Princeton falls in heartbreaker to first-place Cornell

With seven seconds remaining in the game and with the men’s basketball team trailing by three points, sophomore guard Doug Davis shook his defender and brought the ball up the court, looking for a clean shot that could force overtime. He passed the ball off to senior center Pawel Buczak, who dropped it back off to Davis. The shot went up as time expired, but it was long.

Princeton (14-6 overall, 5-1 Ivy League) fell to No. 22 Cornell (21-4, 7-1) 48-45 on Saturday night in front of a boisterous crowd at Jadwin Gymnasium. The weekend did, however, see the Tigers beat Columbia (9-13, 3-5) 55-45 on Friday.

“We want to win badly. We are about winning, but to see that environment, and to have these guys — and they put themselves in that position, to have a big game like that, so they ought to take a lot of pride from that,” head coach Sydney Johnson ’97 said. “The next step is to win a game like that. Terrific atmosphere — the wrong team won; that’s all it is.”

Princeton refused to get caught up in the massive hype surrounding Saturday night’s game, and it took care of business against the tenacious Lions. The Tigers rallied in the second half behind a strong defensive effort that limited Columbia to just 22.2 percent shooting and 18 points.

Cornell may have been guilty of looking ahead, as it fell 79-64 to a 4-16 Penn squad the previous evening.

Still, Saturday night’s game lived up to its billing.

Davis had hit a litany of huge shots for Princeton over the evening, so it was no surprise that he had the ball in the closing seconds.

“I wanted to take the shot earlier, but with [seven-foot center Jeff] Foote’s length, I didn’t think I would be able to get it off, so I hit Pawel to see if he had a shot, and I came back around,” Davis said of his shot. “I let it go; it felt a little long … I was praying somehow it would go in, but it didn’t.”

After losing its first league game of the season — and after it had won all its other league games by at least 10 points — the Big Red played with a sense of desperation. After scoring the game’s first bucket, Foote walked back toward his teammates, screaming with passion.

But passion and effort were two areas where the Tigers were never lacking. Johnson never called timeout during that run; he didn’t have to.

After a quick 8-0 Cornell run, Princeton stormed back to tie the game at 10-10 with a rally of its own. Junior guard Dan Mavraides nailed a three-pointer to put the Tigers on the board. Good ball movement gave Davis a good look at a jumper, which he drained. Mavraides dished the ball to Finley, who was right underneath the basket. He pump-faked to get his man in the air, then calmly laid the ball in. Mavraides then bookended the run with another three.

Every time the Big Red made a run, Princeton answered. Cornell ran out to a 22-13 lead, but the Tigers allowed only one more field goal for the rest of the half and pulled within 24-21.

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Foote was most problematic for Princeton. With his seven-foot frame and big body, he was a handful around the hoop. He ended up finishing a perfect 5-5 from the field and had 11 points on the night.

“I don’t think we have a key to that,” Johnson said. “If you let [Foote] get one-on-one touches close to the basket, he’s going to hurt you.”

Withthree minutes, 20 seconds left, it was forward Ryan Wittman, who had been held in check for most of the night, who finally put together the crucial plays for Cornell. He hit a pull-up jumper and a three-pointer from the top of the arc after coming free on a screen. Cornell had its largest lead since the first half, at 44-38 with just 1:38 left.

The Big Red needed every one of those points, because Princeton refused to concede. Davis hit two huge shots, including one three as the shot clock was expiring, to pull the Tigers within one at 44-43. In between, Princeton gambled by fouling Foote, but it was a very savvy play — the Tigers weren’t in the double bonus, and Foote, not a great free-throw shooter, missed the first free throw to give Princeton the ball back.

With just 24 seconds left, it looked like senior guard and co-captain Marcus Schroeder and Mavraides had executed a perfect trap on Cornell guard Louis Dale, but a foul was called. Dale hit both of his free throws to push the margin back to three.

After Davis hit a pair of free throws, the Tigers nearly made the biggest play of the night. With 13 seconds left, Mavraides got a hand on Cornell’s inbounds pass, but it was headed out of bounds. He leapt up and tried to toss it back to give one of his teammates a chance on the ball, but the ball ended up going out off Princeton. The Tigers then fouled Wittman, who barely got his first free throw to fall — it bounced up off the front of the rim, rolled around and finally fell through.

Though Princeton did not shoot that well — only 38 percent for the game — it was the defense that may have come up just a bit short.

“There were some drives where they were just right at the rim, and that’s not something we allow too often. If you look at the numbers overall, they shot 45 percent — a few points less than that, and we would have been happy,” Johnson said. “I think we were okay, but I think as a team we’re going to look at some of the drives there and some of the things that they got easy and know that that was on us.”

It was an electrifying atmosphere on Saturday night. Though the Tigers didn’t win the game, they went toe-to-toe with a team many thought would run away with the league title.

“It was special to see a crowd like that, to see that many people out … I’ve definitely never seen it like that,” Finley said. “Just to know that we have that support from our fans and from the community — it’s really great to see that. And you know that I think that that’s a game a couple of years ago where it doesn’t come down [to] the end. I think the program has come a long way since I first got here.”

Princeton still has a chance this year to take the next step. A lot of basketball remains, and, while no one knows what will happen, Saturday night proved that these Tigers are for real.

“It was a drastically different basketball game and something that I want us to have every single time out,” Johnson said. “They were pretty excited to beat us. That’s how we want people to feel. We want people to respect that jersey. So hopefully we’ll have another time, another crack … and we’ll see if we can come out on top. It was a really good basketball game, and hopefully we’ll have more like that in Jadwin Gym.”