Women's basketball knocks off Brown in three-overtime epic

It was 9:45 p.m., and the women's basketball team had been playing its heart out for close to three hours.

The Tigers must have been tired. After all, they were now in their third overtime against Brown, and they were still only leading by one point. Every possession had been a battle, and every point had to be fought for.

And at the end of the game, they were still fighting.

With 15 seconds left on the clock in the third overtime, Brown had the ball. Guard Stephanie Bruce was passed the ball from a teammate and fired a missed jumper. After grabbing her own rebound, Bruce took a follow-up jumper, which also ricocheted horribly off of the rim.

There were three seconds left in the game, Princeton was leading by one point and the ball was up for grabs.

The game would come down to whoever wanted the ball the most.

And that was when senior guard Jessica Munson — the shortest player on the court — came up with the rebound.

A more fitting ending could not have been written for the last home game for Munson, who is the lone senior on the Tigers' squad. It seems perfect that the game was won off of a hustle play — a characteristic that has marked the guard for her entire Princeton career.

"Every coach wishes they had a player like Jessica Munson," head coach Kevin Morris said in a post-game reception. "Every coach and teammate wants someone in a game they know will play hard for 40, or in tonight's case, 55 minutes. If we have had 150 practices this year, she has given 100 percent in every single one."

She also gave 100 percent on Saturday against the Bears. Munson led the team in minutes played, spending all but nine minutes on the court including regulation and all three overtimes. Sophomore forward Maureen Lane was third on the team in minutes played with 45, but more importantly she was the game's high scorer with 30 points on 12-for-24 shooting.

Lane was also responsible for the winning basket for the Tigers. With 25 seconds left on the clock, Lane drove down the right baseline past two Brown defenders. When she encountered a third defender on the opposite side of the basket, she executed a reverse layup that fell cleanly through the net.

In addition to her 30-point game on Saturday, Lane also scored a career-high 31 points against Yale on Friday. However, her contribution was not enough to steal the win from the Elis as Princeton fell 67-63. Though the Tigers were confident going into the game, due to the fact that they had beaten Yale on the road at their last meeting, their confidence was not enough to seal the victory.

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Although the Tigers lost on Friday, the confidence they gained propelled them to their second win on Saturday.

"We had a good feeling even before the game that we were going to win," said junior guard Hillary Reser, who scored 16 points on the night.

"Before the game, coach told us that we should play even harder for Munson," Reser said. "We all knew that everything we did out on the court would be for her. If we could get just one more rebound or one extra loose ball, we knew who we were doing it for."

The effort was definitely not lost on the senior, who jumped into junior forward Lauren Rigney's arms in pure joy at the end of the game.

"This is the most memorable game of my career. I am never going to forget it," Munson said. "You never want your last home game to come to an end, and this one really didn't."