Another game, another fourth-quarter comeback.
So it goes this season for the Princeton women’s basketball team, which rallied again in the fourth quarter to win its home opener over Rice, 69-56, at Jadwin Gymnasium.
In the first ever meeting between the two programs, the Tigers once again made things difficult for themselves by missing shots early and often.
After Madison St. Rose tallied a layup to open the scoring for Princeton, a series of six missed shots and two turnovers resulted in eight consecutive empty possessions for the Tigers, a near-replay of Princeton’s first-quarter performance at Maryland on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Owls exploited their size advantage by working the ball in the post to Shelby Hayes, a 6-foot-2 center from Cedar Park, Texas. Hayes deposited an easy layup over a quiescent St. Rose to put the Owls ahead 10-3 at the four-minute mark of the first quarter. An angry coach Carla Berube called timeout.
A layup by Taylor Charles halted Rice’s 8-0 run, but the Owls maintained a 16-11 lead heading into the second stanza.
In the second quarter, the Tigers worked the ball to Fadima Tall, who muscled her way to the rim and drew an and-one foul on Hayes. Tall, the reigning Ivy League Player of the Week, stuffed the stat sheet with 16 points, a team high six rebounds, and four assists.
Tall’s three-point play not only sparked the Tigers, but sent Hayes to the bench with two fouls. The Tigers would make hay in her absence.
With Hayes on the bench, the paint opened up for the Tigers, who exploited Rice’s defense for a series of layups. Princeton’s determination to rush the ball upcourt and score in transition resulted in the Tigers winning a lopsided scoring battle in the paint, 50-26.
A second-chance corner three by Skye Belker gave Princeton its first lead of the game, 22-20, at the six-minute mark of the second quarter. Two consecutive layups by St. Rose and Ashley Chea pushed the Tigers lead to six, 26-20, with just under five minutes to play in the first half. The basket by Chea snapped a six-quarter scoring drought for the All-Ivy first-teamer guard.
But a series of defensive lapses by the Tigers allowed Rice to close the quarter on a 14-4 run. For the second game in a row, the Tigers retreated to the locker room trailing 34-30 at the intermission.
In the third quarter, with Hayes back in the game, Rice reverted to feeding their big in the paint and finding success. Two nice entry passes to the Owls’ center netted a pair of layups to keep Rice in front by six, 42-36, with 5:53 to play in the third quarter. Hayes finished the game with 10 points on 5-for-8 shooting.
But the Tigers refused to yield in front of a sparse home crowd.
St. Rose cleaned up a Chea miss and put it back to narrow the lead to four, 42-38. Then, a missed shot by Rice’s Jordin Blackmon led to a long pass from Tall to a streaking St. Rose for a layup and suddenly it was a two-point game, 42-40.
A steal by Chea led to a runout and a moonshot three by a trailing Tall to put Princeton back on top for the first time in the second half, 43-42. The Tigers appeared to have turned the tide.
But just as they had faded at the end of the second quarter after taking a lead, the Tigers faded in the waning minutes of the third quarter. Inexplicably, Princeton’s defenders failed on three consecutive inbounds plays to find a cutting Owl to the basket, allowing Rice to score three uncontested layups, including an easy lay-in by Hayes at the buzzer, to put the visitors on top, 50-49, at the end of the third quarter.
For the fourth time in four games, the Tigers headed into the final frame needing a comeback.
And for the third time in those four games, the Tigers turned up the pressure in the final stanza and took over the contest.
The fourth quarter started with coach Carla Berube deciding to play two bench players, Emily Eadie and Toby Nweke, instead of stalwarts Olivia Hutcherson and St. Rose. The tactic worked as an active Eadie managed to keep Hayes off the scoreboard early in the quarter.
When a rested Hutcherson and St. Rose reentered the game with about seven and a half minutes to play, the Tigers ground down a fried Rice squad.
A scoop layup by Chea put the Tigers in front, 51-50, and the home team never looked back from there. A huge corner three by Nweke at the seven-minute mark gave the Tigers some cushion, 56-50, and from there the Tigers cruised to victory, 69-56.
The Tigers were led by St. Rose’s 19 points on 8-for-13 shooting. After the game, St. Rose, named the Player of the Game by the ESPN+ crew, was asked how the Tigers have been able to pull off fourth quarter comebacks several times already this season. The senior co-captain emphasized her team’s ability to focus in crunch time on defense.
“Just like the past two weeks, [we’re staying] focused, staying locked into what we know, getting stops, and then executing on offense,” St. Rose said. “Just simple basketball.”
With four games now in the books, the Tigers seemed to have settled into a pattern: Start slow, miss shots, use tenacious defense to claw back into the game, and finally execute the offense in the fourth quarter.
It’s a pattern that has allowed the Tigers to start the season at 3-1 against top notch competition, so it’s hard for Berube and company to complain too much given the results. And hopefully the slow starts will fade away once Princeton’s sharp shooters begin to make shots.
So far, the Tigers have struggled mightily to find their range from distance, making only 24 of 83 three-point attempts (29%).
Chea especially has struggled to find her scoring touch, missing all seven of her jump shots again tonight after going scoreless against Maryland on Sunday. Nevertheless, the junior sharpshooter found other ways to contribute tonight by using quick hands to register four steals, a career high, and moving the ball upcourt quickly to exploit a Rice defense that was slow to react to Princeton’s runouts.
The Tigers will look to continue their winning ways with an exciting trip to the Bahamas to play in the Battle4Atlantis Saturday against Penn State and Sunday against Maryland Eastern Shore.
The matchup against Penn State will be Princeton’s second contest against a Big Ten opponent this season with a third Big Ten showdown against in-state rival Rutgers looming on Dec. 10 at Jadwin.