It’s been an up-and-down season so far for Princeton women’s basketball. With nine games in the books, the six-time-defending Ivy League champions have a mixed record of 5-4.
Highlights of the season include a three-game sweep of Big East opponents DePaul, Villanova, and Seton Hall, a dominant win over in-state rival Rutgers, and a resume-building win over Big 5 foe Temple.
The lowlights include blowout losses at Quinnipiac and Portland, a disappointing finish at Duquesne, and a heartbreaking injury to the Tigers’ superstar team captain, Madison St. Rose.
Carla Berube’s club was picked to finish first again in the Ivy League’s preseason media poll, but the loss of senior leadership, a monumental injury and a brutal, road-heavy slate of opening games has created challenges, opportunities and an intriguing future.
Here are three Tiger Takeaways assessing where the Princeton women’s basketball team stands one-third of the way into the season:
1. The loss of Madison St. Rose has created tremendous challenges for a young Tigers squad.
Coming into the season, the number one story for Princeton was how the Tigers would adapt to the loss of a historically strong senior class that included a former Ivy League Player of the Year and three-time Ivy League Tournament Most Outstanding Player in Kaitlyn Chen, a three-time Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year and the program’s all-time leading rebounder in Ellie Mitchell, and a top scorer, defender and rebounder in Chet Nweke.
That narrative took an extraordinary turn on Nov. 16, when Madison St. Rose, Princeton’s top scorer and rebounder, crumpled to the floor in a non-contact play in the fourth quarter of a road loss to the Quinnipiac Bobcats.
A few days later, Princeton confirmed everyone’s worst suspicion: St. Rose had torn her ACL and would be sidelined for the season. The news was devastating to St. Rose and the entire Princeton basketball community.
St. Rose emerged as a premier playmaker during her freshman year, earning honors as the Ivy League Rookie of the Year. As a sophomore last season, St. Rose finished the campaign on a roll, leading the Tigers in scoring in their final five games. She tallied a team-high 18 points in Princeton’s romp over Columbia in the championship game of the Ivy League Tournament and was named to the All-Tournament team.
Averaging nearly 15 points per game, St. Rose also earned Second Team All-Ivy honors last season and entered the current campaign as one of the front-runners for Ivy Player of the Year.
Prior to her injury, St. Rose was delivering on the high expectations set for her this season. She led Princeton in scoring, averaging 17 points per game, and displayed significantly improved rebounding ability, leading the Tigers with nearly eight boards per game.
“She was playing some of the best basketball of her career,” Berube said in a statement announcing St. Rose’s season-ending injury.
In the immediate aftermath of losing St. Rose, the Tigers played with inspiration. Using a “Win one for the Gipper” mentality, the Tigers gutted out three consecutive road wins at Seton Hall, Rutgers and Temple.
But reality caught up with the Tigers on a challenging two-game western swing, where the absence of St. Rose’s ball-handling skills and scoring abilities played a role in Princeton’s 74-55 drubbing at the hands of the Portland Pilots.
When asked to reflect on the Tigers’ poor performance in Portland, sophomore forward Fadima Tall initially gave a one-word response: “Disappointment.”
“We know we can do better,” said Tall. “I feel like going into that game, we definitely learned who we were. Maybe that 10-day break was too much for us, but we knew after that game [we’ve] got to get back, forget about it … [and] move on.”
The Tigers lost two days later at Utah but showed resilience in coming back from an 18-point deficit before falling in the final seconds to a powerhouse Big 12 program.
“Right now, it’s for Maddie,” Tall told Ivy Hoops Online after the Utah game. “We’re . . . adapting well because we have her in the back of our head. We know we want her to win a championship by the end of this season, so this won’t be a loss for her. She’s still on the sideline. It’s nothing different; she’s still our captain.”
Part of the “adapting” that Tall referred to involves players making the most of new opportunities to emerge in St. Rose’s absence.
So far, the player who’s gotten the biggest opportunity is Olivia Hutcherson, a 5-foot-11 sophomore from Johns Creek, Ga. Berube has started Hutcherson in place of St. Rose in each of the five games played since St. Rose sustained her injury. Averaging only 20 minutes of playing time, Hutcherson hasn’t come close yet to replacing St. Rose’s scoring punch, but she has boosted the team’s aggressiveness and physicality, especially on the glass.
In her five starts, Hutcherson has grabbed an average of five rebounds per game or .25 rebounds per minute. In contrast, St. Rose averaged about 35 minutes of playing per game before she got injured and hauled in an average of 7.8 rebounds per game, or about .22 rebounds per minute.
Asked to reflect on Hutcherson’s performance so far, Berube had nothing but praise for her sophomore guard.
“She’s doing great,” Berube told Ivy Hoops Online after the Utah game. “I mean, she’s very different than Maddie, right? She brings great defense, she brings great rebounding, [she] scores really well at the rim. [She’s an] incredible athlete. So yeah, I mean, I think it’s going to be just a rotation of, you know, guards.”
Other players picking up the slack include sophomore guards Skye Belker, Ashley Chea and Mari Bickley, along with freshman guard Cristina Parrella.
Both Belker and Chea have seen their playing time increase by about six to seven minutes per game since St. Rose’s injury and both have contributed a higher volume of points to help fill the scoring gap. Against Utah, Belker scored a career high 24 points in 35 minutes of playing time. Chea tallied 11 points and grabbed seven rebounds in 37 minutes of action.
One item the coaching staff will have to keep a close eye on as the season progresses is whether Belker and Chea can sustain the increased playing time without getting worn down.
Last season, Belker became only the fourth player in Princeton women’s basketball history to start every game as a freshman, yet even so she only averaged about 25 minutes of playing time per game. Now, she’s averaging 35 to 36 minutes.
Chea also played in every Princeton game last season as a freshman, but she only averaged about 15 minutes per game, typically as a substitute off the bench for Chen or Belker. As with Belker, Chea is now averaging north of 35 minutes per game of playing time.
Freshman guard Cristina Parrella is averaging a little more than 15 minutes of action off the bench so far this season, but that number hasn’t fluctuated much since St. Rose left the lineup. Ditto for sophomore guard Mari Bickley, who’s averaging just over eight minutes per game.
Parrella and Bickley have both shown the ability to light up the scoreboard at times, with Parrella displaying range from beyond the arc while Bickley tends to do her best work in the paint. Expect both of these young guards to get more playing time once Ivy competition begins, especially during back-to-back weekends.
One thing is clear now that St. Rose is out of the lineup for the season: Chea and Belker have become indispensable to the Tigers. Berube and her coaching staff can ill afford to have either of their sensational sophomore guards suffer an off night or get into foul trouble.
But Belker feels confident the team will continue to grow and respond positively to the challenge of losing St. Rose.
“We’ve all been responding really well,” Belker told Ivy Hoops Online. “I think we all know what it takes to be a winning team, and it definitely sucks to have Maddie out and have her presence out, but we’re all ready to step up. And I think in these last couple games, we’ve shown that. And again, we have a lot to grow from, but we are ready to take that challenge.”
2. It’s the defense, stupid – and the turnovers.
Carla Berube’s Princeton teams are all about defense. The program’s mantra is “Get stops.” But so far, this Tigers team hasn’t been getting quite as many stops as past Berube-coached squads, and that’s one of the main reasons the team has struggled at times this season.
When asked by Ivy Hoops Online to assess her team after nine games, Berube provided an unsurprising answer: “Our defense needs to keep improving.”
The numbers back up Berube’s assessment. So far this season, the Tigers are yielding 67 points per game, which ranks 211th in the nation and second-to-last in the Ivy League.
Only Yale, at 70.8 points per game, has given up more points than Princeton among Ivies. Of course, at this point in the season, scoring averages can be deceiving given the disparities among teams in strength of schedule.
Overall, though, it’s not surprising that Princeton’s traditionally stalwart defense hasn’t yet completely gelled. Coaches often emphasize how challenging it is to build defensive cohesiveness, especially with a group of young players, like this year’s Princeton squad.
With four new starters in the lineup, it’s going to take time for Berube’s young group to cohere as a connected unit that can consistently get stops.
One problem that has compounded Princeton’s inconsistency on defense is the Tigers’ proclivity to turn the ball over. Berube’s young team has been bitten by the turnover bug early and often this season, in part because every opponent seems to be deploying full-court pressure against the Tigers.
In nine games, Princeton is averaging 17.2 turnovers per game, which ranks 198th in the country and is second-worst in the Ivy League. Again, only Yale with 19.9 turnovers per game ranks lower than Princeton. In contrast, last season, the Tigers averaged only 13.1 turnovers per game, best in the Ivy League.
Many of Princeton’s turnovers have been of the dreaded live-ball variety, which often lead to fastbreak points for the opposing team. In Princeton’s four losses so far this season, the Tigers have given up an average of nearly 23 points to its opponents off of turnovers. Not many teams will prevail when giving away 23 points to their opponent.
The turnover problem reached epic proportions against Portland last Friday night. Confronted with the Pilots’ suffocating press, the Tigers turned the ball over 29 times, the most in recorded program history.
Two days later, facing Utah’s 1-2-2 zone press, the Tigers played with greater poise and discipline. In the second half, Princeton’s guards not only beat Utah’s press routinely but exploited it with explosive drives to the hoop for layups.
“I thought we did a much better job taking care of the basketball, being disciplined with it, and executing our offense,” Berube told Ivy Hoops Online. “I thought especially in that second half, it was really, really great execution. So yeah, I think we learned a lot from Friday, of course. Portland’s defense is very different than Utah’s, but we’ve got to be ready for anything,”
3. Early hardship may help forge a battle-hardened team by the time Ivy play begins
Before the season began, Princeton’s coaching staff knew they had a hard road ahead in the nonconference schedule. Of the Tigers’ first nine contests, eight have been played in enemy territory against many of the top teams in the country. According to the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), Princeton’s schedule ranks seventh-toughest in the nation.
But scheduling a challenging nonconference slate is part of Berube’s plan for preparing her team for conference and postseason play.
“[We] want that challenge, and we’re looking to challenge ourselves too, so that we’re ready for the conference schedule,” Berube told Ivy Hoops Online in a preseason interview.
Undoubtedly, having to play all but one game on the road has made it harder for the Tigers to rack up early wins this season. But the upside for Berube is that her players have gained an invaluable opportunity to come together as a unit.
“It sounds daunting to have eight of your first nine games on the road, but it’s also an opportunity for us to, you know, just come together and work on our chemistry and start really . . . bonding outside of the confines of . .. the bubble here . . . in Jadwin. I think you really kind of come together and really . . . learn about each other when you’re on the road together.”
Skye Belker expressed the same sentiment when she spoke to Ivy Hoops Online after the Utah game.
“I think it’s always great to get away games in the beginning of the season, because it’s a lot tougher to have the crowd out behind you, and you really learn how to play with each other on the court. And I think that’s going to really show and give us a good advantage coming into this next part of the season.”
Now that the Tigers have run the gauntlet of playing 8 of 9 road games, they can enjoy the reward of an extended stretch of seven consecutive home games.
The Tigers were buoyed by the way they finished their road trip at Utah and are certainly looking forward to enjoying some home cooking over the next month.
“I’m happy. I love our gym. I love shooting at our gym. I love our fans,” Fadima Tall said after the Utah game. “I think getting back home and having that support, compared to the booing we heard here today, will be good for us in the long run.”