PRINCETON — Dalen Davis couldn’t have picked a better time to make his return from a lengthy injury absence. Now the rest of the Ivy League is on notice. The junior guard scored 19 points in 21 minutes in his first action since Nov. 20 to help Princeton hold off arch rival Penn, 78-76, in a thri lling Ivy opener on Monday night at Jadwin Gymnasium. “That’s probably the longest I’ve been out without playing basketball in my life,” Davis said. The Chicago native hurt his right ankle late in the second half of the Tigers’ victory over Northeastern and then proceeded to miss the next nine games — a stretch in which the team, not coincidentally, went 1-8 — before making his return on Monday. “It was hard mentally,” Davis said. “The guys were improving each and every day even though we weren’t in the win column. I was motivated to come back and make a push in the Ivy.” Wearing the No. 3 — a change from the 22 he had on when the season started — Davis came off the bench and looked as you thought he might. Rusty. “Yeah,” he chuckled when asked if that was the case. The team’s leading scorer at 16.5 points in the six games he played before the injury, Davis needed until the 5:40 mark of the first half to get back on the scoresheet. The second half? Well, that looked like the Davis everybody expected. He scored 17 of his 19 points in the second half, with 10 of them coming during Princeton’s blistering 16-for-16 start to the half. He finished 8-of-13 from the field, including a big bucket in the final minute in which he muscled his way into the paint after Penn cut the Tigers’ lead to a point. “It’s not just the scoring,” coach Mitch Henderson said. “It’s his defense, his ability to get over the ball screens, his competitiveness, he got posted up in the first half on (6-9 Dalton) Scantlebury and reached and kind of took it. We don’t have any seniors, but that’s what seniors do. He had a couple really important steals, his passing is so underrated.” That Davis’ return comes at the start of the 14-game Ivy League slate is significant. The top four qualify for the ILT in Ithaca, N.Y., and the Tigers’ chances of doing that are improve dramatically with Davis in the lineup. “We’re a close-knit group. I love these guys. They’re fun to be around.,” Davis said. “Just have that eagerness to come back and compete and compete with the guys you want to fight for.” Princeton’s Dalen Davis, 3, drives to the basket against Penn during a NCAA men’s basketball game on Monday, Jan. 5, 2026 at Jadwin Gymnasium in Princeton. (Carl Rizzo/ Game One Photography, LLC). Inside the blistering 2nd half Before breaking down the incredible second half you have to go back to the end of the first half. Princeton was in big trouble. Penn dictated everything about the opening 20 minutes and led by as many as 14 with less than three minutes remaining. But Jackson Hice got the comeback started with a 3-pointer, Jack Stanton knocked down three free throws after he was fouled attempting a trey for the second time and Hicke beat the buzzer with a tough layup. All told it was an 8-2 run over the final two minutes that reduced the deficit to six. “That was huge for momentum,” Stanton said. “We felt really good about ourselves. We had two really big wall-ups there where we struggled in the first half and were fouling. After thos two physical plays, it helped us.” The second half was exhilarating. The Tigers made 16 straight shots — they scored on 16 of their first 17 possession — and flipped an eight-point deficit into a 15-point lead. “I had faith we were going to come back pretty quick,” Stanton said. But 16 straight makes quick? “I did not know we made 16 shots in a row,” Henderson said. “That’s amazing.” Princeton scored every which way. Drives to the basket and finishing through contact. Long-range treys. Mid-range jumpers. The barrage left Penn coach Fran McCaffery at a loss for word. “There’s nothing else to say,” McCaffery said when asked if he had every experienced an onslaught like that in his long coaching career. “It’s a good question. The answer is no.” The first-year Quakers coach, who is back at his alma mater after successful stops at Lehigh, UNC Greensboro, Siena and Iowa, later said he should have put the press on sooner since that is what allowed Penn to fight its way back into the contest and ultimately have a chance to win at the buzzer. “You can change personnel and you can change defenses and we did that,” McCaffery said. “The only thing that worked was press and we waited too long. We went at about eight and a half and we should have gone probably at 17 and at least 12. That’s the only thing you can do is try and change the momentum, the complexion of the game, the speed of the game.” In total, Princeton scored 54 points in 20 minutes — that’s 2.7 points per minute — and shot 21-of-27 from the floor (77.8%). Princeton’s Jack Stanton, right, drives toward the basket as Penn’s Ethan Roberts, left, defends during a NCAA men’s basketball game on Monday, Jan. 5, 2026 at Jadwin Gymnasium in Princeton. (Carl Rizzo/ Game One Photography, LLC) Up Next The Tigers (5-11, 1-0) have now won consecutive games after snapping an eight-game skid. If they really want to change the outlook on the season they can do so by beating preseason favorite Yale (12-2, 1-0) this coming Saturday at Jadwin. The Bulldogs have won nine of the last 12 meetings, including all three last season. “We had been knocking on the door against really good teams,” Henderson said. “We got a really good win against a very good Vermont team, that’s a very good Penn team. So two in a row, but we got to start to behave like that in the big moments, which means taking care of the ball down the stretch — in the last three minutes we had six turnovers — and staying out of foul trouble, but it’s nice to be 1-0. That’s a really important win.” ...read more read less