Tuesday, July 1, 2025

July Hoops

Hey, it's July 1.

What else is there to talk about other than basketball, right? 

Oh, there is one thing. TigerBlog wrote yesterday that Princeton has led the Ivy League in the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup standings every year except for five since it began in 1994. As it turns out, that's actually all but three times. 

And with that, now the conversation can turn to basketball. There are, in fact, four Princeton Basketball-related updates. 

The first is a story by Elliott Carr on goprincetontigers.com about recent alum Blake Peters and his "Journey to Jadwin." You can read it HERE.

When it comes to the basketball career Peters had, there will always be two highlights for anyone who has been paying attention. The first came when he was a freshman at Evanston High School outside of Chicago. 

It came in a January game against Maine South. His team was down two with 2.6 seconds to go. Peters rebounded a Maine South missed free throw and proceeded to toss in the game-winner from about 80 feet away, with one hand, no less. 

The shot earned him the top play of the day on SportsCenter and a trip to the ESPY Awards. 

Then there was the more recent one, the one that came in a Princeton uniform. This was in the 2023 NCAA tournament, when Peters made 10 three-pointers in wins over Arizona and Missouri, helping Princeton to the Sweet 16. 

Read the story. Watch the video of his high school shot. Remember his postgame interview on CBS after the Tigers beat Missouri in the NCAA tournament. 

Next up? A current Tiger, Jackson Hicke, a rising junior. 

Now that it's July, it's accurate to say that later this month Hicke will be competing at the World University Games in Germany in 3X3. It'll be an all-Ivy League team, as Hicke will be joined by Avery Brown (Columbia), Chandler Piggé (Harvard) and Nick Townsend (Yale).

Then there is Parker Hill, another recent graduate. Hill just signed to play professionally in Switzerland with a team called Hellios, who plays in the highest level of Swiss pro women's basketball. 

Hill will be the sixth women's basketball alum to be playing professionally this year, joining Blake Dietrick '15 (3XBA), Carlie Littlefield '21 (3XBA), Abby Meyers '22 (Maccabi Bnot Ashdod), Grace Stone '23 (Perry Lakes Hawks) and Kaitlyn Chen '24 (Golden State Valkyries). 

It's the last one that TB would like to talk about now. 

Here's a highlight from the Valkyries' 84-57 win over Seattle Sunday night:

That was an Ivy-to-Ivy assist, from Chen to Harvard alum Temi Fagbenle (who also was a teammate of Abby Meyers' with the London Lions team that won the European championship a year ago). Elliott (he of the Blake Peters story) had asked TB last week if he knew of any Ivy League teammates in the NBA, what with Princeton alum Tosan Evbuomwan as a returnee for the Brooklyn Nets and former Michigan and Yale player Danny Wolf's having been drafted by the Nets. 

It's possible that there are more, but TB found five of those examples. The first was in 1949-50, when the Boston Celtics had Yale's Tony Lavelli and Dartmouth's Ed Leede (the Big Green arena is named for him). 

There was also Matt Maloney and Ira Bowman on the 2000-01 Atlanta Hawks. The other three all involved Princetonians: 

* Butch van Breda Kolff and Bud Palmer were teammates for three years on the Knicks in the 40s 
* Brian Taylor and Penn’s Tony Price were teammates on the 1980-81 Clippers
* Geoff Petrie and Penn's Dave Wohl were on the 1972-73 Trailblazers

As for Chen, she's off to a really good start in Golden State, who is also off to a good start in its first season. 

More than the points and the rebounds and the assists, you can see the absolute joy that Chen plays with, in that highlight or in any other.  

It's the same look you saw when she was playing at Princeton, and when she won an NCAA title at UConn as a grad student last season. 

And that's your Princeton Basketball update for July 1. 

Now go enjoy your summer day.  

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