By: centraljersey.com
With exams behind them, as well as their three-week layoff, the Princeton University men’s basketball starts the biggest portion of its season on Friday night when the Tigers host Brown in their Ivy League opener.
"They are two good teams," Princeton coach Sydney Johnson said of opening the Ivy slate against Brown and Yale this weekend. "I know Yale was able to go 2-0 and they are really showing their claim to try and win a championship this year. Brown has been playing good basketball and they shoot the three very well. Now it begins and hopefully we can stay healthy and just be ready to make those plays when the moments come. If we can do that at home and enough times on the road, we just might have a shot."
Yale, along with Harvard and Columbia, opened the Ivy League season with weekend sweeps to go to 2-0 in the league. Princeton and Penn will begin Ivy play this weekend. The Tigers will do so coming off a 73-40 win over The College of New Jersey on Sunday at Jadwin Gym.
"We were not sharp at the beginning of the game, that was clear," said Johnson, whose team shook off a sluggish first half to pull away in the second half. "(TCNJ) came out ready to play and that is good because I know their coach is working hard to have them be competitive. I thought they played very hard and we were slow to get going. But then I thought we got back to what we normally do, which is we defend as much as possible."
Princeton got a huge lift from Kareem Maddox, who came off the bench to score 21 points and grab 12 rebounds in 22 minutes of play. Maddox has become a key part of the Tigers offense and defense in his role coming off the bench this year.
"My main focus was coming out and keeping the intensity up," said Maddox, who helped the Tigers improve to 12-4 on the season. "I know we haven’t had a game in a while and we were kind of rusty. It took a little while to get into it, but I think we came out and shook off a little bit of that rust.
"It has been pretty much all season now (coming off the bench). It’s kind of like doing the same thing and being consistent every single game whether it is starting or coming off the bench doesn’t really matter to me. The important thing is to play well and to win."
Plenty of Princeton players played well in the win over TCNJ. The Tigers used all 15 available players, with 11 different players scoring. The game offered some players a chance to see if they could make an impression heading into Ivy League play.
"We feel good about our entire roster," Johnson said. "We got certain guys out there who had not played as much. There are certain guys that we want to see, even at this point in the season, to see if they can help us out in the Ivy League. There are key people that everybody knows but there are some guys that have shown some things in practice that if they keep grinding I think they can help us in the Ivy League."
One player that can certainly help is Maddox, who is averaging over 13 points a game this season.
"He has done the work," Johnson said. "That’s really what it is. There was a lot of pressure on him to be a certain type of player early in his career and it just wasn’t there. I think he has done the work in terms of the weight room and on the court and with his focus. I take it from the angle that when you bust your tail and give us that much, then you are going to become a featured guy on the court offensively and defensively."
And now Maddox and the rest of the Tigers get ready for the biggest part of the season to begin.
"I think we’re prepared," he said. "And we have this whole week to prepare. It’s going to come down to the little things. The intensity and some of the other things we are trying to focus on."

