PU hoops starts road to improvement

Tigers open Monday against Drexel

By: Justin Feil
   The Princeton University men’s basketball team will tip off the season with a new look and a new approach.
   The Tigers are ready to put last year’s 15-13 season that included its first losing record in Ivy League history behind it and forge ahead with a young squad that has plenty of question marks. The Tigers host Drexel 7:30 p.m. Monday in the Preseason National Invitational Tournament. The Dragons were 17-12 last year.
   It’s just the start to a season in which the Tigers are putting no firm goals out there, as opposed to last year when they embraced the Ivy favorite role.
   "A big mistake I made was talking about all that (stuff)," Princeton second-year head coach Joe Scott told reporters at Wednesday’s media day. "You don’t talk that kind of stuff. What you do is come out and get better every day. You let the players know what the important things are in your program. And you get better every single day. When you get better every day, then all those other things become self-evident. I started that stuff. And that was a mistake of the coach. We want them to really know what we do and how to do it. If you get better every day, your results speak for themselves.
   "Another reason I don’t talk about it is, I don’t really know what these guys are going to do. These guys and us together are going to show what we we’re going to do. Those things speak for themselves. Hopefully that will lend itself to improving because when you zero in on improving, your chances of improving are quite good. We’ll see what that means come February. Hopefully we’re in good shape."
   With a win Monday, Princeton would meet the winner of Missouri and Sam Houston in Wednesday’s Preseason NIT second round. The tournament semifinals are Nov. 23 and the finals are Nov. 25 in New York.
   The Preseason NIT is the start to another challenging schedule. The Tigers have home games against Lafayette, Temple, Wyoming and Monmouth before the winter break. They will play at Wake Forest in a game televised on ESPN2 and play at Stanford, Rutgers, Rice and Davidson. The Ivy schedule begins Jan. 13 when the Tigers host Columbia with Cornell visiting the next night. Princeton plays at Penn Feb. 14 and hosts Penn Mar. 7 in the regular-season finale.
   "I like our schedule," Scott said. "From a youth standpoint, hopefully it will help us. Whether you’re young or old, you’re playing home games early on which is good for any team. Hopefully it will help our guys. Maybe it will give us a chance to grow up a little bit more quickly because you are more comfortable at home. That’s not going to make it any easier come Monday night. It’s not going to make it any easier against Temple and Wyoming. It’s not like we have easy teams. It’s still going to be extremely hard, but maybe we’ll see a benefit that they are at home."
   Princeton returns just one player who saw more than 30 minutes per game last year, the lone senior on the team and captain, Scott Greenman. The point guard is doing his best to set an example for his younger teammates.
   "Something I’m working on," he said, "something I’ve been doing a little bit, is being more vocal than I have in the past in terms of telling people where to go, what to do, why we’re doing things just so everybody’s on the same page. Offensively, I’ll be looking to create more. I’ll be asserting myself more at both ends."
   The Tigers are expecting more scoring out of Greenman, who is their leading returning scorer. He averaged 8.6 points per game. Last year’s fourth-leading scorer, Noah Savage, is back as well. The Hun School graduate is a sophomore who started every game as a freshman for the Tigers. Luke Owings, last year’s fifth-leading scorer, is also expected to play a major role this year. Junior Max Schafer and sophomore Matt Sargeant also appeared in 20 or more games last year. The Tigers also welcome Harrison Schaen back to the team. The sophomore took off a year after a solid freshman season.
   Princeton’s first freshmen contributors will likely be Alex Okafor and Geoff Kestler. Kestler, a 6-foot-3 guard, let Mt. Lebanon High to the Pennsylvania AAAA state championship game. Okafor, a 6-foot-6 forward from San Jose, Calif., could bring some physical play to the front line and is developing as a low-post scoring threat.
   "The most you want out of freshmen is they try to get a grasp of everything you’re trying to do," Greenman said. "They’ve been doing that greatly. They’re really working on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Then the other thing is that they compete. They’re obviously behind the eight ball in terms of experience because it’s their first year. If they go out there and attack the ball and get rebounds, do all the things you don’t have to know anything about to do, that’s what we need. We have some athletic guys who are tough who are doing that. In terms of the little things the intangibles, they’re doing a good job."
   The intangibles will help the Tigers. But scoring, Scott noted, is one of the biggest questions going into the season and he’s looking at Greenman to lead the way.
   "He’s got to score," Scott said. "He can score. He’s got to do it from Game One. He’s not a greedy person, so I know he’s not going to just try and score. He has to know, hey, I’m a guy that can score. It’s got to show up. Seniors and juniors score. They score because of their comfort level. They score because they’ve been through it. It’s got to be Owings and Scotty."
   Scott has confidence in those two to lead the way, and he’s feeling more comfortable after guiding this Tigers group for a full year. He’s looking forward to leading Princeton in his second season as head coach.
   "I think the big benefit of a year later is we know our players, we know their strengths, we know their weaknesses," Scott said. "Because of that, as a staff we can make our adjustments and our plans for progress based upon real facts.
   "To be honest, last year in September and October, we still didn’t know those things. I just think it’s a better situation for the players and the coaches. We’re making our decisions based upon what they do and how they play instead of what we think that should be."
   Princeton has catered its offensive philosophy to its younger team. The Tigers aren’t trying to limit the number of plays they have so they can be very efficient at running them, rather than mediocre at running a lot of different plays. The earlier start to game play make the reduction in plays even more critical. The Tigers need to be good at their offense a little earlier than usual and learn their roles in the matchup zone on defense quicker as well.
   Regardless of the start, it’s improvement that the Tigers are preaching this season. Princeton hopes that approach is enough to put it in position for the Ivy title that eluded it last year.