CBI would certainly take them, but I don’t know if Mitch and the players would be interested. I wouldn’t.
NIT is unlikely but not impossible due to the new “College Basketball Crown” tournament, which will feature 16 power conference teams getting paid to play in Vegas. That means the NIT will have to lower its standards and invite a bunch of midmajors that normally wouldn’t be good enough.
Princeton has unworthy computer rankings (e.g. 178 KenPom) but they’re still 19-11, beat Rutgers and St. Joe’s, and have a minor star in Lee. Not to mention they are a “brand name” among mid-majors. I’m not counting on an invite but won’t be surprised if they snag an away game.
I chose not to get up at 8:00 and instead watched it later without peeking. After that horrendous start I thought a) MH coaching failure–how can this early sleepwalking on both ends keep happening? and b) this thing is going to be deja vus with the regular season.
Well, a) might have been right but b) was very wrong. The Tigers turned it into a rock fight by collapsing inside and forcing Yale to take threes (not all of them wide open) and the Elis couldn’t hit. Peters was stellar in chasing Poulakades around and denying him easy catches. The Tigers couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from outside even with no defender nearby, but still got that first-half run to chew their initial deficit in half. And it was more of the same in the second half–fighting and clawing and finally getting a late lead. Davis and Huggins played well, Lee did a lot, Pierce had a bunch of good passes and cuts, and when Happy hit that one big trey i thought it might come out as a big upset. Yale tried to help out at the FT line, with Aletan missing two and Poulakades missing the front end inside five minutes.
Basically the game was lost in the first 5-10 minutes. The Tigers won the rest of the game by about ten points. Slow starts plagued this group all season and it is kind of fitting that that’s how the season ended. Lots of puzzling coaching stuff to nitpick (2-3 zone comes out and seems to mess Yale up, then disappears forever, no full-court pressure with the young bench guys coming in, the fortunate but not planned clock management at the end that by fluke gave Lee six seconds to try to win it…) but the fight against a bigger, stronger, and very talented opponent was inspiring.
GK, I think you overestimate the importance of the gap between being consistently good versus being champ relative to the gap between being mediocre or bad versus being consistently good. Replacing MH is risking a huge step back in program success in hopes of some championship upside from an unknown replacement coach. It’s a sucker bet.
Maybe McConnell would be a great HC and lead Princeton to unparalleled success. Maybe he would have a good year and leave. Maybe he would crash and burn. Maybe he would replicate MH’s performance. I would much rather keep taking “at bats” with a team consistently expecting to be in the top two or three of the league than switch coaches (assuming realistic candidates).
Fair enough. I just don’t like the idea that we MUST stick with a good-not-great head coach.
I want to see this team play in the NCAA tournament and Mitch couldn’t do that with TWO all-time Princeton talents in Lee and Pierce. He also didn’t get it done in 2022 with Llewellyn, Wright, Tosan, Friberg, Langborg.
At the press conference, you witnessed two 2 college bb players totally invested in the game—one who I know has does so every time he stepped on the court whether it be in practice or games. I actually thought MH was going to break down. He acknowledged his part in Princeton’s season and said he had a bad year. The press also questioned his non usage of players throughout the season to which he took ownership. The emotions continued as X and Blake stepped on the bus. Heartbreaking
The slow start was largely due to CJ Happy missing I think his first 3 or 4 shots; had he made his first two of them, the dynamic might have been different. When he finally hit one late in the game it was a big boost, and his next attempt was all but through the net before rimming out. Live by the 3, die by the three.
At one point during the season Pierce was a 40% three point shooter. Ended the year 31%, and was 21% over the last five games, including some real bricks early in the Yale ILT game. Not sure what happened to him.
Even if Huggins plays more next year, he and Malik have no outside shot at all, so Happy will carry that load for as many minutes as he can play per game, unless either of the two incoming freshman “bigs” can contribute.
He has the skills to be the quality starter we need. He just wasn’t ready for primetime as a freshman - early jitters on those wide-open threes. If only he got more minutes, shots earlier in the season.
Mitch has a bad habit of anointing chosen ones… and then putting them in the doghouse for weeks.
Even a 40% three point shooter will miss three in a row 20% of the time, so it might have been just “statistics” rather than jitters. But yeah, he probably was a bit nervous.
I heard CJ was injured over the summer so no surprise he had a slow start to the year. CJ has one of the prettiest strokes on the team. That last one went down so far I jumped off my couch and thought we were up 4.
He’ll be ready next time for sure. I like that he was still willing to keep shooting it. He even smiled after hitting the go-ahead 3.
Just needed that next one to go down! I swear it was seriously 60% down, if that’s even possible by the laws of physics. Oh well. To be fair, Lee and Peters both bounced in 3s, so it’s cosmic karma I suppose.
If Guy Ragland Jr. were on our team, we’d have an undefeated season. That’s all we need - big strong guy in the middle who can shoot 3s and play solid, straight-up defense at the rim.
Yale back up 8. They’ll pull this out, but Jaques has done a great job with Earl’s system.
They were by far the best in the league this year and deserve the NCAA bid.
I just hope Lee and Pierce come back and FINALLY beat a James Jones team in the ILT. Even with Mbeng and Poulakidas gone, he’ll have Townsend, Aletan, Celiscar, Mullin, Simmons to work with.
I hope Mitch and the guys put themselves through the agony of watching this game on TV. See what it takes to win the tough league games. No more excuses. Enough talk. Get it done.