Tigers Top Brown, Stay Alive for Ivy Tournament Berth

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Friday night went exactly the way the Princeton men's basketball team needed it to go for the Tigers' season to continue past this weekend.

Princeton beat Brown in Providence, leading by as many as 18 points in a 78-63 win. The first Ivy game to go final was in Hanover, where Dartmouth dealt Columbia an 80-78 defeat, allowing Princeton to pull even with the Lions at 5-8 in Ivy play. Princeton then finished its win over the Bears, and the Tigers had to wait for Harvard to hold off the upset bid from Cornell in double overtime, 98-88.

Penn, which lost at Yale, and Harvard now co-lead the league at 11-2. Yale solidified its third-seed spot at 8-5. Princeton, Cornell and Columbia are all 5-8 and Brown is at 4-9. If Princeton wins at Yale to finish at 6-8, it only needs Columbia to lose at Harvard Saturday night to gain the Ivy League Tournament bid. Princeton would have the tiebreaker over Cornell as Princeton would then have two wins over Yale, and Cornell wouldn't have a win over any of the league's top three teams, which it could have gotten tonight. Princeton needs to finish a game clear of Columbia due to Columbia's earlier win over Harvard.

Brown's last lead was at 12-11 with less than nine minutes gone in the opening half, and after Brown was within three at 21-18 with six-plus minutes before halftime, Princeton went on an 18-7 run bridging halftime that included scoring the first seven points of the second half to build a 39-25 lead. The Tiger advantage peaked at 18 last at 51-33 with 12-plus points left in the game, and after the half-opening run, the Tiger lead was never single digits.

The Amir Bell-Myles Stephens-Devin Cannady trio accounted for 59 of the 78 points with Stephens tying a career high with 12 rebounds on the way to his third career double-double and second of the season along with his game-high 22 points. Bell had 21 and all of Cannady's 16 came in the second half. Jerome Desrosiers added 10 to give Princeton four players in double figures.

"Regardless, we were going to play hard, try to win tomorrow, but now, we have a little bit of extra motivation," Stephens said of Saturday's game at Yale. "We know what we have to do. We beat them once. It was a close game (76-73 in OT on Feb. 2). They're a good team. They're at home now, so if we execute, stick to the game plan, I think it could be a good night for us."

Princeton's key stats were shooting 45.5 percent from the field to 33.9 for Brown, including nine 3-pointers to Brown's seven and going 19 of 22 at the stripe to 17 of 27 for the Bears. That allowed the Tigers to overcome a 44-35 Brown rebounding edge including 15 offensive boards to lead to 11 second-chance points for the Bears. Obi Okolie led Brown with 17 points, ahead of 12 for Desmond Cambridge after Cambridge scored 32 in the 102-100 Brown overtime win in Jadwin last month.

Princeton's game at Yale Saturday night is a 7 p.m. start and can be seen on ESPN3 and the Ivy League Network.

Postgame notes

• Junior Devin Cannady's 16 points moved him past Steve Goodrich '98 (1,207) for 14th on Princeton's all-time career list, now at 1,208. Senior Amir Bell's 21 points moved him past Will Venable '05 (1,010) for 33rd all-time, now at 1,023.

• Bell had one assist to tie him with Ian Hummer '13 for sixth on the program's career list, now at 308.

• Cannady made two 3-pointers to break the tie with Gabe Lewullis '99 for fourth all-time in program history with 214 in his career. Sean Jackson '92 is third at 235. Cannady now has 74 3-pointers, breaking a tie with Douglas Davis '12 for sixth in a single season in program history. Cannady's 81 3s last year are fifth-most.

• Princeton has won five in a row at Brown, continuing the team's longest active Ivy road winning streak, and now leads the all-time series 106-28.

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