The Princeton Tigers and the Marist Red Foxes meet Saturday in college basketball action from McCann Arena. Princeton is 1-2 on the season so far after a Monday win versus UMBC. As for Marist, they’re 1-2 as well following a loss to Lehigh in their last game. Check back all season long for free college basketball picks at Sports Chat Place.
Princeton suffered a couple of fairly close losses out of the gate. First was the opener versus Hofstra. The Tigers fell 83-77 in that one. In game two Princeton took on Navy. After a valiant second-half comeback, the Tigers lost 74-73.
Princeton was able to get their first win of the year on Monday versus UMBC. The Tigers jumped out to a 41-27 halftime lead and scored 53 more points from there in a 94-64 win. Matt Alloco led the team on 18 points with seven boards.
Over on the Marist side, they had a tight opener battle versus American but managed to power out the win 73-69. The Foxes played in another close matchup for game two against Binghamton and took a loss 78-75 in that one.
Matched up against Lehigh in game three, the Foxes were down 29-16 at halftime. Marist got better in the second half with a 38-35 advantage, but it was a lost cause in a 64-54 defeat. Anthony Cooper put up 16 points in 18 minutes to lead the way.
PICK: I’m going to try Princeton here. We should have a pretty good matchup on our hands regardless. The Tigers have been on a solid run since the second half of the Navy game, and they’ve been competitive in all three outings thus far. Princeton shot a scorching 57.8 percent from the field and 63.2 percent (12-of-19) from 3-point range in the UMBC game and collected 41 rebounds along the way. The Tigers likely won’t match those numbers here, but should find some room against a struggling Marist team.