Men's Basketball Finishes Perfect Jadwin Season, Beats Columbia 66-61

Saturday, February 26

Jadwin Gymnasium

6:00 PM

Princeton University

Columbia

Stats

Men's Basketball Finishes Perfect Jadwin Season, Beats Columbia 66-61

February 27, 2011 | Men's Basketball

By: Princeton Athletic Communications

PRINCETON -- Senior Dan Mavraides made all four of his field goal tries in the last six minutes and classmate Kareem Maddox led the Princeton men's basketball team with 20 points Saturday night as the Tigers closed out a perfect home season with a 66-61 win over Columbia.

The Tigers (22-5, 10-1 Ivy) finished 12-0 at home on the season and have not lost in Jadwin since Feb. 20, 2010, continuing a 16-game home winning streak. It is the third time in Jadwin history that Princeton has won as many as 12 games at home without a loss, tying the record set by the 1990 and 1998 teams.

Mavraides had missed his first seven field goal attempts on the night but came through in the clutch, as the same Columbia (14-12, 5-7) team that Princeton defeated by 30 points just two weeks ago in Manhattan wouldn't go away in the rematch in Jadwin. His 14 points on the night all came within a span of less than six minutes from the 6:15 mark of the second half until 29 seconds remained and the Tigers had the game in hand. Mavraides had all but four of Princeton's 18 points during that stretch.

"The last two threes that I shot, I had 100% confidence in them and they felt great the whole way up," Mavraides said.

"It was just one of those moments when he tried to put us on his back," Sydney Johnson, the Franklin C. Cappon-Edward G. Green '40 head coach of men's basketball, added. "It was nice. It was definitely nice and I think senior night made it that much more special, obviously."

Princeton's overall effectiveness on the night mirrored Mavraides' late surge, as the Tigers entered the locker room down a point at 24-23 with their lowest halftime point total of the season after shooting just 31.8% (7 of 22) before the break. In the second half, Princeton raised that to 46.4%, making 13 of 28 tries.

"We knew that we could battle through it and figure it out down the stretch," Maddox said of the second-half stand. "We're not going to get every call, the ball's not going to bounce our way every time, we're not going to get every rebound, hit every shot. It's just kind of a maturity and a calmness that we're happy to see from everyone."

Mavraides came eight points short of becoming the 28th member of Princeton's 1,000 career point club at home, standing on 992 as he heads to the state in which he attended prep school when the Tigers face Dartmouth Friday night. After graduating from Serra High near San Francisco, Mavraides spent a year at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

Maddox and Mavraides were two of four Tigers with double-figure points, as Ian Hummer added 11 points and Mack Darrow reached double digits for the third time in his career with 10.

Princeton gutted out a game that saw 10 lead changes and Columbia take a lead as high as eight near the midway point of the first half.

"Everybody's going to give us their best shot," Johnson said of the Lions, and of close games in general during the Ivy slate. "We typically get a lot of people's best games, and that's fine, but we need to prepare in the right way for that. That's our challenge. We'll come back in Monday and prepare because we know that Dartmouth and Harvard can't wait to play us, and that's the way it should be."

In addition to getting the win, Princeton vaulted back into first place in the Ivy League following Yale's 70-69 win over Harvard, which dealt the Crimson their second loss of the Ivy season. The other came to Princeton on Feb. 4 in Jadwin Gym, and the two teams will meet Saturday after the Tigers visit Dartmouth and Harvard hosts Penn Friday night.