Women's Basketball: Cagers repeat as conference champions

“It started at the end of last year. We won, but we wanted to win again, so we knew what we had to do,” senior guard and co-captain Krystal Hill said of the Tigers’ resolve to repeat as champions. “We knew that repeating as Ivy League champs was something that we had to work hard for.”

Princeton opened its non-league season with a series of dominant victories over lesser teams and hard-fought contests against stronger opponents. Just a week after a buzzer-beating loss at Rutgers — which later reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament — the Tigers headed to Nashville, Tenn., to play eventual Women’s National Invitation Tournament runner-up University of Southern California.

Despite trailing for most of the game, the Tigers found themselves down by just one point with five seconds remaining and senior guard Addie Micir at the free throw line. Micir sank both shots to pull the Tigers ahead of the Trojans for good. The next day against Vanderbilt — then a top-25 team that earned a No. 10 seed in the tournament — the Tigers pulled to within three points in the final minute but could not leave with the victory.

“You learn how to finish games, and you learn what it feels like to lose, and everyone on our team does not like that feeling,” Micir said of the competitive non-league games. “Knowing that feeling that we hate to lose really motivated us to take games over at the beginning.”

But before the momentum could carry over into the Ivy League season, Princeton suffered a huge setback — the loss of sophomore forward and leading scorer Niveen Rasheed, an agile playmaker who set the pace of the offense. Rasheed, who led the team with 15.4 points per game in her freshman year and averaged 16.4 at the time of her injury, tore her right ACL in a victory over Davidson.

With only one week until the start of the Ivy League season, the rest of the roster adapted to fill Rasheed’s shoes. Micir and junior forward Lauren Edwards took over the outside shooting and driving games, and junior center Devona Allgood continued to dominate in the post and on the boards.

“We had people stepping up all over all season long after losing such a pivotal player,” Banghart said, adding that Rasheed’s leadership from the sidelines after her injury showed that she was a better teammate than competitor. “And anyone who’s seen her play knows that she’s quite the competitor.”

Even without Rasheed, three of the starting top five averaged in double digits and the Tigers’ defense alllowed the fewest points in the Ivy League. This play resulted in a plus-17.4 scoring margin, which led the conference and helped Princeton to a league season nearly as flawless as its last one, with only one blemish: a 73-67 loss at Harvard.

“It takes a little bit of luck to get through undefeated,” Micir said. “Harvard’s a good team and they play really well at home. We knew it was going to be a battle up there. We played hard and we came up a little bit short, and that motivated us the rest of the time.”

The Tigers rebounded to beat Dartmouth 75-50 the next day and won the rest of their Ivy League games. The Tigers took revenge against the Crimson on March 5 with a 68-59 victory that clinched the conference championship. Princeton ended its regular season with a 78-27 rout of Penn.

After earning a No. 12 seed in the Philadelphia regional, the Tigers faced off against No. 5 Georgetown in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Troubled by the Hoyas’ pressure, Princeton got off to a woeful offensive start and found itself down 22-5 eight minutes into the game. Although the Tigers went on some runs, they could not overcome Georgetown’s lead and ended up falling 65-49.

“Georgetown was disappointing,” Banghart said. “I thought we were well-prepared and they didn’t do anything we weren’t expecting them to do. Against a pressure-style team, if you don’t make your shots early, you naturally tense up and you’re dead meat.”

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The Hoyas went on to beat Maryland in the second round and lose a close game to UConn in the third round.

Though the players were frustrated with the loss and thought they did not play as competitively as they should have, Hill said that reflecting back on how far the team has come since her freshman year — when the Tigers went 7-23 overall — has helped to put the loss in perspective.

“Being disappointed about losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament shows the tremendous growth that has gone on in four years,” Hill said. “We’re at a higher level of basketball, and that’s definitely something to smile about.”