City of Basketball Love

By Kevin Callahan (@hooplove215)
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PRINCETON – Although they all walked slowly off the floor, many of the Penn players with their heads slumped, the Quakers already knew Saturday afternoon they would be bouncing back here at Jadwin Gym in exactly seven days.

So, as the Princeton players circled at mid-court, hugged and danced and posed for pictures with the Ivy League regular-season championship trophy they just snatched out of the Quakers’ grasp, Penn was already shaking off the dread of allowing their 17-point halftime lead to crash in a 77-69 overtime loss.

“We’ll be back here next week,” coach Steve Donahue said with resolve outside of the Penn locker room. “Honestly, we wanted to win a championship, but whether we won or lost today, we are still coming back here with the goal of getting to the NCAA tournament.”

Yes, the outcome, even though a double-fisted gut punch, only changed the seedings. Penn (17-12, 9-5) fell to the third seed in the league tourney at Jadwin next weekend.

Princeton (19-8, 10-4) clinched at least a share of the Ivy League crown, contingent on the Yale-Brown outcome tonight. Yale (9-4 in the Ivy) will split the regular-season title with a win over the Bears in Providence.

So both the Quakers and Tigers will be back competing for the league’s automatic NCAA bid at Ivy Madness with semifinal games at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Saturday (both on ESPNU) on the Princeton campus. The championship game is noon Sunday (televised on ESPN2).

“As disappointing as this is, we still all want to get to the NCAA tournament,’” Donahue said, “we want to win the conference tournament and get to the NCAA tournament.

“If we won today, that would’ve been great, but it doesn’t change right now of what we have to do this week to get ready for the tournament.”

Donahue delivered the same resilient message just minutes earlier to his players and staff.

“We did a lot of good things, but we didn’t deserve the win, we didn’t play well enough to close out the game,” Donahue said. “That’s fine, like in life, it’s not really what happens to you, but what you have inside you to get over this adversity.”

A national audience on ESPNews saw the Tigers respond to the adversity of a double-digit deficit that crept into the second half. And Penn still held an eight-point advantage with just over four minutes left in regulation when sophomore guard George Smith scored for a 66-58 spread.

But Penn wouldn’t score again in regulation as the Tigers’ man defense contested each shot and Princeton scored eight unanswered points to force OT.

Penn still couldn’t score to open the extra period while Princeton opened with a 5-0 run. The Tigers padded its lead to 73-67 with 28 left on a free throw by senior guard Ryan Langborg (13 points).

 “We have to figure out a way to learn from this and be better for it next week,” Donahue added.

Penn’s dynamic 6-3 guard Jordan Dingle paced all scorers with 28 points, but only seven came in the second half. As the Quakers were being outscored 21-3 down the stretch, Dingle’s streak of nine straight missed shots lingered.

“I think kids get over this quicker than adults,” Donahue said, not concerned if his players will bounce back. “They are disappointed, but they also are unbelievably committed to everything we do.”

Indeed, a bounce back can be expected from Dingle. After all, it was Dingle's 22nd game of 20 or more points in his sensational junior season, which is only behind the legendary Ernie Beck’s 25 (1952-53) in Penn’s single-season history.
Penn junior Max Martz scored 13 points for the 6-6 junior’s third-straight game in double figures while sophomore 6-9 center Nick Spinoso contributed 11 points. Clark Slajchert, a 6-1 junior guard, added a career-best eight rebounds.

Princeton, the defending Ivy champs, has won eight in a row over Penn, including a 72-60 victory in mid-January at the Palestra.

Freshman Caden Pierce led the Tigers with 17 points and the athletic 6-6 guard grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds

Senior forward Tosan Evbuomwan collected 15 points and a game-high six assists while junior guard Matt Allocco added 12 points.

Penn came into this decisive game playing its best ball of the season and with the momentum of an undefeated February (6-0).

But Princeton sprung to an 8-4 lead in this first winner-take-all game to end the regular season in the history of this storied rivalry. The Tigers led 13-8, with 14:50 remaining in the half.

Dingle then heated up to spark a 16-0 burst for a swift 24-13 lead with 9:27 left in the half – a spread that grew to 42-25 at the half.

The two Ancient Eight rivals have played three previous winner-take-all games - all of them in Ivy playoffs after the teams tied for the Ivy regular-season crown. The Tigers had won the previous two, with the last also coming in overtime back in 1996.

But, there was no Ivy League tourney back then. So Penn loses and lives to play another day on the same court.

“We will have our best practice,” Donahue said, looking forward already to next week,” I’ll give them off both Sunday and Monday, and on Tuesday will be ready to go.”