In less than a week, the Princeton men’s and women’s basketball teams will tip off their new seasons, and for the first time since 2016, neither program will enter the campaign as the defending Ivy League champion.
What are the prospects for the Orange and Black returning to the top of the Ivy League standings in 2025-26? Let’s investigate the probabilities for both programs, starting with the women:
Princeton women’s basketball – The stars are aligned for a special season
Coach Carla Berube enters her seventh year at the helm of Princeton women’s basketball, the most dominant program in the history of Ivy League women’s hoops. Princeton’s women have won at least a share of 18 Ivy League titles in the past 50 years, and five of the seven Ivy League Tournament championships played so far.
But last season was the first during Berube’s tenure in which her Tigers failed to win either an Ivy League regular season title or the Ivy League Tournament. Instead, Princeton was swept during the regular season by Columbia and finished second to the Lions in the Ancient Eight standings.
And in the semifinals of Ivy Madness last March, the Tigers fell victim to one of the greatest performances in Ivy hoops history when Ivy League Player of the Year Harmoni Turner tallied 44 points to lead Harvard past Princeton, 70-67.
Despite these setbacks, Berube’s squad earned an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament for a sixth consecutive season (not including the pandemic-cancelled seasons), behind the outstanding play of a group of four sophomores from the Class of ‘27: Skye Belker, Ashley Chea, Olivia Hutcherson and Fadima Tall.
The “Fantastic Four” return this season as juniors along with impact seniors Madison St. Rose and Taylor Charles. As a result, the Tigers were selected to finish first in both the Ivy League preseason media poll and the Ivy Hoops Online preseason poll.
When Princeton’s season tips off on Sunday afternoon at Georgia Tech, all eyes will be on St. Rose, who missed nearly all of her junior year after tearing her ACL in Princeton’s fourth game of the season.
By all accounts, the former Ivy League Rookie of the Year and Second Team All-Ivy player as a sophomore seems fully recovered and primed to have a huge senior year. Last month, St. Rose was named to the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year Watch List.
But two questions loom over the return of the prodigal St. Rose.
First, will the 5-foot-10 guard from Old Bridge, N.J. be able to return to the high level of play she displayed prior to her injury after missing nearly a year of experience on the hardwood? Second, what will her role be on a team that established a winning chemistry without their superstar playmaker for nearly an entire season?
The latter question is a good problem for Berube to have. Every player on Princeton’s projected starting lineup averaged double-digit scoring last season. While no one player may carry this squad on a consistent basis, Berube will have the luxury of relying on a group of five or six different players to step up on any given night.
The other question mark for the Tigers this season surrounds the team’s relatively small size, both physically and numerically.
Princeton’s roster includes only 11 players, the smallest in recent memory. (Last season, the Tigers rostered 15 players). The depleted roster stems from the graduation of five seniors from last season’s squad, along with the untimely departure of two promising juniors, Tabitha Amanze, who transferred to Virginia, and Mari Bickley, who left the team last season.
Despite losing seven players, Berube and her staff were able to bring on board only two new recruits during the off-season, freshmen Sarah Lessig from Seattle, Wash. and Grace O’Sullivan from Acton, Mass. Neither Lessig nor O’Sullivan is likely to play a large role this season given the presence of a core group of talented upperclassmen on the roster.
In addition to lacking numbers, Princeton will lack size this season after losing its four tallest players to either graduation or the transfer portal.
Fittingly, Princeton’s tallest projected starter is junior Fadima Tall, who’s listed on this year’s roster at 6-foot-1. (Apparently, Tall grew an inch since last year when she was listed on Princeton’s roster at 6 feet).
Berube isn’t particularly concerned with either size issue (roster numbers or team height). In fact, in many ways, Princeton’s lack of a true center may allow the Tigers to return to the style of play they employed during the glory years of 2022-2024 when an undersized Ellie Mitchell patrolled the paint and Princeton won two first-round matchups in the NCAA Tournament.
Still, no team relishes entering a contest at a size disadvantage, and it appears the Tigers will confront that very challenge when they face off against their biggest rival, the Columbia Lions, on Jan. 30, 2026, at Jadwin Gym, and again on Feb. 13 at Levien Gym.
At Ivy League Media Day, Columbia coach Megan Griffith beamed about entering the season with the biggest frontcourt she’s ever had in her 10 years at the helm at Morningside Heights.
It’s an interesting role reversal between the two programs.
In recent years, Princeton has succeeded at recruiting more size than Columbia, but the Lions have compensated by instilling an aggressive, all-hands-on deck mentality to rebounding, especially on the offensive glass. Now, it’s Princeton who gets the opportunity to take a Davidian approach to rebounding with no true center, but a balanced group of highly athletic playmakers.
The Tigers will get plenty of chances early in the season to hone their personality against larger opponents. Berube’s staff put together a grueling nonconference schedule, with matchups against three Big Ten teams (Maryland, Rutgers and Penn State), three Big East opponents (Villanova, Seton Hall and DePaul), two A-10 schools (George Mason and Rhode Island) and an ACC foe (Georgia Tech), along with mid-major stalwarts Temple and Belmont.
