Princeton basketball's impressive win over Yale a reminder of NCAA's flawed system

PRINCETON – Caden Pierce began Saturday’s Ivy League basketball showdown by getting four stitches on his chin after taking a sneaker to the head.

He ended it by throwing down a breakaway dunk, blowing the lid off 4,000-plus raucous fans at Jadwin Gym as Princeton finished off Yale 73-62.

“It’s not every day you get to dunk in front of however many thousand people,” Pierce said afterward.

The total number was certainly in the hundreds of thousands because the contest aired on ESPN2 in prime time. It was a fitting stage for the Tigers, who are 19-3 and start five players who contributed to last March’s run to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16. Yale came to Old Nassau with an 8-0 record in the Ivy League and left with an orange handprint on its backside.

But you won’t find Princeton in any bracketology or bubble watch. The Tigers are not considered a candidate for an at-large bid to the Big Dance, even if they are 25-4 on Selection Sunday. That’s a prime example of how flawed the metrics-driven evaluation system is.

“These guys sign up knowing we’ve got to win the league, we’ve got to win the (Ivy League) tournament,” Princeton coach Mitch Henderson said. “It stinks because there’s multiple teams in this league that could do a lot of damage (in March Madness). But that said, there’s something about how hard you have to work to get there that gets you ready for that moment – that’s what happened to us last year.”

Good team, bad process

Princeton’s all-important NET ranking is 53. That’s better than Northwestern (59) and South Carolina (57), which are considered to be safely in the field. It’s better than Butler (56), which ESPN bracketologist Joe Lundardi has as one of his “last four byes.” It’s better than Providence (58) and Ole Miss (64), which Lunardi has among the last four in. It’s better than four more teams listed in Lunardi’s first 12 out, including Memphis (81!) which has played like garbage for ages now but won some big games quite literally last year.

The point is not to pick on Lunardi, who is simply forecasting what the NCAA Tournament’s selection committee will do. The Tigers will be penalized because they haven’t faced a Quad 1 opponent, the most important resume-building metric.

It’s not for lack of trying. They got into a November Feast Week tournament, only to have two other teams in the field refuse to be matched up against them, threatening to pull out and collapse the event (Princeton had to withdraw instead). The only high-major with the guts to schedule them was Rutgers, which lost on a neutral floor.

So Princeton will enter next month’s Ivy League Tournament facing an all-or-nothing situation. They’ll do so with one of the best backcourts in the country. Anyone who tuned in Saturday got to see sophomore guard Xaivian Lee (19 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, 1 turnover) hitting cutters with pinpoint passes and finishing exquisite drives with both hands. They saw senior guard Matt Allocco (18 points) commit zero turnovers while logging 40 minutes for the second straight night (he also had no turnovers in Friday’s win over Brown).

They saw a bandaged-up Pierce and Zach Martini shut down 7-foot NBA prospect Danny Wolf, who missed all eight of his field-goal attempts.

“We’re not the tallest group but man, we’re going to fight until the clock ends,” Martini said.

Better than last season

As incredible as it may seem, Princeton lost a player to the NBA (forward Tosan Evbuomwan, who is with the Detroit Pistons and showed up at Jadwin Saturday) and got better. If that team knocked off Arizona and Missouri in the Dance, this one certainly could send some brand names packing.

“No doubt in my mind,” Martini said. “We’ve got that belief.”

It was nice to see the campus and public respond by packing Jadwin. Students arrived an hour before tip and rocked the place for two hours, waving “safety school” signs at Yale’s bench. The normally placid Henderson spent much of the game screaming so his guys could hear the plays he was calling.

“I absolutely love it, and I love it for them,” he said of the atmosphere. “When I played here, this is what it was like. It’s been a long time coming and it’s because of the players, and I’m so proud of them.”

Henderson helped Princeton win two NCAA Tournament games in the 1990s. He recognizes something special when he sees it – even if a flawed selection system does not.

“If you’re not enjoying coaching this kind of a team, you’ve got to get out of coaching,” he said. “because this doesn’t come around very often.”

Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Princeton basketball romp of Yale reminder of NCAA flawed system