Women's Basketball: Tigers look for revenge in opener

The women’s basketball team had a successful season in 2010-11, posting a 13-1 conference record to win the Ivy League and reach the NCAA Tournament. When the Tigers open their season on Friday, they will look to repeat some of that success and get revenge against one of the few teams that beat them last season, St. Joseph’s.

The Tigers lost to the Hawks in disappointing fashion last year, dropping a double-overtime contest on the road after holding a 10-point lead with 11 minutes left. Princeton hopes to use that game as motivation in this year’s opener.

“We will certainly need to learn from our mistakes last year in our game against St. Joseph’s because they are close to the same team since they return all of their starters,” senior guard and co-captain Lauren Edwards said. “They are a talented team that competes at a high level. We are all looking forward to opening our season against them.”

With five starters returning from a team that went 20-12 and reached the Women’s National Invitational Tournament, the mature Hawks will be a difficult opponent. Edwards said that the team they play in their opener will be better than the version that defeated the Tigers last year.

“Since they are returning most of their players from last year, we know that they will be a formidable opponent who has likely matured since we’ve played them last December,” she said.

The Hawks’ leading scorer from last year is senior guard Michelle Baker, who scored 29 points against the Tigers in last season’s meeting. The Tigers’ defense, which was the best in the Ivy League last season, will have to find a way to limit Baker.

The Hawks also return guard Katie Kuester, guard Erin Shields, forward Kelly Cavallo and forward Samira van Grinsven, all of whom started for the Hawks last season.

The other bench also features quite a bit of experience. With the exception of guard Addie Micir ’11, who was unanimously voted Ivy League Player of the Year, and reserve guard Krystal Hill ’11, the Tigers return the rest of their players from last year’s conference-championship team.

Two first-team All-Ivy selections — senior center Devona Allgood, who scored 11.9 points and 7.2 rebounds per game last season, and Edwards, who averaged 11.4 points — are back to defend the title, as is junior guard Lauren Polansky, the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year.

But perhaps the most-anticipated return is that of junior forward Niveen Rasheed, who led the Tigers with a 16.4 scoring average through 12 games before missing the rest of the season with a torn ACL. Princeton also brings in a talented class of three freshmen — center Jess Shivers, guard Blake Dietrick and guard Mariah Smith.

With that said, this year’s team will have a different look than last year’s, a message that head coach Courtney Banghart and the players have stressed in the preseason. “We are hoping to continue building off our success from last year, but we are no longer the same team,” Edwards said. “We understand that our strengths and weaknesses have changed.”

Edwards added that the team has looked good in practice so far but definitely has areas to improve. “We are all very happy with the team’s effort so far — every member of the team has shown commitment to improving and reaching team goals throughout practices and scrimmages. However, we all know that there are areas of improvement on the individual and collective level, so we will do everything we can to fix those areas as early as possible.”