‘LIFE-CHANGING MOMENT’
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Mitch Henderson was raised at the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone, a pocket of flyover country where in the summertime extra hours of daylight stretched evenings into eternities and turned neighborhood streets into postdinner playgrounds.
Before his father’s career as an electrical contractor relocated the family to Lexington, Ky., Henderson spent the first 12 years of his life in Vincennes, Ind., a riverbank town across the water from Illinois at the western border of the Hoosier state.
“You got light until 9:30, 10 o’clock at night. It’s an incredible way to grow up,” Henderson said. “Small town that loves sports, and all the neighbors, everybody in the neighborhood kind of watched your kid for you. So I was outside all the time playing basketball, Wiffle ball, hideand-go-seek, Ghost in the Graveyard. It’s an amazing way to grow up.”
Henderson is 47 and has lived in New Jersey for nearly two decades, having played four years of basketball for Princeton in the 1990s and now in his 12th year as the Tigers’ coach. But he will always be a Midwesterner at heart, someone who relishes soaking up the last slivers of light.
Princeton is doing just that as the last double-digit seed left standing in the NCAA Tournament and the fourth No. 15 seed ever to reach the men’s Sweet 16. The Tigers’ Cinderella run is illustrative of the Tournament’s inherent allure and adds intrigue to the slate of South Region games taking place in Louisville this weekend.
Princeton plays No. 6 Creighton in the second of two regional semifinal games Friday night at the KFC Yum! Center, following a game between No. 1 Alabama and No. 5 San Diego State. The winners will face off Sunday in the regional final for a spot in the Final Four.
March Madness lends itself to dichotomous labels and Davidand-Goliath storylines, the potential for upsets as much a part of the Tournament’s identity as the third month on the calendar.
This year, the South is the only region that has a double-digit seed and lacks multiple top-four seeds. The other three quadrants of the bracket are considerably chalkier, especially in the Midwest, where No. 1 Houston is joined in Kansas City by No. 5 Miami, No. 2 Texas and No. 3 Xavier.
In Louisville, the assembled teams sound like the beginning of a joke: A No. 1 overall seed, two mid-majors and an Ivy League dark horse walk into a bar …
The punch line is to be determined. In a region ripe for disruption, Princeton might be primed to lead the charge. Henderson, though, described simply feeling “thrilled to be here.”
“As fun as this all is, it’s a lifechanging moment for our group,” he said. “Three weeks ago, we were fighting for our life to make the Ivy League tournament. So just appreciating being present here is really special.”
Cinderellas, underdogs … whatever you want to call them, the Tigers will take it.
“Personally, I love it,” Princeton guard Ryan Langborg said. “I think it allows us to play with a confidence not only amongst ourselves but amongst fans and allows us to get the crowd involved, which I think always helps with momentum. Basketball is a game of runs, so I think any support in those terms we can get is great.”
Tigers forward Tosan Evbuomwan added, “We know who we are and what we bring to the table. It doesn’t mean too much to me what everyone else calls us.”
San Diego State, which opened Thursday as a 7.5-point betting line underdog to Alabama, is not as keen to embrace that label.
“We’re not a one-hit wonder,” Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher said. “We have a program. We have a culture. So I don’t care what game we go into — we don’t consider ourselves an underdog. We just look at the next opponent.
We’re not embracing the underdog role. We’re just trying to embrace San Diego State basketball and be the best version of us.”
Alabama dominated in the early rounds of the Tournament, beating Texas A&M Corpus Christi by 21 points and Maryland by 22. The Crimson Tide, though, are wary of complacency after they suffered regular-season losses against Gonzaga, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas A&M.
“I feel like us as a group, we just take it slow. We don’t overlook any team,” Alabama forward Brandon Miller said. “We know this team (San Diego State) is here for a reason. They’ve beat highly, highly talented teams. So we just have to come out here and just play our game, really, and just not let them speed us up or play at their tempo.”
