Ellie Mitchell

Season ends for No. 10 Princeton women at Utah in NCAA Tournament second round

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 The No. 10 Princeton women’s basketball team ran out of steam against No. 2 Utah, which beat the Tigers Sunday night, 63-56, in a second-round NCAA Tournament matchup at the Jon M. Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City.

The loss brought an end to another outstanding and history-making season for the Princeton women, who finished the season 24-6.  By winning their first-round contest against No. 7 North Carolina State on Friday, the Tigers became the first program in Ivy League history to win games in back-to-back NCAA Tournaments.

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No. 10 Princeton women come back to top No. 7 NC State in NCAA Tournament opener

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The No. 10 Princeton women’s basketball team made history for the university and the Ivy League  Friday night, storming back from the brink of elimination to sink No. 7 North Carolina State, 64-63, in a first-round NCAA Tournament matchup at the Jon M. Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City.  

With the stunning come-from-behind win, Princeton became the first Ivy League women’s program to win a game in back-to-back NCAA tournaments.  Princeton also became the first Ivy school in history to win games in both the men’s and women’s brackets in the same year.  

Senior guard Grace Stone nailed a clutch corner three with 4.7 seconds left to complete a 9-0 run to close out the game, but not before Madison St. Rose, the Ivy League Rookie of the Year, forced a fumble on NC State’s final possession to seal the win.

The Tigers found a way to triumph despite trailing most of the game against a larger and very talented Wolfpack quintet.  Kaitlyn Chen, the Ivy Player of the Year, and Stone each led the Tigers with 22 points.  First-team All Ivy senior guard Julia Cunningham added 14 for the Tigers, who have now won 16 games in a row.  

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And the Ivy Madness Oscar goes to …

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The Princeton Tiger flexes at Jadwin Gym Saturday. (Photo by Steve Silverman)

Since the 95th Academy Award airs Sunday night, here are my choices for the Ivy Madness Oscars from day two of the Ivy League Tournament:

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Princeton women stave off Penn in Ivy League Tournament semifinal

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PRINCETON, N.J. – What looked like a rout for the top-seeded Princeton women turned into a close game, but they stopped a Penn comeback and took their semifinal game Friday in the Ivy League Tournament semifinal, 60-47.

The Tigers had reason to be confident: They were on their home court, they were the regular-season titleholders for the fifth year in a row, and they’d beaten the Quakers decisively just a week earlier in West Philly. Princeton scored first, then again, then again and again, setting up fastbreaks seemingly at will — 19 points in the first quarter on 50% shooting. Penn, meanwhile, was a portrait in futility: two points on 1-for-13 shooting.
“I felt really good after that first quarter,” Princeton coach Carla Berube said.
The game was as good as over.
But then it wasn’t.

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Ivy League Tournament women’s semifinal preview: No. 4 Penn vs. No. 1 Princeton

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No. 1 Princeton (21-5, 12-2 Ivy) vs No. 4 Penn (17-10, 9-5 Ivy), Jadwin Gym, 4:30 p.m. (available on ESPN+)

Game #1, 1/16/23: Princeton (home) over Penn, 55-40
Game #2, 3/3/23: Princeton over Penn (home), 71-52

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2022-23 IHO Women’s All-Ivy Awards

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The Ivy League announced its major women’s awards Wednesday, but we know this is the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Ivy Hoops Online’s 2022-23 All-Ivy Awards, as determined by IHO’s contributors:

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Ivy women’s week 10 roundup: Ancient Eight’s top 10

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Heading into the last two days of the regular season, Columbia and Princeton were tied for first, while Penn held a one-game lead over Harvard for third place.  After the Lions, Tigers and Crimson each grabbed a win, the Ivy League Tournament semifinal matchups of Columbia against Harvard and Princeton versus Penn had been set.  What needed to be determined was the seeding of the four teams and the timing of the two matchups.

When the updated NCAA NET rankings were posted on Sunday morning, Princeton’s convincing road victory over upper division Penn combined with Columbia’s narrow escape at home against seventh-place Cornell resulted in the Tigers overcoming an 11-position difference from last week and taking the No. 1 seed away from the Lions.

