The Tigers<\/a> had a dog in the fight for most of the game. They led by as much as seven late in the first quarter and went up by six on a drive and 3-pointer by freshman Julian Mucha to go up 43-37 with 1:42 left in the third quarter.<\/p>\nEvan Steimle hit a couple late free throws to draw the Panthers within four at the end of the third quarter and then they went to work in the fourth.<\/p>\n
E-P got hoops from Steimle, Connor Keegan and Ethan Lavine to open the fourth quarter, taking a 45-43 lead. Keegan scored again on a short pop and Steimle scored a three-point play with a drive and free throw to put E-P up 50-44.<\/p>\n
Jack Oester scored on a back-door cut on an assist by Jackson Mason out of a timeout to make it 50-46. The Tigers did not score again, tallying just three points in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
It was certainly a frustrating finish for the Tigers. who went cold in the fourth quarter and spent more than a minute chasing the Panthers around trying to foul them to get them to the free throw line.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s been our MO all year. We can\u2019t score in one quarter. Usually it\u2019s the first or second quarter, honestly, not the third or fourth quarter,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t worried about our offense at all in the fourth quarter. Gave up six straight points. When they get up by six or eight on the other side, it\u2019s like you\u2019re down by 20.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winckler was proud of how his team finished.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were able to find a way down the stretch to get a few stops and we made some buckets. I thought our energy picked up in the fourth quarter to try to match what they were doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easier at the end of the year to not be as focused. But we weren\u2019t. We took it serious. We watched a ton of film on them. Knew what they wanted to do. We just didn\u2019t execute on the some of the things on the defensive end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winckler was also impressed with the Tigers\u2019 effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrinceton has just consistently gotten better all year long. It\u2019s fun to see what coach Smith and the boys have done,\u201d he said. \u201cI know it\u2019s been kind of different thing trying to figure out what they do, but they just play so hard and so well. Their motion and their back cuts really gave us some problems. And we let them get to the right a lot, which they took advantage of every one of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steimle led E-P (12-9, 5-4) with 18 points and Keegan added 11.<\/p>\n
Gavin Lanham and Mucha each scored 12 points for the Tigers (4-23, 1-8).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Winckler did not exactly walk into Princeton\u2019s Prouty Gym on Tuesday with a lot of good vibes.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[52989,52990,136,138,137,982,11134,10987,983],"class_list":["post-110741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-bcr","tag-bcr-sports","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-erie-prophetstown-preps","tag-illinois-valley-front-headlines","tag-princeton-preps","tag-sauk-valley-front-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Princeton](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/M6LIFBKXGJCT5KNBIMLMU2TRJA.jpg\")
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