Princeton women’s basketball shuts down Dartmouth, 63-39, for seventh straight win

Before tipping off against Dartmouth women’s basketball on Saturday afternoon, Princeton took the court at Jadwin Gymnasium wearing freshly minted warmup shirts with the team’s “Get Stops” slogan colorfully displayed on the front.

The Tigers forcefully delivered on their wardrobe messaging.

The hosts held the Big Green to under 40 points in a dominant 63-39 triumph.

Dartmouth began the weekend with a 2-0 record in Ivy League play for the first time in 15 years.  The Big Green left Jadwin with a loss for the 15th consecutive time.

Meanwhile, the Tigers improved their home winning streak to 28 games, third-best in the nation.

The game started in promising fashion for Dartmouth as Victoria Page scored back-to-back layups to give the Big Green an early 4-2 lead.

Page came into the contest as Dartmouth’s leading scorer, averaging 16.4 points per game. But the senior guard from Murfreesboro, Tenn. left the game midway through the second quarter after hitting the court hard while fighting for a loose ball. She never returned to action and finished with only four points in just 12 minutes of playing time.

Princeton had to deal with its own personnel problems in this contest. Already missing their leading scorer, Madison St. Rose, whose season ended with an ACL tear in a November matchup against Quinnipiac, the Tigers played on Saturday without Fadima Tall, the team’s leading rebounder and third-leading scorer, who was sidelined with an illness.

Even without Tall, the Tigers took advantage of their height advantage to grind down the Dartmouth defense.

Two layups by Tabitha Amanze along with a three by Ashley Chea put the Tigers in front, 7-4. Chea, whose buzzer-beater provided a memorable win over Harvard last weekend, finished with seven points on 3-for-10 shooting.

A putback by Taylor Charles upped Princeton’s lead to 9-4. After the Tigers got a stop, Skye Belker drove the lane and popped the ball out to Toby Nweke, who drained a straight away trey to put the Tigers ahead 12-4. Nweke finished with a career high 10 points on 4-for-6 shooting, including 2-for-4 from beyond the arc.

Meanwhile, Princeton’s stifling defense continued to get stops as the Tigers took a 14-7 lead at the end of the first quarter. For the sixth game in a row, the Tigers managed to hold their opponent to single digits in at least one quarter.

In the second stanza, a three pointer by Cristina Parrella followed by a nifty pivot in the paint and jumper by Belker gave the Tigers their first double-digit lead, 25-14, with 2:39 left to play in the first half. Belker finished with a game-high 16 points and four assists.  Though still wearing a knee brace, the sophomore guard from Los Angeles looked much more agile than in recent games.

After Dartmouth guard Nina Minicozzi missed a jumper, Chea found a streaking Katie Thiers for a runout layup to put the Tigers up 29-16. The Tigers took a 31-18 lead into the intermission. Princeton was paced in the first half by Nweke’s seven points while Dartmouth’s leading scorers were Page and Alexandra Eldredge, who each tallied four first-half points.

In the third quarter, Dartmouth took advantage of cold Princeton shooting to score the first five points of the stanza behind a three pointer and a mid-range jumper by Minicozzi. The sophomore guard came off the bench to lead the Big Green with a team high 10 points on 4-for-9 shooting.

But the Tigers used defense and timely play making to restore order. Chea drove the lane and deposited a layup to break Dartmouth’s run.  Then Taylor Charles hit a pull-up jumper to stretch Princeton’s lead to 12, 35-23, with 5:34 to play in the third stanza. Charles finished with an impressive stat line of nine points, seven rebounds, two assists and a career-high five blocks.

A pair of plays by Princeton center Tabitha Amanze punctuated Princeton’s superior play in the paint. First, Amanze poked away an entry pass intended for Dartmouth forward Clare Meyer.  Then, Amanze backed down Meyer in the paint and tallied an up-and-under layup to put the Tigers up 37-25.

Two blocks by Charles stifled Dartmouth’s final possession of the third quarter as the Tigers took a 41-27 lead into the final stanza. Once again, the Tigers held the Big Green to single digits, winning the third frame 10-9.

In the fourth quarter, the Tigers built a 21-point lead behind a jumper and trey by Belker. With the game seemingly in hand, Princeton coach Carla Berube inserted four bench players to close out the contest.

But Dartmouth had other ideas. Rallying behind the sharp shooting of Minicozzi, the Big Green rattled off ten straight points to cut the Princeton lead to 11, 50-39, with 4:43 to play. Berube called timeout and reinserted her starters.

The ploy worked as the Tigers scored the final 13 points of the game to secure their seventh consecutive win and preserve a perfect 3-0 record in Ivy League play.

With the win, the Tigers closed out a potentially season-defining seven-game homestand with a perfect 7-0 record. During the homestand, the Tigers established a team chemistry that was often missing during a grueling slate of road games during the nonconference part of the season.

Asked to describe her team’s identity after being named the Player of the Game, Charles provided a succinct answer:

“I think Princeton’s identity is just grit and togetherness,” Charles told the ESPN+ broadcast crew. “I think that no matter what challenge or what we need to kind of rise up and do whether it’s threes or pounding it in the post, we stay together, and we’re gonna be gritty and get a win, no matter which player.”

The road ahead will get considerably more challenging for Princeton as the Tigers (11-4, 2-0 Ivy) begin a four-game stretch of games in hostile territory, including a rivalry matchup on Monday at Columbia.  The Lions and Tigers have split their last four regular season matchups against each other, and have tied for the Ivy League regular season title in each of the past two seasons.

Dartmouth (8-8, 2-1) will lick its wounds after this loss but return home for its next four contests, including a Monday matchup against last-place Yale.