WEST LONG BRANCH — King Rice has taken some lumps in the non-conference portion of the schedule during his 15 seasons in charge at Monmouth so he knows exactly what Mitch Henderson is going through right now. Rice and the Hawks lost their his first eight games last season. “You are always honest with your kids and when we were going through it last year, really, it’s not the worst thing that has happened to you,” Rice said after his team handed Princeton a 63-58 setback on Wednesday night. “I know they are Princeton kids and all that, but they’ve had some adversity in their lives. Losing some college basketball games is really small on the spectrum of the world.” Princeton’s roster, already bereft of any seniors, has been rocked by injuries in the opening month of the season. Down two starters on Wednesday night — Dalen Davis missed his fifth straight game with a sprained right ankle, while Malik Abdullahi joined him on the injured list with a left foot problem — the Tigers trudged out of the OceanFirst Bank Center and back home on I-I95 with yet another frustrating defeat. Princeton (3-8) has lost five games in a row for the first time since opening the 2019-20 season at 0-5. It won its next game and then lost the next two but turned a 1-7 start into a 14-13 final record with a 9-5 mark in the Ivy League. The last four of those five losses have come by a combined 16 points. “At the three-and-half-minute mark, we were down four and this is the fifth straight time we’ve been in this position,” Henderson said. “We are going to breakthrough if we figure out how to get it done right there and we turn the ball over. That’s what we’ve been doing.” This one left the Tigers’ 15th-year coach in a particularly grumpy mood and with a list of grievances. He wasn’t pleased with the officiating, calling it “a wrestling match.” He took a timeout nine seconds into the second half after freshman Landon Clarke turned the ball over after he slipped on a wet spot leftover from halftime. He lost his last timeout after unsuccessfully challenging an out-of-bounds call with 3:13 remaining. And the game, which was the second half of a doubleheader, started 25 minutes late even though the women’s game ended 55 minutes before the originally scheduled 8 p.m. tip. “I like to play the game on a school night so we can get home by 10:30,” Henderson said. “I know that sounds like sour grapes.” Chalk that up to frustration. “I can’t lead that charge. Patience and understanding has to come from within,” Henderson said. “It has to come from the top. There’s a lot of voices in these guys’ lives and we have to have consistent messaging. We are improving. We’re right there. We’ve been right there five games in a row, but we haven’t come out on top.” The Tigers certainly had a chance to steal this one despite trailing for most of the contest. Sophomore center CJ Happy returned to the lineup after missing Sunday’s loss to St. Joe’s with an illness and scored 20 points. Happy had a 3-point attempt to tie it with seven seconds left clang off the rim. It was a final play similar to the one on Sunday that went awry when the defense blew up the initial action and Happy, who was 4-of-8 from deep, ended up having to put up an awkward shot. You wonder if Henderson would have used a timeout there had he not lost his last one on the unsuccessful challenge. “You listen to your guy and you trust him. He said he didn’t touch it,” Henderson said. “The nightmare is that at two in the morning that’s one the one where you are like I’m going to lose it and then you do and it happens.” Princeton was again plagued by turnovers (19 of them that led to 23 Monmouth points). The Hawks (5-4) also had 21 fast break points in the game. It’s the price of having to play not only underclassmen, but without a true point guard as Davis recovers from his injury. That’s also reason for perspective. The real season begins on Jan. 5 when Penn comes to Jadwin. “It’s sucks to lose and the way we’re losing is really rough, but I’ve been in worse situations with teams,” Henderson said. “This team is very connected. If they stay that way, they can be very good.” Take if from somebody who knows. “Those kids are tough kids and they aren’t hanging they’re not hanging their heads the way they played today,” Rice said. “… Those kids were fighting to the last second. That means they are high-character guys and they understand that they’ve got some guys out. Get those two guys back, get their point guard back and it’s a different game right there.” ...read more read less