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Princeton University Athletics
Princeton University
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Dartmouth
Players Mentioned
Men's Hoops Awakens to Top Dartmouth, 54-38 (with video)
February 07, 2010 | Men's Basketball
Anyone who needed a reminder that no Ivy League team can be taken lightly received that notice Saturday night at Dartmouth, when the league-winless Big Green led Princeton at the start of the second half before the Tigers pulled away in a 54-38 win.
Indeed, Princeton is 4-0 for just the second time since 2004, which was also the last time the Tigers won all four Ivy games in New England. The 16-point margin of victory was also the largest for the Tigers in Leede Arena since 1998, when the last Ivy team to win an NCAA Tournament game brushed aside the Big Green with a 32-point victory.
Video: Sydney Johnson, Ian Hummer and Pawel Buczak in the postgame interview.
But these Tigers are in a different circumstance, just two years removed from a 6-23 season and still two victories from clinching their first winning season since 2005.
These Tigers also have another major hurdle to contend with and little time to enjoy their accomplishments from this weekend. Every Princeton player who was part of the team last season knows why.
"It's always nice to win the first four, especially on the road," senior Pawel Buczak said. "But last year we started out 4-0 and the rest of the way we didn't play as well as we would have liked to. We're trying to let these younger guys here know that we can't have that letdown."
Last season's letdown saw Princeton (13-5, 4-0 Ivy) go from a 4-0 league start to losing six of its last 10 Ivy League games.
Next Saturday's game against Cornell could be an undefeated showdown, but Princeton has work to do between now and then. Columbia, 2-4 in the Ivy, will come to Jadwin looking to pin Princeton's first league loss.
Buczak and Hummer know the Tigers will have to show more fight from the start than they did this weekend, though both games ultimately ended Princeton's way.
"The way we've come out the last couple games, it won't happen again," Hummer said after leading the Tigers with 11 points.
Hummer, with his evolving post presence, helped the Tigers all but ensure another week atop the NCAA's statistical ranking for fewest average points allowed. Harvard and Dartmouth (4-16, 0-6) combined for 91 points against the Tigers, the same number Brown and Yale scored against Princeton last week.
"Teams that are very good defensively have a chance to be in games and to win games," said Sydney Johnson, the Franklin C. Cappon-Edward G. Green '40 head coach of Princeton basketball. "Once our flow kind of came back on the offensive end, we were able to pull away."
A 13-3 run to start the second half put Princeton ahead for good after no team led by more than three in the game's first 21 minutes.
The victory saw senior point guard Marcus Schroeder, who adds to the team in more statistical columns than just points, reach the 500-point mark for his career. Junior Dan Mavraides landed on 498 points a night after sophomore Douglas Davis, now with 575 points, overtook senior Zach Finley, with 567, for the team's active leading career scorer title.
Such a standing, though, means little on a team that saw five players reach or end up within a basket of double-digit scoring against the Big Green when the whole squad finished with 54 points.
Following a game-turning second half that saw the Tigers outshoot Dartmouth 47.6 percent to 33.3 percent, Princeton will head south with an undefeated Ivy League record and the aim for more wins.
"We have a huge challenge in front of us against Columbia and Cornell to defend well, to shoot the ball well and to defend our home court," Johnson said. "We're fully engaged and trying to have a pretty solid season."
It's a solid season so far, but as Johnson would agree, it needs to be solid throughout.