Women's basketball returns home looking for another league victory

Last weekend, the women's basketball team finally found what it had been looking for — a way to win. With a 61-60 overtime victory at Yale, the Tigers finally proved to themselves that they can compete with the rest of the Ivy League. But Princeton is finished celebrating that first success and has shifted their focus to its weekend goal — showing that its performance in New Haven was not a flash-in-the-pan.

Princeton (1-16 overall, 1-3 Ivy League) has two chances to accomplish its goal at home this weekend, the first coming Friday against Dartmouth and the second being Harvard on Saturday.

For now, the Tigers are focusing all their energy on the Big Green (6-12, 2-3). Dartmouth has Ivy League wins over Cornell and Yale and losses to Harvard, Columbia and Brown, so a win for the Tigers is neither guaranteed nor out-of-reach.

Princeton is searching for ways to keep the flow of the game from being determined by the Big Green and their star player, sophomore forward Katharine Hanks.

"[Hanks] pretty much does everything," freshman forward Maureen McCracken said. "Our biggest focus is stopping her."

Hanks, who has been the leading scorer for 11 of Dartmouth's 18 games, had her 15th double-double last weekend against Columbia and will be a tough force to shut down. While her 22 points and 13 rebounds were not enough to push the team past the Lions last weekend, the Big Green has demonstrated that when Hanks is kept out of scoring range, other players will step in. This was most recently accomplished by another sophomore, guard Keri Downs, who burst out of the background to score 25 points against Cornell and give the Big Green a solid 65-49 win.

Princeton's second chance to prove that they cannot be ignored comes Saturday against Harvard. The Crimson (7-11, 4-1) — whose only Ivy League loss came at the hands of Brown — has recovered admirably from a 1-9 start to the season, winning six of their last seven games. The team appears to have found its rhythm, which is usually set by freshman forward Hana Peljto. Peljto is the first player off the bench for the Crimson, despite the fact that she leads the team in several major statistical categories.

Working in the Tigers' favor is the fact that Harvard will play conference powerhouse Penn (12-5, 4-0) Friday night before heading to Princeton. If the Quakers can end Harvard's winning streak and shake its confidence, the Tigers' job of keeping Harvard out of the win column could be that much easier.

But that's not something Princeton is staking its hopes on. Feeling like things might be turning around, the Tigers are counting most on having big performances from their own team.

"We've really had a big confidence booster," McCracken said. "We realize now that we're still in this and we'll all play better for it."

Princeton's chances will also be improved if they can continue to keep their turnover count low, as they did in the game against Yale when they had only 13 as compared to their season average of 20.

The fact that both Dartmouth and Harvard are led by underclassmen levels the playing field for the Tigers, who have only two juniors and one senior on the roster. Dartmouth will count on Hanks and Downs to lead the team while Harvard needs freshmen Peljto to continue to dominate this weekend.