Princeton Men’s Basketball Bucks Trend By Retaining Its Top Two Players

Of the 22 conference players of the year from one-bid leagues a year ago, just one returned to the same school this season: the Tigers’ Caden Pierce.

Tigers forward Caden Pierce returned to Princeton this season to follow up his conference player of the year honor. / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images

It didn’t take long after the Princeton Tigers’ season ended in the NIT that coach Mitch Henderson asked star point guard Xaivian Lee about his plans for the next season.

Minutes, in fact.

“Hendy pulled me aside and was like, ‘What’s the word for next year?’ ” Lee recalls. “I was like, ‘We just lost, I have no idea!'"

Direct? Maybe. But Henderson knew he had two players in Lee and Ivy League Player of the Year Caden Pierce who would get no shortage of interest in the transfer portal, so there wasn’t much time to waste in the re-recruitment process. From that final buzzer on March 20 against the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels until May 1, Princeton’s program could have been upended at any time by a transfer portal announcement.

“What used to be normal was that you’d come back, especially at a place like Princeton,” Henderson, a Princeton basketball alum himself, says. “We like to think that that’s true, but unless you’ve walked in someone else’s shoes that’s going through something like this, it’s difficult to know what that feels like.”

It’s not new for mid-majors to get rocked by transfer departures, but the explosion of NIL money throughout the sport has made it even harder to retain talent at lower levels. Of the 22 conference players of the year from one-bid leagues a year ago, just one returned to the same school this season: Pierce. About half were out of eligibility, with the other half either hitting the transfer portal or turning pro early. If you were one of the best players in a lower-level league, chances are high-major coaches found some way through back channels to gauge your interest in transferring.

And while Ivy League schools have always preached a longer-term vision about setting up players for life after basketball, that sell gets harder and harder with more money on the line. Ivy League schools don’t offer athletic scholarships, so top players like Lee or Pierce might be turning down getting paid to play college basketball to instead pay for college themselves. Harvard Crimson star freshman Malik Mack hit the portal in the spring after averaging over 17 points per game and landed with the Georgetown Hoyas, while Yale Bulldogs star big man Danny Wolf left the Bulldogs for the Michigan Wolverines in the offseason. Sources indicated each received mid-six-figure NIL commitments from their new schools.

Lee chose to return to Princeton after Pierce made his decision. / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images

“[Transferring] never really crossed my mind, it was never an option until I saw those guys in the league leaving,” Pierce says. 

While it’d have been easy to be wooed by the chance to play at the highest level and cash in on his early success, Pierce took a more mature approach, one he says would’ve been harder to embrace a few years earlier when he was being recruited out of high school. 

“If you had put those things in front of high school me, it would’ve meant a lot more to me,” Pierce says. “Two years into college, I understand there’s more to life than money or the brand.” 

Still, Pierce knew the decision his star teammate Lee made would have a big impact on him and vice versa. With Lee also going through the NBA pre-draft process in the spring while weighing his stay-or-go transfer decision, staying on the same page wasn’t always easy. 

“To put it bluntly, communication isn’t [Lee’s] specialty,” Pierce says, with a laugh. “You should see our text thread from, what was it, April 15th to May 1? Probably multiple texts a day, like, ‘Dude, update me.’” 

Pierce says he wasn’t quite re-recruiting Lee, wanting his friend and classmate to do whatever was best for himself. But Pierce deciding earlier in the offseason that he wanted to stay at Princeton over exploring the portal was huge for Henderson’s hopes of retaining his other star. Henderson called Pierce the “magnet” that kept the Tigers together in the spring while rival teams in their league had their rosters raided. 

As that May 1 deadline approached, some people encouraged Lee to put his name in the portal just to keep his options open with the opportunity to return to Princeton if he didn’t receive an offer he liked. It would have allowed him to weigh his decision after the NBA G League Elite Camp, which Lee was invited to in mid-May ahead of the NCAA’s deadline to withdraw from the draft on May 29. Lee feared entering and going through the recruiting process again might lead him to a decision he’d regret. 

“It felt like the door to Narnia,” Lee says. “I’m not going to say I was afraid of change or anything, but it’s like, once you get in there and start taking visits, you have an idea what your NIL is worth, but coaches all the sudden are throwing money and it’s hard to say no. I could say I was keeping Princeton my No. 1 option, but you’re going to be hit with the best recruiting schemes from the best coaches in college basketball. It’s going to be hard to say no to that.”

Still, the choice wasn’t as clear-cut as picking hundreds of thousands of dollars now vs. the power of a Princeton degree in the future. Lee says, as much as he could, he took money out of the equation, strictly wanting to make the best basketball decision. 

“If I put myself in the best position to have a good [pro] career, hopefully that’s a position where the NIL I’m making this year is chump change compared to where I’m at down the line,” Lee says. 

Both Lee and Pierce believed Princeton was the place that could develop them into pros. Playing with one as a freshman in Tosan Evbuomwan, who was on a two-way contract with the Detroit Pistons earlier this year, helped. So did seeing how each of their games took off as sophomores: Lee went from 4.8 points per game as a freshman to 17.1 as a sophomore, while Pierce jumped from a role-playing 8.2 points per game into averaging nearly 17 per night and posting 14 double-doubles. Plus, the two have already proven they can win big at Princeton, reaching the Sweet 16 with Evbuomwan in 2022–23 before going 24–5 a year ago. Why mess with what’s working?

Pierce shoots against Creighton Bluejays forward Arthur Kaluma during a game last season. / Jamie Rhodes-Imagn Images

“We’ve been through those rough patches, we’ve gained trust with the coaches, so now we’re in a position where we can play freely, play through mistakes, and that’s the most important thing you can ask for as a basketball player,” Pierce says. “We’re fortunate enough to have that here, and if you go and transfer somewhere else, you may not have that. You may be looking over your shoulder, there’s a five-star coming in behind you or another transfer. You might have a shorter leash.” 

“I feel like some people might look at that as us not believing in ourselves, but I would honestly say it’s the exact opposite,” Lee adds. “Staying here was me betting on myself, betting on my teammates, and knowing that we can succeed where we’re at and show that we’re good enough to get to the next level even at a mid-major school that isn’t known for producing as many prospects.” 

If Lee didn’t already have plenty of motivation to make his NBA dreams a reality, his summer job provided an extra jolt. Unlike most of Division I, Ivy League schools don’t bring their teams back to campus for the summer for practice and summer school. So In classic Ivy League fashion, Lee spent June and part of July commuting from Princeton to New York City for a finance internship instead.

“Trying to put a little something on the résumé, you know?” Lee says. “It made me want to make it more, for sure. It was such a crazy change of pace for me, the people I was around, what I was doing. It was almost comical.”

As for Pierce, he spent much of his summer at home in the Chicago suburbs, putting on basketball camps with his older brother, Justin. Before that, though, he got a reminder of why he feels he made the right decision to return to Princeton by working the school’s 60th reunion for the Class of 1964 in late May. 

“It was so cool to see how much pride the alums had in the school,” Pierce says. “That was right after the decision was made [to come back] and so just seeing that, if I were to have walked away from this, I think I might have been kicking myself a little bit. It’s cool to have pride in a school and a university and a place that you can call home and root for for the rest of your life.”