Women's Basketball: Weekend holds promise of repeat championship

As head coach Courtney Banghart pointed out, the team prepares mentally on a daily basis.

“We have a thought of the day before every practice, and the thought of the day today is that a championship weekend is the result of a lot of games won one at a time,” Banghart said.

After two convincing road victories against Cornell and Columbia last weekend, Princeton put itself in position to clinch the league championship outright with two home victories this weekend. If the Tigers win just one of two games, they will clinch a share of the Ivy League title and will still have an opportunity to win sole possession with a victory over Penn in their final regular season game on Tuesday.

As senior guard and co-captain Krystal Hill explained, the entire season has led up to this weekend.

“We’ve been preparing throughout the season for the goal of winning the Ivy League championship,” Hill said. “Mentally, we’ll be prepared to go out and perform.”

At Princeton’s heels in the Ivy League standings is second-place Yale, who will host Columbia and Cornell this weekend. Neither the Lions nor the Big Red has won a game on the road so far this year, so the odds will be stacked in Yale’s favor. If the Bulldogs come out victorious on both nights, they will finish the season with an 11-3 league record.

If this is indeed the case and the Tigers win only one of their three remaining games of the season, the Ivy League champion would be determined by a one-game playoff. If Princeton loses its next three games and Yale wins, the latter would take sole possession of the title.

While the Tigers are favored over Dartmouth and Penn — two teams they defeated handily earlier in the season — a win over Harvard on Saturday night is anything but a sure bet. The Crimson handed Princeton its only Ivy League loss of the season on Feb. 4 at Lavietes Pavilion. The Tigers attributed their loss, in part, to a weak defensive effort and, in part, to a very strong shooting game on Harvard’s part. The Crimson’s 73 points were the most Princeton has allowed among conference games this season. In a defensive effort that Banghart said was “unacceptable,” Harvard shot 50 percent from the field, including 7-15 from behind the arc.

“They made a lot of shots, and our defense wasn’t where it usually is,” Hill said.

Many of Harvard’s points came from an offense that the Tigers simply could not stop. Hill said the team has been practicing one-on-one defense and examining player tendencies. Senior guard and co-captain Addie Micir said there is still room to improve.

“We have to toughen up on our [one-on-one] defense, and at the same time shore up our team defense,” Micir said. “We’ve been working on defense this whole week, because we know with both teams it’s going to be a defensive battle.”

Although Princeton defeated seventh-place Dartmouth handily in their meeting in Hanover on Feb. 5, the Big Green should not be written off.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“They’re the perennial powerhouse in the league, so they find a way to win,” Micir said. “They have some pretty good post players, and they also have a couple guards who can shoot the three.”

In addition to the potential Ivy League championship, this final home series has special significance for the team’s two senior captains, Hill and Micir. It will be senior weekend, and Banghart said she is expecting the largest crowd ever for a women’s game at Jadwin for the two seniors’ final home games.

Micir, who has been coming to Princeton games since she was a child, considers this an important moment for the team.

“For Krystal and I, it’s going to be a special experience having it be the last time we play in our home gym,” Micir said. “For myself, I just want to soak up every minute of it and play hard and hopefully play well, because that’s the last memory that I’m going to have in Jadwin.”