The night after a dreadful shooting performance by Penn, Princeton found a way to one-up its rival with an ugly 21-point effort that tied an NCAA Division I record for fewest points in the shot clock era. Except Princeton did this against a 1-6 Monmouth team with its starting point guard injured and his backup suspended. The news was significantly better up in Boston, where Harvard’s win over Long Island was its first without the injured Brian Cusworth.
A giant step backward
The Tigers’ deer-in-the-headlights performance last night shows why taking a wait-and-see attitude following the Wyoming win was the way to go. As Jon Solomon pointed out to his Princeton Basketball News subscribers in his postgame recap, Princeton is neither as good as it looked against Lehigh and Wyoming, nor as poor as it looked in ugly losses to Lafayette, Colgate, and Monmouth. Most everyone realized this was going to be a rebuilding season, but not all rebuilding seasons are created equal. If the Tigers were scrapping and just coming up short against superior opponents, that would be one thing. What we’ve seen so far — five uninspired efforts sandwiched around a couple of good performances — isn’t inspiring hope on the part of even the most optimistic fan.
In his postgame comments, Joe Scott said his team was thrown off by Monmouth zoning them for 40 minutes. Many are wondering openly how a college team can be so befuddled by a very common defensive approach. The short answer is that Princeton doesn’t just pass the ball around the perimeter and try to catch a zone out of position like many teams do. In fairness to Scott, the Tigers have had problems against zones in the past — though not on this scale — under his predecessors. But Joe Scott is going to be feeling some heat after this latest display of basketball ineptitude. Princeton fans on both PBN and Basketball U. are clearly upset about the direction of the program and are taking aim at their coach. The media coverage is getting increasingly negative, and it’s only a matter of time until the unflattering columns start popping up in papers normally friendly to the Tigers’ cause.
Harvard gets well against LIU
Harvard blew this one open with a 20-4 run midway through the second half, but the game shouldn’t have been that close prior to the spurt. The Crimson were leading by seven in the first half when Matt Stehle had to head to the bench for the final seven minutes of the half after picking up his second foul 22 feet away from the basket. LIU responded with a 10-2 spurt over the next two minutes to take a two-point lead, and the lead changed hands seven times until the second half, when Harvard built up its double-digit lead. Stehle has always thrived on irritating opponents and getting into their heads, but he needs to show more intelligence and restraint with his fouls with Cusworth out. The senior captain was able to atone for his mistake with a career-high 27 points — 11 of which came during the decisive Harvard run. Suprisingly, the Blackbirds struggled with turnovers, committing 21 on the night after coming in ranked 8th in the nation in preventing turnovers.
