Mitch Henderson has been pleased with his Princeton team’s response to last year’s Ivy League tournament loss, and leads Tigers back to pursuing NCAA Tournament return. (Photo by Princeton University Athletics)
On the national scene, a Sweet 16 appearance less than two years ago confirmed what most had already known. A long-consistent mid-major powerhouse, Princeton had finally turned heads after NCAA Tournament upsets of Arizona and Missouri got the world beyond New Jersey to take notice of the Tigers.
And after a disappointing early exit from the Ivy League tournament this past March, business has picked up yet again at Old Nassau, perhaps with a heightened sense of ensuring the Tigers return to where everyone in the program believes they belong.
“I don’t think that you can ever get rid of that,” head coach Mitch Henderson said of last March’s loss to Brown in the Ivy semifinals. “It’s a very difficult loss, but I think those things form you and change you a lot. And if they don’t, then it makes the change and growth a little bit more difficult. Our objective is to win the league, which gives us the best opportunity to put ourselves in the spot of going back to the NCAAs. I’m looking forward to the learning opportunities that we’ll have with this group, not that I’m looking behind, but it’s a very different team in some ways.”
While Princeton is different by Henderson’s own admission, his outfit is still very much familiar even if the veteran coach did lose a pair of starters to the transfer portal in Matt Allocco and Zach Martini. Reigning Ivy League Player of the Year Caden Pierce returns for his senior season, as does point guard Xaivian Lee after he tested the NBA Draft waters over the summer, and the Tigers also welcome back glue guy Blake Peters to join the duo as the de facto leaders of a team whose results have been largely shaped by the effectiveness of leadership year in and year out.
For Lee, who made a significant jump as a sophomore to more than triple his production from his rookie season, he credits those before him for allowing him to blossom in a smaller role while also absorbing what was required to be one of the faces of the Princeton program. Now entering a year where more attention will be focused upon him than at any point in his career, he admits being a vocal leader remains a work in progress.
Xaivian Lee tested NBA Draft waters in offseason and brings professional feedback to an already expanding game entering his junior season. (Photo by The Daily Princetonian)
“A lot of that was based on the team we had freshman year,” Lee said. “We had a lot of great leadership guys, great seniors, so for me, it was kind of learning from them and soaking up what I can in practice. And then when my role expanded last year, as big of a jump you may have seen freshman to sophomore year, I’m trying to do the same thing this year in different ways. What we need this year as a team is more leadership, to be honest, and that’s something I’ve been trying to push myself to be better in, and affect the game in different ways than just scoring.”
“First, it’s difficult for anybody to come in right away and make major contributions, so the signs were always there,” Henderson countered with regard to his point guard’s potential. “Xaivian had terrific games as a freshman, but his sophomore year, what may have been a surprise to many others was not to us. He’s worked hard, he’s very deserving of everything that comes his way, and I think we play a way that highlights the things that Xaivian does very well. We just want to keep adding on to that, and he’ll be the first to tell you, too: Winning helps what we’re all after. We want to see the group success sort of highlight what the talent is around the group.”
The group of which Henderson speaks also includes sophomore Dalen Davis, who saw noticeable playing time off the bench as a freshman last season and should be poised for a greater impact this year, plus freshmen CJ Happy and Malik Abdullahi, a Top 150 recruit who arrives in the Garden State with considerable hype not normally found in an Ivy League newcomer.
“Malik’s a terrific player,” Henderson remarked. “He and the other freshmen have the advantage of watching how it gets done from the older guys. This is, and always will be, what defines us. You’re led by those in front and watch what they do, and when we’ve been really good, that example has been quite sharp. It’s like getting out of the way of a sharp elbow, you’ve gotta follow the lead. Yes, there’s great talent, yes, we expect great things out of those guys, but I’m particularly thankful for the leadership we have within the program.”
Deven Austin, who seemed ready to turn the corner before injuries compromised his playing time, is also back for his sophomore season, and although he is not entirely back to the form he showed nearly two years ago, is progressing enough to where his number should be called in most situations.
