Postgame audio - Coach Sydney Johnson:
Postgame audio - Dan Mavraides:
Postgame audio - Pawel Buczak:
Junior center Pawel Buczak dominated the last four minutes of play, contributing to three straight baskets in an 8-0 Princeton run that helped the Tigers build a decisive 11 point advantage on their way to a 59-54 victory over Dartmouth. The win is the team’s fourth straight, Princeton’s first four game unbeaten streak since 2004.
It was a balanced offensive effort in Hanover to open the Ivy slate. Buczak finished with a team-high 14 points and a game-best five assists. Dan Mavraides scored 13, 10 in the first half. Freshmen Douglas Davis and Patrick Saunders each added 11, the latter a career high.
The near-unstoppable Alex Barnett was the only Dartmouth player in double digits, scoring 24 in a variety of ways, including five strikes from three point range.
"I felt like we got closer to doing what we wanted to do on offense and defense," said Princeton coach Sydney Johnson after the game. "When you're playing hard enough and play well enough times you come away with a win."
With Princeton up by three after two free throws from Clive Weeden with 4:03 left to play, Buczak took over.
A long Buczak lefty hook shot from the center of the paint made it a two possession game.
Davis cut backdoor and laid home a perfectly timed lob pass by Buczak to make the score 55-48 Tigers. At 6'10", Buczak was able to take advantage of his height and look down over his man to survey the floor. "It definitely helps," said Buczak of his vantage point. "When a big guy is guarding me, he's not pushing up on me so I can look over and see everything. It makes my job a little easier."
Mavraides came over on help defense to slap the ball away from a driving Barnett and into Saunders' hands with 1:41 to go.
At the other end of Leede Arena, Buczak found Saunders floating to the rim for another nifty layup.
It wasn't all offense. Buczak set his feet and absorbed a drive by David Rufful with a minute left to give the ball back to the Tigers. Princeton was able to run 26 seconds off the clock before Dartmouth sent them to the free throw line and two Saunders conversions finished the run and secured the victory.
When told about his contributions to the game's final chapter, The reticent Buczak could not think of what to say.
"I don't really remember it that well," Buczak stated bashfully. "I guess [it all happened], if you say so."
"He's got confidence," Johnson said about his starting center. "I think confidence comes from results and results give you confidence. It is kind of feeding on itself.
Buczak had five assists for the second straight game. "I've always felt that passing has been one of the stronger points of my game," said Buczak. "I feel like it is all coming together."
The first half had the feel of several painful games during Princeton's last three seasons of conference struggle: get repeated good looks that don't go down, be unable to build a single digit lead, play solid defense for a spell but then start to wear down and allow baskets.
The Tigers' Dan Mavraides scored the game's first five points, the first on a handoff screen from Buczak that cleared space for a long two. Mavraides then sized up a three in the far corner after taking in a Davis pass.
That was all the scoring by either team in the first four minutes, as the Tigers committed four turnovers and Dartmouth missed seven consecutive jump shots.
The Big Green finally got on the board with 15:18 left on a basket by Marlon Sanders, who freed space for himself with a wicked crossover. Sanders crossed over Mavraides a second time and drove to the tin, scoring while being fouled. The free throw was no good, but Dartmouth was within one.
The similarity to Ivy losses in recent years increased when Barnett began to catch fire.
Barnett, who leads Dartmouth in every conceivable statistical category, slid over to help on defense and added to his block total, slapping a Davis drive off the backboard. At the other end, Barnett gave Saunders a subtle push off to create enough space on the wing for his first three point shot, which pulled the Big Green back within one.
Dartmouth took their first lead when Barnett scored on a baseline jumper over Davis.
At the right side of the arc, Barnett lulled Kareem Maddox to sleep by holding the ball behind his back with his left hand, then created a sliver of space with a jab step and targeted another deep jumper, pumping his fist as he ran down the floor. Princeton called time out, trailing 15-12 with 10:29 to go before halftime.
The Dartmouth lead reached seven as Jabari Trotter canned one off the dribble at the free throw line.
His team needing a basket to stem the tide, Buczak ambled around Elgin Fitzgerald with three staccato bounces to the glass and flicked one up while being bodied.
Trotter had a long dribble go out of bounds on the sideline as he brought the ball up and Princeton immediately had the ball back.
Buczak got possession in the post, waited for the defense to sag to him and kicked out to Saunders on the same side for three. The Tigers were down one.
When Princeton had the ball next, Saunders drove to his left, spun around and fed Mavraides, who had filled the space Saunders vacated at the top of the key. Mavraides was on the mark.
Barnett somehow got a wild one-handed lean in push shot to the rim, and the ball nicked the front of the iron, kissed the glass and fell home. Dartmouth took the lead back 22-21 with 4:02 remaining.
Princeton's defense allowed them to survive a stretch where they missed several golden opportunities.
Mavraides was just short on a reverse layup that hung on the rim and rolled off.
Zach Finley, subbing for Buczak, dropped a perfect bounce pass for Mavraides, who this time came up impossibly short.
