Princeton gets its revenge on rival Hall on Senior Night

PRINCETON - The Princeton Tigers played with a lot of emotion Friday night at Prouty Gym.

It was senior night with eight senior Tigers recognized for their contributions to the Tiger program this season and the past four years.

The Tigers also came out on a mission to avenge two previous losses at the hands of the rival Hall Red Devils.

It was mission accomplished as the Tigers dominated the night, riding a 12-0 run to an early 18-2 lead on the way to a 51-29 runaway victory in Three Rivers East play.

“It feels great. Obviously you don’t want to be satisfied here,” Princeton senior Noah LaPorte said. “(We) want to carry this win and momentum into the postseason, but to go out with the guys I grew up and play basketball with, it’s a great thing.

“Losing to these guys two times before. They stormed the court at their place, but they really couldn’t do that here.”

Tiger coach Jason Smith said the Tigers did well to stay focused on senior night.

“Senior night is always a hard night to get your rhythm,” he said. “The game doesn’t start on time. You have that lag between your pregame speech and warmups. The kids aren’t used to that. Usually have some seniors who normally don’t start, but I thought Wyatt (Koning) did an amazing job tonight. You couldn’t tell the difference.

“They were super focused and knew what we wanted to accomplish. We talked about (Hall) storming on our home court last year and storming on their home court this year and so the guys wanted this one pretty bad.”

LaPorte and Asa Gartin each scored six points and Jordan Reinhardt added four to get the Tigers rolling in the first quarter. LaPorte threw down a dunk and Gartin scored on the break and added a pair of free throws to send the Tigers to a 16-4 lead at the quarter’s end.

In the second quarter, LaPorte scored on a cut with an assist from Luke Smith and returned the favor with a dish on the break to Smith to put the Tigers up 31-10 late in the first half. Senior Brayden Fulkerson beat the buzzer for a scoring drive to make it 33-14 at the half.

Senior reserve Jeremy Borsch got in on the fun with a reverse layup in the fourth quarter much to the delight of the PHS student body.

“Sophomore year, I always saw him at the Met (playing basketball) and I kept trying to get him to come out. (I told him) ‘Just go out for it. You’ve got to try it.' Now he’s scoring a bunch of baskets,” LaPorte said.

Hall coach Mike Filippini said it just wasn’t the Red Devils' night, especially when it came to shooting their favorite shot, the 3-pointer, making just 1 of 14 attempts.

“We beat them without LaPorte and the second time he played. Tonight, we just couldn’t make a shot,” he said. “You can’t be 1 of 14 against a team that plays a 2-3 zone and expect to win. When teams play zone, you’ve got to make the shot behind the arc and tonight we couldn’t make anything.

“We told them at halftime, you can’t trade baskets with them, you’ve got to get some stops and get some scores. We kind of had a little run going in the third quarter, but it was over quick.”

Smith was pleased with the Tigers’ play on both ends of the floor.

“I thought our defense played well. Held them to what, four points first quarter, 14 in the half and 29 in the game. (Held them to) under 30. That’s pretty darn good defensive performance,” he said. “They may have missed some points, but was it our closeouts. I don’t know what. Hats off to our kids for executing every defense we ran and every offensive set we ran tonight.

“They were just laser focused and that’s what it’s going to take to make a postseason run and we’re starting to trend that way to get there.”

Reinhardt finished with a game-high 20 points for the Tigers (15-12, 6-2) with LaPorte adding 19 and Gartin eight.

Jack Jablonski led the Red Devils (11-14, 2-7) with 10 points.

The Tigers will return to Prouty Saturday to face Winnebago with the start time moved up to 2:30 p.m. to try to beat the weather.