Former Tiger forward Luke Owings is closing in on five years since he graduated from Princeton. I recently stumbled on the news that in an attempt to both reprove himself as an athlete and develop washboard abs prior to Reunions, Owings would be stepping into the boxing ring for the first time next month.
This upcoming fight is for a good cause too, one that I'm more than happy to help spread the word about. Owings is raising money for cancer research as part of a pugalistic fundraiser titled Haymakers For Hope.
I caught up with Owings on the phone today and he told me more about his imminent bout and detailed training that has taken him from the basketball court to business school into the squared circle.
You can support Owings’ quest by making a donation here. I hope visitors to this site will help Luke exceed the financial goal he's set.
A transcript of our conversation can be found after the jump.
While members of this site have already been well-briefed on the three members of Princeton's 2012 recruiting class thanks to our in-depth profiles of Hans Brase, Edo Lawrence and Mike Washington Jr. those articles were all penned last October before the beginning of their respective senior seasons.
With that in mind I reached out to the coaches of Brase, Lawrence and Washington Jr. for updates on how each's final year in high school went. Their responses can be found after the jump.
Princeton held its annual awards banquet in the lobby of Jadwin Gym tonight.
The worthy recipients of honors at the 2011-2012 banquet included:
Class of 1959 Bob Rock Sixth Man Award - Mack Darrow.
B.F. Bunn Trophy - Doug Davis.
Friedman Memorial Award Trophy - John Comfort.
Davis and Ian Hummer were also recognized for their All-Ivy status.
It was easily the shortest banquet on record. Not having Marvin Bressler as the MC anymore and all three seniors being fairly quiet in public will speed a night crisply along.
The fact this event was held on what would have been Bressler's birthday was a nice, purely accidental touch.
Pete Carril was asked to introduce the Friedman award and recalled the story behind the man this plaque is named after.
John Comfort (who said his thesis was due tomorrow), Patrick Saunders (who was recently admitted to the University of Vermont pre-Med program) and Doug Davis each gave brief remarks after the full team was called up to receive their varsity letters.
It was personally heartwarming to hear head coach Mitch Henderson single out my father's photo of Ian Hummer's dunk versus Cornell from the dais.
All the food looked great. Wish it hadn't been Passover!
A reader of this site sent me a heavy box yesterday full of Princeton media guides and related ephemera from the previous 20 years. For that I am quite appreciative.
There were a few editions inside that I didn't already own, namely 1993-94 and 1994-95.
Flipping through those years I noticed a portion of each guide I wanted to reproduce and for starters I'll share something from the first's "Unsung Heroes" page, where Pete Carril pays tribute to former Princeton Supervisor of Grounds and Buildings George "Georgie Buck" Boccanfuso.
Boccanfuso, as you may well know, worked at the university from 1947 until his retirement in 1989 but continues to show up every morning at Jadwin Gym to make sure the building is running as it should.
Carril offers a poem that he wrote, which I've reproduced after the jump.
While it has been seriously slow in the news department, this piece by my friend Tom Scharpling for The Classical re-imagining every 2012 NCAA Tournament coach (including John Thompson III) as a movie villain was too excellent to not share.
I was saddened and surprised to read in the latest Princeton Alumni Weekly about the passing of Gib Kirwin '58. A supporter of this site and a contributor to the listerv that preceded it, I was always glad to hear from him. My condolences to his family and friends.
Jimmy Tillette, who was "the first outsider to infiltrate Princeton's inner circle [of coaches]" per this 2003 Sports Illustrated feature and then served as the head coach at Samford for 15 seasons, was fired.
Both Northwestern's John Shurna and Georgetown's Henry Sims had good accountings of themselves at the Reese's College All-Star Game in New Orleans.
To wrap up the season statistically, the Tiger athletic department was nice enough to send along this year's complete plus/minus numbers. I've generated my own Ivy-only and DI-only plus/minus data in Excel out of that document.
The first of five charts shows the number of minutes played across the 32 games this season and the difference in points scored by Princeton while each player was on the floor versus points allowed by the Tigers during the same span.
The second chart shows the same information for non-conference games only, followed by non-conference versus DI opponents, Ivy-only data and postseason-only data.
I've also broken down +/- per 40 minutes for all pertinent players and added Net/40 numbers ("Roland Rate") with inspiration from Hoya Prospectus. This data has been split into non-conference, Ivy-only and postseason-only as well.
Here’s the latest collection of videos from various corners of the Princeton basketball family. Above, a belated news piece on Princeton's regular season finale.
You might be curious to know the CBI finals between Pitt and Washington State will come down to a winner take all game three on Friday night in Allegheny County.
In the extended "season finale" of their weekly interview series, Tigers head coach Mitch Henderson and princetonbasketball.com editor Jon Solomon sat down courtside at Jadwin Gym this afternoon for a seventeenth and final time on the year.
Solomon and Coach Henderson looked back on Princeton's CBI games at Evansville and Pittsburgh in great detail before touching on the season as a whole, including if there was a specific point where Henderson realized his team could actually be pretty good and if there was a defining moment for the year.
Henderson also discusses if it is possible to carry over the season’s strong finish through the summer, heading to the Final Four this weekend, what he hopes to get out of that trip, who he wants to bump into in New Orleans, if he and his staff are done recruiting for the class of 2012 and for the first time provides details on the team's planned foreign trip this summer.
This exclusive Q&A is 23:00+ in length and can be streamed after the jump.
Feel free to also explore a full archive of Solomon and Henderson's weekly discussions from 2011-12.
Northwestern's John Shurna was named an Associated Press Honorable Mention All-American.
John Thompson III joined GameTime to talk about the improvements of Greg Monroe and Roy Hibbert.
Hoya senior Henry Sims will play in the 2012 Reese's Division I College All-Star Game this weekend. Also on his team: The aforementioned Shurna and Keith Wright from Harvard.
Last year we looked back on the season by examining a series of small moments. For 2011-12, how about something new?
THE FIRST-ANNUAL SITE AWARDS!
[fanfare of trumpets]
Nominees and recipients in a variety of categories both expected and unexpected after the jump. I hope you'll create your own awards and hand out (virtual) trophies to winners in the comments.
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
