Princeton head coach Robb Williams has been close to getting the Tigers to the state tournament for the first time since 1981 but hasn’t had much luck crossing that hump. This year’s prospects are in question, mostly because he’s not entirely sure who he’ll have out.
The season tips off just four days after football season ended for the Tigers, leaving Williams wondering exactly who will show up. His early struggles have also been compounded by the fact he graduated four starters and multiple depth pieces.
“It’s interesting because I don’t have half of the team yet because the success of the football guys,” Williams said. “We’re already about five weeks behind everyone else and we had one returning starter back in (Britt) Beasley and then I have two other guys, Jayce Gum is able to practice with us and Nick Bailey, who was out last year due to an injury, torn ACL, but those are the really the only returning players with any basketball experience without the football players.”
Amongst the players Williams hopes to field is Daniel Jennings, a Graham transfer who’s committed to play football at Penn State.
“I won’t know for sure until the football season is over but yeah, we expect to see Daniel out there,” Williams said. “He was with us this summer and we expect him to make a big impact for us and yeah, I’m very pleased to have Daniel Jennings on the basketball court.”
While Williams is trying to avoid a rebuild, opting for a reload, he feel’s comfortable with the makeup of this team. The last two years his teams have been guard heavy with limited size. He believes that will be different this season.
“We always replaced two or three players but this is kind of a rebuild for a lot of teams,” Williams said. “I’m very fortunate for the first time since I’ve coached here to have some size. We’re usually very guard heavy and small. This year we look to be 6-foot-3 to 6-foot-5 all across the line other than the guard position and that’s at the point guard. We have a point guard you know in Beasley so we could be very big which will be interesting when we get the football players back. Zay Neely, Daniel and Elijah Webster should all come out. We’re gonna be a different team than usual. We’re gonna be the larger team so to speak.”
The Tigers will be in a new situation this year as well. They’ve dropped from Class AAAA to Class AAA where they’ll compete in a nine-team region under a new regional format that eliminates the sectional tournament. While the conventional line of thinking is a drop favors the Tigers, they’re granted no favors.
The region features several talented teams including defending state champion Shady Spring.
“I think it’s hard,” Williams said. “I told someone, ‘Yeah we traded Woodrow for Shady basically.’ We got all those other teams in place of Oak Hill. We didn’t get any favors this way and I don’t know how late they figured that out. One region has nine teams I think and one has five or six. I don’t understand how they did that but yeah, I mean the competition is really tough. We really don’t know what we have. I mean you know we’re gonna struggle early on, no doubt simply because we really are gonna be about eight weeks behind every one. I had to move three games already because I really would not have a JV team if I didn’t move it back. We’re very unsure what we’re gonna have. We think we’re gonna have a pretty good team if everyone comes out. We lose Marquel to a knee injury in football and thatl was really tough. Such a good young man, such a good athlete. I hate that he won’t be with us due to his injury but if everyone else comes out, we should be OK. We should be able to compete.”
