Thanks to a reader's tip, I was able to watch a broadcast of Princeton recruit Ian Hummer and Gonzaga High School playing St. Mark's in the 8th Annual Spalding Hoop Hall Classic, which took place this afternoon in Springfield, MA.
This was my first chance to see an entire game of Hummer's. Detailed notes and video highlights follow after the jump.
Minnesota vs. Northwestern - 2:00 pm ET - Big Ten Network
Georgetown (12-4) fell 76-67 at Duke. Dad, if you're reading this, here's Exhibit A of why I don't want you yelling at officials from behind the bench!
St. Bonaventure outscored Richmond (9-8) 11-0 over the final three minutes of their 71-67 victory over the Spiders.
Oregon State (6-10) was no match for Washington in the second half. The Huskies pulled away from the pack for the 85-59 decision.
How many close games can one team lose? Denver dropped another one possession game, 59-57 at FIU.
Craig Moore and Northwestern host Minnesota this afternoon.
Good news? Princeton recruit Mack Darrow scored 22 points and grabbed 9 rebounds for Barrington. Bad news? The rest of his team scored a total of 17 in a 53-39 loss to Conant in the High School Hoops Showdown.
Around the Ivy League: Penn (4-8) became the latest Ancient 8 team to beat still-winless NJIT, sending the Highlanders to their 51st straight loss, 59-40. Dartmouth (2-13) fell for the eighth straight time, 68-59 to New Hampshire. Cornell (11-6 / 1-0) began the defense of its conference crown with a 71-59 win at Columbia (5-10 / 0-1).
Postgame audio - Coach Howie Levy:
"Unfortunately, success tends to make guys let up," said Mercer County Community College head coach Howie Levy.
"It happened in the Northwestern game [when the Wildcats could not hold a double digit halftime lead versus Purdue]. It happened in [Oregon State's] game against Washington State," added Levy. "You get a big lead and you forget to do the things that got you the big lead."
The same story played out for Mercer on Saturday afternoon, as Manor climbed out of an early 26-9 hole and pulled themselves up from a 43-30 deficit with under 15 minutes to play to pass and fend off the Vikings.
The newest members of the Garden State Athletic Conference's Region XIX ended Mercer's four game winning streak with the 56-52 win and evened the Vikings' record at 8-8.
"The big message that I send to these guys is that every basketball game is decided by a handful of possessions," Levy stated after his team's loss.
"It turned from a game played our way to a game played their way. Our offense doesn't work when we don't cut hard and our guys aren't good enough to play without it." The hard work on defense to come over screens as Mercer built their advantage and the attention to assistant coach Roger Gordon's scouting report that limited the touches of the Blue Jays' sharpshooters came undone midway through the second half.
Back-to-back threes by Stefan Thompson, who had been shut out up to this point, gave Manor their first lead, 47-46 with six minutes to go. "They have shooters that just catch the ball and shoot it. All you have to do is not let them get any shots off, just being attentive. They got two," said Levy of this stretch. "A three point shooter can have a great game and have the ball in his hands for four seconds. You can make three threes, catch and shoot, and he had a great game."
Despite the setback, Mercer has made significant strides since the last time I saw them in action in mid-November. "I think they're starting to enjoy to play this way," Levy said of his team, "but when things are tough they haven't been doing it long enough to not revert to what they did previously."
Mercer hosts Essex on Tuesday night at 7:00 pm ET.
Georgetown vs. Duke - 1:30 pm ET - CBS
Manor vs. MCCC - 3:00 pm ET
St. Bonaventure vs. Richmond - 7:00 pm ET
Denver vs. FIU - 7:30 pm ET
Washington vs. Oregon State - 10:00 pm ET - FSN NW
Penn vs. NJIT - 2:00 pm ET
New Hampshire vs. Dartmouth - 7:00 pm ET
Cornell vs. Columbia - 7:00 pm ET
The Seattle Times has the latest profile of Craig Robinson.
Alex Wolff wrote a feature called "The Audacity of Hoops" about President-elect Obama for this week's Sports Illustrated.
Princeton recruit Will Barrett scored 16 and grabbed nine rebounds as Central Bucks South won its 10th straight.
The game of the afternoon may be Georgetown at Duke.