Looking at seeding alone, the South’s makeup ostensibly gives Alabama an easier path to the Final Four than the highest-seeded teams in the other three regions, though that assertion appears flimsier upon closer examination.
San Diego State is rated by KenPom.com as the nation’s fifth-best defensive team and held each of its first two NCAA Tournament opponents, Charleston and Furman, under 60 points and to a combined 27.5 percent shooting on 3-pointers. The Aztecs beat Furman in the second round by 23 points, the largest margin of victory a Mountain West program has ever had in a men’s NCAA Tournament game.
Creighton advanced to the Sweet 16 for the second time in three seasons after toppling No. 3 Baylor in the second round. So far in the NCAA Tournament, Creighton is shooting 95.1 percent from the free-throw line, better than any other team in the field.The Bluejays’ defense, led by junior center Ryan Kalkbrenner, allows opponents to take just 33 percent of their shots at the rim and grab just 23.5 percent of available offensive rebounds.
And then there’s Princeton, which has developed a reputation as a giant killer during the Tournament with takedowns of No. 2 Arizona (59-55) and No. 7 Missouri (78-63). Princeton has been among the country’s best rebounding teams all season and outrebounded Missouri 44-30 in what also marked the largest win by a No. 15 seed in Tournament history.
Alabama coach Nate Oats is aware that upsets play a large part in the NCAA Tournament. They even account for some of his own strongest childhood memories of the event.
“I mean, I go back to when I was a kid, and you see these — I’m thinking about Bryce Drew and hitting his shot at Valpo and just all those great upsets and shots,” Oats said. “But you’ve also got great games between two great teams. I’m thinking about, you know, Bobby Hurley’s Duke team or Christian Laettner hits the shot against Kentucky. That’s one of my best memories watching two really good teams play. So you don’t just have to have the upsets to make for great TV and for the fans. You can have really good teams going at it, which is what I think we have here.”
As the coach of the overall No. 1 seed, Oats said he neither leans into nor downplays the Davidand-Goliath narratives. Instead, he tries to strike a balance between humility and realism when talking to his players.
“We never lie to our team,” Oats said. “We tell them the truth. We tell them when we’re focused and concentrating on what we’re supposed to be focused on, we should be the best team in the country. Now, we need to play like it, and we’ve had enough games this year where we haven’t done that. So we’re not trying to flip it and tell them anything different. They know we’re the No. 1 overall seed. They know what we’re capable of when we bring it, but we need to bring it.”
After beating No. 11 North Carolina State in the first round, Creighton was not favored to win its second-round game against Baylor. But the Bluejays emerged victorious and now, on the precipice of reaching the program’s first Elite Eight, find themselves flipped back into the role of the betting favorites against Cinderella squad Princeton in the Sweet 16.
“It definitely doesn’t matter to us, because I think we have the same goal as the other team, Princeton, does: to win and make it to the Elite Eight,” Bluejays guard Shereef Mitchell said. “So I don’t think we’ve really bought into that, because we have to focus on us and what we have to do to win the game. And whatever they have going on as the Cinderella is great and all, but we also have our thing that we want to do.”
As much as Princeton’s postseason run is being celebrated, it is not as if the program’s overall success lacks precedent. Henderson, who finished his playing career at Princeton in 1998 and still ranks eighth in program history in career assists and ninth in career steals, rattled off a list of former Tigers players drafted into the NBA: Chris Thomforde, John Hummer, Ed Hummer, Geoff Petrie, Ryan Taylor, Armond Hill.
“Our school thinks very highly of its basketball history, and we think that this team reflects that history very well,” Henderson said. “I would put this team up against any of them. So, you know, we followed Saint Peters’ run last year very closely. I just think that each team has a special life to live in the Tournament. You’re lucky and fortunate if you get a chance. I’ve seen it on the other side as a coach and watched teams forever, but this is … It’s amazing and hard to put into words what it feels like on this end, but I’m glad. I don’t think seeds matter as much as they used to.”
Princeton’s Cinderella run epitomizes the anything-can-happen nature of tournament