The Outright Champs

TigerBlog was on the men's lacrosse bus to Georgetown Friday afternoon when head coach Matt Madalon asked him how he would describe Tosan Evbuomwan of the men's basketball team.

The conversation had turned to basketball, both men's and women's, both of whom had clinched Ivy titles by then. 

TB thought for a second bout Evbuomwan and then said this: "He's sort of the Giannis of the Ivy League. The more he thinks about it, the more TB likes that description.

Giannis, of course, is Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, who led his team to the NBA title a year ago. Giannis is a two-time NBA MVP, and you can make a very strong case that he is the best basketball player in the world right now.

What makes him so special is the ability for someone his size (6-11, 245) to create his own shot. Giannis can - and regularly does - take the ball facing the basket near the three-point line, puts it on the floor and gets to the rim without any help. That's the bread-and-butter of Evbuomwan's game as well.

Giannis and Evbuomwan are both matchup nightmares in their leagues. You can't guard them with big men, because they can take them off the dribble. You can't guard them with faster but smaller players, because they'll both overwhelm them.

In addition, both are outstanding passers and rebounders. And you need to account for them at all times, which opens things up for everyone else on the team. 

Evbuomwan showcased his skills yet again Saturday night, when Princeton defeated Penn 93-70 to clinch an outright Ivy League championship. The Tigers went into that game having already secured at least a tie for the title and the No. 1 seed in the Ivy League tournament, and a win over Penn or a Yale loss to Brown (a game that started an hour later that Yale would win 74-65) would mean the championship was all Princeton's.

Evbuomwan had this line in the Penn game: 23 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. He played 32 minutes, or eighty percent of the game, and if you factor his numbers over 80 percent of the 48 minutes of an NBA game, they would have been 29 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists. Evbuomwan also shot 9 for 14 from the field in the game.

Jaelin Llewellyn also had a big night for Princeton. Coming into the game needing 14 points to reach 1,000 for his career, Llewellyn had 18 at halftime and 24 for the night, bringing him to the 1,000-point mark in fewer than one half of the game and in less than three full seasons.

Oh, and neither Llewellyn nor Evbuomwan committed a turnover in the game.  

With the regular season over, Princeton looks ahead to the Ivy tournament, which starts for the men Saturday at 11 am at Harvard. The first semifinal matches Princeton and Cornell, coached by former Princeton great Brian Earl. The other semifinal matches Yale and Penn, and the final will be Sunday at noon.

As for the women, they also salted away an outright championship with a win this weekend over Penn, this time in Jadwin Gym Friday night. The final score of that one was Princeton 69, Penn 43.

The game was 18-16 Princeton after one quarter and 22-20 Penn nearly four minutes into the second. Then Princeton went on a 13-0 run, one that was more about the "0" than the "13," and Penn would get no closer than 10 the rest of the way.

That win, plus Harvard's win over Dartmouth, eliminated the Quakers from the postseason chase and solidified the women's Ivy tournament matchups: No. 1 Princeton vs. No. 4 Harvard Friday at 4:30 and No. 2 Columbia vs. No. 3 Yale after that. The women's final is Saturday at 5.

Princeton and Harvard got to a trial run yesterday afternoon, when the two finished the regular season on the same court where they'll play again Friday for biggest stakes. What was on the line yesterday was a perfect Ivy season for the Tigers, and again the Tigers came through, winning 73-53.

Ellie Mitchell had 15 points and 12 rebounds as she continues to make every loose ball her own personal cause. Abby Meyers had 14 points; she should be the Ivy Player of the Year, unanimously, TB would think. 

If you're keeping score, that's back-to-back perfect seasons for the Princeton women in Carla Berube's first two seasons - only Bill Carmody on the men's side has done so before in Ivy League history.

It's a good moment to step back and enjoy the two outright championships. Briefly, at least.

For both, there is still much left to accomplish. 

Championships, though, should never be taken for granted.