Tigers to Wrap First Ivy Road Weekend at Dartmouth Saturday

The Tigers will wrap their first full Ivy League road weekend of the season Saturday night at Dartmouth as the race for a spot in the Ivy League Tournament continues.

Princeton (11-11, 3-4 Ivy at Dartmouth (4-16, 0-7 Ivy), Saturday, Feb. 10, 7 p.m. ET, Leede Arena, Hanover, N.H.
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• Princeton Game Notes

• The Mitch Henderson Show airs Tuesday nights during basketball season from 6-7 p.m. on Fox Sports 920 The Jersey. (The Feb. 6 broadcast was Wednesday, Feb. 7 due to the Penn game.) Originating live from Winberie's Restaurant & Bar (1 Palmer Square, Princeton), the weekly show features men's basketball head coach Mitch Henderson '98 along with assistant coaches, players, and other special guests. Derek Jones, the play-by-play voice for Princeton basketball on the Princeton IMG Sports Network and Ivy League Network, serves as host – tweet him your questions for Coach Henderson @DerekJones79. Fans who can't make it Winberie's can listen on Fox Sports 920 or live online. A podcast of each episode is also available following the show at GoPrincetonTigers.com/podcasts and the Princeton Athletics channel on iTunes.

• Up next: The Tigers' road swing will continue with the annual New York trip, first with a late game at Cornell Friday at 8 p.m. and then a 7 p.m. Saturday tip at Columbia. Both are the second halves of doubleheaders with the women's teams.

• Saturday at Dartmouth, the Tigers will be looking to snap a three-game Ivy skid. The last time Princeton lost three league games in a row was 2014, when the Tigers started 0-4 in the Ivy with losses at Penn, Harvard and Dartmouth and a home loss to Columbia. Princeton got things turned around to go 8-2 in the league the rest of the way and finish 8-6, good enough to tie for third in what would be an Ivy tournament spot had it been in place that season.

• At the midpoint of the Ivy season, with all teams having played seven games, the league has a logjam in the middle as the race for the four Ivy Tournament spots continues to take shape. Penn escaped Dartmouth 64-61 Friday night to stay unbeaten at 7-0, one game in front of Harvard. After that, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton and Yale are all 3-4.

• Against Penn and Harvard, Princeton leading scorer Devin Cannady had his first back-to-back single-digit scoring games since the trips to Harvard and Penn last February. He bounced back to average 14.8 points a game the rest of the way, upping his season average from 12.6 ppg after that Penn game to 13.4 by season's end. Cannady's last two games have also seen him shoot below 30 percent from the field. He last did that in the first two games in Hawaii against Middle Tennessee and Akron before heating up again to shoot .538 over the next seven games, never dipping below .467, until Tuesday's game against Penn.

• Spencer Weisz '17 led Princeton against Dartmouth in scoring last year at 19.5 points per game, but Myles Stephens (15.5) and Devin Cannady (11.5) are back. The Big Green lost Evan Boudreaux (18.0), who led them in scoring last year against Princeton, as well as Mike Fleming, who had a second-best 9.5 points per game against Princeton last season, leaving Miles Wright (6.5) as the team's leading returning scorer against Princeton from a year ago. Princeton outshot the Big Green overall last year head-to-head, .469 to .402, and from 3, .365 to .342, while outrebounding the Big Green by 2.5 boards per game and committing just five turnovers a contest to Dartmouth's 11.5. That led to two victories by an average of 10.5 points each.

• A pair of former teammates at La Mirada High School near Los Angeles will meet 2,500 miles from home Saturday in Princeton's Vittorio Reynoso-Avila and Dartmouth's Ian Carter. Much closer to Hanover, Princeton's Jerome Desrosiers will reunite with fellow Northfield Mount Hermon (Mass.) alum Ian Sistare of Dartmouth.

• Dartmouth has shot 40 percent from the field in every game but four this season, and two of those games were against Harvard. The Big Green will be coming off their lowest shooting performance of the season, hitting at a .279 clip against Penn. Also, only three Big Green opponents have shot below 40 percent from the field this season, and eight have shot at least 50 percent. The Big Green are 0-8 in those games. Four teams have made 10+ threes against Dartmouth this year, with Boston College, New Hampshire, Columbia and Harvard all making 12 and all getting wins.

• Devin Cannady continues his climb up Princeton's 1,000 career points list after joining the club Jan. 6 at Penn. Now 18th all-time at 1,125, he's one of just five players with between 1,100 and 1,200 points, along with Chris Thomforde '69 (1,122), Rick Hielscher '95 (1,130), Frank Sowinski '78 (1,133) and former teammate Steven Cook '17 (1,148).

