No two teams needed wins more than Brown and Princeton, and both teams got those victories on Saturday. Columbia got back in the win column as well, but struggled more than it should have at home against a weak Lafayette team. The only loss on the day was Harvard’s disappointing showing at Lehigh.
Turning points?
Wyoming had to be wondering at halftime what had hit it. Princeton had scored an average of 17.2 points in the first halves of its first five games, but the Tigers exploded for 37 first-half points on Saturday and led by 15 at intermission. It was a continuation of the good offensive execution of the final 18 minutes of the previous game against Temple. This was fitting, considering Joe Scott started the same group of players primarily responsible for that stretch of inspired play. While it was disappointing to see a 17-point Tiger lead shrivel to just one point in the second half, Princeton responded well, hitting some key shots to put the game away. After struggling against decent teams and weak opponents alike so far, for Princeton it was simply important to win a game.
Likewise, Brown probably didn’t care too much that its second win came against a 1-6 Binghamton squad. After three straight shoddy offensive efforts, the Bears cracked the 70-point mark for just the second time all season. Unlike the previous six seasons, Brown doesn’t have a go-to guy on offense, so Glen Miller is going to need to get balanced scoring out of his team like what he got on Saturday, when five Bears scored in double figures.
Looking for more out of Columbia
The Lions are ranked second in this week’s Power Rankings, despite not exactly playing like the second best team in the league for most of the season. Joe Jones’s team has shown an unhealthy habit of playing down to the level of its competition — which is to say, pretty low. Despite an easy schedule, the 80-63 win at LIU marked the only time this season Columbia has won by more than four points. This propensity for allowing weak opponents to hang around has already come back to bite the Lions, when an undermanned Army team beat Columbia on its on floor with shot at the buzzer. On Saturday the Lions led by 17 with under seven minutes left, yet Lafayette ended up trailing by just five, with the ball, in the final minute. On three other occasions this year Columbia has held double-digit second-half leads, only to win at the buzzer.
Crimson struggling without Cusworth
Harvard center Brian Cusworth suffered a fracture of a small bone in his hand diving for a loose ball in the first half of the loss to Central Connecticut on December 3. In the five halves of basketball since then, Harvard has held a lead for a total of 59 seconds, and three of those halves were against teams Harvard should beat — even without its big man. The 7-0 junior’s presence was particularly missed in Saturday’s loss at Lehigh, when the Mountain Hawks owned the glass, rebounding at a 35.5-percent clip offensively and at 75.6 percent defensively.
