.png&width=24&type=webp)
Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Men's Hoops: Five Takeaways from the Cornell-Columbia Weekend
February 16, 2016 | Men's Basketball
The Princeton men's basketball team kept control of its Ivy title hopes with a sweep of the Cornell-Columbia trip, but it didn't come easy. Here are five takeaways from the weekend:
Princeton 85, Cornell 56: Box Score | Recap | Highlights & Postgame
Princeton 88, Columbia 83 (OT): Box Score | Recap | Highlights & Postgame
1. On the road again... The Tigers have improved many of their numbers from non-league games away from Jadwin earlier this season to its five Ivy road games so far. In the pre-conference away from Jadwin, Princeton shot .414 overall, .353 from 3 and .718 at the stripe while getting outrebounded by a board a game and outscoring opponents by less than a point a game. In Ivy games away from Jadwin, Princeton has shot .437 overall, .342 from 3 and .800 at the stripe while outrebounding foes by nearly three boards a game and outscoring them by 11 points a game. Those Ivy road numbers were helped this weekend by Princeton's .478 clip overall, .370 from 3 and .821 at the stripe while outboarding Cornell and Columbia by an average of better than eight rebounds a game and outscoring the pair by an average of 17 points.
2. From a distance... Princeton is 10-3 this season when making fewer than 40 percent of its 3-point tries. While Princeton is still well above .500 in those games, it has made for some more nervous outcomes as the Tigers have outscored their opponents by an average of just seven points in those games and 25 points in games where they make at least 40 percent of their 3s. That was evident in the two games this weekend, when Princeton went 11 of 25 from beyond the arc and beat Cornell by 29 points but went just 6 of 21 from distance against Columbia and won in overtime. The good news is that hot shooting games have been more common than cold lately, with six of the seven .400+ games coming in January and February and just four of the 13 below-.400 games coming in the new year.
3. DC and DD... When Devin Cannady scored 17 points in his first collegiate game in November against Rider, it was the most points a Tiger freshman had scored in a season opener since Douglas Davis '12 put in 25 in his debut in 2008 against Central Michigan. Davis, of course, went on to send Princeton to the NCAA Tournament with a buzzer-beater in the Ivy League playoff his junior year, and Cannady, two-thirds of the way through his rookie season, sent Princeton to overtime at Columbia in a game that kept Princeton in control of pursuing its Ivy title hopes. In total points, Cannady, with 240, is just behind Davis was 21 games into his freshman season, with 253. But Cannady is making his contributions all off the bench, averaging 21.3 minutes a game, while Davis started each of his first 21 games and averaged 31.8 minutes a contest through those 21. That said, the '08-'09 Tigers averaged just 57.8 points per game while shooting .429 from the field as a team, while the current Tigers are averaging 79.6 points a game and are shooting .459 from the field as a team.
4. Again, don't count 'em out... Princeton was down by at least eight points with less than five minutes to go in three of its first seven Ivy League games and came back to win two of those, at Penn and Columbia. In looking at the last five minutes of those three games, including the Yale contest in which Princeton had the chance to tie in the final minute, the Tigers outshot their foes .459 (17-37) to .378 (14-37) from the field, .357 (5-14) to .250 (3-12) from 3, took 10 more free throws than the trio of foes and made them at a .737 clip (28-38). Devin Cannady, who scored the team's final eight points in regulation and five of the 12 in the OT at Columbia, scored 24 of the team's 67 points in the last five minutes of those games. Steven Cook and Amir Bell had the next-most points in that span, with 12 apiece.
5. New Year, new Myles... Since the calendar flipped from 2015 to 2016, rookie Myles Stephens has seen a jump in his numbers. He shot .379 (11-29) from the field in the 2015 portion of the schedule and .545 (24-44) since and averaged 1.7 boards and 3.4 points before the new year and 2.9 boards and 6.4 points since. That improvement continued this weekend, when he shot .600 (6-10) from the field against Cornell and Columbia while averaging 3.5 rebounds and 8.0 points a game over the trip.