After scoring a dominant win over Yale on Friday night, the Princeton women’s basketball team got on a bus and motored up Interstate 95 to Providence in anticipation of a tough matchup a few hours later against the Brown Bears. Brown hasn’t beaten Princeton in eight years.
The Tigers’ 60-47 triumph at the Pizzitola Sports Center on Saturday night kept that streak going.
Despite the double-digit victory, this game was a struggle for the Tigers, who at times showed their fatigue in having to play back-to-back road games in less than 24 hours.
The game started positively for Princeton when Parker Hill won the opening tip and Skye Belker hit a step back three to stake the Tigers to a 3-0 lead.
The Bears responded with a midrange jumper by Grace Arnolie, Brown’s leading scorer. Arnolie displayed quickness and savvy in the early going, scoring five of Brown’s first seven points and leading the Bears to a 7-5 lead four minutes into the game.
Fadima Tall took over the game for the rest of the quarter, scoring 10 straight points for the Tigers. Tall’s run began with a rainbow jumper from the right elbow, but accelerated with two drives to the paint that resulted in back-to-back and-ones.
Princeton led 20-15 at the end of the first stanza.
In second quarter, Brown fought back while the Tigers went cold from the field. A pump fake by Arnolie lured Olivia Hutcherson into leaving her feet. The junior guard then converted a fallaway jumper and the and-one free throw to cut Princeton’s lead to two, 20-18.
Moments later a putback by Gianna Aiello tied the game at 22.
While the Tigers struggled to find the range, missing six of seven shots, Brown grinded out points using second chance opportunities to push into a two-point lead at the half, 28-26. The Bears held the Tigers to just six points in the second quarter as fatigue appeared to affect Princeton’s shooters, who consistently left shots short.
It was only the fourth time this season that Princeton had trailed at half.
Princeton was led in the first half by Belker’s 12 points while Brown was led by Arnolie, who also tallied 12 points and entered the 1,000-point club with a free throw at the nine-minute mark of the second quarter.
Neither team shot the ball particularly well in the first half, with Princeton converting on only 33.3% of its shots while Brown made 34.5% of its attempts.
Two other first-half statistics were revealing: Brown outhustled the Tigers decisively on the boards, outrebounding Princeton 25-16, while Princeton, in a role reversal, won the turnover battle, surrendering the ball only three times compared to eight giveaways for the Bears.
During the intermission, Brown coach Monique LeBlanc reflected on her team’s first-half performance.
“I thought, obviously, we did a much better job defensively in the second quarter. I think we were a little bit stretched out once they hit a shot early, and I think we got back to our game plan a little bit better in the second quarter, with putting more pressure on and being in some key areas that we needed to defensively.”
In the third quarter, Princeton came out on fire and immediately seized control of the game.
An opening stop on defense led to stepback three by Belker, identical to the one she used to start the game.
Then, Chea hit a late shot clock trey while drifting to her left. The make was reminiscent of the sophomore’s buzzer-beater against Harvard three weeks ago.
A moment later, Hutcherson brilliantly anticipated a pass by Bella Mauricio, stepping in front to intercept the pass and taking the ball to the cup. The and-one bonus gave Princeton a 34-26 lead as the Tigers began the half with three consecutive three-point plays in less than two minutes.
The Bears fought back with a 9-0 run sparked by Beth Nelson. The sophomore forward scored five straight points as Brown took back the lead, 36-35, with four minutes to play in the third quarter.
The game see-sawed for the rest of the stanza, with the lead changing hands several times. A sweet midrange jumper by Chea capped the third quarter scoring as Princeton pulled into a tie with Brown, 43-43.
In the fourth quarter, the Tigers grinded down the Bears and took command of the game.
The stanza started on a hopeful note for Brown when Alyssa Moreland stripped Taylor Charles at mid-court and took the ball to the bucket. But Moreland, who dazzled against Penn on Friday night with 25 points and 18 rebounds, couldn’t convert the layup.
The Tigers took advantage of Moreland’s miss when Hutcherson found Hill in the paint and the senior center finally deposited her first two points of the game, giving the Tigers a 45-43 lead.
A moment later, Hill picked up her fourth foul and had to sit on the bench. But Princeton’s other defenders stepped up to fill the gap.
Desperate to get their star player into the thick of play, the Bears worked the ball to Arnolie down low. But Olivia Hutcherson rose up and swatted the ball back into Arnolie’s face, forcing the junior guard to fall to the floor.
After Hutcherson’s forceful rejection, Chea hit a three to give the Tigers a five-point lead, 48-43. A spin move by Katie Theirs in the paint padded Princeton’s lead to seven.
Brown simply couldn’t respond. The Bears missed their first six shots of the fourth quarter despite having multiple good looks.
A trey by Tall gave Princeton its first double-digit lead, 53-43, with just under five minutes to play. Ninety seconds later, Tall hit another rainbow three, effectively putting the game away.
A layup by Moreland finally snapped Princeton’s 16-point run, but it was too little, too late for the home team.
In the final minutes, the Tigers cruised to victory, 60-47, with a dominant fourth quarter in which they outscored their hosts 17-4. For the tenth straight game, the Tigers succeeded in holding their opponent to single digits in at least one quarter.
Tall led all scorers with 18 points, a career high. She also grabbed a game high nine rebounds. For good measure, the sophomore from Silver Spring contributed an assist and two steals.
After the game, Tall told ESPN+ that grit had carried the day for the Tigers.
“I think us as a team, we need to . . . play to our best, and that’s like, when we’re on the loose balls, when we’re on the floor, we’re getting rebounds. I think it’s . . . something we did find in us.”
It should surprise no one that Princeton gutted out this challenging road win using its trademark defense. After burning the Tigers for 12 points in the first half, Arnolie was held to just two points in the second half. The junior guard from Vienna, Va. led her team in scoring, but needed 17 shots to register 14 points in 34 minutes.
With the win, Princeton (15-5, 6-1 Ivy) finished a four-game road trip with a 3-1 record. After stumbling at the outset of the road trip to Columbia, the Tigers responded by winning three straight games by an average of nearly 16 points.
Princeton will now play their next four games at home, starting next Saturday when the Tigers host Penn at Jadwin Gymnasium.
Despite the loss, Brown (10-10, 4-3) remains in the fourth and final slot to quality for Ivy Madness, which will be played at the Pizzitola Sports Center in mid-March. The Bears host Columbia next Saturday in a game that tips off at 2 p.m. ET.