Not so friendly Jadwin

PU hoops loses second

By: Justin Feil
   Noah Savage knows all about the Jadwin Gym mystique.
   The Hun School graduate has been going to games there since he was little. Now he plays in Jadwin and he wants to get back the aura for the Princeton University men’s basketball team after its second straight loss at home to open the season.
   "It’s absolutely important," said the Princeton resident who grew up a short walk from campus. "We’re a young team. I don’t think people understand the history and the aura and what Jadwin means. That’s obvious when you come out like you do (Sunday). We don’t realize what opportunity we have and what history we have to uphold and what tradition we have. We have a responsibility to come out better than we did."
   Savage and the Tigers fell behind, 23-13, by halftime of the afternoon game and didn’t start to play like the Princeton team that dominated Lehigh for its first win the Sunday before until they trailed by 19 points less than five minutes into the second half. Princeton outscored Lafayette, 33-25, from that point, but it was far too little, too late in a 57-46 loss. Savage scored all of his game-high 17 points in the final 9:50 of the game.
   "The game started at 3. The ball was tipped at 3," said Princeton head coach Joe Scott after his team slipped to 1-2 overall. "That’s when the sense of urgency is required, not when you get down 19. Not having the sense of urgency at 3 o’clock puts you in the hole of being down 19. If we had had that sense of urgency that maybe we did display at that particular sense of time, if we had that at 3 o’clock, we might not have been in that hole. We might still have been because Lafayette played extremely well."
   The Leopards defeated Princeton for the fourth time in seven meetings in the series that has now been played every one of the last 16 seasons. Princeton won, 40-38, last year in Easton, Pa., when Lafayette’s Marcus Harley misfired on a last-second shot. The Leopards won two years ago in Jadwin when Scott Greenman missed a buzzer-beater.
   "That’s a team that’s come in here and they’ve won three of the last four times they’ve come in here," Scott said. "This is no recent phenomena that Lafayette’s a good basketball team. They’ve come in here and beaten us when we’ve had experienced teams.
   "It obviously was a big game for them," he added. "I could tell from an emotional standpoint, it looked like it was a big game to them. It didn’t appear like it was a big game to us. Obviously, they get credit for that. We have to develop that. We have to develop an understanding that every time you go out on the court, nothing’s easy."
   Sunday’s game wasn’t very close after Princeton took an early 5-4 lead. Lafayette scored the next seven points. After Princeton cut the lead to 2 points, 11-9, Lafayette scored 12 of the game’s next 16 points for a commanding lead at halftime. In the second half, the Tigers whittled the deficit to eight points with 2:27 to go, but there was no drama when Max Schafer’s deep three-pointer at the buzzer only made the final outcome an 11-point loss. The end wasn’t the problem though.
   "I was surprised anybody scored in the first half because we just weren’t in our offense ever," said Savage, whose only miss came on a first-half three-pointer. "We would just run around and pull it out to half court and get into something. But it’s tough to score when we don’t get into our offense. In the second half, we ran our offense and the opportunities are always there to score as long as we get into something and run it hard. I don’t think it changed anything in the second half. I just think we ran stuff better."
   Similarly, Savage was critical of the way the Tigers played defensively in the first half despite holding the Leopards to 38 percent shooting and only 27 percent from beyond the arc. Lafayette hit better than 50 percent of its shots in the second half, and every time Princeton scored toward the end of the game, the Leopards were able to answer.
   "I would hope our defense would be one of our strengths," Savage said. "It’s something we emphasize. It looks good at times. But at other times, it’s not where it needs to be as far as intensity and talking. Hopefully that will become a strength."
   What the Tigers want most is consistency. They need it in all areas — on offense, defense and in the effort to get ready to play. Princeton has four practices before they’ll play at Colgate on Saturday.
   "We played well once," Scott said. "And when you have a young team, you play well and obviously there was some kind of letdown. The sense of urgency we exhibited after our first loss was missing today. That’s something we have to work on developing. We didn’t have it today and Lafayette did.
   "We’ve shown we can play well after not playing well," he added. "Right now, we didn’t have the corresponding ability to play well after having played well. To me, that’s a sign of youth. That’s something you develop. Unfortunately, maybe fortunately, we’re getting another crack right away. We played poorly again at home. We have to go on the road. We have an extremely important game and how are we going to respond? Maybe it’s good it happened to us right away so we can learn from it."
   Maybe it’s good if it can help clear up some of the confusion as to what kind of team the Tigers will be this year. Princeton has been at opposite ends of the spectrum in its win and losses.
   "It’s just tough to find out who we are as a team and what everyone’s role is and what’s going to be our response to adversity," Savage said. "Right now, our response is to cave in and give in and come out flat. We had one good game and we came out like we were some great team, but beating Lehigh by 10 doesn’t make you world champs. I don’t know what we’re thinking coming out as flat and soft as we did (Sunday)."
   Savage and the Tigers hope to have it figured out by Saturday and definitely in time for the start of the Ivy League season, which comes earlier than usual this year. Princeton opens the conference schedule in six weeks.
   "We’re definitely going to be a factor in the Ivy League," Savage said. "Every game comes down to how we come out and how we play. If we come out how we did against Lehigh, we have a chance to win every single game. If we come out like we did (Sunday), we have a chance to lose every single game. It’s really more about what our attitude is more than anything else."