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Princeton women push back to power past Penn, 71-52

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Kaitlyn Chen put on a memorable performance in Princeton’s victory over archrival Penn Friday, notching 27 points, five assists and four rebounds in 37 minutes. (Photo by Erica Denhoff)

Editor’s note: Princeton-Penn is always a big deal, and our Toothless Tiger and Palestra Pete combine to recap Saturday night’s P vs. P action in audio and written form below: 

It was The Kaitlyn Chen Show, but more than that, it was The Princeton Defense Show at Penn on Friday night, and the Tigers roared back (sorry) from a first-half deficit to beat the Quakers handily, 71-52.

In some respects, the game was meaningless: For weeks we’ve known that the top two women’s teams going into the Ivy League Tournament would be Princeton and Columbia, and that they would face Penn and Harvard in the first-round games. But pride counts, too, and Princeton knew it needed this win to get a share of its fifth straight regular-season title.

On the Penn side, too, the stakes were emotional: This was Senior Night, and Princeton was the only Ivy the graduating Penn players had never beaten. Truth is, they’d never come very close: The 15-point loss in January at Princeton was their closest score. Their best chance probably would have come in the COVID-canceled Ivy tournament of 2020, or more likely the canceled season that followed, when the career of Penn’s last dominant center, Eleah Parker, would have overlapped with that of forward Jordan Obi.

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Ivy women’s week nine roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top 10

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The conference’s next-to-last weekend began on Friday night with a nationally televised game between Princeton and Harvard, two of the four teams headed to the Ivy Tournament.  The last time they met in January, the Crimson came away with a 67-59 victory, ending the Tigers’ 42-game Ivy League win streak.

Playing in front of more than 1,700 fans at Jadwin Gymnasium, Harvard took a 14-12 lead after the first quarter.  The visitors used a late 13-2 run to open up a 12-point lead before Princeton cut it to 10, 30-20, at the half.

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Ivy women’s week six roundup: Ancient Eight’s Top Ten

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On Friday night, league-leading Columbia continued its “Revenge Tour” by dominating Penn by 22 points at Levien Gymnasium, avenging a surprise four-point loss to the Quakers on January 7.  The Crimson also had payback on their minds, as they traveled down to New Haven to take on a Yale team that defeated them 71-70 in overtime on that same January day.  Harvard’s defense took control over the opening 20 minutes, limiting the Elis to 19% (0% from three) from the field and opening up a 33-13 halftime lead that the visitors could not overcome.  

Meanwhile, Princeton, which entered the weekend tied for second with Penn and Harvard, rattled off a 17-5 run over a six-minute stretch of the third quarter to ring up a double-digit victory over Cornell.  In the night’s remaining contest, Brown swept the season series over Dartmouth on the strength of 10 three-pointers.

The Big Red suffered another big third-quarter run, giving up 17 straight points to the Quakers on Saturday, as Penn took the second half of their Empire State weekend. Harvard methodically built a 26-point fourth-quarter lead and ended up winning by 13 at Brown. The victory gave the Crimson a season sweep over the Bears and was the team’s fifth in a row.

Down three at the half, Yale outscored Dartmouth 28-17 in the third quarter to lead the Bulldogs to a 13-point win.  While Yale’s season sweep of the Big Green and weekend split keeps it in the hunt for a slot in the Ivy Tournament, Dartmouth’s 14th straight loss keeps them winless in Ivy action and eliminates it from postseason play.

Like last February, the Lions and Tigers faced off in front of a boisterous capacity crowd at Levien Gymnasium with first place on the line.  And just like a year ago, Princeton controlled the game from the very beginning, quickly taking the students out of the contest and running away with a commanding 18-point victory. 

The Tigers’ eighth win in a row was the first their first taste of Ivy revenge in the Carla Berube era, rebounding from an 58-55 defeat at home in early January.  

With nine league games in the book, Princeton, Columbia and Harvard sit atop the standings, while Penn is one game back in fourth and Yale is two games behind. 

While the preseason favorite Tigers and Lions split their season series, the commanding nature of Princeton’s road win, the reemergence of the team’s offense and the presence of the Ivy League Tournament at Jadwin Gymnasium seems to put the Orange & Black in the driver’s seat for the league’s automatic bid.

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