Not the ending PU had in mind

Tigers end season with loss to Penn

By: Justin Feil
   Princeton University seniors Luke Owings and Justin Conway sat side-by-side following a 64-48 loss to the University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
   "It’s not really how I expected it to end," said Owings, who scored six points and had a team-high six rebounds.
   Owings wasn’t just talking about the second loss to the Ivy League champion Quakers this season. He was talking as much about the end of the season and end of his career. Never could he have envisioned an 11-17 season overall, 2-12 and last place in the Ivies for the first time in the Tigers storied history.
   Owings came to the Tigers from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C., and contributed on the court immediately as Princeton won its 25th Ivy League title. It seems worlds ago. He played in 27 games and was the top freshman scorer for the Tigers that season.
   "You don’t know where the road’s going to take you," Owings said. "My freshman year, it didn’t look like it would take us here. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an experience I’ll cherish."
   Owings wrapped up his career as the team’s second-leading scorer at 7.6 points and second-leading rebounder at 3.3 points per game. He exits 11th on the Tigers’ all-time three-pointers made list, but misfired on all three attempts Tuesday.
   Princeton misfired a lot this season. They shot 42 percent Tuesday, just above their season average of 41 percent. They missed layups on two of their first three possessions Tuesday and never had the lead after the first two minutes of the game. Penn led by 11 at halftime after shooting 57 percent to Princeton’s 31.
   "That’s plagued us all year long," said PU head coach Joe Scott. "We just haven’t shot the ball that well. We shot 38 percent in our league games. It’s hard to win games shooting 38 percent. That’s plagued us and that showed up tonight. I don’t think it should have been an 11-point game (at halftime), and then they came out and took advantage of it right away in the second half."
   Conway also sat dejected after the loss, but he might have been just as uncomfortable because of the back pain that limited him to four minutes off the bench Tuesday.
   "Justin, he can’t move," Scott said. "He didn’t practice all week long. It’s just a hard way for him to finish. I know that. I just threw him in there because he’s a senior and he said, I think I can give it a shot. Obviously, the guy can’t even stand up right now. It’s just hard for him."
   That Conway’s presence was missed shows how far he has come. Conway played in just one game before Jan. 29, 2006. He came on to become an emotional leader and this year’s team captain. He led the Tigers in rebounds and steals.
   "I didn’t expect it," Conway said. "I’ve been blessed to have this opportunity. As Luke said, I wouldn’t trade it for anything."
   The third Princeton senior, Edwin Buffmire, was also slowed by injuries in the final half of the Ivy season. Limited to just 12 minutes Tuesday in his recovery from a sprained ankle, he had a typical well-rounded game. He had four points, a blocked shot, a steal and two rebounds.
   "Those three guys, they’ve done well," Scott said. "They’ve done everything asked of them throughout the year. They had good leadership. Unfortunately for them, I think they had some bad luck. As you go through 14 games, (Kyle) Koncz gets hurt. He’s a junior. He’s an upperclassman. Buffmire, a senior, he gets hurt and misses four games and you only have 14 league games. He’s not a 100 percent. Then Conway gets hurt for the last three. Those are juniors and seniors. They’re the guys who sustained injuries through the league season. That didn’t help and it’s unfortunate for them that it’s their senior year that those things happen. And it’s unfortunate for us."
   It’s unfortunate that they had to be part of a down turn for the Tigers. Sandwiched around a 10-4 Ivy season last year are two disappointing finishes. Among the things that have contributed to the swing are losing some potential help.
   "We’ve lost a lot of good guys over the years," Owings said. "I’ve personally gotten the chance to know in my four years here 30-40 guys who brought their own life experience and their own skills to the basketball program. Not being able to keep all those guys and not being able to figure out how to fit guys into what we were doing, rather than fitting what we were doing into the guys, I think that really contributed to it."
   The three seniors were at Princeton when the team won its last Ivy title. Since then, they’ve seen leaner times. They are a part of the first Princeton team to lose 17 games in a season. They were on the Tigers team that lost to Division III Carnegie Mellon, and suffered the first losing Ivy season in 2004-05.
   "I’ve learned a lot," Owings said. "I’ve had a lot of good times, a lot of bad times. I’ve gone through a lot of different stuff. It’s hard not to kind of look back at some of the stuff as it ends right here. It still hasn’t sunk in completely that tomorrow I’m not going to get up and go lift weights or go to practice, or really lace them up again. I don’t think that’s sunk in completely.
   "I’ve cherished my time here. It hasn’t always been the best, but I’ve always learned from it and I’ve always grown as a person because of it. I really wouldn’t trade it."
   The results may have been disappointing, but not the efforts. And Owings believes the Princeton program still has a lot of promise.
   "Sports has a cyclical nature, like everything else in life," he said. "There’s up times and there’s down times. The character of a program doesn’t die after three years. It doesn’t die after two years. It doesn’t die after a losing season. It doesn’t die because we lost to Penn tonight. The character of the program lives on."
   Owings and the Princeton seniors were happy to be a part of continuing that character. They didn’t have an easy transition from John Thompson to Joe Scott. The wins have been hard to come by, and Ivy title non-existent. But the experience of having played for the Tigers was one they wouldn’t give up.
   "I’d like to say that me and Justin and Buff, we carry that same character of Princeton basketball," Owings said. "For the rest of our lives we’re going to be proud to say we played Princeton basketball. OK, we didn’t have the best won-loss record ever. But we went out there and we left everything on the court the same way all these guys did.
   "It’s a way of being and a way of caring about your work and caring about the details and putting everything you have into it. Putting everything into it doesn’t necessarily guarantee results. Sometimes situations occur that you can’t control. There’s bad luck. Things happen that you don’t expect. If you can honestly say that every day, you put everything you had into it, then you have nothing to be ashamed of."