Senior forward Lauren Rigney lay in bed, dreaming of jump shots that swished, drives to the hoop, thunderous dunks and an 8-7 record.
She jerked awake with a cry of pain. Pain for a dream lost, pain for a season imagined and pain from her lower back.
Rigney and the rest of the women's basketball team finally woke up Thursday from the effects of the spell they had been under for the first two months of the season.
Head coach Richard Barron came to Princeton this spring from the University of the South where he had studied voodoo and snake-charming.
"Down there it worked for an entire season," Barron said. "These Ivy League kids aren't quite as impressionable."
Barron feared his magic was wearing off so he took his team to the Big Easy — home of Anne Rice and voodoo magic — in December, but the cure seems never to have taken effect and the team woke up to realize the early season was an aberration.
"Last year we had a 16-game losing streak," junior guard Allison Cahill said. "This year we want to really try to outdo ourselves."
"I don't know where to start," head coach Richard Barron said. "I mean, shooting is poor, rebounding unimpressive, defense non-existent. Intangibles . . . not so much.
"I really thought this voodoo coaching thing was going to work."
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