Some have it Princeton -1.5, others Princeton +1.5
Seems like the last gasp of a dying season.
I see Whitfield as having earned a start.
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And Huggins.
Who sits (besides Happy)?
Tough question. Based on performance would suggest Clark, but we need him to bring the ball up.
This team is unwatchable now. Endless stupid TOs. It’s not that the effort isn’t there. They’re just demoralized now.
Whatever chance they had at a surprise ILT run is out the window with Stanton’s injury.
Lions humiliate us in a different way than Cornell. They played harder, smarter, more confidently.
Our defense was marshmallow soft as most MH teams are. And Columbia’s multiple prayer 3s bouncing didn’t help. At least their losing streak against us ended, there’s no “extra motivation” next season. ILT hunt is over unless they win out - even then, the tiebreakers won’t favor us.
Mitch’s Trentonian interview was depressing. He gave up on the season after Stanton’s injury and the guys are reflecting their coach’s energy.
That was just woeful. Tigers were like 5 guys playing together at the Y for the first time. No ball screens. No picks. No offense other than one-on-one hero ball. Garbage time play started with 15 minutes to go. Dalen inexplicably started turning up open three after open three to drive inside and the result was often ugly. Then every time the Tigers looked like they might claw their way back into the game, they threw the ball away.
Mitch looks like a guy who wishes the season was already over and the body language between him and Dalen is really bad.
The two and oh start in league play, with great wins over Penn and Yale, has sadly just completely melted away. Not sure how they win any more games at this point.
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I know this was always a “down year,” but Mitch has failed to deliver in “up years,” so this season still stings. That Sweet 16 bought Mitch a lifetime appointment. He’s a Supreme Court justice now.
“They’re really good, they’re a good team,” quipped Princeton head coach Mitch Henderson, who was visibly frustrated in the postgame media room. “They’ve got good players, and they thumped us.”
He’s acting like Cornell is an NBA team. Penn beat 'em twice this season.
Compete, just got to compete,” Henderson said when asked what he wants to see from his team on Saturday. “Opportunity, can’t let teams take you out of what you’re doing. You’ve got to compete.”
Well, Mitch, they didn’t compete at all. Columbia left the door open but your guys couldn’t make simple passes 6 out of 7 straight possessions.
Yes, Penn beat them twice this season. But Penn is a much better Ivy team this year than in recent campaigns.
Failing to deliver in up years when talking about a coach who made the sweet 16 3 years ago as an Ivy League team is very funny
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That’s a nice memory. What do you see for 26-27 and beyond?
Of course Yale fans want Mitch stay forever. James Jones almost always beats him in the ILT, even with an inferior team.
2021-22 and 2023-24 were disastrous failures. Last season was a disappointment. One magical run shouldn’t buy you a lifetime contract. Steve Donahue made the Sweet 16 too (with Cornell). Should Penn have kept him?
But even aside from that, this crappy new NIL/transfer era is a totally different animal. You can’t rely on superstar talents to stick around for 4 years. Coaches who can do more with less are what we need.
Obviously the Tigers were told to exploit matchups and drive or post up in iso fashion, but to do that you have to actually have the defender isolated, which means you need spacing or off-ball movement to clear out the help defenders. By standing around too close to the ball and to the basket too often, as well as constantly turning down in-rhythm three-point opportunities, Princeton made it really hard on themselves. Those late killer turnovers were partly due to this problem. I miss the Princeton offense, which would take some of the pressure off their scorers to win one-on-one so much. But I’d settle for any semblance of overall movement, ball reversal, challenging cuts, off-ball screens, etc.
Defensively, the team has a non-Lombardi problem. One of the old Packer coach’s classic sayings was “you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time.” They have great defensive possessions or segments of possessions, but way too many bad possessions or segments of possessions that lead to easy shots for the opponent. (I can’t blame them for some of the unlikely treys that Columbia hit, but the Lions also missed some open ones that easily could have gone in.)
Maybe the lack of motion on offense is infecting the defense, which frequently looks flummoxed by basic ball screens, curls, etc. You could frequently see five steps in advance when a Columbia dribbler or cutter curling around a screen was going to be able to turn the corner and get into the lane. You could predict strong-side double-teams leaving easy passes to open shooters on the perimeter. These guys can and have played better D earlier in the season; Stanton was part of that, but I don’t think the whole operation declined so much just because of his absence.
The upside is that we are seeing the many good things that Abdulahi and Davis can do when forced to do too much on both ends. Hicke was trying, but despite his stats seemed not to be able to get the Tigers off the ropes offensively, I do like Whitfield and Hammond and Clark as giving a boost (especially attitudinally–they look like they are excited to be out there competing rather than disappointed by the lack of team success so far).
AND you need to take and make an open 3 rather than dribble into traffic.
But yes, some bad bad bad turnovers down the stretch, and Columbia seemed to hit everything.
I like Clark doing more one-on-one near the hoop with that sneaky left hand.
BTW, announcers said Stanton had foot SURGERY. Perhaps pinning of a metatarsal?
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In “The Prince” today, Mitch is quoted as saying: “I hope everyone comes back next year”.
So do we all. Transfer portal open April 6 to April 21, FYI.
Amen on turning down trey attempts. I noted that in my comment above. Getting tired of yelling “shoot” at the screen.
They’ve lost their confidence, their joy. When that happens, you turn down open 3s and miss open layups. Mitch is already looking ahead to next year.
Brown was in a similar situation in 2024 and rallied to within 1 bucket of the NCAA tourney. I don’t see that fight in our players or coach. Stanton’s injury was the straw that broke the camel’s back.