Johnson tinkering with Princeton offense

It wasn't very long ago that the Ivy League men's basketball season consisted of a two-horse race, with each contender starting with the letter 'P.'

Since the start of the 1958-59 season, the Ancient Eight has crowned 54 champions and co-champions. Princeton and Penn have earned a combined 50 of them.

That all seems like a distant memory for Princeton coach Sydney Johnson, whose team finished 3-11 in conference play last season, his first year at the helm.

But he's quick to let you know that he doesn't planning on continuing that way.

"Our program has been about winning so much," Johnson said. "That's what we want to stand for."

Still, the notoriously slow Princeton offense was even slower than usual throughout Johnson's rookie campaign.

The Tigers were held under 60 points on fifteen different occasions throughout 2007-08.

Fast forward a season, and Johnson has been able to inject a little urgency into his lackadaisical cats.

Princeton sports an improved, though still unimpressive, 5-8 record, and has only found its way to 60 points in five of thirteen games.

Those five games include two veritable scoring outbursts: 73-point efforts in wins against Fordham and Lehigh.

Johnson - who graduated from Princeton in 1997 after winning Ivy League Player of the Year -- is trying to transform the Tigers into a more up-tempo team offensively, as blasphemous as that sounds.

He receives considerable help to that end in the form of freshman guard Doug Davis.

Davis leads the Tigers in points, steals and minutes played. He has started all 13 games, providing a spark for Princeton's famously plodding attack.

"He's an obvious scorer," said Johnson -- who did not make his players available for comment. "I think that that may change a lot of people's viewpoints, in terms of what our offense is about."

But of course, a guard is no good on his own without some tall trees in the middle to whom he can pass the ball.

Enter sophomore forward Kareem Maddox and junior centers Zach Finley and Pawel Buczak, who have averaged a combined 18.6 points and 12.8 rebounds per game.

"We certainly need more balance," Johnson said, "if we can get it."

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