Maccabiah Madness

Way back when, TigerBlog's close friend Ed Zucker won a gold medal with the United States team at the Maccabiah Games in basketball.

Ed Zucker played college basketball at Rutgers. One of his teammates on that Maccabiah team was a name more familiar to Princeton basketball fans - Howard Levy, who was an All-Ivy center for the Tigers and then a longtime assistant coach under Bill Carmody, John Thompson III and Joe Scott before becoming the head coach at Mercer County Community College.

Howard is also Princeton's career leader in field goal percentage, having made a remarkable 64.7 percent of his shots (269 for 416). Had he made the required 400 field goals for his career, Howard would be ranked 18th in Division I history for career percentage, or pretty much right between Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor (who became Kareen Abdul-Jabbar).

As TB recalls, the U.S. team had a one-point win over Israel in the final. It was a game that Ed talked about for years as being an incredible experience.

Today in Israel, Noa Levy gets to try to match her father's Maccabiah medal when she competes in the women's high jump. Noa Levy was an All-Patriot League high jumper at Lehigh.

As for some updates on Princeton basketball at the Maccabiah Games, here is the least shocking news you'll read today:

Guess who is the leading scorer in women's basketball in the round-robin portion at the Maccabiah Games in Israel?

That would be Princeton alum Abby Meyers. As TigerBlog said, this is not surprising at all.

Meyers has scored 21 points in each of the U.S. team's first two games, both of which were easy wins. She is the only player so far who has had a 20-point game.

The Americans play the Australians tomorrow in the third of their four preliminary games. There are only three teams in the women's basketball tournament, along with Israel, whom the U.S. swept.

The championship game will match the top two teams and will be held Sunday. 

On the men's side, the U.S. team is also unbeaten, having beaten Argentina, France and Australia so far. The men's team is a six-team field, with those four, plus Israel and Canada.

The Americans finish the round-robin portion against those two, and then the final games will match the 5 vs. 6, 3 vs. 4 and 1 vs. 2 (this for the gold medal). Barring something major, the championship figures to be a U.S.-France rematch of a game the U.S. won 90-77.

The U.S. team has a strong Princeton presence as well. 

The head coach is former Princeton guard Scott Greenman, who is now on the staff at Chattanooga after working for nine years under another Princeton guard, Mike Brennan, at American. Current Princeton assistant Skye Ettin is an assistant at the Maccabiah Games for the United States team.

Princeton sophomore Blake Peters is a player for the U.S., and he's averaging 10.3 points per game. He had a tournament-best 18 in the win over France.

Peters played in 14 games as a freshman a year ago for the Ivy League champion Tigers. He came to Princeton from Evanston High School outside Chicago. Today's trivia: What former Princeton star and longtime pro player in Europe also went to Evanston High?

Greenman attempted the second-highest number of three-point shots in Princeton men's basketball history. Trivia question No. 2: Who has taken the most? 

As an aside, three of the top nine on the list were part of the men's basketball team a year ago: Drew Frieberg (third), Ethan Wright (seventh) and head coach Mitch Henderson (ninth).

Greenman was also a great foul shooter, and he sits in ninth place all-time at Princeton with a career percentage of .809 (140 for 173).

Trivia question No. 3: Who is Princeton's career leader in free throw percentage?

If you'd asked TB all three of these trivia questions about 30 minutes ago, he would have gone 1 for 3 by the way. He'd have gotten the first one right, but not the other two.

Trivia answer No. 1: Mason Rocca. 

Trivia answer No. 2: C.J. Chapman.

Trivia answer No. 3: Devin Cannady.