Carla Berube’s minions continue to amaze.
The Yale Bulldogs arrived at Jadwin Gym Saturday hoping to stop what has become a runaway freight train of a basketball team.
No dice.
Princeton women send another statement by routing Yale, 74-36
Grace Stone
Princeton women shut down Columbia, claim supremacy in battle of Ivy unbeatens
The much anticipated collision between the last Ivy unbeatens, Princeton and Columbia, was far from the expected titanic struggle.
Princeton women roll over Cornell, 75-37
The second meeting between the Tigers and the Big Red was a bigger blowout than the first. On Jan. 8, the Berube Brigade rolled over the Big Red in Ithaca, 65-41. This evening’s rematch at Jadwin Gym was a defensive tour de force for the Tigers as they held Cornell to 9.25 points per quarter while scoring 18.75 themselves.
Princeton women win tussle of Tigers versus Towson, 68-54
Consistent with her strategic plan to challenge her team, Carla Berube squeezed in a very difficult matchup for the Tigers’ final out-of-conference game of the season. She invited to Jadwin Gym another group of Tigers, the Towson Tigers of the Colonial Athletic Association – a top 50 club nationally.
Princeton women can’t topple No. 11 Texas at Jadwin
Carla Berube needed but one word to describe the on-court presence of the Texas Longhorns Wednesday afternoon at Jadwin Gym.
Relentless.
Princeton women come out on top in roller-coaster overtime win over Buffalo
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.
Princeton women triumph at No. 22 Florida Gulf Coast for first win over ranked opponent in 43 years
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.
Ivy League women’s basketball Media Day roundup
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.
What to expect when Ivy League basketball returns
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:
How Princeton women’s basketball clawed its way to the top of the Ivy League
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.)