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 (Photoby Bill Allen/NJ SportAction) caption:
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Logan Aims to Fight Through Aching Knee As Princeton Men's Hoops Starts Ivy Play
By Bill Alden
He loped up the court Monday night with a large black brace protecting his left knee and he left the gym carrying two jumbo bags of ice into the bitterly cold night. After having multiple surgeries on that troublesome knee, Princeton University senior forward Andre Logan knows that with his ACL just a memory, he will never be 100 percent physically.
That harsh reality, though, is not going to prevent Logan from doing whatever he can to help Princeton succeed.
Last Monday, the 6'6, 210-pound Logan scored a season-high 11 points, passed for four assists, and had three rebounds in 18 minutes to help the Tigers ease past Haverford 60-33 before a Jadwin Gym crowd of 1,718 in their annual post-exam NCAA Division III matchup.
Logan, whose latest surgical procedure came this past November after he reinjured the knee on the first day of practice, was encouraged by his performance against Haverford.
"It was definitely good for my confidence," said Logan, who was granted a fifth year of eligibility due to his knee problems. "I've been taking things in steps. You make that first shot in practice and you start shooting more, I finally hit a shot in a game. It took a while like last year, it was good to get that out of the way."
The Brooklyn, N.Y. native, whose single-game career-high at Princeton is 19 points, realizes he isn't going to be a go-to guy for this year's squad.
"I'm not expecting to come out and do things I did a couple of years ago," said the bearded Logan with a rueful smile. "I just want to help the team when I can. I've just got to come in and get a hand on a pass here, a rebound there, hit a shot when I need to hit it."
Logan acknowledges that it hasn't been easy coming to terms with his reduced role. "I'm used to playing at a higher level and doing things at a higher skill level, " said Logan, who has scored 558 points in his Princeton career and averaged 7.6 points a game.
"It's a difficult adjustment to doing what you can do physically. You have to know your role and not try to do too much. Adjusting to what your team needs you to do is the most important thing."
Princeton head coach Joe Scott realizes that Logan is going to have to overcome some mental hurdles in order to give the Tigers what they need.
"He'll never be at full strength, that's known," said Scott, whose club improved to 9-5 with the win over Haverford, its 20th straight in its annual D-III encounters. "I still think that the knee, understandably so, poses him questions. He's got to be at mental full strength to get the most out of himself physically and for us to get the most out of him."
Getting the most out of Logan will require a day-to-day effort. "It's not the dribbling, the shooting, and the passing that I'm looking for from Andre," said Scott, whose club had been out of competition for a 19-day exam break before the Haverford contest. "It's the competitiveness. I told him that I need to have him compete everyday at practice to show me that he's ready to compete. I'm looking for his toughness in going after the ball."
With the Tigers tipping off their Ivy League campaign with home games against Brown on January 28 and Yale on January 29, Scott is looking for his team to display a collective toughness.
"What matters is being ready for how hard it's going to be every single night and every single weekend," asserted Scott. "The team that is prepared for those mental battles is going to come out on top."
In Scott's view, the formula for success is simple as the veteran-laden Tigers look to defend their league title. "I told the guys that it's turnovers and mental mistakes, that's the whole season," explained Scott. "We've got to limit turnovers and mental mistakes. If we do that for the next 36 days, we're going to be fine. "
The Tigers will face a stern test of their mental acuity in the opening Ivy weekend when they figure to encounter two radically different styles of play. "Brown is the best three-point shooting team in the league," said Scott.
"They have five guys who shoot 3s and they shoot 40 percent as a team from three-point range. The other game is the exact opposite. Yale is a team that likes to throw the ball inside. There is more driving, more individual moves from the perimeter. They are very dissimilar teams in that regard."
Logan, for his part, believes the Tigers are up to the challenge.
"I'm real excited, we have three days to get ready," said Logan. "Every game will be tough. I think we're ready to play. The first four months of the season lead up to these 36 days. We have a veteran team and we know what it takes. We need to play as hard as we can and hopefully win it."
And Logan isn't going to let his aching knee keep him from contributing whatever he can to Princeton's title push.
