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Steve Silverman 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 coach Carla Berube joins Ivy Hoops Online contributor Steve Silverman for an in-depth reflection on her program heading into the 2025-26 campaign, going over how Madison St. Rose looks coming back from injury, the Tigers’ standout Class of 2027, how the team’s offensive attack will be different this season, Princeton’s difficulty of mining the transfer portal, the team’s loaded nonconference schedule and much more:
Princeton coaching and Dartmouth playing legend Courtney Banghart spent 45 minutes in conversation with Ivy Hoops Online contributor Steve Silverman.
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.
Caden Pierce announced on Tuesday that he will step away from basketball during his senior year at Princeton. The two-time All-Ivy League forward told ESPN that he plans to graduate next May from Princeton and enter the transfer portal to play his final year of NCAA eligibility as a graduate student.
Pierce’s withdrawal from the Princeton men’s basketball team is the latest and perhaps heaviest blow to hit Mitch Henderson’s squad since the 2024-25 season ended with a heartbreaking loss to Yale in the semifinals of the 2025 Ivy League Tournament.
The offseason started ominously for Princeton with the news breaking in late March that two key assistant coaches, Brett MacConnell and Lawrence Rowley, would not return to Mitch Henderson’s coaching staff for the 2025-26 season.
There was no obvious explanation for the coaching staff shakeup, other than Princeton’s leadership perhaps deciding that something needed to change after the Tigers underperformed expectations during the 2024-25 season.
A wave of player defections then descended on Old Nassau.
At the Spokane Hoopfest, home to the world’s largest 3X3 basketball tournament, seven former Ivy League women’s basketball stars will lace up their sneakers this weekend alongside 25 other elite hoopsters from across the globe in a center court showcase staged by the 3X3 Basketball Association.
Blake Dietrick and Carlie Littlefield (Princeton), Harmoni Turner and McKenzie Forbes (Harvard), Camille Zimmerman and Hannah Pratt (Columbia), and Roxy Barahman (Yale) have signed up to play on the 3XBA tour this summer, with the Spokane Hoopfest as the opening stop.
An eighth Ivy alumnus, Kaitlyn Chen, had signed up to play in Spokane as well, but the former Princeton star and recently crowned national champion at UConn pulled out of the 3XBA tour after she was offered a contract to play for the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries.
In April, the Valkyries selected Chen early in the third round of the WNBA Draft, only to waive her a few weeks later during training camp. Ditto for Harvard’s Turner, who was also drafted in the third round by the Las Vegas Aces and later waived.
Other WNBA Draft picks failed to earn roster spots this spring as well, and many of those players have now found an opportunity to continue developing their professional basketball careers by signing on to join the 3XBA tour.
The 3xBA describes itself as “the premier professional women’s FIBA 3X3 tour and youth development pipeline in the United States.” Part of its mission is to provide an outlet for standouts like Chen and Turner, who didn’t quite make the cut in their first attempts, to land a roster spot in the WNBA.
“The idea, is that young players, the bubble players, who maybe are the 13th and 14th kids who would make a WNBA roster if we had that many spots, can come and play 3X3 and potentially end up on a USA national team or make money, have a livelihood during the summer, and then go and play their five-on-five season overseas if they want to, in the fall and spring,” Blake Dietrick told Ivy Hoops Online.
The Xaivian Lee era at Princeton appears to be over.
According to a report posted today by ESPN, the First-Team All-Ivy junior guard has entered the transfer portal. The report states that Lee will also enter the NBA Draft while simultaneously keeping his options open to transfer to another program for his final year of collegiate eligibility.
A year ago, Lee similarly tested the NBA Draft waters before returning to Princeton for his junior year.
Lee’s likely departure from Princeton, while not entirely unexpected, is the latest development in what already is shaping up to be a tumultuous offseason for the Princeton men’s basketball program.
In a historic season of firsts, the Columbia women’s basketball team couldn’t get a NCAA Tournament Round of 64 win, falling on Saturday afternoon to the West Virginia Mountaineers, 78-59, in Chapel Hill, N.C.
The Mountaineers, who used a furious rally in the third quarter to defeat Princeton in last year’s NCAA Tournament Round of 64, ousted another Ivy foe on Saturday, dominating Columbia wire-to-wire.
Columbia is used to turning over its opponents with relentless full court pressure, but there’s an old saying in basketball that team’s that press don’t like to be pressed themselves, and that adage proved correct on Saturday as West Virginia’s signature zone press wreaked havoc on the Lions, forcing 25 turnovers, including 11 in the first quarter.
“West Virginia is a great team and a super-unique team in the women’s game,” Columbia coach Megan Griffith said postgame. “I think what they do not a lot of teams do, right, and especially defensively. March Madness is who can make the other team the most uncomfortable, and I thought they did that successfully to start the game. You know, forcing 11 turnovers.”
The Princeton Tigers women’s basketball team probably wishes that third quarters could be dropped from the NCAA Tournament.
For the second year in a row, the Tigers squandered a first-half lead in the Big Dance, losing on Wednesday night in the opening game of the 2025 NCAA Tournament to fellow No. 11 seed Iowa State, 68-63, in a play-in game at Purcell Pavilion on the Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Ind.
The Ivy League’s dream of a three-bid Ivy came to fruition on Sunday night when the final invitation to the Big Dance went to the Princeton Tigers.
“It’s awesome,” Princeton coach Carla Berube told reporters on Monday afternoon. “We have a email chain going with the whole Ivy League and head coaches and, yeah, I mean, we’re thrilled, but we’re not shocked or surprised, and we know just the level of basketball and how talented our student athletes are. And we’re going about it the right way with our nonconference schedules and how we have to build that up.”
Princeton, a No. 11 seed, will face off in a play-in game against Iowa State, also a No. 11 seed, in the opening game of the NCAA Tournament on Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET in South Bend, Ind. The winner will face No. 6 Michigan on Friday.
Here are three thoughts about Princeton’s bid and tomorrow’s matchup against the Iowa State Cyclones: