Last night was a real downer for the Ivy League. The highlight of the evening was Dartmouth losing respectably against a borderline-major conference opponent. From Columbia looking totally disorganized to Harvard getting rolled by a mediocre opponent to Brown struggling offensively yet again, it was a dismal evening. And then there was Princeton…
Rock bottom
If Tiger fans thought The Blackjack Game was the nadir of the Joe Scott Era, that was nothing compared to last night’s 51-46 loss at home to Division III Carnegie Mellon. While the result might seem like the logical next step in a nightmarish season for Princeton, even bad Division I teams should breeze by good Division III teams at home. But the Tigers are their own worst enemies right now. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is. Aside from good halves against Lehigh, Wyoming, and Wake Forest, Princeton has looked awful offensively this season. Scott’s comments after the game blamed the poor performance on lack of upperclass leadership on the court and an inability to implement changes with a young roster. Neither one of those explains the Tigers scoring 20 or fewer points in 50 percent of their halves this season, including one against a Divisioni III team. And it’s not a matter of Scott Greenman being injured. This had proven to be a bad team before he tweaked his back in the Temple game.
As much as Scott would like to pin this on the players, there is talent on this roster. It’s not the same level of talent as last year’s squad, but Greenman, Luke Owings, Noah Savage, and Harrison Schaen are four-fifths of an above-average Ivy League starting lineup. Kyle Koncz has proven to be a very good outside shooter, Patrick Ekeruo is an above-average backup center, and freshmen Geoff Kestler and Alex Okafor have shown flashes of talent. That’s not a bad rotation at all. It’s hard to believe John Thompson III would be any worse than 5-5 right now with this team against this schedule. Playing to the strengths of your personnel and minimizing your weaknesses are key components of successful coaching strategy, so Scott’s inability to win with the talent is damning. It sounds crazy to say after 38 games, but this latest embarassment to a proud program almost certaintly puts Joe Scott’s job in at least some amount of jeopardy.
Meltdown kills Harvard
Aside from one eight-minute stretch midway through the first half last night, Harvard outscored SMU 54-48. The problem was what happened in those eight minutes, when Harvard committed eight turnovers and didn’t score a field goal during a devastating 28-1 Mustang run. The Crimson can write off this awful stretch as a fluke, but the reality is that it lost by 21 points against a team with which it should have been able to compete. It’s hard to tell if having Brian Cusworth for this one would have even helped. It probably would have improved the abysmal 53.6-percent defensive rebounding and might have upped the frigid 30.4-percent shooting, but would he have prevented any of those turnovers during the decisive SMU run? After getting some momentum going with three straight wins to push its record to 8-3, Harvard has to be disappointed with the way it closed out its non-league schedule with ugly losses at BC and SMU.
No Garden party for Lions this year
Columbia wasn’t able to replicate last year’s third-place finish in the Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden. The Lions blew a late lead against Saint Peter’s and fell in the consolation game. Columbia held Keydren Clark to 5-for-21 shooting, limited the Peacocks to 16 free throw attempts, and outshot their opponents 44.7 percent to 37.3 percent. This should have all but guaranteed a win — were it not for the 27 turnovers. For the second straight night, the Lion offense looked completely out of sync and registered more turnovers than field goals. Saint Peter’s keyed on John Baumman defensively, resulting in another rough offensive night for Columbia’s leading scorer. In the two games at MSG, Baurmann shot a combined 4 of 20 from the field and finished with a total of 11 points. After starting 5-0, the Lions now have lost five of their last six games. They have two home games left against Lehigh and CCNY to figure things out before they open Ivy play at Princeton.
Offensive Brown-out
The Bears found themselves down 31-15 at halftime after shooting 27.3 percent in the first half. While Brown did shoot decently in the second half and outscored Albany 32-31, trimming a deficit to 13 points isn’t quite the “rally” advertised in Brown’s writeup of the game. The really bad news for Glen Miller is that Damon Huffman’s shooting slump continued with an 0-for-5 performance from the arc. That and the 9-17 assist-turnover differential spelled doom for the Bears.
Dartmouth shows some fight
The Big Green found itself trailing by as much as 19 points against New Mexico at The Pit, but the Big Green went on a 13-4 run to get back in the game, and ended up cutting its deficit to just six with 2:27 left. But Terry Dunn’s crew couldn’t get any closer, as the Lobos held on to send Dartmouth to its sixth straight loss. Still, the Big Green can look at the stat sheet and see that it played a Mountain West team close on the road in a hostile environment, finishing essentially even in shooting percentage, rebounding, and assist-turnover differential. The difference in this one was New Mexico’s 29 free throw attempts, compared to just 10 for Dartmouth. Sadly, this six-point loss was the highlight of the night for the league.
Tonight’s action
Yale’s the only Ivy team favored to win tonight, so call a 2-1 night a pleasant surprise.
Yale (5-5) vs. James Madison (2-5) – 7:00 pm – Flint Hills Invitational, Corpus Christi
Dominick Martin has given Yale a shot in the arm, as the Bulldogs won a pair of home games and battled Providence well on the road after this return. Now they travel down to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi’s holiday tournament, where they’ll face a 2-5 James Madison team coming off a crushing loss that saw the Dukes blow an 18-point lead and lose at hapless Youngstown State. JMU will also be missing some key personnel, including its leading scorer, who was suspended this week. Yale gets some good news in that forward Sam Kaplan is expected back tonight after sitting out the last two games due to a scratched cornea. The Bulldogs are slight favorites in this one.
Dartmouth (1-7) vs. Radford (6-5) – 8:00 pm
The Big Green will look to break its losing skid in the consolation game of the Comcast Lobo Classic. Radford of the Big South Conference, is a beatable opponent tonight. Dartmouth will need to play like it did in the second half last night, however, when it took care of the ball, shot well, and played good defense. The one thing the Highlanders do very well is get to the free throw line. If the Big Green can limit the fouling and hit its shots, it stands a decent chance of getting re-acquainted with the win column.
Penn (3-4) at Hawai’i (7-3) – midnight
It’s hard to know what will happen tonight when a Penn team rusty from a three-week layoff takes on a tired and banged-up Hawai’i squad in a game that will tip off at midnight in the Quakers’ home time zone. The line is Hawai’i by 8.5, but this is a game that could see either team win by as much as 15 or 20. Ivy teams haven’t fared well in the 50th state in recent years, so the Quakers will be looking to reverse than trend. The Hawai’i coaching staff told the local media they expected Penn to press them to exploit recent ballhandling issues highlighted in a narrow win over a bad North Carolina A&T team on Tuesday. Fran Dunphy isn’t very likely to resort to a full-court press, but the Penn guards might wreak some havoc on the perimeter defensively in the half-court set. It’s an opportunity for a quality road win, which could come in very handy come tournament time should the Quakers win the league.
