Ellie Mitchell

Princeton women shake off sluggish start to stymie Cornell, 65-40

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The Princeton Tigers traveled to Ithaca to make their second league start against the Cornell Big Red this afternoon. The Tigers were grateful not to have to make the five-hour bus ride between games of the back-to-back New York State swing since last night’s Columbia contest was postponed due to COVID-19 protocols. 

Following a comfortable trip yesterday, the Tigers were nevertheless sluggish out of the gate en route to an eventual 65-40 win. The Big Red, after an impressive road win a week ago at Dartmouth, were even worse.

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Princeton women pull away from Harvard, 68-50

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The Princeton Tigers opened the defense of their 2020 Ivy League title Sunday afternoon at Jadwin Gym against the Harvard Crimson. This was the final appearance at Princeton of legendary Harvard coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, who is closing her 40-year coaching career at Harvard at the end of the season. The Ivy League is a much better place because of her presence in it.

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Princeton women come out on top in roller-coaster overtime win over Buffalo

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Princeton coach Carla Berube set up a challenging out-of-conference schedule for her club, to say the least. She is focusing on preparation for running the Ivy League gauntlet. The Buffalo Bulls, a top-50 team and an NCAA Tournament team three times in five years, came into Jadwin Gym Tuesday night at 6-2 and riding a five-game winning streak.
The Tigers, on the other hand, were heading in the opposite direction, having lost two straight on the road at Fordham and Seton Hall.
The Bulls, coached by Felisha Legette-Jack, who has more than 300 wins in her 19-year career, are led by Dyaisha Fair, one of the best scorers in the nation.

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Princeton women triumph at No. 22 Florida Gulf Coast for first win over ranked opponent in 43 years

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The Princeton women made history Wednesday evening at Alico Arena, home of the Florida Gulf Coast Eagles. The Tigers shot down the high-flying No. 22 Eagles, 58-55. It was the first win for a Tiger team against a ranked opponent since 1978.

The Eagles entered the game with a record of 63-6 since the start of the 2019-20 season, coming in at 7-0 on the year:

If you follow Ivy Hoops Online’s coverage of the Tigers, you know that we concentrate on coach Carla Berube’s commitment to defense, particularly the single-digit quarters the defense yields.

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Princeton women suffer first loss in exactly two years in rock fight at Rhode Island

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The Princeton Tigers took their NCAA-best 25-game winning streak on the road to Rhode Island Saturday.

The result was a disappointing 61-53 loss at the hands of the unbeaten Rams.

The last defeat suffered by the Tigers occurred, ironically, two years ago to the day in overtime at Iowa.

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Ivy League women’s basketball Media Day roundup

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One day after releasing the conference’s preseason poll, the Ivy League moved one step closer to normal by hosting the 2021-22 Media Day for women’s basketball Tuesday.  For the first time, the league used a Zoom format to create a stronger connection between the coaches, players and the media.

In Monday’s poll, three-time defending champion Princeton was again picked as the top team with 122 total points and 12 first-place votes.  Penn, the 2019 co-champion, was selected No. 2 with three first-place votes and 108 points. The next three teams were close, with only six points separating Columbia, Yale and Harvard.

The Lions, which earned their first Ivy League Tournament berth in 2020 before the tourney was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved up to third with 87 points. The Bulldogs, a third-place team in 2020, dropped to fourth at 82 points.  The Crimson, which finished fifth in 2020, received one first-place vote but missed the upper division by one point.

Cornell, the 2020 seventh-place squad, moved up to sixth for 2022 with 41 points.  Dartmouth and Brown, two teams with new coaching staffs, ended up with the last two spots, with the Big Green’s 29 points two ahead of the Bears.

Tuesday’s Media Day revealed the four tiers apparent in the preseason poll. But there could be a slight reordering near the top.

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What to expect when Ivy League basketball returns

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As this Ivy non-season progresses, we thought it’d make sense for us to do an Ivy Hoops Online contributors’ roundtable looking ahead to next season, assuming there is one:

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If there would have been a 2020-21 Ivy hoops season, what would have happened?

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Now’s the time of year that an Ivy League hoops slate would be revving up, and since there’s no Ivy hoops action to come this spring, here’s an IHO contributors’ roundtable pondering what might have happened in the 2020-21 Ivy season on the men’s and or women’s sides if there had been one instead of an exodus of much of the league’s top talent via the transfer portal. Behold the one-year Ivy hoops universes we created:

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How Princeton women’s basketball clawed its way to the top of the Ivy League

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The 2019-20 Princeton women’s basketball team’s campaign ended all too quickly due to COVID-19, but not before demonstrating the enduring strength of the program under a new coaching staff. (Princeton Athletics)

The 2019-20 Princeton women’s basketball team was by no means a “one-hit wonder.”

It was the product of a process begun more than a dozen years ago. Successful coaches do more than win games; they build a program, an organization that can produce highly competitive teams year after year. Successful programs are designed to withstand graduations, injuries, and the inevitable clash of egos and personalities in groups of a dozen or more highly competitive and talented individuals. To achieve success in college basketball over time is incredibly difficult. To achieve credibility on the national scene with a mid-major program and no athletic scholarships defies belief. Princeton has done that.

In 1970, the 225th year of Princeton’s existence, school administrators decided to adopt the revolutionary idea of coeducation, not coincidentally, I have always believed, in the year following my graduation. One year later, varsity basketball was introduced as a women’s intercollegiate sport. The Tigers enjoyed early success, winning the first four Ivy titles following the launching of a women’s postseason tournament in 1975. (The women played a postseason tournament until 1982. In 2017, the present tournament format was adopted. The top four men’s and women’s teams compete at the same site over the same weekend to determine the league’s NCAA representatives.)

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