Home of the Roundball Poets
For the first time in nearly a month, Princeton’s women played a basketball game at home. The Tigers made the most of their homecoming Wednesday, holding off the Rhode Island Rams, 66-54, in a game the Orange and Black led wire to wire.
The win snapped a two-game losing streak for Princeton and avenged a frustrating loss to the Rams a year ago in Kingston.
It’s been an up-and-down season so far for Princeton women’s basketball. With nine games in the books, the six-time-defending Ivy League champions have a mixed record of 5-4.
Highlights of the season include a three-game sweep of Big East opponents DePaul, Villanova, and Seton Hall, a dominant win over in-state rival Rutgers, and a resume-building win over Big 5 foe Temple.
The lowlights include blowout losses at Quinnipiac and Portland, a disappointing finish at Duquesne, and a heartbreaking injury to the Tigers’ superstar team captain, Madison St. Rose.
Carla Berube’s club was picked to finish first again in the Ivy League’s preseason media poll, but the loss of senior leadership, a monumental injury and a brutal, road-heavy slate of opening games has created challenges, opportunities and an intriguing future.
Here are three Tiger Takeaways assessing where the Princeton women’s basketball team stands one-third of the way into the season:
Princeton Athletics announced Friday that standout junior shooting guard Madison St. Rose will miss the remainder of the 2024-25 basketball season due to an anterior cruciate ligament tear in her left knee.
St. Rose suffered the injury last week in the fourth quarter of a road contest against Quinnipiac, which the Tigers lost, 74-66.
The extent of the injury was not immediately known, and fans of St. Rose have been waiting with a sense of dread for several days for more definitive news on the junior’s status.
St. Rose did not play in Princeton’s stirring win at Seton Hall last night, an ominous hint that her injury might be serious.
Princeton coach Carla Berube released a statement Friday expressing optimism that St. Rose will make a full recovery:
As the 2024-25 season quickly approaches, the Ivy League hosted its annual women’s basketball Media Day on Thursday. The three-hour event, hosted by Lance Medow, can be viewed on the conference’s YouTube channel.
Prior to the event, the league announced the results of its preseason poll.
Princeton, which has claimed the Ancient Eight title for the last six years, was picked first with 122 out of a possible 128 points and 10 first-place votes. Columbia, which has tied for the top spot in each of the last two seasons, came in second with 110 points and five first-place votes.
Harvard, which has finished the last two years in third placed, was tabbed for third in 2025, earning 101 points and one first-place spot.
Penn, the final participant in last year’s Ivy tournament, was picked fourth with 75 votes, while Brown, which finished last year tied with Penn for fourth, was four points back in fifth place.
Sixth place went to Yale, which was as high as third place in 2022, with 48 votes.
While Cornell and Dartmouth ended last season tied for seventh place, the Big Red got the nod for seventh in this year’s poll with 30 points and the Big Green were eighth with 19 points.
Below are highlights from this year’s virtual Media Day:
The Princeton women’s basketball team opened the Ivy League season in impressive fashion on Saturday afternoon with a dominant win over the Cornell Big Red, 79-38, at Newman Arena. The 41-point margin of victory was Princeton’s largest since the Tigers defeated Brown by 43 points last February.
With the win, the Tigers moved to 11-3 on the season and 1-0 in the Ivy League.
In an Ivy Hoops Online interview published Thursday, Princeton coach Carla Berube expressed little concern that her players would look past this contest to the Tigers’ marquee matchup against Harvard next weekend.
“I think they understand how important every one of these Ivy League matchups are,” Berube said. “You take nobody lightly, you take nobody for granted. You respect them and play your very best in each of these contests.”
It was supposed to be a tune-up game for the beginning of the Ivy League season.
But the Le Moyne Dolphins of the Northeast Conference gave the Princeton women’s basketball team all it could handle Sunday in a 66-55 win for the Tigers at Ted Grant Court in Syracuse, N.Y.
The Princeton women’s basketball team returned to action after a 16-day exam and holiday break to defeat the Vermont Catamounts, 67-47, Saturday afternoon at Patrick Gymnasium in Burlington, Vt.
Once again, the Tigers proved to be rude guests, spoiling Vermont’s 16-game home winning streak. Earlier this season, Princeton snapped Middle Tennessee’s impressive 29-game home court winning streak. With the win, the Tigers moved to 9-3 on the season, while Vermont, the reigning champions of the America East Conference, fell to 8-6.
The Princeton women’s basketball team rebounded from a disappointing loss on Sunday to Rhode Island with an efficient win over Quinnipiac, 79-70, Wednesday night at Jadwin Gym.
