Slow second halves doom w. hoops against Dartmouth, Harvard

Just days after the women's basketball team hit the highlight of its year thus far, Princeton had another season turnaround — this time in the wrong direction. Despite great individual moments and spurts of united effort, the inconsistency that has plagued the Tigers this season returned to haunt them as they lost first to Dartmouth and then to Harvard.

Foremost among these encouraging moments was Princeton's determination in sticking with both Dartmouth and Harvard through the first halves. Against Dartmouth (7-12 overall, 3-3 Ivy League) Friday, the Tigers led early on and were down by only seven at halftime. This effort was magnified the next night against Harvard (8-11, 5-1), when Princeton's intensity — spurred on by record-setting attendance at Jadwin — pushed the team to a 9-0 start and made the Tigers the dominating force throughout the first half.

But both nights, despite promising starts, things began to fall apart. A 12-point advantage at halftime turned into a six point loss against the Crimson, 64-58. The Tigers were able to stick with Dartmouth through the majority of the first half, but a solid offensive effort — led by sophomore Katharine Hanks' 17 points — helped the Big Green outlast Princeton, 65-48.

"We played in spurts instead of playing the whole game," sophomore forward Maureen Lane said. "Some individuals played well, but we're having trouble all coming together and doing that at the same time."

While sophomore forward Lee Culp's shooting was almost flawless — five-for-six on the night for 12 points — the remainder of the team managed to make only 13-of-44 shots. This left the Tigers unable to compete with the Big Green's impressive 53% from the field.

"We didn't get the ball inside enough to the post players and we didn't shoot really well," Lane said. "Hanks was a big scorer, but there were others that we also needed to shut down and we were not effective in doing that."

"They were a beatable team," sophomore guard Allison Cahill said. "We kind of beat ourselves."

It looked like it was going to be a different story the next night against Harvard. The Tigers were clearly the controlling force, keeping the Crimson scoreless until two three-pointers from Lane and one from junior forward Hillary Reser helped Princeton rack up a 9-0 lead and head into halftime with a sound 35-23 advantage.

"In the first half we were able to score at will, but then a couple bad stretches hurt our confidence," Cahill said. "We weren't playing with as much poise."

The most notable of those bad stretches came in the opening minutes of the second half, when the Crimson went on a 26-4 run to lead by 10 points, 49-39. The Tigers were able to use a solid foul shooting effort to regroup and get the game back within six points, but no closer. Even a 21-point effort from Lane could not keep Princeton from finishing the game with its inspired first-half performance clouded by a 64-58 loss.

"It was more the defense than the offense," Cahill said. "We shot so well in the beginning that it was tough to match that the entire game. Then Harvard started hitting shots and that put more pressure on everybody. We just got too tight."

"The team needs to help when people get beat defensively," Lane added. "If we're not going to score, we have to be playing good defense. We need to work on our rebounding. We ended up giving Harvard a lot of second chances to score from the inside."

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The Tigers will soon have their opportunity to correct these mistakes when they meet rival Penn Tuesday at Jadwin Gym. With its goal to play 40 minutes of good basketball rather than sporadic periods of success, Princeton has little time to work on fundamentals. Instead it is looking to coordinate efforts on both ends of the court to perform well simultaneously.

"We've started putting things together," Cahill said. "Harvard is a really good team and we played with them pretty much the whole game. We just need to mature, to play together. We need to learn to deal with things the other team does and to respond better when things don't go our way."