Tipping In Pittsburgh

When TigerBlog was talking yesterday about Caden Pierce and his 26-point, 15-rebound outing against Hofstra, he forgot to include this:

Bill Bradley had 17 games in his Princeton career with at least 26 and 15. Yes. Seventeen.

Pierce is also the first Princeton men's basketball player with back-to-back games of at least 15 rebounds since Bradley did so. Bradley had 15 or more rebounds in back-to-back games five times in his career, and on one of those occasions he did it three times.

Bradley does not, however, own the longest streak in program history of consecutive games with at least 15 rebounds. That would be Al Kaemmerlen in the 1961-62 season.

Pierce has 15 rebounds in both of Princeton's games this season. He had 16 in the NCAA second-round win over Missouri last March.

Pierce is currently third in Division I in rebounds per game. Ellie Mitchell of the women's team is fourth in Division I, with 14.0 per game. 

At some point this year, TigerBlog will sit down with them to talk about their philosophies on getting loose balls. In the meantime, he'll just marvel at how well they do it.

Pierce gets a chance to match Bradley's longest streak and get halfway to Kaemmerlen tonight, when Princeton is at Duquesne. The game tips at 7 and can be seen on ESPN+.

The winner of the game will take the lead in the all-time series, such as it is. Princeton and Duquesne have played four times previously, with each team's having won twice.

The most recent game was Princeton's 2020-21 season opener, a game the Tigers lost 94-67 after leading by five at the half. That game seems like a long time ago, though not nearly as long as the first between the teams, which came in the 1952 NCAA tournament opening round, a game Duquesne won as well (60-49).

That, by the way, was Princeton's first NCAA tournament game ever. 

The two Princeton wins came in the 1973 Holiday Festival in Madison Square Garden (72-62) and the 2010 College Basketball Invitational at Jadwin (65-51). The Holiday Festival win came one year before perhaps the most famous Duquesne player began his career, and that would be longtime Los Angeles Laker Norm Nixon.

In other words, no current Princeton player has ever played against the Dukes, and Mitch Henderson has neither coached against them nor played against them.

Duquesne comes into the game 3-0 on the young season, with wins over Cleveland State, the College of Charleston and Stony Brook. The College of Charleston, you may recall, went 31-4 a year ago and reached the NCAA tournament, and, as you probably don't recall, beat Iona in its opener this season. Duquesne won that game by 18 (90-72).

The Dukes followed that win by taking down Stony Brook 85-63. The score of the opener against Cleveland State was 79-77.

Princeton has been more than Pierce's rebounding, obviously. There's Matt Allocco, who like Pierce averages 17 points per game through two games but who is shooting .636 from the field and .400 from three-point range. Xaivian Lee has averaged 31.5 minutes in the first two games after averaging 13.4 a year ago. Blake Peters continues to make it look like he's going to make every three-pointer he attempts. 

Of course, it's only two games. There are weeks to go until the Ivy League season begins and months to go until the Ivy tournament at Columbia in March. Who knows what will happen by then? Who knows what directions the season will take? 

This is a time for interesting non-conference games, like the one tonight in Pittsburgh. It's also the time to do some experimenting with rotations, combinations, philosophies — all to be peaking at the right time, as Henderson's team did a year ago as it reached the Sweet 16.

It's fun to keep writing that every time TB talks about the men's basketball team. "The Tigers went to the Sweet 16 a year ago." 

Yes, that's a great sentence to be able to write. 

It's the Tigers and Dukes tonight in Pittsburgh.

Next up for Princeton after this game will be a shorter trip, to Monmouth for a game Saturday at 2.