Sunday, March 14th
(3) Richmond vs. (1) Temple - 1:00 pm ET - CBS Atlantic 10 Tournament
A week after falling in double overtime to Xavier, Richmond (26-7) returned the favor, getting past the Musketeers 89-85 in OT. The backcourt of Kevin Anderson and David Gonzalvez combined for 53 points. The Spiders will play in the A-10 Conference championship game this afternoon.
Georgetown (23-10) fell in the final seconds of the Big East Tournament championship to Da'Sean Butler and West Virginia.
Princeton recruit T.J. Bray had 16 points as Catholic Memorial beat Whitefish Bay in the Division 2 sectional finals to advance to Wisconsin's state tournament.
Former Arkansas standout Corliss Williamson has been hired as the new head coach of Central Arkansas. Williamson says one of his mentors is Pete Carril.
Here's an article on Uros Kovacevic and the Mercer men's basketball team. The Vikings are aiming for a JUCO title at the National Junior College Athletic Association Division II Championships starting Tuesday in Danville, IL.
Two Padres videos, one a season forecast for Will Venable and the other highlights of three shutout spring training innings by Chris Young.
Postgame audio - Coach John Thompson III, Austin Freeman, Chris Wright & Greg Monroe:
A fantastic Big East Tournament championship game was decided by a superlative shot.
West Virginia's Da'Sean Butler drove to his left from the arc with the score tied and the clock down to single digits. Butler got past Georgetown big man Greg Monroe, but was cut off by the Hoyas' Austin Freeman in the center of the paint on his way to the basket. Butler went up with a shot that traveled beyond Monroe's reach, off to the right of Butler's shoulders and was forced through Freeman's arms, banging off the back iron and down the netting with :04.2 to play.
"I had a little hesitation, went around [Monroe] and Freeman stepped up, and had a little hop step and scooped the layup off the glass and it fell" was how Butler broke down his last basket.
Chris Wright pushed the ball down the court for Georgetown, got in the lane and never had any doubt in his mind that he wasn't going to get to the iron and send the game to overtime. Wright's curling scoop came up short of the mark, ticking off the right iron as the buzzer sounded as Wright fell on his back on the baseline in disappointment.
Butler's game-winner was the Mountaineers' only field goal in the final 7:30 of the second half, as the Hoyas rallied from 50-41 deficit to pull even on two occasions - an Austin Freeman three point shot set up by Wright's penetration with 54 seconds showing made it 56-56 and after Wright made the mistake of fouling Joe Mazzulla after West Virginia's 20th and final offensive rebound with 0:27.6 on the clock and Mazzulla canned both his free throws, Wright spun left in the paint and went glass with 17 seconds to play to even the score at 58.
Wright nearly came up with a steal as the Mountaineers brought the ball up, tipping a pass before West Virginia was able to call time out with nine seconds left, setting up the heroics of the 2010 Dave Gavitt Trophy winner for Most Outstanding Player.
Butler finished with 20 points on 7-19 shooting, surpassing 2,000 points for his career.
Wright nearly matched Butler step for step, scoring 20 and handing out seven assists.
Building off of yesterday's post and some additional information that has since come to light, here's a table looking at potential College Basketball Invitational and College Insider Tournament teams.
NIT-ology and The NIT Bracket Project have not been updated for Saturday, March 13th, so some of the teams listed may be bumped up to the National Invitational Tournament's 32 school field.
Saturday, March 13th
(3) Richmond vs. (2) Xavier - 3:30 pm ET - CBS College Sports Atlantic 10 Tournament
(8) Georgetown vs. (3) West Virginia - 9:00 pm ET - ESPN Big East Tournament
Georgetown (23-9) raced to the Big East Tournament championship game, using a 30-8 second half run to dispatch Marquette, 80-57.
At the Big 10 Tournament, Northwestern (20-13) pulled within one of Purdue in the final 45 seconds, but the Boilermakers held on for the 69-61 win.
Richmond (25-7) moved into the Atlantic 10 semis with a 77-72 win over UMass.
Here's a very well-crafted story on Douglas Davis from the Princeton Athletic Department.
Several Denver players earned Sun Belt Conference Academic Awards.
