Pasadena, CA-
If there was a sequence of plays to accurately describe tonight's 80-62 Principia College loss to Occidental College, it occurred with just over 10 minutes left in the 2nd half.
After going into the halftime locker room down 43-22, having been completely and totally out-played in the first 20 minutes, PC began to claw back.
TreVaughn Goodman spent the first 8 minutes of the half scoring 10 points and, following a
Micah Paulson 3 pointer, the Occidental lead was down to just 12 points, the score reading 59-47 in favor of the Tigers.
A sizable crowd of Principia fans was beginning to make significant noise, the Prin bench was up and loud, there was a bit of energy and belief beginning to ripple through the team but, before any of that could really take hold, Occidental leading scorer Zach Baines took advantage of a defensive miscue and hit a 3 pointer of his own just 8 seconds after Paulson's potentially momentum-shifting bucket.
Just like that, the rebellion was dead.
Tuesday night's game served as just another chapter in the same painful book that Principia has been reading all season long. There were positives, there were moments of hope, but ultimately PC just didn't have enough to defeat a 9-0 Occidental team that, in all fairness, well and truly appears to be a national contender.
As mentioned earlier, the first half was…less than ideal.
Things started okay for the Panthers, with
Clark Davidson scoring 7 of PC's first 10 points, highlighted by his first 3 pointer of the season. With 14:14 to go in the half, Prin was only down 13-10 and looked to be keeping pace with the high flying Tigers.
That would be the closest deficit the Panthers would see all night.
From that point until the end of the half, Occidental went on a 30-12 scoring tear to blow the game wide open and enter the halftime locker room with a commanding 43-22 lead. And while the Panthers didn't play their best half of basketball, it was completely reasonable to say that Occidental was legitimately 21 points better.
In the 2nd half, Principia looked nothing like the team that had just been on the floor during the 1st half, playing a much looser, free-flowing game that gave Occidental plenty of problems and ultimately won PC the half by a 40-37 margin.
But, again, as has been the case all season long, the negatives of the first half out-weighed whatever positives there were in the 2nd half and bogged Principia down into another loss.
At this point in the season, it feels like the team is playing a proverbial game of whack-a-mole. For every problem that progresses or gets solved, another one pops up.
I mentioned in yesterday's game story about how much better the Panthers have gotten over the last 10 minutes of games and that progress continued in tonight's game, PC accruing a +2 point margin over the final 10 minutes.
But, on the flip side, free throw shooting has gone about as far down the drain as possible, the team shooting a combined 49% over the past two games.
And, for as well as the team has started playing over the last 10 minutes of games, the first 10 minutes of games have begun to replace it as the 'problem of the month.' A 43-22 halftime score tonight is indicative of that early struggle, as PC came out of the gates tight, passive and looking overwhelmed by the opposition.
"We keep taking these small steps forward each game," senior guard
Micah Paulson told me yesterday. "I know it [a win] is coming, I'm encouraged by our progress."
Other positives from tonight's game included
Daniel Hoffman seeing 3 minutes of game action in front of local family,
Micah Paulson continuing his nationally acclaimed scoring record with a 24 points performance to lead the Panthers, and
Clark Davidson bouncing back off of last night's season low scoring output with 13 points.
Tonight concluded the playing portion of Principia's two-game Los Angeles trip, but stay tuned into @PrinAthletics and @PrincipiaMBB on Instagram for updates about what the team is up to during the remaining days of the trip.
