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Princeton University Athletics
Princeton University
Butler
Season Opener to Come Sunday at Butler for Defending Ivy Champ Princeton
November 08, 2017 | Men's Basketball
Now, it's time to start again. Three starters, including two All-Ivy Leaguers, are gone. Two more All-Ivy players, including the reigning Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year, are back among 12 returners joined by five freshmen. They'll open by taking a trip to historic Hinkle Fieldhouse, opened in 1928, one year after The Palestra in Philadelphia where Princeton won that Ivy League Tournament last year and will aim to be to win another one in March. There, they'll face a Butler team also dealing with graduation losses but looking to follow up a Sweet 16 run from a year ago.
You can hear it on WPRB 103.3 FM in Princeton or right here on GoPrincetonTigers.com and watch it on CBS Sports Network, Sunday night at 6.
All the links and info you'll need for the opener are below.
Princeton at Butler, Sunday, Nov. 12, 6 p.m., Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, Ind.
• Watch: CBS Sports Network
• Listen on WPRB 103.3 and TuneIn
• Live Stats
• Tickets
• Follow @Princeton_Hoops for in-game updates
• Princeton Game Notes
• Up next: Princeton will open its home schedule Wednesday, Nov. 15 against BYU. The Cougars have won all five all-time meetings with Princeton, including last year's 82-73 BYU win in Provo.
• Butler has won all three meetings in the series versus Princeton, but none of those three games included any of the current players. Butler won at Hinkle in 1955, 1962 and 2013.
• Since the reorganization of the Big East took effect in 2013, Princeton has faced only Butler from the conference, with the Bulldogs winning 70-67 at Hinkle on Nov. 16, 2013.
• Butler was picked eighth in the 10-team Big East in the preseason coaches poll despite returning leading scorer Kelan Martin (16.0 ppg last year), who was picked for the preseason All-Big East first team. Behind Martin, Butler lost its next four leading scorers and returns 1,085 of its 2,595 points (41.8 percent) from last year.
• Princeton was voted a close third in the Ivy League's official preseason media poll. Princeton received three of the 17 first-place votes with Harvard getting six first-place votes and Yale eight. Harvard had 121 poll points to 118 for Yale and 114 for Princeton.
• Princeton is coming off a 14-0 Ivy League season, the sixth in program history and first since 1998, and the 14th in Ivy League history and first since 2008 (Cornell). That earned the Tigers their 27th Ivy League championship and the top seed in the inaugural Ivy League Tournament, which Princeton won to advance to its 25th NCAA Tournament.
• The Tigers graduated three starters in Ivy League Player of the Year Spencer Weisz, first-team All-Ivy Leaguer Steven Cook, and center Pete Miller. Despite that, Princeton returns two starters in junior Devin Cannady, an honorable-mention All-Ivy Leaguer, and classmate Myles Stephens, the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year, a first-team All-Ivy Leaguer, and the Ivy League Tournament MVP. Princeton also returns senior Amir Bell, who has started 64 games in his career, including five games last year.
• Both Princeton head coach Mitch Henderson (Vincennes) and Devin Cannady (Mishawaka) are Indiana natives. Henderson, an alum of Culver Military Academy, was a 12-time letterwinner between basketball, baseball and football, graduating as the first Culver athlete to earn 12 letters and as the basketball team's career leading scorer at 1,279 points. In football, Henderson threw and rushed for 1,000-plus yards as a senior, throwing for 50 touchdowns in his career. In baseball, Henderson was drafted as an outfielder by the New York Yankees as the 24th pick of the 29th round, the 815th pick overall.
Cannady finished his high school career second on the Mishawaka Marian's all-time scoring list with 1,475 points (Demetrius Jackson, now of the Houston Rockets, is first with 1,934 points), and named to the North team for the Indiana All-Star game as well as earning a spot on Indiana Basketball Coaches Association/Subway "Supreme 15" Team, a ranking of the Top 15 players in the state. The Butler game will be Cannady's second straight against an Indiana program, as the Tigers faced Notre Dame, next door to his hometown, in the NCAA Tournament.
