HAWAIIAN PUNCH: Princeton University men’s basketball player Devin Cannady puts up a free throw in a game earlier this season. Junior guard and tri-captain Cannady exploded for 26 points in the second half as the Tigers pulled away to a 77-63 win over Hawai’i on Christmas Day in a consolation contest at the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic in Honolulu. Cannady totaled a career-high 28 points in the game and was later named the Ivy League Player of the Week. Princeton, now 7-7, returns to action when it starts Ivy play with a game at Penn on January 5. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

By Bill Alden

With the Princeton University men’s basketball team tied 31-31 at halftime against the University of Hawai’i in its third and final game at the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic, Devin Cannady knew the Tigers had to step up the intensity.

“We went into halftime tied and I don’t think we played the best that we could have defensively,” said Cannady, as quoted on the Princeton sports website. 

“We let them score a lot in the paint, get to the free-throw line, which is what they do really well. In the second half, we came out more aggressively.”

Junior guard and tri-captain Cannady came out on fire after the break, exploding for 26 points in the half on the way to a career-high 28 as the Tigers pulled away to a 77-63 win in the tourney’s fifth-place game and improved to 7-7.

For Cannady, the outburst broke a mini-slump as he had averaged 11 points in the first two games of the tourney, going 5-of-22 from the floor before shooting 7-of-13 against the Rainbow Warriors.

“This whole trip has been rough shooting-wise for me, but my teammates, my coaches kept having the confidence in me to shoot, and so did I,” said Cannady, who was later named the Ivy League Player of the Week and is now three points shy of the 1,000-point mark in his career. “I kept shooting, and once the ball started going in, I got more and more confident.”

With Princeton going 4-1 on its western swing, with wins at Cal Poly (80-60 on December 16) and Southern Cal (103-93 in overtime in December 19) on the California portion of the trip, a loss to Middle Tennessee State (69-67 on December 22), and a victory over Akron (64-62 on December 23) on a buzzer-beater by Myles Stephens as it went 2-1 at the Diamond Head Classic, the Tigers should be bringing plenty of confidence into their Ivy campaign, which starts with a game at Penn on January 5.