Richmond hosts St. Bonaventure.
Oregon State welcomes Washington to Corvallis tonight.
Denver plays at Florida International.
Around the Ivy League: Yale (6-9 / 1-0) won its fourth straight, 70-62 over Brown (6-9 / 0-1).
When I ran the above picture from Peter Dutton earlier today as part of a series of photos from 1989-1992, I did not expect to receive the following email a few hours later.
Internet, you amaze me.
Dear Mr. Solomon,
I can explain the gorilla costume at the 1989 NCAA Tournament game vs. Georgetown. I was wearing it.
I am a member of the Princeton class of 1989 and was the Drum Major of the marching band (although my term had ended by the time the Tournament rolled around). For four years, Bob Scrabis' mother sat near the band for every home game and she and I had what I would call, for lack of a better term, a friendly cheering acquaintance. We both admired her son's basketball prowess. [In fact, I modeled my beer pong form on his free throw shooting form. I always glanced to the left just before releasing the ball.]
I owned the gorilla suit (bought for use in a skit that was a takeoff of 2001:A Space Odyssey that the band performed at the Yale football game the previous fall). My winter coat was stolen that fall at a party on Prospect St. and so, for no other reason than I was somewhat cold, I decided to wear my gorilla suit to the first basketball game of the year. As a gag, I took a bunch of bananas with me and handed them out. The first one, went to Mrs. Scrabis, who laughed out loud. We won the game, and the suit got a good reaction. So, for every home game that year (and several away ones as well), I wore my gorilla suit and presented Mrs. Scrabis with a banana for good luck.
I had a great seat for the game against Georgetown: Section A, Row 1, Seat 1, if I recall correctly. I gave the ticket stub later to a bandmember who had been too sick to attend the game. I managed to get into the arena and locate Mrs. Scrabis (who was NOT near the band for that game). I gave her a banana and got a big hug before arena security accosted me and made me take off the suit. It seems there was a NCAA regulation against a school having more than one mascot at a Tournament game. I pleaded my case to no avail. The suit came off and the rest is history.
Best wishes, Eliza Kunkel '89
Breaking news from TigerBlog:
Doug Davis, the freshman who is the leading scorer on the Princeton men's basketball team, has let us know that he would prefer to be known by his full name from now on. All future mentions of him will therefore be of Douglas Davis.
To update an earlier post, Davis scored 165 points across 12 games as Doug Davis (13.8 ppg) and needs to total 222 points as Douglas Davis over the final 15 games of this season to match the Princeton record for most points by a freshman.
That's 14.8 ppg, for those of you keeping score at home.
While on Flickr one recent evening, I discovered a huge repository of late 80s/early 90s photos taken by former Princeton band member Peter Dutton.
Dutton was kind enough to give me permission to share a few of his shots, clicked from the stands at various Princeton games, including four straight trips to the NCAA Tournament.
They're not expert sideline snaps by any means, but that's not the point. These photos bring me back to a time almost two decades previous that was a whole lot of fun. I hope they'll stir up similar memories for some of you and give people who weren't there an idea of what it was like to follow the team back then.
Hopefully these .jpgs will also get me off my duff and scanning the archived material gathering dust at my parents' house!
Peter has thousands of additional photos on his Flickr page.
If you have any Princeton basketball photos you would like to be similarly shared, please get in touch!
December 1989. That's certainly Kit Mueller (#00), Bob Scrabis (#34) and Jerry Doyle (#5). Fairly confident Marv Williams (#22) is also on the floor. Is #40 Anders Vestergaard?
The Tigers' last lead against Georgetown. 1989 NCAA Tournament.
Princeton band. Providence Civic Center. Gorilla costume?
Georgetown shooting a free throw in the first half. I see George Leftwich (#22), Matt Lapin (#33) and Bob Scrabis (#34) ready to box out.
Second half of the 1992 NCAA Tournament. Chris Mooney (#21) is at the top of the arc. Are those Leftwich and Rick Hielscher (#33) on the floor with him?
The band does "Rock Lobster" after a game at Jadwin. Note the Matt Lapin "Senior On A Stick," which most likely means this came from the final home game of the 1989-90 season.
The Tiger unmasked!
