W. hoops faces toughest competition of season

Could it happen again?

Earlier this season, when the women's basketball team (8-13 overall, 3-4 Ivy League) faced Dartmouth (11-10, 5-3) and Harvard (16-4, 8-0) in one weekend, it lost by a combined total of 58 points.

Last year, the Tigers beat Harvard before the Crimson went on to win the Ivy League Title. Once again Harvard is No. 1 in the league and undefeated in the Ivies this year. Princeton will attempt to spoil the Crimson's otherwise perfect league record for a second year in a row.

This weekend will decide whether No. 5 Princeton will repeat this season's embarrassment by Harvard and No. 3 Dartmouth, or if it can repeat last year's victories over those favored teams and improve its own Ivy League status.

As always, the key will be consistency, something neither the Tigers nor the rest of the Ivy League (except maybe undefeated Harvard) have been able to claim this season.

The Ivy League race has been so inconsistent that technically there is not even a single team in last place right now — Yale and Cornell both hold the seventh spot with seven losses and 1 win each.

No. 6 Columbia has won the same number of games as Princeton (including the one against Princeton two weeks ago) but holds the lower spot because of a single extra loss. And Penn, which holds fourth place above Princeton, can boast of a slightly better record. Nevertheless, they quaked before the Tigers in both teams' first Ivy game of the year.

Here's a quick rundown of what Princeton will be up against this weekend:

Dartmouth

It took the Big Green three losses in a row early in the season — two, not surprisingly, against Harvard — to find its momentum, but it is now on a five-game winning streak. The team will not give the Tigers any green lights tonight when they face off in Jadwin.

Much of Dartmouth's success this year can be attributed to the fact that it returns all five of last year's starters to the lineup. Senior scoring and rebounding leader Katherine Hanks averages 18.4 points and 9.2 rebounds per game.

Last year, what made Dartmouth a particularly interesting opponent for Princeton — a team of excellent three-point shooters who like to keep the ball spread out on the perimeter — is that quite the opposite was true for the Big Green, which was strongest in the frontcourt and suffered from a much thinner backcourt presence. Hoping to solve the problem, the coaches recruited three freshman guards to the 2002-03 lineup who have lived up to their promise: when the two teams last played, rookie Angela Soriaga scored a game-high of 17 points in 35 minutes of playing time.

"Against Dartmouth, they simply out-hustled and outworked us," head coach Richard Barron said. "They were much more aggressive, ran the floor hard, and played a much more physical game than we did."

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

But in the last couple weeks, the Tigers have in turn improved their frontcourt presence, particularly with outstanding efforts by freshman center Rebecca Brown and junior post Kelly Schaeffer.

"Becky Brown and Kelly Schaeffer have really asserted themselves over the past couple weeks," Barron said.

Harvard

At the beginning of the season, Barron predicted that Harvard would be the team to beat. He was right.

The last time Harvard lost a game was way back on Dec. 21 against Rutgers, and since then it has charged through the league like a bull after a Crimson flag.

Junior forward Hana Peljto, who was unanimously voted 2001-02 Ivy League Player of the Year, was just renominated for Player of the Week after scoring a combined total of 61 points against Columbia and Cornell last weekend.

With Harvard again being the team to beat this year Princeton is placed in the familiar position of trying to topple a team marching toward another Ivy crown.

Barron and the Tigers, in fact, are not even thinking about Harvard yet. They have to get by the Big Green first.

"In my opinion," Barron said, "these are the two most talented teams in the league. The win over Harvard was a great moment for our team last year. However, we can't look ahead to Harvard. We play Dartmouth first and right now, that is the most important game on our schedule."