• Last season, Mitch Henderson notched his fourth 20-win season as Princeton's coach, the second-most in program history behind Pete Carril's 10.
• Princeton's 19-game winning streak that included the final 17 games of the regular season and the Ivy League Tournament was the second-longest in program history behind the 20 straight that the 1997-98 team won with Mitch Henderson as a senior.
• Mitch Henderson, at 119 wins, is the third-winningest coach in program history behind Franklin "Cappy" Cappon (250, 1938-43 & 46-61), for whom the men's basketball head coaching position is named, and Pete Carril (514, 1967-96), for whom Henderson played his first two seasons at Princeton.
• Just two seasons into his Tiger career, Devin Cannady stands 14th on Princeton's career 3-point list with 138. He needs just 29 more 3s to vault to sixth place. Chris Mooney '94, the Richmond head coach, is in 13th place at 142.
• Junior Amir Bell enjoyed quite a bounce-back in the Ivy League season. In non-conference play, he averaged 3.8 ppg while shooting .268 from the field and .120 from 3. In Ivy play, he averaged 8.7 ppg, shooting .581 from the field and .559 from 3. Bell had Princeton's highest shooting percentages overall (among players with >3 FGA) and from 3 in Ivy League play.
• Princeton has 32 members of the program's 1,000-point club, with Spencer Weisz '17 and Steven Cook '17 joining last season. There are a few candidates to join this season, with Amir Bell at 727 points, Devin Cannady at 740 and Myles Stephens at 534.
• Princeton's trip to Hawaii for the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic Dec. 22-25 will be the program's fifth to the nation's 50th state, following the 1979 Rainbow Classic, the 1998 Rainbow Classic, the 2007 Maui Invitational and last year's Pearl Harbor Classic.
• Entering the 2017-18 season, Princeton stands 88th in the Pomeroy rankings, the second-highest level in the Ivy League by four spots behind Yale (84) and 22 spots ahead of Harvard (110). Princeton will have chances to move up, with at least eight games against teams currently in the KenPom top 100: USC (12) Miami (27), Butler (42), Saint Joseph's (66), BYU (72), Yale (84, twice) and Middle Tennessee (92). Two more such games are possible in the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic, with Davidson (86), USC and Miami in the field after Princeton faces Middle Tennessee.
• Under Mitch Henderson, the Tigers have a 41-35 (.539) record in the pre-New Year portion of the schedule and a 78-25 (.757) record from Jan. 1 forward.
• Entering the season, Princeton had the most wins among New Jersey's eight Division I teams since Mitch Henderson took over at Princeton prior to the 2011-12 season. Princeton's 119 wins during that time are four better than Seton Hall's 115.
• Princeton ended last season tops in the nation in fewest turnovers at 298, fourth in fewest fouls at 482, fifth in turnovers per game at 9.9, ninth in scoring defense at 61.4 ppg allowed, 12th in 3s per game at 9.9, 15th in assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.44, and 17th in turnover margin at +3.2/game.
• Princeton ended 49th in last season's final RPI after ending the season ranked 47th in 2016.
• Princeton appeared in ESPN's August 2017 bracketology for the 2018 NCAA Tournament, seeded 12th.
• With both the preseason AP and Coaches polls out, Princeton will face two teams ranked in each. USC is 10th in the AP poll and 11th in the Coaches, and Miami is 13th by the AP and 12th by the coaches. Butler, Middle Tennessee and Harvard were all included in the "receiving votes" section of the AP poll, and Butler and Harvard were in that section of the coaches poll.
• The Pete Carril coaching tree is going strong in the 2017-18 season. Six current Division I head coaches played for and/or coached under Carril, including Mitch Henderson '98, Mike Brennan '94 (American), Chris Mooney '94 (Richmond), Sydney Johnson '97 (Fairfield), Brian Earl '99 (Cornell) and Bill Carmody (Holy Cross).
