Princeton had the look of a team playing its third game in four days Saturday night.
The Tigers started slow but rallied to lead before faltering in the fourth quarter of a 72-60 loss to Huntington in the New River CTC Invitational at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center.
Leading at halftime and midway through the third quarter, the wheels came loose for the Tigers late in the third as they fell into a 14-point hole early in the fourth.
A late comeback bid ultimately fell short for Princeton which missed all seven of its free throw attempts in the frame. But being in that spot seemed unlikely for the Tigers to begin with.
Huntington scored the game’s first seven points in a 90-second span, forcing Princeton head coach Robb Williams to burn a timeout. His message and adjustments worked.
“The first half, we really played really good basketball and moved the ball,” Williams said. “They sped us up a little later in the second half and we still were able to do better and handled that but in the third, they literally just be jumped a lot. We had a couple of turnovers. But when they played, really, they jumped everywhere, and it sped us up and that’s their game. They did that to Bluefield last night and you know, so we knew they were going to speed us up at some point. And you know, we’ve got young guys and a lot of athletes. They know they can go with speed and our athletes are fast so when they’re in there, they’re gonna go fast and sometimes when you’re good, you go fast and you make mistakes, but you know, I was very pleased with the effort tonight. Never pleased with the loss but, that’s a really good team.”
Out of the breather Princeton found its bearings with a curveball on a defense – a 3-2 zone that played like a matchup. It stalled the Highlanders long enough for the Tigers to even the field and they did with a pair of Koen Sartin buckets and a Britt Beasley 3. Sartin gave the Tigers their first lead with a trey off an assist from Gavin Stover and former returned the favor the next time down the court finding Stover for a trey to make it 13-9 Princeton.
The Tigers expanded their lead to five later in the frame only to see Huntington tie the game at 18 right before the end of the quarter.
Princeton took a 20-18 advantage into the second but an 11-0 Highlander run threatened to blow the game open. Princeton again slowed the Huntington offense and answered with an 8-0 run featuring 3s from Zayden Neely and Marquel Lowe.
“I think we came out really strong, but once we weren’t able to get the ball rolling and and push it they would get into that zone and that’s just kind of how they were able to slow us down,” Huntington head coach Lambros Svingos said. “And you know, once we are able to just not let them do that we could play more of our game instead of playing theirs.”
“I don’t think they recognized as fast as I expected them to what defense I was running,” Williams said. “You know, I kind of disguised our defense our zones a 3-2, but it’s more of a matchup, at least it was tonight. And we went with cutters and they were running the cutter so we went with it and got a couple easy takeaways there or a couple fumbles where we just picked it up and then they ran a second cutter we picked that up so that’s what that adjustment was. And you know, once we did that we got going and you know we can run and we ran with them. I think that was a big difference there. In the second half we got sloppy at the end I mean, it was closer than the score we indicated at the very end.”
Princeton parlayed its run into a 33-32 halftime lead on the back of a layup and 3 from Lowe.
The advantage carried deep into the third where Nik Fleming scored after a Lowe steal to make it 43-40 but it crumbled in a hurry afterwards.
The Highlanders responded with a 12-0 run, leading 54-45 after three.
Princeton had one charge but never cut the lead below seven points.
Patience helped the Highlanders throughout the second half. After hitting on 2 of 14 3s in the first half they attempted just three in the second half and nailed one of them.
“Right now we’re shooting 60% from two for the year and we’re shooting 20% from three,” Svingos said. “It’s not our game. That’s a different looking zone than we’ve gone against this year and nothing that we saw on film, so it’s a little different. We just had to make our adjustments, work in the middle and be patient while still being aggressive. We made our adjustments.”
Sartin and Lowe finished with 14 points each for the Tigers in the loss.
Mikey Johnson led the Highlanders with 27 points and 14 rebounds.