The Princeton women’s basketball team tips off its Ivy League season against Penn at the Palestra on Saturday afternoon after finishing the nonconference season with a 12-1 record, a No. 25 ranking in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll, and a gaudy NET ranking of No. 38, tops in the Ivy League.
Here are three Tigers Takeaways as what could be a season of destiny for Princeton transitions to conference play:
1. The Tigers just completed their most successful nonconference season in the Berube era.
Carla Berube admitted in the preseason that her team’s upcoming nonconference schedule was likely the toughest of her coaching tenure at Old Nassau.
The slate included a gauntlet of power conference and high mid-major opponents, with only five games scheduled at home.
Overall, Princeton’s strength of schedule during the nonconference season ranked 15th in the nation according to Warren Nolan.
Yet the Tigers met nearly every challenge presented, sweeping all three BIG EAST foes they faced (Villanova, Seton Hall, and DePaul), taking down two of three Big Ten opponents (Penn State and Rutgers), and defeating Georgia Tech of the ACC for the first time in program history.
Princeton also vanquished George Mason, an NCAA team last season, Rhode Island, who appears to be headed for post-season play this season, Belmont of the Missouri Valley, and stalwarts Temple and Rice.
In all, Princeton won 12 of 13 nonconference games, equaling the record of the vaunted 2019-20 squad led by Bella Alarie, Carlie Littlefield, Grace Stone, Julia Cunningham and a freshman named Ellie Mitchell.
And while it may seem premature to compare this Tigers team to the 2019-20 squad, it’s worth noting that in the 2019-20 season, Berube’s first at Princeton, the Orange and Black hosted seven home games at Jadwin and had the luxury of catching its breath against several lower mid-major opponents, including Rider, St. Francis, Marist, and Monmouth.
In contrast, this year’s squad played only one low mid-major, Maryland Eastern Shore, and that contest tipped 24 hours after the Tigers clawed their way past Penn State at the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas.
Overall, Princeton’s tremendous success in the nonconference part of the season has positioned the Orange and Black for a seventh consecutive bid to the NCAA Tournament, even if the Tigers somehow end up not cutting down the nets at the Ivy League Tournament in March.
“Kudos to my associate head coach [Lauren Gosselin] who does the scheduling that gets us prepared for the Ivy League and prepared for the opportunity if all goes well to play in mid-March,” Berube told the Associated Press last month. “We’ve seen a lot of teams and styles because of our schedule that we’re ready to play in some big games down the road.”
2. Is it resilience or destiny? Actually, it’s WAB (Wins Above Bubble).
In case you haven’t noticed, this Tigers team has shown a penchant for overcoming adversity, coming through in crunch time, and winning close games.
The season began with Princeton coming back to win in the fourth quarter six times in its first nine contests.
The Tigers reached peak resilience on Dec. 20 in the Miracle at Mason.
Trailing the George Mason Patriots by seven points with 25 seconds to play in regulation, Princeton rallied to push the game into overtime, then rallied again in the extra session to register its seventh fourth-quarter comeback victory of the season.
“We’re a resilient bunch,” Berube told ESPN+ after the George Mason game – an understatement.
Fortunately for Princeton, there’s now a statistic that attempts to measure resilience, called Wins Above Bubble, or WAB. Even better, the NCAA recently decided that its Tournament Selection Committee should take WAB into account when it selects and seeds the field of 68 teams for March Madness.
So, what is WAB?
Simply put, it attempts to measure the number of wins a team has above what would be expected of a typical bubble team.
As Her Hoops Stats explains: “[WAB] answers the question, ‘How many more wins does Team A have than the number of wins a bubble team would be expected to have against the same schedule?’”
As you might imagine, Princeton’s WAB is quite high this season. In fact, according to Bart Torvik, Princeton ranks fifth in the nation with a WAB of +3.6. Only UConn, UCLA, Texas and South Carolina rank higher, which is pretty good company to keep in the world of women’s college basketball.