Davis was off-target from three and Nick Lake beat everyone to the ball, but somehow could not convert as everyone else in the paint stood flatfooted gawking.
Finally, a basket! Marcus Schroeder, who played another quality floor game for Princeton, came over to help on defense and stole the ball from Rufful. Schroeder threw an overhand pass to Mavraides racing downcourt and Mavraides hauled it in, hesitated to get Barnett in the air and scored.
On his team's next possession Schroeder was the driver, leaving the ball for the trailing Buczak who hooked it home.
Dartmouth held for the final shot of the half, but Davis had other ideas, picking the pocket of Trotter 35 feet from the basket and scoring ahead of the pack with nine seconds to go.
Now down by five, Barnett attempted a deep three point shot two steps behind the line over the extended arm of Buczak that sailed through the net as time ran out. As Dartmouth raced off the floor, Buczak stood on the floor with his right arm still pointed at the ceiling, as if to say "what more could I have possibly done?"
The Big Green caught the Tigers at the start of the second half, and Dartmouth took their final lead of the game at 31-29 on a Trotter shot high off the glass. Princeton answered with nine straight. Davis was fouled on a drive by Herve Houna and made both free throws.
Two Big Green players headed to the basket after a Princeton cutter, which allowed Mavraides time to size up a three point shot on the wing. The Tigers had a three point lead.
Finley came over to cut off Barnett in the post and draw a charge, to the delight of the Princeton bench.
Pushing the ball up the floor, Schroeder went to Saunders in the right post and Saunders spotted Finley heading towards the hole on the lefty drive. Finley was fouled by Kouna as he made his move and converted both his chances at the line.
Saunders hauled in a Davis pass and connected on the left side, his toe just over the three point line. Dartmouth called time out with Princeton now in front 38-31.
The Tigers saw their lead cut to one possession on six occasions.
If earlier in the season Coach Johnson felt that his team did not understand they were controlling games despite having just a one or two possession lead, against Dartmouth the Tigers showed their newfound poise. "I think as we've gone on and are getting used to each other and playing together, we're getting better at controlling the game when we have a lead or we're only down by a couple," agreed Mavraides. "I think we're getting more confident in ourselves and trusting each other more, and more confident that we're a good team. When we're only up two with a couple minutes left, we're still in the lead and we know we can control the game.
"We really understood what we had to do - how we had to play defense and rebound," Buczak said. "Even though we didn't do things perfectly, we missed a lot of layups and we let a lot of open threes, we played hard and we understood we had to do that."
The start of the 2008-09 Ivy campaign was the polar opposite of Princeton's horrible performance the last time they visited Hanover, a game that was Mavraides' first career start. "That definitely was a low point in our season. I think we came up here last season and we didn't come to play," Mavraides admitted. "I think this season has had a different turn to it. I think we came in here ready to go and we were prepared for their stuff, and we ran our offense how we wanted to do it. We controlled the game."
Notes:
-Princeton finished the game 22-50 from the floor (44.0%), 6-16 from three (37.5%) and 9-12 at the line. Dartmouth shot 21-55 on Friday night (38.2%), was 6-18 outside (33.3%) and 6-10 from the stripe (60.0%). For the second straight contest, the Tigers attempted more free throws than their opponent.
-Playing an opponent very familiar with their offensive schemes, Princeton toyed with new variations of their traditional sets in the first five minutes to keep Dartmouth off guard. The Tigers went back to what they knew, which led to greater success getting good looks. The Tigers had four turnovers in the first four minutes and then just one in the last 16 minutes of the first half.
-Barnett's 24 points came on 9-22 shooting. No other Dartmouth player had more than seven. "We tried to make it hard for him," said Johnson of his team's gameplan. "We 'held him' to 24 points and we're saying we did a good job. That's just kind of comical for me from the standpoint of he's really good. If we made him work really hard and frustrated him and he's still able to do that and keep his team in the ballgame, that's just a credit to him." "When we played the defense we wanted to against him I felt like we did a pretty good job but he still hit some tough shots," Buczak added. "He's a really good player." Barnett turned the ball over four times.
-The Princeton coaching staff wore sneakers on the sidelines as part of the Suits and Sneakers Awareness Weekend, an initiative of the National Association of Basketball Coaches and the American Cancer Society supporting the fight against cancer.
-The individual play of the night might have been Nick Lake's horizontal dive to save a loose ball as it bounded away from Barnett and off a Tiger towards the Princeton locker room. Lake was able to leap from the field of play and throw the ball behind his body over the corner of the court to Buczak as he sailed into the arms of a police officer off to the side of the far bleachers, securing Princeton possession with the Tigers up five and three minutes to go. "These guys are making me speechless in a good way," Johnson said of his co-captain's unreal effort. "For him to make a play like that, it is just tremendous for him and it really picked our guys up and we were able to ride it out for a win."
-The Tigers finish their New England swing at Harvard on Saturday night. Tipoff is 7:00 pm ET.
