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Princeton University Athletics
Princeton University
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Dartmouth
Players Mentioned
Men's Hoops Tops Dartmouth 77-55, Heads to Harvard
March 05, 2011 | Men's Basketball
Princeton defeated Dartmouth 77-55 and Harvard took care of Penn 79-64 heading into tomorrow's 7 p.m. game between tonight's two victors.
"It's obviously a big game," Sydney Johnson, the Franklin C. Cappon-Edward G. Green '40 head coach of Princeton men's basketball, said. "I think we've worked pretty hard to put ourselves in this spot and we're just going to try to play hard and see what happens."
A Princeton win sends the Tigers to the NCAA Tournament as the Ivy League's outright champion, while a Harvard win shifts the focus to Tuesday's Princeton game at Penn.
The Tigers will enter tomorrow night's game at 23-5 overall, the program's best record since the 1997-98 team finished 27-2. Princeton's 11-1 Ivy League record is its best since 2004, when the Tigers finished 13-1 en route to an Ivy title.
This season is the closest the Tigers have come to the Ivy League title since that 2004 campaign.
Douglas Davis, who entered Princeton after the Tigers' 6-23 season in 2008 and has helped the team improve to 13, 22 and now at least 23 wins each season so far in his career, can set his sights on Saturday's contest.
"It's going to be fun," Davis said. "I'm looking forward to it. Let's go. Let's roll the balls out, toss it up and let's play."
This Princeton team is now tied for the fifth-most wins in a single season in program history with the 1965 Final Four team, while the 1998 club holds the overall record at 27.
Princeton had a slow start against the Big Green (5-22, 1-12), trailing by as much as six early before using a 16-0 run over nearly nine minutes to turn an 18-17 deficit into a 33-18 lead. Princeton made 16 of 30 (53.3%) from the field in the first half.
From there, Princeton never looked back. Davis had nine first-half points on his way to a team-high 14 points, joining Ian Hummer (12), Kareem Maddox (12) and Patrick Saunders (11) in double-figures. Saunders had his best game offensively since the Penn contest on Feb. 8 in which he also had 11 points, and freshman T.J. Bray had a career-high nine.
Davis leapt three spots on Princeton's to 21st with his point total against the Big Green, passing Armond Hill '85, James Brangan '60 and Art Hyland '63 to stand with 1,068. Current Richmond coach Chris Mooney '94 is in 20th place with 1,071 points.
Dan Mavraides got two points closer to becoming the 28th Princeton player to reach 1,000, now with 994.