The Princeton women’s basketball team, winner of five consecutive Ivy League Tournament championships, released its schedule this week for the 2024-25 season.
For the Tigers, it’s déjà vu all over again. Of the 27 games included on the schedule, only four involve new opponents compared to a season ago. That’s largely due to Princeton playing return matchups against nine nonconference opponents from the 2023-24 campaign.
The first of those return matchups will take place on November 4 against the Duquesne Dukes, an Atlantic 10 squad that won 21 games last season en route to a berth in the WNIT.
Last year, Princeton beat the Dukes, 65-57, at Jadwin Gym in the season opener for both teams. The two programs will tip off their seasons against each other again, this time at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse in Pittsburgh.
The Tigers then travel to Chicago to face the DePaul Blue Demons on November 9. DePaul is a “new” opponent this season and one of three Big East foes Princeton will play over a 12-day span. The other two Big East foes, Villanova and Seton Hall, fell prey to the Tigers a season ago. The Wildcats will motor across the Delaware River to Jadwin Gym for Princeton’s home opener on November 13.
Eight days later, the Tigers will complete “pool” play in the Big-East with a drive up the New Jersey Turnpike to South Orange to take on in-state rival Seton Hall on November 21. The Pirates and Tigers have quite a rivalry developing. The two programs have met each of the last eight seasons (not counting Princeton’s canceled pandemic season of 2020-21) with Princeton having won the the last two in a row and five out of the last eight.
Seton Hall won’t be the only in-state rival the Tigers play this season. Princeton will travel to New Brunswick to take on Rutgers, its sole Big Ten opponent of the season, on November 24. Carla Berube’s squad outdueled the Knights last year at Jadwin, 66-55.
Perhaps the most interesting nonconference game on the schedule involves a clash on December 8 with the Utah Utes, a perennial power who’s making the transition this season from the denuded PAC-12 to the bloated Big 12. Princeton followers will recall that No. 2 Utah halted Princeton’s postseason run in the second round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament in Salt Lake City, barely outlasting the Tigers, 63-56. Berube managed to coax the Utes into a rematch, although the Tigers will once again be forced to travel across the country to play on Utah’s’ home floor.
Other nonconference opponents announced for the upcoming season include road tilts at Quinnipiac (November 16), Temple (November 26), and Portland (December 6), followed by four straight home contests against Rhode Island (December 11), Vermont (December 21), Middle Tennessee State (December 29), and LeMoyne on New Year’s Eve.
In all, the Tigers will play 13 nonconference games – eight on the road and five at home – across four different time zones before beginning Ivy League play on January 4 against Cornell at Jadwin Gym.
Key dates to circle on the Ivy calendar include Jan. 20, 2025, when the Tigers travel to Morningside Heights to clash with the Columbia Lions, and February 22, when the Lions invade Jadwin for the return matchup. Princeton and Columbia have shared the regular season Ivy League title the past two seasons and are likely to contend for the title again this season.
The Tigers will grabble with two back-to-back Ivy weekends, starting with a Friday-Saturday matchup at home against Dartmouth and Yale on February 14 and 15, respectively, and again on the road against Dartmouth and Harvard on February 28 and March 1.
On March 8, Princeton will close the regular season against its oldest rival, the Penn Quakers, at the Palestra.
This will be the third season in a row that Princeton and Penn have been scheduled to meet in their season finales. In the past two season-ending meetings, the Tigers won decisively and clinched a share of the Ivy League title in the process.
Will the Tigers close the 2024-25 season at the Palestra by cutting down the nets again? As the Magic 8 Ball often proclaims: “Outlook good.”