. Bonaventure vs. Richmond - 7:00 pm ET
Denver vs. FIU - 7:30 pm ET
Washington vs. Oregon State - 10:00 pm ET - FSN NW
Penn vs. NJIT - 2:00 pm ET
New Hampshire vs. Dartmouth - 7:00 pm ET
Cornell vs. Columbia - 7:00 pm ET
The Seattle Times has the latest profile of Craig Robinson.
Alex Wolff wrote a feature called "The Audacity of Hoops" about President-elect Obama for this week's Sports Illustrated.
Princeton recruit Will Barrett scored 16 and grabbed nine rebounds as Central Bucks South won its 10th straight.
The game of the afternoon may be Georgetown at Duke.
When I ran the above picture from Peter Dutton earlier today as part of a series of photos from 1989-1992, I did not expect to receive the following email a few hours later.
Internet, you amaze me.
Dear Mr. Solomon,
I can explain the gorilla costume at the 1989 NCAA Tournament game vs. Georgetown. I was wearing it.
I am a member of the Princeton class of 1989 and was the Drum Major of the marching band (although my term had ended by the time the Tournament rolled around). For four years, Bob Scrabis' mother sat near the band for every home game and she and I had what I would call, for lack of a better term, a friendly cheering acquaintance. We both admired her son's basketball prowess. [In fact, I modeled my beer pong form on his free throw shooting form. I always glanced to the left just before releasing the ball.]
I owned the gorilla suit (bought for use in a skit that was a takeoff of 2001:A Space Odyssey that the band performed at the Yale football game the previous fall). My winter coat was stolen that fall at a party on Prospect St. and so, for no other reason than I was somewhat cold, I decided to wear my gorilla suit to the first basketball game of the year. As a gag, I took a bunch of bananas with me and handed them out. The first one, went to Mrs. Scrabis, who laughed out loud. We won the game, and the suit got a good reaction. So, for every home game that year (and several away ones as well), I wore my gorilla suit and presented Mrs. Scrabis with a banana for good luck.
I had a great seat for the game against Georgetown: Section A, Row 1, Seat 1, if I recall correctly. I gave the ticket stub later to a bandmember who had been too sick to attend the game. I managed to get into the arena and locate Mrs. Scrabis (who was NOT near the band for that game). I gave her a banana and got a big hug before arena security accosted me and made me take off the suit. It seems there was a NCAA regulation against a school having more than one mascot at a Tournament game. I pleaded my case to no avail. The suit came off and the rest is history.
Doug Davis, the freshman who is the leading scorer on the Princeton men's basketball team, has let us know that he would prefer to be known by his full name from now on. All future mentions of him will therefore be of Douglas Davis.
To update an earlier post, Davis scored 165 points across 12 games as Doug Davis (13.8 ppg) and needs to total 222 points as Douglas Davis over the final 15 games of this season to match the Princeton record for most points by a freshman.
That's 14.8 ppg, for those of you keeping score at home.
While on Flickr one recent evening, I discovered a huge repository of late 80s/early 90s photos taken by former Princeton band member Peter Dutton.
Dutton was kind enough to give me permission to share a few of his shots, clicked from the stands at various Princeton games, including four straight trips to the NCAA Tournament.
They're not expert sideline snaps by any means, but that's not the point. These photos bring me back to a time almost two decades previous that was a whole lot of fun. I hope they'll stir up similar memories for some of you and give people who weren't there an idea of what it was like to follow the team back then.
Hopefully these .jpgs will also get me off my duff and scanning the archived material gathering dust at my parents' house!
Peter has thousands of additional photos on his Flickr page.
If you have any Princeton basketball photos you would like to be similarly shared, please get in touch!
December 1989. That's certainly Kit Mueller (#00), Bob Scrabis (#34) and Jerry Doyle (#5). Fairly confident Marv Williams (#22) is also on the floor. Is #40 Anders Vestergaard?
The Tigers' last lead against Georgetown. 1989 NCAA Tournament.
Georgetown shooting a free throw in the first half. I see George Leftwich (#22), Matt Lapin (#33) and Bob Scrabis (#34) ready to box out.
Second half of the 1992 NCAA Tournament. Chris Mooney (#21) is at the top of the arc. Are those Leftwich and Rick Hielscher (#33) on the floor with him?
The band does "Rock Lobster" after a game at Jadwin. Note the Matt Lapin "Senior On A Stick," which most likely means this came from the final home game of the 1989-90 season.
The Tiger unmasked!
The Princeton band plays towards the end of the first half of Princeton's 1991 NCAA Tournament game versus Villanova - a game I've never been able to bring myself to watch on tape after suffering through it live.
princetonbasketball.com was founded on April 28th, 1998 in an attempt to provide fans of the Princeton Tigers and Ivy League basketball with the best on-line source for up-to-date news and information. We have since expanded to launch a companion site, Georgetown Basketball News.
As these sites have continued to grow we have increased our coverage to include additional teams with Princeton connections - the Richmond Spiders, Denver Pioneers, Oregon State Beavers, Fairfield Stags and Mercer County Community College Vikings - plus former Tigers playing professional baseball and basketball all over the world. This site is not directly affiliated with the Friends of Princeton Basketball, Princeton University or the Princeton athletic department.
Sun. 11/10 vs. Florida A&M
Sat. 11/16 at Butler
Wed. 11/20 vs. Lafayette
Sat. 11/23 at Rice
Tue. 11/26 vs. George Mason
Sat. 11/30 at Bucknell
Sat. 12/7 vs. FDU
Wed. 12/11 at Rutgers
Sat. 12/14 at Penn State
Fri. 12/20 vs. Portland*
Sat. 12/21 vs. Pacific*
Tue. 12/31 vs. Kent State
Sat. 1/4 at Liberty
Sat. 1/11 at Penn
Sun. 1/26 vs. Kean
Fri. 1/31 at Harvard
Sat. 2/1 at Dartmouth
Fri. 2/7 vs. Columbia
Sat. 2/8 vs. Cornell
Fri. 2/14 at Brown
Sat. 2/15 at Yale
Fri. 2/21 vs. Dartmouth
Sat. 2/22 vs. Harvard
Fri. 2/28 vs. Yale
Sat. 3/1 vs. Brown
Fri. 3/7 at Cornell
Sat. 3/8 at Columbia
Tue. 3/11 vs. Penn
2,503 - B. Bradley, 1962-65
1,625 - I. Hummer, 2009-13
1,550 - D. Davis, 2008-12
1,546 - K. Mueller, 1987-91
1,451 - P. Campbell, 1959-62
1,441 - C. Robinson, 1979-83
1,428 - B. Earl, 1995-99
1,365 - B. Scrabis, 1985-89
1,321 - G. Petrie, 1967-70
1,292 - H. Haabestad, 1952-55
1,277 - G. Lewullis, 1995-99
1,239 - B. Taylor, 1970-72
1,207 - S. Goodrich 1994-98
1,133 - F. Sowinski, 1975-78
1,130 - R. Hielscher, 1991-95
1,122 - C. Thomforde, 1966-69
1,099 - T. Manakas, 1970-73
1,090 - J. Wallace, 2001-05
1,088 - C. Belz, 1956-59
1,079 - B. Hauptfuhrer, 1973-76
1,076 - B. Roma, 1976-79
1,071 - C. Mooney, 1990-94
1,064 - A. Hyland, Jr., 1960-63
1,062 - L. Brangan, 1957-60
1,057 - A. Hill, 1973-76
1,054 - D. Mavraides, 2007-11
1,044 - S. Johnson, 1993-1997
1,031 - J. Hummer, 1967-70
1,010 - W. Venable, 2001-05