Regardless of whether WAB is the right measure of this team’s character, we already know one thing for certain: Princeton will not wilt when crunchtime hits. That’s one key reason why the 2025-26 Tigers look like a team of destiny.
3. Princeton’s short roster has stood Tall so far.
Coming into the season, Princeton’s coaching staff faced the challenge of dealing with a short roster in both number and stature.
Only 10 student athletes have been available to play so far this season, and only one of them, Taylor Charles, stands taller than 6-foot-1.
But these limitations haven’t kept the Tigers from standing tall.
As in Fadima Tall.
The junior forward from Silver Spring, Md., has played a key role in anchoring Princeton’s defense, especially around the rim.
Tall leads the Tigers in rebounds (7.7 per game) and steals (2.1). She also often leads the charge on offense, averaging 14.4 points in just under 30 minutes of playing time per game. With many of those points (and rebounds and steals) coming in crunch time, Tall is a prime contender for Ivy League Player of the Year honors.
But Tall hasn’t been the only player to come up big on defense for Princeton.
Olivia Hutcherson often draws the assignment of guarding the other team’s best player, and more often than not, the 6-foot-1 junior forward from Johns Creek, Ga., succeeds in her mission of shutting down her opponent.
“Clutch Hutch” leads the team in blocks (0.7 per game) and is second in rebounds (5.8), but lately she has developed the confidence to become a leading scorer. For example, in her last four games, Hutcherson has averaged over 15 points per game, second best on the team.
The Tigers’ rock and most consistent player so far has been their senior co-captain, Madison St. Rose.
St. Rose leads the team in scoring with 17.7 points per game, second highest in the Ivy League.
While nearly everyone else on Princeton’s roster has had their ups and downs at times this season, St. Rose has played brilliantly every time she’s taken the floor, tallying double digits in every game except for Princeton’s blowout of DePaul (in which she played limited minutes and still registered nine points).
In addition to scoring, St. Rose has stuffed the stat sheet in nearly every category, averaging 5.4 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.2 steals per game. Like Tall, she enters conference play on the short list for POY honors.
With a short bench, Princeton’s backcourt tandem of Skye Belker and Ashley Chea has been forced to log big minutes and, for the most part, the duo has come through, cumulatively averaging nearly 25 points per game.
Both junior guards have started to shoot the ball better in recent weeks, though turnovers remain an issue when opposing teams apply pressure, especially for Chea, who “leads” the team with three giveaways per game.
With all five starters averaging double digits in points per game, the Tigers will be a force to be reckoned with once Ivy play begins.
Yet the biggest challenge for Berube and her staff remains coaxing quality minutes and production from Princeton’s bench.
So far, only two players – Toby Nweke and Taylor Charles – have made an impact off the bench for the Tigers. Overall, Princeton averages only nine bench points per game, which ranks 358th out of 359 Division I basketball teams. Yep, you read that right. Princeton’s bench production is the second-worst in the nation.
Needless to say, more bench production will be needed from both Nweke and Charles, along with backup big Emily Eadie, especially during the three upcoming weekends involving back-to-game games.
Overall, the season could not have gotten off to a better start for the Tigers, who look even more indomitable now than they did at the beginning of the season when the media chose them by a wide margin to win the Ivy League.
But anything can happen in a short, 14-game conference schedule, and Princeton’s new season begins on Saturday with a particularly tough assignment against one of its oldest rivals, the Penn Quakers.
Like Princeton, Penn (10-3) has enjoyed a successful season so far. Led by Katie Collins’ 13.1 points per game, the Quakers are riding into Saturday’s clash with Princeton on a five-game winning streak that includes triumphs over Maine, La Salle and Washington State.
But the Tigers haven’t lost to the Quakers during Berube’s tenure at Princeton. In fact, you have to go all the way back to 2017 to find Princeton’s most recent stumble at the Palestra.
Look for the Tigers, a team of character, to come out strong and fast on Saturday as Princeton’s women begin the new year in a quest for Ivy supremacy.