“I’m glad that he’s back,” Henderson said of Austin. “It’s been a long time since he’s taken the floor in a Princeton uniform — more than a year and a half — and there’s signs of what we saw from him in his freshman year. Deven needs time and some runway to continue to improve and get back to a form that he’s accustomed to, and for all of us around him, we keep encouraging him because there’s so much there for him. To think that he’d pick up where he left off is a bit unfair for Deven, but I’m really excited about having him back with us. It’s nice to have him around.”
Still, the Tigers will go as Pierce and Lee will on most nights. And for Pierce, stepping into the shoes vacated by Tosan Evbuomwan and Keeshawn Kellman afforded the forward the ability to not only change a game while also staying true to himself, but also learn on the fly during some possessions in an experience he cites as integral to his own skill enhancement.
Last season’s Ivy League Player of the Year, Caden Pierce has developed into a game-changer on both ends of the floor entering his senior season. (Photo by Princeton University Athletics)
“I think just overall, offensively and defensively, I was more confident last year,” Pierce revealed. “I had a much bigger role. Tosan left, Keeshawn left, so the bigger guys we had my freshman year, I had to fill that sort of role. I kind of played a similar role Tosan played offensively. You’re able to be really creative, which is a blessing as a player to kind of play through mistakes. I think that’s the biggest part in helping my development.”
And while Pierce had more of a free-flowing development, Lee had the opportunity to not only get feedback from professional scouts over the offseason, but also to work with a fellow Ivy League sensation who went on to become a household name at the professional level. The Canadian was able to work out alongside former Harvard star Jeremy Lin, arguably the most successful Ivy product in the NBA this century, an experience the young upstart termed “super cool.”
“It was a great experience,” Lee said of the NBA Draft process, something his former teammate Evbuomwan went through a year ago. “I was grateful to learn from Tosan, who did that the year before. Obviously, he didn’t have a choice to come back, but just getting his experiences kind of made it easier for me to go through that whole process. And for me, honestly, I think a lot of us in the Ivy League have those aspirations to get to the next level, so just being able to go through that and see what it’s like and what it takes to almost be at that doorstep, it’s fueling me to get back there even more. But now that we’re back, the goal is to win as much as we can. It was an awesome experience and I think it just made me a better player, to be honest. Just having a better perspective has helped me mature a little bit.”
“(Lin) reached out to me when I was going through the workout process, so that was probably in May when I hopped on a call with him. And obviously, being Asian and having that crazy spotlight for a little bit, he was able to shed a little bit of light on how he handled that so quickly. That’s not where I’m at yet, but I can definitely relate to that and draw on some of his teaching points. This summer, he hit me up and was like, ‘you want to come work out for a couple days?’ And I was like, ‘sure, why not?’ I’m not going to turn that down. That was my first time working out with any NBA guys like that, so just to see the level of professionalism he had and how he kind of goes about his business was definitely cool to see.”
Professional workouts and summer development only go so far, however, and the Tigers will still need to prove their mettle during the season. But what may be different about this endeavor is the chip the team has on its collective shoulder, one forged by a premature end to the ultimate goal that is now being chased with a vengeance by a group who has been more aggressive in its pursuit of a championship.
“The end of last season was definitely a hard one for us,” Pierce assessed. “Having this sort of crushing defeat like last year, I think that gives you motivation. It helped me throughout the summer to keep pushing myself, and I think it helped our entire team and all the guys returning that we can’t let up. It’s extremely valuable. Every day in practice, having those guys that returned, we know what the common goal is. We want to come out with wins at the end of the day. Having that hard loss under our belt is only going to help us going forward.”
For the man in charge of returning to the highest level of postseason play, the blend of youth and experience is not as much a concern as the desire to avenge what slipped away last season, something that has been addressed without a considerable amount of words.
“We’d like to go deeper,” Henderson said. “We lost two starters, so you’ll definitely see new faces. I feel very good about what we have in the program. Guys have gotten a lot better, and we’ve added some really good freshmen that’ll help us. We just want to have a spirit of improvement here all the time, and this group has that.”
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