Last March, the Princeton women’s basketball team reaffirmed a valuable lesson as it celebrated earning its sixth consecutive bid to the NCAA Tournament: If you play a challenging schedule and win games, the NCAA Tournament selection committee will reward you.
The Tigers on Wednesday released their schedule for the upcoming 2025-26 season, and once again, it’s loaded with top opponents.
The schedule includes 13 nonconference matchups, only four of which will be played within the friendly confines of Jadwin Gymnasium. The remaining nine games will be played either on the road or at a Thanksgiving week tournament site that has yet to be announced.
Overall, the Tigers will face at least two teams from the Big Ten, three teams from the Big East, two teams from the Atlantic 10, two teams from the American Conference, an ACC team, and a Missouri Valley Conference opponent, in addition to a full slate of Ivy League matchups. There are no cupcakes on this schedule.
The season tips off with a bang: three straight road games against power-five conference opponents, including the season opener on Nov. 9 against Georgia Tech of the ACC. The Sunday matinee matchup will serve as a homecoming for Princeton’s lockdown defender junior guard, Olivia Hutcherson, a native of Atlanta.
The Yellow Jackets won 22 games last season and earned an at-large berth to March Madness as a No. 9 seed. The Tigers are 0-4 all-time versus Georgia Tech, having last played the Yellow Jackets in 2017.
After visiting Atlanta, the Orange and Black will travel north to play at Villanova on Nov. 12, one of three Big East opponents on the Tigers’ schedule this season. Princeton will look to extend its winning streak over the Wildcats to three games in the 24th meeting overall between the two programs.
Four days later, the Tigers will yo-yo back down I-95 to face the Maryland Terrapins on Nov. 16 in College Park, Md.
The matchup against the perennially powerful Terps, a Sweet-16 team last March, will give junior dynamo Fadima Tall an opportunity to sparkle in front of friends and family as the Silver Spring native will try to lead her Tigers past Maryland for the first time in four tries in program history.
Carla Berube’s squad will kick off its home season at Jadwin against the Rice Owls of the American Conference on Nov. 19 in the first-ever meeting between the two academic powerhouses.
The Tigers then hit the road again over the Thanksgiving break for a holiday tournament yet to be announced, before traveling to Kingston for a return matchup with the Rhode Island Rams, an Atlantic 10 foe the Tigers vanquished at home last season.
After the Thanksgiving break, Princeton will play host to a pair of Big East opponents, Seton Hall, one of Princeton’s greatest rivals, and the DePaul Blue Demons. The Tigers triumphed over both teams last season en route to a three-game sweep of Big East opponents.
In December, the Tigers will travel to Nashville to face the Belmont Bruins of the Missouri Valley Conference before dipping below the Mason-Dixon line for a fourth time on Dec. 20 to face the George Mason Patriots, last year’s winner of the A-10 title, in Fairfax, Va. Both Belmont and George Mason will be first-time opponents for Princeton.
The Tigers will face in-state rival Rutgers on Dec. 10 at Jadwin with a chance to extend their winning streak to four games against the Scarlet Knights. Princeton will close out the nonconference schedule and the calendar year on Dec. 22 at home against the Temple Owls, whom the Tigers dispatched a season ago in Philadelphia, 72-67.
The Tigers will ring in the new year and a new Ivy League season on Jan. 3 at the Palestra against their longtime conference rival Penn. The Orange and Black haven’t fallen to the Quakers in seven years and own a 14-game winning streak in the series.
The schedule gives Princeton the opportunity to jump out in front of the Ivy League standings with two key home matchups against perennial contender Harvard on Jan. 19 and defending Ivy League champion Columbia on Jan. 30.
Columbia will host the Tigers in a return matchup at Morningside Heights on Feb. 13, while Harvard will look to hold serve against Princeton in Cambridge on Feb. 28.
Princeton will close the regular season with a home tilt against its oldest Ivy rival, the Yale Bulldogs, on March 7.
The Ivy League Tournament, in which Princeton will almost assuredly participate, will take place at Cornell on March 13 through 16.
Overall, Princeton is assured of at least 10 matchups against teams that played in postseason tournaments last season, including at least seven games against NCAA Tournament teams from last March.
Depending on who Princeton plays in the as yet unannounced Thanksgiving week tournament, this might be the most challenging schedule that Berube and her staff have assembled since arriving at Princeton seven years ago.
The challenge arrives at a good time for the program. Expectations for the Tigers will be high this season with the return of team co-captain Madison St. Rose, who missed nearly all of last season due to injury, and an uber-talented group of junior starters, including Hutcherson, Ashley Chea, Tall and Skye Belker.
Last season, the Tigers used a run of wins during a challenging nonconference schedule to boost their NET ranking into a territory that ultimately lifted the Tigers to a sixth straight berth in the NCAA Tournament. With the release of an even more challenging schedule for the upcoming season, Berube is banking on history repeating as her Tigers hunt for a seventh consecutive bid to the Big Dance.
Berube’s success will continue until Big $ invades Women’s bball, when big spending schools will start shopping for her most valuable players and making offers they can’t refuse as we have seen on the men’s side. I wonder if she will want to stay and deal with that mess.