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Princeton University Athletics
Tigers Start Slowly, Fall to Lafayette, 57-46
November 27, 2005 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 27, 2005
Box Score
It looked like the Princeton men's basketball team might never get it going Sunday afternoon against Lafayette at Jadwin Gym. By the time the Tigers did, it was simply too late.
Bilal Abdullah had 15 points and seven rebounds and the Leopards used a 12-0 run that spanned halftime to firmly take control on the way to a 57-46 win over the Tigers that had Princeton head coach Joe Scott talking about the game's early minutes after it was over.
"We can't wait to play well and run our stuff until we get down by 19 points," Scott said. "The game tipped at 3:00 and we needed to be ready then, and we just weren't ready."
Princeton (1-2) led just once, at 5-4 just 3:14 into the game, then saw the Leopards (2-2) score seven straight points to take a lead they would never relinquish. Lafayette took its first double-digit lead with 4:43 left in the first half at 19-9 on a Ted Detmer layup, led 23-13 at halftime and then made it even more difficult for the Tigers with a 9-0 run to start the second half, capped by Abdullah's three-point shot with 15:23 left that made it 32-13 Lafayette.
The Tigers finally got hot from the field after that thanks mostly to Noah Savage and Scott Greenman, who scored 27 of their 31 combined points in the second half. Princeton cut its deficit to eight points twice in the final 3:30, but Lafayette's Andrei Capusan scored each time the lead went to single digits to push it back to 10.
Savage had all of his game-high 17 points in the second half for the Tigers, who shot 50% from the field after halftime. "We didn't run our stuff with any kind of urgency in the first half, and our defense wasn't good enough either," said Savage, who is averaging better than 16 points per game in Princeton's first three games. "We let them dictate how the game was going to be played."
Detmer and Capusan each added 10 points for Lafayette, which won at Jadwin Gym for the second straight time and the third time in their last four trips to Princeton. The Leopards shot 52% in the second half and outrebounded the Tigers 32-22.
Greenman had 14 points for Princeton, which shot just 5 for 18 in the decisive first half. The Tigers had 18 turnovers and made just eight of 23 three-point shots. Luke Owings, who came into the game averaging better than 11 points per game, ran into first-half foul trouble and finished 0 for 4 from the field in 22 minutes.