End of the Ivy road for Penn: M. Hoops unable to overcome No. 8 Tigers

Maybe they are that good. In a battle for first place in the Ivy League, eighth-ranked Princeton slowly wore down the men's basketball team last night, coming away with a 71-52 victory in front of a raucous 7,185 fans at Jadwin Gymnasium. The win virtually assures Princeton (21-1, 9-0 Ivy League) its third consecutive Ivy League title with five games remaining on its schedule. Not including its rematch with Penn March 3, Princeton beat its other four remaining opponents by an average of 24.5 points in the first round of Ivy play. The Quakers capitalized on two early Tigers turnovers and four Michael Jordan points to build an early 8-4 lead four minutes into the game. That lead was short lived, as Tigers center Steve Goodrich fueled a 10-0 Princeton run over the next two minutes to put the Tigers ahead 14-8. The Quakers would never draw closer. "Steve [Goodrich] was really productive in the low post," Princeton coach Bill Carmody said. "Every time he touched the ball he scored." Princeton steadily increased its lead over the final 30 minutes, as it shot 58.1 percent from the field and 56.3 percent from behind the three-point line. With five minutes, 23 seconds to play, Goodrich drove for a layup and was fouled by Penn sophomore Matt Langel. The ensuing free throw put the Tigers up by 20 for the first time, 58-38, and caused the frenzied student section to start chanting, "Warm up the bus." After the game, the Tigers gave a lot of the credit for their victory to the overflowing student section which stood and literally shook the floor up and down during the entire game. The students were ready to congratulate themselves as well, cheering, "Let's get loaded," as the game drew to a close. A home court advantage maybe could have helped Penn mount another miracle comeback similar to the one it had last week against Yale, but last night there was nothing Penn could do that Princeton could not deliver right back. Jed Ryan's three pointer cut the lead to 17 with five minutes to play, but the glimmer of hope was quickly dashed when Goodrich slammed home two more to push the lead back up to 19 with 4:27 on the clock. Goodrich was the story of the game, leading the Tigers with 19 points on 8-of-10 shooting. The 6'10" senior had little trouble moving around Quakers junior George Mboya, who started the game in place of the injured Jed Ryan. After realizing that one Quaker was not enough to cover Goodrich, Penn tried to double down when he got the ball in the paint, but Goodrich turned the tables by dishing off assist after assist to open Tigers perimeter shooters. Goodrich finished with six assists and just two turnovers in 38 minutes of action. "[Mboya] is undersized a little bit, so I felt like I could shoot the ball over him and he couldn't stop me," Goodrich said. Afterwards, Goodrich said he was pleased that it was finally his turn to dominate the Quakers the way they dominated him when he was a freshman and sophomore. Last night's win was Princeton's fourth consecutive victory over Penn, dating back to the playoff game between the two schools in March 1996. "It took such a long time to learn how to beat [Penn]," Goodrich said. "Now, maybe they have something to overcome." While the Tiger's offense moved fluidly, Penn had trouble finding a rhythm. After opening the game by moving the ball effectively inside to junior forward Paul Romanczuk, Princeton clamped down their defense, which leads the country in fewest points allowed per game. Forced to look for open perimeter shots, the Quakers could not find the mark, draining just 1-of-8 three pointers in the first half. "We got a lot of shots, we just didn't make them," a quiet and disappointed Jordan said afterwards. Traditionally known for working the shot clock to near nothing before shooting, Princeton rarely took all of its time, choosing instead to put in open layups which it found by the barrel. The layups in turn freed up sharpshooters Brian Earl and Gabe Lewullis, who were a combined 6-of-10 on three pointers. Penn used every second it could get on offense. With 35 seconds, on many occasions, the shot clock forced the Quakers into shots it otherwise might have passed up. Senior guard Garett Krietz, who poured in a career-high 33 points against Brown Saturday night, mustered a stunning zero points and was 0-for-6 from the floor. Langel had been the other hot hand entering the game, but even he was just 2-of-9 from the floor and finished with five points. "We didn't do a good job running our offense in the first half," Dunphy said. "We needed Garett [Krietz] to make shots from the perimeter. "They are not as fun to coach against as they are to watch." The Quakers received a boost from the return of junior forward Jed Ryan, who played with a large bandage covering the outside two fingers of his shooting hand. After looking uncomfortable in his first stint on the floor, in which he played five minutes and missed his only shot, Ryan came back in the second half with seven points and two rebounds. "He came to me and said he wanted to play," Dunphy said. "He's worked so hard to get where he is, I owed it to him." Entering the second half down 31-20, The Quakers traded baskets with Princeton for the first 10 minutes of the half. When Jordan hit his second three pointer of the half to make the score 43-33 with 12:39 to play, it looked like Penn might have another comeback left in them. The Tigers, however, would not be denied their 14th straight victory, and looked to another Goodrich hook shot and forward Gabe Lewullis' three-pointer to push the lead up to 15. The Quakers shot well in the second half, hitting 50 percent on their shots from the field and 6-of-8 from downtown. Their transition game hurt them, as Princeton scored layup after layup off of Penn turnovers. Both teams committed 12 turnovers in the game, but Princeton scored 16 points off of those turnovers while the Quakers scored just 8. "They finish very well. We didn't get back on defense after turning it over," Dunphy said. Princeton also hurt Penn from the free throw line. In the first half the Tigers did not take a single shot from the charity stripe as the referees had little use for their whistles in the unphysical game. The second half was a different story, as Princeton paraded to the line 15 times, making 12. Princeton guard Brian Earl had to sit on the bench for the final five minutes of the first half after picking up his second foul, but no other Tiger was ever in foul trouble. Without a deep bench, the Tigers could have been hurt by a physical game, but Penn was forced into too many outside shots with the shot clock running down and was unable to pick up fouls in the paint. Princeton has now equaled its best start in school history. The 1924-25 team also began 21-1. The win was also the 12th straight double digit win in the Ivy League, and its 31st straight in the month of February. Despite being nearly assured of the Ivy title, Princeton needs continued victories to maintain both their national ranking and their Rating Power Index ranking, which is more important in determining seedings for the national tournament. "Our ranking is inflated," Goodrich said. "We are not defending our ranking against ranked teams every week. We are moving up because teams ahead of us are losing to each other." Whatever Goodrich's opinion of the national ranking, last night's precision drilling of Penn proved there is no question where Princeton stands in the Ivy League.

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