The Princeton band plays towards the end of the first half of Princeton's 1991 NCAA Tournament game versus Villanova - a game I've never been able to bring myself to watch on tape after suffering through it live.
Yale vs. Brown - 7:00 pm ET
What a rough night.
First there was the Northwestern (8-6) game. The Wildcats had a 13 point halftime lead against Purdue and an 11 point lead with under eight minutes remaining. That advantage was incrementally widdled away as Northwestern habitually split their trips to the foul line. The Boilermakers won 63-61 on two free throws with two seconds left. Argh.
As that contest was finishing, Oregon State (6-9) was going to overtime versus Washington State, despite not trailing in the second half. The Beavers would fall 61-57.
Not to be outdone, Denver (7-10) could not hold a 21 point halftime lead at North Texas, as the Mean Green rallied for a 69-62 win. It tied the largest comeback in North Texas history.
The Ivy League has announced that starting in 2010 there will be conference tournaments for men's and women's lacrosse. These four team playoffs will determine the automatic NCAA tournament bid for each sport. Can basketball be far behind?
Craig Robinson is the subject of a feature by Chuck Klosterman in the new issue of Esquire.
John Thompson III will attend Tuesday's swearing-in ceremony, even if he has to walk there from Georgetown.
Princeton recruit Gus Gabel and two teammates are interviewed by the Arizona Republic.
A pair of Daily Princetonian articles - part two of their history of Princeton basketball and a preview of the Tigers' next three games.
Scott Greenman's dad is also an assistant coach, and he's quoted in a Press of Atlantic City story about high school assistants.
The MCCC Vikings improved to 8-7 with their fourth straight win, a 79-61 decision over Middlesex tonight.
Roger Gordon (left), often seen on the sidelines at Jadwin, has joined the staff at Mercer.
Hope to catch up with Howie Levy on Saturday to talk about his team's improvements since I saw them play in mid-November.
Pictures courtesy of Stephen Goldsmith.
Footage from last night's dominant Hoya win plus postgame analysis by the always solid Doris Burke.
Purdue vs. Northwestern - 7:00 pm ET - ESPN2
Middlesex vs. MCCC - 7:00 pm ET
Denver vs. North Texas - 8:00 pm ET
Washington State vs. Oregon State - 9:00 pm ET - FSN
DaJuan Summers and Georgetown (12-3) beat Syracuse from pillar to post, 88-74.
Richmond (9-7) went to Virginia Tech and probably wishes they hadn't in retrospect, shooting just 31.1% from the field in a 62-48 loss.
Mercer beat Ocean earlier this week to raise their record to .500. The Vikings' game at Brookdale has been rescheduled for February 5th.
In the wake of Gonzaga's victory over Bishop McNamara, here are some videos of Ian Hummer - dunking on a backdoor cut and answering some questions after the game.
Princeton recruit Will Barrett scored 21 in a 52-49 Central Bucks South win over Central Bucks East.
Winless in Big 10 play, Northwestern hosts #19 Purdue tonight.
Denver is on the road at North Texas.
Oregon State welcomes Washington State to Corvallis. Beavers head coach Craig Robinson will take some time away from his team after this weekend's games to attend the inauguration.
Around the Ivy League: Penn (3-8) was humbled by former coach Fran Dunphy and Temple, 78-53.
...and with this post, I believe you're caught up on everything that happened while the site was on vacation.
Georgetown (11-3) came from behind to beat Providence, 82-75. Freshman Greg Monroe finished with 13 points, 11 rebounds, eight assists, five steals and two blocks for the Hoyas.
Richmond (9-6) started Atlantic 10 play with a 60-48 win at George Washington.
Craig Robinson was ejected at the end of a 64-47 Oregon State (6-8) loss at Arizona.
Denver (7-9) rallied past Louisiana-Monroe, 58-47.
Around the Ivy League: Columbia (5-9) kept NJIT winless, 73-50. A third straight victory for Yale (5-9), 71-63 over Hartford. Brown (6-8) beat Bryant 69-56, two days before Cornell (10-6) did the same, 69-46. Conference play began on Saturday with Harvard (9-6 / 1-0) pulling one out in the final seconds at Dartmouth (2-11 / 0-1). The Big Green's 60-52 loss to Stony Brook was their seventh straight.