The Tigers were led by sophomore guard Madison St. Rose, who scored 17 points and assisted on four other Princeton baskets. For her efforts, St. Rose was named the Player of the Game by the ESPN+ broadcast crew. It was a night of career highs for several other Tigers, including senior co-captain Kaitlyn Chen, who dished out a career-high 10 assists, the most of any Tiger since Blake Dietrick accomplished the same feat in 2014.
Unlike nearly every other Princeton game this season, the Tigers came out blazing from the opening tip, hitting their first seven shots en route to an early 15-5 lead. The Tigers exploited a height advantage in the paint, working the ball methodically into a pair of twin towers: Parker Hill and Paige Morton. Hill, a 6-foot-4 junior from Bethesda, Md., was unstoppable, sinking seven of nine field-goal attempts for 14 points, while Morton, a 6-foot-3 junior from Summit, N.J., came off the bench for a career-high eight points.
Despite facing a bigger and more athletic opponent, Quinnipiac, who defeated Rhode Island in their last outing on a buzzer-beater, would not go away. A layup by forward Grace LaBarge punctuated an 11-4 run and brought Quinnipiac to within two with two minutes to play in the first quarter. The 6-foot-3 junior came off the bench to score 20 points, tops among all scorers. The first stanza ended with the Tigers clinging to a narrow lead, 19-16.
Princeton continued its torrid shooting in the second quarter as just about everyone got in on the action. Junior guard Amelia Osgood, who hadn’t seen any playing time in Princeton’s previous two games, rattled home a long three to extend Princeton’s lead to 34-22. Coach Carla Berube dove deep into her bench, rotating in 12 different players in the first half. The Tigers led by 10 at the break, 44-34, behind 16-for-26 shooting for a blazing 73%.
In the second half, the Tigers continued to find points in the paint. With 3:47 to go in the third quarter, Mari Bickley, a 5-foot-10 freshman guard from Akron, Ohio, made an athletic move to the cup off a long feed up court from Chen. With the bucket, the Tigers led by twelve, 56-44. Bickley scored seven points off the bench for the Tigers, one of seven Princeton bench players to score in the game, a season high.
In the fourth quarter, the Tigers’ defense stiffened, getting stops on Quinnipiac’s first five possessions. A pair of free throws from junior forward Paige Morton put Princeton up by 17, 76-59, the largest lead of the night for the Tigers. From there, the Tigers coasted home to a 79-70 victory.
While coach Carla Berube may not have been entirely pleased by Princeton’s defensive effort in this game, the Tigers looked more connected and confident on offense than in any other game so far this season. Overall, the Tigers sank 33 of their 58 field goal attempts, or 56.9%, one of their best shooting performances of the season. Even more impressive, the team combined for 22 assists, by far their highest number of helpers this season.
During a postgame interview with ESPN+, St. Rose revealed the team has a goal of at least 15 assists per game. The Tigers well exceeded that threshold against Quinnipiac, a primary reason they succeeded in getting back on the winning track.
The Tigers now stand at 6-3 on the season and travel across the Delaware River next Monday to face Villanova for what promises to be another tough and competitive nonconference matchup for Princeton.
Playing their first game since garnering a top-25 ranking in the Associated Press poll, Princeton women’s basketball gutted its way to a win over Seton Hall, 75-71, in double overtime at Jadwin Gymnasium on Wednesday night.
The Tigers were led by senior co-captain Kaitlyn Chen, who tallied 21 hard-earned points on 4-for-11 shooting. However, the real hero for the Tigers was freshman sensation Skye Belker who scored 18 points and sank the game-winning jumper with 37 seconds to go in the second overtime. The native of Los Angeles was named the Player of the Game by the ESPN+ broadcast crew, which included former Tigers star player Julia Cunningham. Making her broadcasting debut, Cunningham did a remarkably good job of not betraying her pro-Princeton sympathies while providing interesting insights into what it’s like to play for Princeton coach Carla Berube.
In a battle for New Jersey supremacy, it was unclear whether this contest was a basketball game or a turnover festival. Perhaps it was the approach of the holiday season that inspired both teams to combine for 52 giveaways. Seton Hall was the more generous squad, turning the ball over 28 times compared with Princeton’s 24.
The Princeton women’s basketball team nearly pulled off an upset for the ages as the Tigers fell on Friday afternoon, 77-74, to the No. 3 UCLA Bruins at Pauley Pavilion. It was Princeton’s first loss of the season.
Five days earlier, the Tigers had visited Middle Tennessee State and ended the Blue Raiders’ 49-game homecourt winning streak. On Friday afternoon, in the first game of a two-game West Coast swing, the Tigers entered the Bruins’ den at Pauley Pavilion in hunt of another statement win.
They almost got it.