Know Your Enemy - Princeton Edition

Last season, I was able to exchange questions with a Dayton basketball follower before the Spartans played the Flyers. I called the post "Know Your Enemy" (after my favorite Rage Against the Machine song). Well, it's time to try the segment again.

This time I was able to catch up with Jon from Princetonbasketball.com. He runs a great site, but before visiting be warned. Jon's such an overachiever that he doesn't just follow the Tigers, but also many other teams with Princeton connections (Georgetown, Denver, Northwestern, etc).

I'll still post my normal preview later in the week. I answered his questions as well. I'll link to them when they are posted.

It looks like the Tigers have been streaky early in the year. Princeton won it's first 2 games, then lost their next four. The win last Saturday may be the start of another streak. What are the reasons for the up and down play?

In Princeton's first two games, the Tigers started both of their senior centers side-by-side. With 6'9" Zach Finley and 6'11" Pawel Buczak on the court together for long stretches, Princeton's interior defense was sound and both got very makable shots (though against Manhattan they inexplicably missed almost all of them at point blank range).

Despite that early success, the third game of the year against Army was a disaster. Neither Finley or Buczak felt the double (and sometimes triple) teams coming from smaller Black Knight defenders and combined to turn the ball over seven times with zero assists. After this game, where Princeton committed the second highest number turnovers they'd had this decade, the starting lineup was changed.

What have you seen so far out of the Tigers that you like? What have you seen that concerns you?

The lack of production from the center position remains concerning. Since Army, neither Buczak or Finley has completely gotten back on track. Buczak is shooting 28.1% from inside the three point arc and Finley has a 2:17 assist-to-turnover ratio. There have been flashes, but neither looks comfortable doing things that have come naturally to each of them in the past.

I have enjoyed watching Douglas Davis play. He was the first Princeton freshman to lead the team in scoring in program history and in the last two games he has been excellent - making good decisions and under control.

Two freshman forwards - Ian Hummer and Will Barrett have impressed defensively and both are long, active, and hard for the opposition to work around. However, Princeton has struggled to find a balance between what Hummer and Barrett were born with and what the veteran Finley and Buczak have learned. The Tigers are often two teams over one game and have not yet decided which side of the fence they'll ultimately fall on.

The all around game of a now-healthy Patrick Saunders, both on offense and defense, has been a positive. Saunders is one of those players doesn't do any one thing great, but he does almost everything well across the board. When Princeton ran their offense through a posting Saunders in the second half, the Tigers were able to pull away from Lafayette.

"Are we planning on guarding ________ ?" If I'm yelling this from my seat on Sunday, what Princeton player's name seems most likely to be in the blank?

Davis. He can hit from outside (see his seven threes versus Lafayette) at a decent clip and can also get into the lane to pull up for midrange jumpers. At Rutgers, when nothing was working offensively for Princeton in the first half, he was fearless driving right at the Scarlet Knights' big men and drawing fouls. If he gets going, it only opens up options for other Tigers.

Dan Mavraides, Princeton's second leading scorer, can put up points in very small stretches of time.

Head Coach Sydney Johnson took over a program that had fallen on some hard times. He is now in his third season. What are your thoughts about him as a coach? What has he done to really get this program moving back in the right direction?

I like Coach Johnson a good deal. Two+ seasons in, it is still hard to tell if he is as good an in-game coach as he is a recruiter and mid-week tactician, but his teams are always well prepared and usually play very passionately for him. There are a few very sly things he's coached his teams to do that remind you that he was previously an assistant for an exceptionally sly coach - John Thompson III at Georgetown.

Be honest ... is it flattering or just annoying hearing about the tons of teams around the country that run the "Princeton" offense?

Heh. It is more annoying to have people complain about the lack of backdoor baskets after a game because they think that's the only component of a "Princeton" offense. I really enjoy watching the different permutations of the Carril coaching tree play. There's stuff Denver runs that Georgetown would never do and sets Northwestern uses with great success that the other "Princeton" programs can't seem to pull off as regularly.

Prediction time. How do you see the game between the Tigers and Spartans going down? Just for fun, give me a score.

It sounds like UNCG, similar to Princeton, has struggled with slow starts this season. If the Tigers can play well in the first 10 minutes, I see them returning to New Jersey with a 57-52 victory. If Princeton struggles to score early, like they did versus Army, Cal and Rutgers - the Tigers could be chasing the Spartans all afternoon.