• Cannady has 385 points this season and needs 131 the rest of the way to have scored 516, which would be the most any Tiger has scored since Brian Taylor '84 poured in 676 points in 1972 (entered with the Class of 1973). Cannady needs just 501 points over the rest of this season and next to pass Ian Hummer '13 to become the second-highest scorer in Princeton history. It'd be the third time that the title of second-to-Bill Bradley '65 (2,503) on Princeton's all-time scoring list has changed under Mitch Henderson. Douglas Davis '12 changed the No. 2 spot for the first time in 21 years in 2012, and Hummer did it the next year.

• Cannady, with 63 3-pointers this year, is the seventh player in program history with three 50 3-pointer seasons. The others are Sean Jackson '92, Brian Earl '99, Gabe Lewullis '99, Kyle Koncz '08, Douglas Davis '12 and former teammate Spencer Weisz '17. Only Davis and Earl had four 50 3-pointer seasons, which Cannady is able to achieve as well.

• Last year, the four-member freshman class of Will Gladson, Jose Morales, Vittorio Reynoso-Avila and Richmond Aririguzoh logged a combined 462 minutes. This year's five-member freshman class of Sebastian Much, Jerome Desrosiers, Ryan Schwieger, Elijah Barnes and Charlie Bagin have more than doubled that already, with 1,104 minutes so far. Will Gladson had 304 of the 462 last year and Much, Desrosiers and Schwieger have 1039 of the 1,104.

• The Tigers have overcome tough starts to have a strong Ivy League season before under Mitch Henderson. In Henderson's first season of 2011-12, Princeton started 1-5 before finishing 10-4 in the league, a record that's now one likely to make the Ivy League Tournament. In 2012-13, Princeton started 3-6 before going 10-4 in the league. In 2014-15, Princeton started 3-8 before going 9-5 in the league. Last season, Princeton started 4-6 before going 14-0 in the Ivy. This year, the Tigers have won nine of 14 after a 2-6 start to stand 11-11 overall and 3-4 in the Ivy.

• Entering Friday's (2/9) games, Princeton ranked in the top 10 percent of Division I in fewest fouls (10th, 358), fewest turnovers (15th, 256), 3FG percentage (27th, .393) and 3s per game (33rd, 9.9). Devin Cannady had the top individual ranking with a 30th-best .883 free throw percentage. Dartmouth was No. 1 in the nation in fewest fouls at 310. The Big Green's Brendan Barry ranked 25th with a 2.86 assist-to-turnover ratio.

• The Tigers used their eighth starting lineup of the season Friday at Harvard, giving senior Aaron Young his first career start. Eleven Tigers have started a game, and only senior Amir Bell and juniors Devin Cannady and Myles Stephens have started all 22. Tiger rookies have accounted for 24 starts between Sebastian Much (16), Jerome Desrosiers (seven) and Ryan Schwieger (one), while three other seniors (Young, one, Mike LeBlanc, five, Alec Brennan, five) have started, as have two sophomores (Will Gladson, six, Richmond Aririguzoh, three).

• Feb. 6 against Penn, Devin Cannady (201) became the sixth Tiger with 200 career 3-pointers. He hasn't passed anyone on the career 3-pointer list since Dec. 6 at George Washington, when he passed Dan Mavraides '11 for seventh, but Cannady is nearly done chipping away at the 43 3-pointer gap between Mavraides and Spencer Weisz '17 (209) in fifth. Princeton's single-season 3-pointer mark belongs to Sean Jackson '92, who drilled 95 in 1990-91. The Ivy League record held by Cornell alum Ryan Wittman is 109 in his senior year of 2009-10. Cannady enters the Brown game with 59 3s.

• Devin Cannady, Myles Stephens and Amir Bell have combined for 50.5 percent of the minutes through 22 games. All three average at least 33.1 minutes per game, and no other Tiger is closer than rookie Sebastian Much at 20.0 mpg. The Bell-Cannady-Stephens trio accounts for 2,923 of the 3,997 points on the roster, or 73.1 percent.

• Under Mitch Henderson, the Tigers now have a 48-42 (.533) record in the pre-New Year portion of the schedule and an 82-29 (.739) record from Jan. 1 forward.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 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.

• The Ivy League men's and women's basketball tournaments return to Philadelphia, where they will take place Saturday and Sunday, March 10-11, 2018. The top four teams will earn berths to the tournament, with the semifinals on Saturday and the championships on Sunday. All six games will be broadcast live on ESPN's networks. For tickets and more information please visit IvyMadness.com.

• The Ivy League Network (ILN) is available on Apple TV, Roku and the ILN app for Android and Apple devices.

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