The Ivy League’s dream of a three-bid Ivy came to fruition on Sunday night when the final invitation to the Big Dance went to the Princeton Tigers.
“It’s awesome,” Princeton coach Carla Berube told reporters on Monday afternoon. “We have a email chain going with the whole Ivy League and head coaches and, yeah, I mean, we’re thrilled, but we’re not shocked or surprised, and we know just the level of basketball and how talented our student athletes are. And we’re going about it the right way with our nonconference schedules and how we have to build that up.”
Princeton, a No. 11 seed, will face off in a play-in game against Iowa State, also a No. 11 seed, in the opening game of the NCAA Tournament on Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET in South Bend, Ind. The winner will face No. 6 Michigan on Friday.
Here are three thoughts about Princeton’s bid and tomorrow’s matchup against the Iowa State Cyclones:
1. The Tigers likely needed to pass the “eye test” in Providence to secure the final bid.
Early on during the Sunday evening broadcast of the nationally televised selection show, invitations were announced for Harvard, who won the Ivy League’s automatic bid, and Columbia, the Ivy League regular-season champion.
But the real suspense was reserved for Princeton, who won neither the Ivy regular season title nor the Ivy League Tournament championship. After falling to Harvard in the Ivy Madness semifinals on Friday, 70-67, the Tigers were deemed the ultimate bubble team, listed either as the “Last Team In” by Charlie Creme’s ESPN Bracketology, or the “Last Team Out” as projected by Megan Gauer at HerHoopsStats.com.
In the end, Creme at ESPN got it right, as did the selection committee.
The Tigers checked nearly every one of the 11 boxes used by the committee to select teams, but what may have ultimately made the difference was Princeton passing the so-called eye test. The Tigers looked like a tournament-worthy team in Ivy Madness even as they fell to a Harvard team that needed a record-breaking performance from Ivy Player of the Year Harmoni Turner to scrape past Princeton for the first time in three tries this season.
“[We] heard that the committee was watching our games on Friday and Saturday,” Berube said Monday afternoon. “And that’s really meaningful.”
The Ivy League Tournament, hosted by Brown University at the Pizzitola Sports Center in Providence, R.I., turned out to be a showcase event, especially for the women’s teams. The high level of play displayed by Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and Penn, made a compelling closing argument to the Committee and likely tipped the balance in favor of a three-bid Ivy.
2. Iowa State presents an intriguing and challenging assignment for the Tigers.
In drawing the Iowa State Cyclones in tomorrow’s play-in game, the Tigers face a powerful opponent from the Big 12 Conference for the second year in a row.
Last year, the No. 9 Tigers drew No. 8 West Virginia in a first-round clash in Iowa City, so they know what they’re up against in having to play an upper-division opponent from the Big 12. Princeton also traveled to Salt Lake City in December to face Utah, another NCAA Tournament team from the Big 12, and the Tigers came within two made free throws of pulling an upset.
Like West Virginia last year, Iowa State appears to have been underseeded by the Committee. With a NET ranking of 37, Iowa State could easily have drew a No. 9 or No. 10 seed.
The Cyclones feature one of the most imposing players in all of college basketball in 6-foot-2 sophomore center Audi Crooks. Crooks burst onto the national landscape in last year’s tournament after nearly leading the Cyclones to an upset of No. 2 Stanford at Palo Alto in the second round of March Madness.
With a hulking frame and a long reach, Crooks can collect and finish like no other player Princeton has played this season. Selected First Team All Big-12 unanimously for the second year in a row, Crooks averages 23.2 points per game, eighth-best in the nation, and has scored in double figures in an astounding 65 straight games. She also averages 7.6 rebounds a game.
Crooks creates a matchup nightmare for nearly every opponent, but fortunately, Berube has options given her own roster of talented post players. The Tigers have three bona-fide centers they can use in different combinations to front Crooks in 6-foot-3 Parker Hill, 6-foot-3 Tabitha Amanze, and 6-foot-2 Katie Thiers. In addition, The Tigers have a physical group of guards to collapse on Crooks, including 6-foot forward/guard Fadima Tall and 5-foot-11 guard Olivia Hutcherson.
“Audi Crooks is a very talented, skilled player,” Berube said Monday. “They’re certainly not all just Audi Crooks, either. They have a talented team around her.”
Two years ago, the Tigers had to contend with another dominant post player in Alissa Pili, who led the Utah Utes past the Tigers in a second round matchup in the 2023 NCAA Tournament in Salt Lake City. But Berube sees big differences between 2023 and 2025.
“I think Pili is different than Crooks. Both are very strong, interior players. Pili I think is a little bit more of a face-up player than Crooks. But we’re different then we were, you know, a couple years ago, right? There’s no Ellie Mitchell inside. We actually have some length in the middle with our fives. But it’s certainly not just our fives’ responsibility with her. So it’s a full-team effort.”
In certain ways, the Tigers are similar to the Cyclones. Both teams feature a starting lineup of four sophomores and a senior. In common matchups this season, both teams beat Middle Tennessee State at home by double digits and both teams lost at Utah. And both teams are making their sixth straight appearance in March Madness.
But in other ways, these two programs are worlds apart. For starters, they’ve never even played each other. Iowa State is an upper-division program in a power conference that’s knee-deep into NIL deals and the transfer portal. As a member of the mid-major Ivy League, Princeton eschews direct payments to players and doesn’t offer athletic scholarships.
Overall, this is an intriguing, competitive matchup that makes for a perfect curtain raiser for the 2025 NCAA Tournament.
3. Princeton’s vibe heading into Wednesday’s game appears to be happy and loose.
A year ago, Princeton’s women headed into March Madness with a very businesslike mentality. The senior-laden team had cut down the nets twice in the week leading into the NCAA Tournament and arrived at the Big Dance sporting the second-highest seed in program history. There was pressure on that team to at least duplicate the first-round victories that the two previous tournament teams had produced.
This year there are no such expectations. This Tigers team over performed to get into the tournament, and to some extent, they are playing with house money.
You can see the absence of pressure in the smiling faces of Princeton’s players and their coach in this week’s press conferences.
“I think the vibes are really good,” Berube told reports on Tuesday. “I think we have had a really fun journey. We’ve grown up a lot. There’s been some really challenging times and we’ve moved through those and found, yeah, some really bright spots and some great play, so it’s been a lot of fun … I think we’re having a good time. The vibes are great and our players are really excited to compete tomorrow night and looking forward to it.”