This weekend offers the women's basketball team (6-11 overall) the opportunity to revive its 1-2 Ivy League record with back-to-back home games against Columbia and Cornell.
Columbia is currently in third place in the Ivy League standings, right above fourth-place Princeton. After two losses last weekend, first to last-place Yale (61-58) and then to second-place Brown (71-66), the team is 2-2 in the Ivy League and 9-8 overall. Both of its conference wins were against Cornell.
Despite its two losses, the Lions were able to hold both Yale – the League's top three-point shooting team – and Brown to just one longrange shot apiece in four and three attempts, respectively.
The Tigers should be on the prowl for two Lions in Friday's game: junior guard Sue Altman and senior guard Patricia Kern.
Altman has led Columbia in scoring in three of the team's first four Ivy games. Kern had a season-high 14 points against Brown on a five-of-eight shooting performance. With her four assists last weekend, Kern needs just 29 assists to break the school record.
After splitting its two games last weekend, the Cornell Big Red are in sixth place in the Ivy League, with a 7-10 record on the year and a 1-3 record in conference play.
On Friday the Big Red came up 10 points short against Brown, losing 73-63. But the team came back the next night to defeat Yale by the same margin (80-70), thus earning its first Ivy win of the season.
Guard Karen Force tallied a career-high 28 points against Yale behind a 15-of-18 performance from the free-throw line. Forward Lynell Davis recorded 22 points and seven rebounds in the win.
Guard Lauren Kilduff continued her solid play for Cornell, recording 24 points and eight rebounds on the weekend. Over the past six games, Kilduff has averaged 10.2 points and 4.6 rebounds per contest.
Cornell shot over 40 percent from the floor and held both Brown and Yale to under 40 percent shooting.
The Tigers need to enter the games against Columbia and Cornell with the energy they displayed in their first Ivy game of the season against Penn, which they won 56-51, and in the ensuing non-conference match-up against Lafayette.
In the Penn game, Princeton recorded an 86.7 shooting percentage from the foul line, demonstrating poise and intensity under pressure, while making heroic defensive stands down the stretch.
Princeton displayed similar intensity against Lafayette, most notably in the first half. The team opened the game red-hot from three-point range, making 7 of 12, and finished the night with a 50 percent shooting percentage from the field.
That type of energy was clearly lacking in the team's 78-42 loss to first-place Harvard and its 74-52 loss to seventh-place Dartmouth.
Against Harvard, the Tigers folded under the Crimson's pressure defense, turning the ball over 31 times. Against Dartmouth, the Tigers were cold from the first tip, shooting half as well as they did against Lafayette (25 percent) and missing all eight of their three-point attempts in the first half.
If a lack of energy is indeed the reason behind Princeton's most recent losses, the Tigers can count on fan support to get the blood flowing this weekend.
Saturday is National Girls and Women in Sports Day, hosted by the Princeton University Department of Athletics. Last year on this day, the team set an attendance record with 3,067 fans, consisting mostly of admiring young female athletes.
The team, as well as other Princeton varsity athletes, will host stations Natinal Girls and Women in Sports Day. Last year's crowd broke the old Princeton record of 2,192 fans set in 2001.
If a gym full of screaming, adoring fans doesn't get the blood flowing, nothing will.
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