Xaivian Lee (1) exults as his 27 points propelled Princeton past Iona in season opener Monday. (Photo by Princeton Athletics)
PRINCETON, N.J. — When most college students were enjoying their spring and summer before returning to school this fall, Xaivian Lee spent his working out alongside Jeremy Lin while going through the NBA Draft process.
Lee ultimately decided to return to Princeton for his junior season, and in his first game action in almost eight months, turned in an effort that mirrored Lin’s own meteoric rise once the former Harvard star got the opportunity to shine on the big stage.
Lee’s 27 points were a game-best Monday, and none of his markers were bigger than the last two, which came at the free throw line with 3.7 seconds remaining in regulation, capping off a 16-point second-half comeback and sealing an 81-80 Tiger win over Iona in the season opener for both teams at Jadwin Gymnasium.
“He was terrific,” head coach Mitch Henderson conceded after admitting he has yet to run out of superlatives to describe his star point guard. “He made it look simple, and then he made his free throws when everyone was struggling to make them.”
“Good players make good coaches, so we’re very fortunate. However, what I’ve asked of them is that they would be the most coachable guys on the team. And if they are that, then we can be really good because everyone’s going to look at them all the time, not just the opponents, but inwardly, our team.”
Princeton looked to Lee—and also reigning Ivy League Player of the Year Caden Pierce—quite often Monday as the Tigers had difficulty solving Iona’s full-court press for the majority of the night. But as the Gaels did as much as possible to isolate the duo, the hosts were unable to find a consistent third scorer to step up. Dalen Davis was hampered by foul trouble for a large portion of the night, and the Tigers as a whole missed 11 of 14 attempts from distance in the first half while shooting 11-of-22 at the free throw line.
“I think I can speak for all of us…we didn’t really come ready to play in the first half,” Lee reflected. “I think we just kind of expected to walk out there and do our thing. We got punched in the face, and I think we needed that. Ultimately, we’re gonna look back at this game and it’s gonna be really good for us.”
“Obviously that game looked really good, but I felt like, personally, if we lost, it would’ve been completely on me just because I was playing terribly in the first half. If you look at the game from a whole, it looked like we had a great win, but I think there’s so much for us to improve on.”
Iona seized control of what had been a back-and-forth affair for most of the first half with runs of 11-2 and 14-4 in the latter stages of the opening stanza. The Gaels used the cushions to take a 49-37 lead into the locker room at halftime and expanded it to as many as 16 points, at 58-42, riding a physical front line and the hot hand of freshman Adam Njie, whose 19 points in his collegiate debut earned plaudits from Tobin Anderson.
“I thought he’d be good,” the Iona head coach said of the Cardinal Hayes product. “He’s got a way about him that’s really good, actually. He made a lot of good decisions. He’s gotta let things come to him more, and he’ll learn from that. The thing about Adam is he’s very coachable. He wants to get better.”
In the other locker room, the message was far more blunt, and a direct call to action from an upperclassman leader.
“I told the guys when we broke the huddle in the second half, (Iona) put up 49 points in the first half,” Pierce recalled. “We just gotta take some pride. At the end of the day, I didn’t think they were doing anything special, they were just beating us one-on-one and out-toughing us. So I looked at the guys and said, let’s toughen up and take some pride.”
Pierce’s plea was received—and carried out—over the ensuing seven minutes of gameplay to the tune of a 20-2 run that started with a Jacob Huggins dunk and was punctuated, fittingly, by a pair of Lee free throws that gave Princeton its first advantage since the 9:15 mark of the first half in a stretch Henderson candidly said was defined by his side wanting it more.
“We decided to play harder,” the coach deadpanned. “I’m not trying to be cute, but we finally just played harder. We made some plays, but why are we waiting until the second half to play hard?”
“Once we got stops, I felt like all the momentum kept coming,” Lee said. “It’s a lot easier to play when they’re not scoring, honestly. It might look like our offense started clicking, but I think we were getting what we wanted for the most part the entire time. I went and told Caden, ‘we might get punched in the face, but we’re always gonna have a chance to win.’ That’s always how I feel. I told him, we’re gonna get our chance, we just need to get stops. We just had to kind of bear down a little bit.”
Iona battled back, restoring its advantage with eight unanswered points that put the Gaels in front by a 77-73 margin with 2:51 remaining in regulation before a step-back triple by Lee trimmed the lead to one point. He then regained the initiative for Princeton with a driving jumper to beat the shot clock inside the final minute. The Tigers added one more point as Pierce split a pair of free throws, only for Iona to answer with 16.2 seconds to play after Clarence Rupert converted a 3-point play.
On the ensuing possession, there was no doubt as to who would get the ball. Lee drove inside, but with most of his options sealed off, looked to get to the rim and draw contact. He did, as Rupert was whistled for his fourth foul to put the Canadian on the foul line for what proved to be the decisive points.
“There wasn’t really much of a play there,” Lee said as he recounted the final seconds. “I was honestly just trying to get downhill. In that situation, you’re just trying to get something at the rim. I was just trying to get fouled.”
Iona still had one last-ditch effort to win it, as Dejour Reaves raced down the floor and got a clean look from the top of the key, only to hit the right iron. For the Gaels, it was a sense of deja vu, as Iona had a chance to win its season opener at Charleston last year only for Wheza Panzo to miss a 3-pointer at the buzzer.
“Credit to (Princeton),” Anderson lamented. “That’s a good basketball team. I thought we were right there. I thought we executed well down the stretch, we had a chance to win when Rupert got a big and-1, I thought (Reaves) had a good look at the end, but they were able to make one more play than us. Credit to them.”
“I think we could’ve played a lot better defensively, and I’m sure Mitch would say the same thing to his team too. Our foundation’s gotta be our half-court defense, and I’ll be honest with you: I was disappointed in how we defended. Are there positives? Yeah, but I thought we could have been better defensively. We built a pretty good lead, we were up by 14 or 15, but we just couldn’t string together stops. You’ve gotta be better for 40 minutes.”
Both teams return to action Friday, with Iona visiting Hofstra while Princeton plays a de facto home game at a neutral site, as reigning Atlantic 10 champion Duquesne comes to Trenton for the Jersey Jam doubleheader, which also features Monmouth taking on Temple. In the meantime, the Tigers will take a win any way they can get one, in a game that felt more like a February or March affair than a November opener.
“I’m glad to get one like this under the belt early,” Henderson said. “It felt like a later in the season environment with how physical it was. They were better than us. As far as playing a college basketball game, it’s like just about the best thing that could happen to us in a lot of different ways. It was very much a learning experience. I’m happy we had a game like this, this early, right up front, that taught us so much.”
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