Tiger recruit T.J. Bray lost his grandfather on Friday, then proceeded to go out and score 30 points as Catholic Memorial beat top-ranked Wisconsin Lutheran in a Division 2 sectional semifinal. Bray was also profiled on Preps on the Net as part of a series highlighting five candidates for Wisconsin's Mr. Basketball award.
Another future Princeton player, Tom Noonan, was named Penn Charter Team MVP.
Postgame audio - Coach John Thompson III, Austin Freeman, Chris Wright & Greg Monroe:
Locker room audio - Coach John Thompson III:
Marquette 62 Georgetown 59.
Syracuse 73 Georgetown 56.
South Florida 72 Georgetown 64
Syracuse 75 Georgetown 71.
If you thought the trio of Austin Freeman, Chris Wright and Greg Monroe had put these four regular season conference losses behind them, you should have seen their faces light up when asked if playing these schools again in the Big East Tournament was providing Georgetown with extra motivation to get back at those teams.
Ten different versions of "yes!" overlapping one another followed from the Hoyas' big three, leaning into their microphones on the podium for emphasis.
Now Georgetown gets a chance to complete its 2010 Revenge Tour on Saturday night in the BET finals against either Notre Dame or West Virginia, two more teams who toppled the Hoyas when they played earlier this season.
"A good friend of mine, after yesterday's game, said 'there's nothing better than Friday night in New York City other than Saturday night in New York City,'" Hoya head man John Thompson III said.
"We're going to show up in New York City on Saturday night."
To secure that date on date night, Georgetown third appearance in the Big East Tournament finals since 2007, the Hoyas turned a 48-47 lead with 13:34 left in regulation into a 78-55 edge by the final two minutes.
Georgetown's last two buckets of this incredible stretch came on feeds by big man Greg Monroe. First Monroe found Jason Clark on a lob cut, then bounced a backdoor pass to Chris Wright to cap off a 23 point, 13 rebound seven assist line.
The web site NIT-ology has, as their name might suspect, been projecting the National Invitational Tournament field since the 2004-05 season.
They had 97% of the teams correct last year, 93.8% correct in 2007-08.
Below their projected seeds table, which takes into account the NIT's automatic bids for regular season conference champions that lost in their conference tournament, are a list in red of 33 teams they see as on the NIT bubble - likely candidates for the either the College Basketball Invitational or College Insider Tournament.
While Princeton is not on this list (which includes both Harvard and Northwestern), the picture I see developing favors the Tigers for a postseason bid.
If you don't like open three point shots and easy layups, this is not the footage for you. Princeton hit 13 times behind the arc at Jadwin Gym and dissected Yale on ESPNU, 82-58.
Northwestern (20-12) surged past Indiana 73-58 to hit 20 wins for the first time in program history. The Wildcats forced 13 turnovers in the second half and Michael Thompson made three straight three point shots to rally his team.
A 12 point lead with 16 minutes to play wasn't a large enough lead for Oregon State (14-7), as Washington went on a 23-4 run to secure the 59-52 win in the Pac-10 Tournament.
Richmond opens their A-10 Tournament run against UMass. The Spiders are in an unfamiliar position as they head to Boardwalk Hall.
Princeton recruit Ben Hazel was named First Team All-WCAC.
Future Tiger Chris Clement is Co-District 16-5A MVP.
The Princeton Packet writes about the Tigers' push for the postseason.
Princeton's athletic department was good enough to send me plus/minus sheets for the entire regular season, and I've generated my own Ivy-only plus/minus numbers in Excel out of that .pdf.
These dandy columns show the number of minutes played by each Tiger this season and the difference in points scored by the team while each player was on the floor versus points allowed by the Tigers during the same span.
Individual single game highs and lows went unchanged in this latest pass. Douglas Davis was +39 against Goucher and Pawel Buczak was -23 at Cal.
Ivy highs and lows were as follows: Patrick Saunders +25 at Columbia and versus Dartmouth. Kareem Maddox scored -11 versus Cornell.
The most successful lineup combination was the one that has played the most minutes together this season. Marcus Schroeder, Dan Mavraides, Pawel Buczak, Douglas Davis and Patrick Saunders were +44 in 197:17 of court time.
The least successful five? The starting lineup for the season opener and the season finale. Lake, Schroeder, Zach Finley, Mavraides and Buczak, combining to go -22 in 24:25 of play.
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