These early games provide the Tigers with several juicy opportunities to burnish their resume and build a top NET ranking, the same formula Princeton used last season to earn an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament.
In short, the stars appear to be aligned for a return to glory for the 2025-26 Princeton women’s basketball team.
But don’t take my word for it. The college basketball world seems to have already taken notice of Princeton’s potential. When the Associated Press Top 25 preseason poll was released last week, the Tigers garnered 17 votes, putatively making them the 29th-ranked team in the country.
If the Tigers can get past Georgia Tech on Sunday and Villanova next Wednesday – a tall order to be sure – they could officially crack the top 25 rankings by mid-November.
Princeton men’s basketball – Is this a season of rebuilding or reloading?
The Princeton men’s basketball program is coming off one of the most tumultuous off-seasons in program history.
After the Tigers failed to live up to high expectations last season, two assistant coaches were sacked and two of the most celebrated stars in recent Ivy hoops history jumped from skipper Mitch Henderson’s ship.
Xaivian Lee transferred to Florida for millions in NIL cash, while former Ivy League Player of the Year Caden Pierce withdrew from the program to preserve his eligibility to play (for cash) at another program next season as a graduate student.
Oh, and by the way, Jack Scott (son of former player and coach Joe Scott), left the program for a second time, transferring during the offseason to Duke.
There were other departures as well, leaving Princeton with no seniors on its roster for the upcoming campaign. That’s right, zero seniors.
So that means Princeton men’s basketball will be rebuilding this season, right?
In the words of the legendary football coach and commentator Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend.” The Tigers might have a better, more experienced team than the outside world thinks.
The key returning player for Mitch Henderson is junior Dalen Davis, an outstanding shooter and playmaker who should begin the season on the shortlist for possible All-Ivy honors.
At Media Day, Henderson fawned all over Davis, which was strange given that the junior guard’s inconsistent performance during a critical midseason stretch last year resulted in Henderson removing him from the starting rotation.
Perhaps Henderson’s new embrace of Davis (and others on the roster) reflects a lesson learned from last year: Embrace what you have no matter what or face the consequence of losing players to the transfer portal. As Henderson put it at media day, “I have every intention of keeping this team together.”
The Tigers have talent on the roster beyond Davis. Malik Abdullahi dominated in the paint at times last season and thrilled the crowd with thunderous dunks. Although the 6-foot-7 forward from Miami only averaged about four points in a little over 14 minutes per game in his rookie campaign, with increased playing time and a year under his belt, Abdullahi could develop into a star forward in the League this season.
Ditto with junior Jacob Huggins, a 6-foot-8 forward/center from Harvard-Westlake in California.
Huggins entered Henderson’s doghouse early in the season a year ago and didn’t emerge until the very end, with Henderson admtting in his final press conference at Ivy Madness that he had mismanaged Huggins during the season. Huggins will likely get an extended opportunity to prove this year that he can make consistent contributions, especially in the paint where Princeton was often abused by opponents last season.
Henderson is also likely to get greater contributions from a trio of sophomores: Jack Stanton, CJ Happy, and Peyton Seals, along with junior Jackson Hicke. All four players got valuable playing experience last season, averaging 16.5 points per game as a group. This season, they should play a much larger role in Henderson’s rotations.
Then, there is the freshman class, a massive one by recent Princeton standards. Six newcomers will don the Orange and Black this season, including Landon Clark, Ryan Mandes, Jake Sussberg, Cash McSweeney, Sebastian Whitfield and Jacob Hammond.
At media day, Henderson extolled the virtues of Clark, a 6-foot-8 “rangy” guard from Bangor, Maine, whom Henderson expects to help run the Tigers’ offense this season.
Given the turmoil of the past eight months, it’s tempting to dismiss this current Princeton squad as a sinking ship, or at least as a ship in dry dock undergoing repairs.
But maybe, just maybe, this is exactly where Mitch Henderson and his Princeton men need to be.
Since advancing to the Sweet 16 in 2023, Henderson and the Tigers have been burdened by high expectations, winning beauty contests in various preseason rankings, but failing to handle the pressure of having a target on their backs. Now that all of his superstars have either graduated or fled, Henderson can revert to simply coaching up a team that has excellent raw talent and a heavy upside if the right chemistry takes hold.
Henderson seems to do his best coaching when his team is not burdened with ultra-high expectations. In 2022, the Tigers were picked second in the Ivy League preseason media poll behind Penn. Five months later, they cut down the nets at Ivy Madness and advanced to the Sweet 16.
While winning the Ivy League may be a bridge too far for the 2025-26 Tigers, a berth to the Ivy League tournament still seems reasonable.
And who knows what happens after that? Maybe this young group of Tigers can come together by mid-March and make some serious noise at Ivy Madness.