The Princeton women’s basketball team ran to the locker room at the intermission of their Saturday night contest at Cornell knowing that its season was suddenly on the brink.
The Tigers had crashed hard the night before, losing by 14 points at Columbia in the worst Ivy League defeat for the Orange and Black of the Carla Berube coaching era.
And yet fewer than 20 hours later, things had somehow gotten worse.
After two quarters of play in Ithaca, the downtrodden Tigers managed to tally only 15 points and trailed by eight, 23-15, to one of the lower division teams in the Ancient Eight.
Even though Cornell had been forced to play an extra session in their overtime loss to Penn the night before, the Big Red somehow had mustered more energy than the dispirited Tigers, who misfired on 24 of their 29 shots for an abysmal 19% first-half shooting performance.
But in the locker room, the Tigers collectively took a deep breath, regrouped, and came out determined to get their promising season back on track.
In a complete role reversal, Princeton locked down on Cornell and held the Big Red to just 15 points for the rest of the contest. Meanwhile, the Tigers fired on all cylinders on offense and surged to yet another comeback victory, 59-38.
The win maintained a deadlock in the Ivy League standings between Princeton and Columbia, both of whom are tied with 8-2 records, though the Lions own the tie-breaker after sweeping the regular season series against the Tigers for the second year in a row.
With four games remaining in the regular season, Princeton’s 2025-26 campaign is at an inflection point.
After beginning the season 17-1, the Tigers became the toast of the mid-major universe, rising as high as No. 19 in the AP Top 25 Poll and earning a no. 1 ranking in the College Insider Mid-Major Poll.
All of that came crashing down after the Tigers suffered a pair of setbacks to Columbia over a 14-day span.
On Monday, Princeton is expected to fall out of the national rankings for the first time in eight weeks. And the Tigers’ NET ranking has plummeted over the past 10 weeks, falling from 28 in early December to 47 in the NCAA’s most recent update.
Perhaps most important, Princeton’s prospects for returning to the NCAA Tournament for a seventh consecutive trip are now teetering.
Once considered a lock for March Madness, Charlie Creme, ESPN’s bracketology guru, currently pegs Princeton as a No. 11 seed and one of the last four teams to earn a bid, meaning that the Tigers would have to win a play-in game to enter the bracket.
What happened to the Tigers, who only a few weeks ago were considered a juggernaut?
The twin losses to Columbia weren’t the only indications of cracks in Princeton’s fortress.
After emerging triumphant from a grueling nonconference schedule, the Tigers looked worn once conference play began, requiring Houdini-like escape acts to prevail at Penn, at Brown and at home against Harvard in overtime.
Part of the problem has been the team’s lack of depth.
Berube and her staff have had to manage a depleted roster of only 10 healthy players for much of the season, five fewer than a typical college basketball roster.
Of course, in-season injuries have only compounded this problem.
Since tweaking her right knee in the third quarter of Princeton’s loss at home to Columbia on Jan. 30, Madison St. Rose, Princeton’s leading scorer, has averaged only 22 minutes per game, down from more than 33 minutes of action in the Tigers’ previous 17 games.
Not surprisingly, with reduced playing time St. Rose’s scoring contributions have dipped considerably in recent weeks. The senior co-captain has averaged only 10 points per game in Princeton’s last six contests, about six fewer than her season average.
Injuries have likewise taken a toll on Fadima Tall, Princeton’s leading rebounder and third highest scorer. Tall has been forced to miss games and play reduced minutes due to a series of nagging injuries.
Twice selected the Ivy League Player of the Week early in the season, Tall’s reduced playing time in recent weeks has resulted in her reaching double-digits only twice in Princeton’s last five games. In contrast, Tall surpassed double-digits in nine of Princeton’s first 10 games before injuries began to limit her play.
Cristina Parrella, a promising sophomore guard, has played in only two games the entire season due to a lower-body injury she suffered late in her freshman campaign.
And most recently, Toby Nweke, one of the best young guards in the Ivy League, was forced out of action in Princeton’s win at Cornell due to an undisclosed injury.
Another issue for the Tigers in recent weeks has been the team’s lack of physical presence in the paint.
The team ranks second to last in the Ivy League in rebounding and often surrenders second chances to its opponents after initially forcing a missed shot. In last Friday night’s loss at Columbia, the Tigers allowed the Lions to collect an astounding 21 offensive rebounds, which they converted into 23 points.
To a large degree, this problem was pre-ordained once Tabitha Amanze decided to transfer to Virginia during the offseason.
Amanze, a 6-foot-4 senior from Nigeria, would have given Berube a true center to defend the rim and provide an added punch in the paint. Instead, Amanze is averaging 10.4 points and 6.2 rebounds per game as a Cavalier, both career highs.
Once Amanze left the program, Princeton had no true center, which has forced Berube and company to adopt a “position-less” approach to running the team’s offense and defending the paint this season.
Olivia Hutcherson, Tall and Taylor Charles have been heroic in filling the gap at center, but there’s only so much they can do against teams like Columbia, which can throw multiple bigs at a time at the Tigers.
At any other program, including some in the Ivy League, the transfer portal might have provided a solution to Amanze’s late departure. Not so at Princeton, where admissions standards and other protocols seemingly make obtaining transfers a near impossibility.
Another factor that has hurt Princeton this season has been the inconsistent play of Ashley Chea.
Chea burst onto the Ivy scene last season as a sophomore when she inherited the point guard role from her former high school teammate, Kaitlyn Chen, who graduated from Princeton in the spring of 2024.
Chea led the Tigers last season in scoring with 13.6 points per game. She also contributed 3.6 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game and was Princeton’s only player to earn All-Ivy First Team honors.
This season, Chea’s numbers are down across the board. She currently averages just 10.3 points in nearly 33 minutes of playing time per game.
Chea has experienced an up-and-down season so far, canning clutch, game winning shots at George Mason and at home versus Harvard, as she did last season.
Yet in recent weeks, Chea has struggled mightily to find confidence in her shot.
In Princeton’s two losses to Columbia, Chea missed her first 15 shots from the field until she finally converted two field goals during garbage time in Friday night’s shellacking at Levien Gym.
Overall, Chea has reached double-digits only once (11 points versus Cornell) in Princeton’s last six games. In Princeton’s weekend salvaging win at Cornell on Saturday, Chea tallied only two points and missed all three of her attempts from beyond the arc.
The situation has gotten so bad in recent weeks that Berube has at times started Toby Nweke in place of Chea, perhaps hoping that her sharpshooting guard would perform better coming off the bench, as she often did during her freshman campaign.
Chea’s spotty play this season may be due to other teams focusing their defensive efforts on her more than they have in previous years. Columbia especially has succeeded in guarding Chea very closely and forcing her off the three-point line. In response, Chea has become more of a facilitator, a role she often plays well with her precision passing.
But the 5-foot-8 guard also makes rash decisions and frequently turns the ball over when pressured. She leads the team in turnovers with 2.4 giveaways per contest.
If Princeton is to regain its status as an Ivy League champion, Chea must rediscover her shooting touch and find a way to overcome the pressure other teams are deploying against her.
Despite all of these issues, the Tigers still find themselves tied for first place in the Ivy League and with solid prospects for earning a seventh consecutive bid to March Madness.
The key to success likely will come from the team rediscovering its DNA as a defensive-minded club.
Perhaps the Tigers’ defensive performance at Cornell on Saturday night will serve as a catalyst. The Big Red’s meager 38 points were the fewest allowed by Princeton this season.
Isn’t Chea playing with an injury. I see her wearing some kind of belt around her stomach area so may be back injury. Please research this.