It was the kind of win that just made everything seem right for the struggling women's basketball team.
On Friday night, Princeton (7-12 overall, 2-3 Ivy League) fell 75-66 to Columbia (10-8 overall, 3-2 Ivy League). The next night, the Tigers overcame a 37-26 halftime deficit to defeat Cornell (7-12, 1-5), 66-63, while also snapping a three-game losing streak in front of 3,000 screaming fans at Jadwin Gymnasium. Most of the fans were young, aspiring female athletes who had come out for National Girls and Women in Sports Day.
"It was great," freshman post Rebecca Brown said. "After the game, when we had our little huddle in the center of the court, everyone was beaming. We got to sign autographs after the game for about an hour. It's a relief that we finally put everything together and fought back for the victory."
Cornell seeing red
The first half against Cornell did not start well for the Tigers. After Princeton scored the first two points of the game, Cornell leaped ahead, scoring 12 of the next 15 points. The Tigers had trouble on the boards, allowing Cornell's Dani Aretino to grab five offensive rebounds in the early part of the first half.
Largely thanks to the sharp shooting of junior guard Kelly Schaeffer, who tallied nine points in the first half, the Tigers managed to fight back and tie the game at 15. Cornell, however, then pulled away once again with an 11-2 run. The two teams then matched score for score until the half, with Cornell taking a 37-26 advantage.
"We just knew that we had to rebound better," senior captain and forward Maureen Lane said. "We were giving them too many opportunities on the defensive end."
Indeed, though the team was shooting a respectable 44 percent from the field, it was rebounds that were killing the Tigers. Cornell owned Princeton on the boards in the first half, outrebounding the Tigers by a 25-10 margin.
In the second half, the Tigers came out determined to take the win away from the Big Red.
"We all recognized that we needed to take it one possession at a time," Brown said. "We only made something like three turnovers in the second half, which is a huge improvement on our previous performances."
The Big Red held its halftime lead for the first six minutes of second-half play, with both teams finding an offensive rhythm.
At this point, the Tigers began to chip away slowly at the Cornell lead, using a 13-5 run to come within one point of the Big Red, 51-50. Cornell held Princeton off for a little longer, but with two minutes left, the Tigers took the 61-59 lead off of Brown's layup. Schaeffer would score once more before the Tigers came through with the 66-63 victory.
Performance anxiety
Princeton's Friday night performance against Columbia was less remarkable than its play against Cornell. Columbia was evenly matched with Princeton, which was apparent in the closeness of the score for nearly the entire game. Last April, the Lions skirted by the Tigers with a 73-72 win.
The Lions' lead increased to as many as four points in the first eight minutes before the Tigers tied the game at 13 with Brown's two charity-stripe points. The score would be tied again at 19 and 21 points for each team, before Columbia began opening up a little bit of a lead.
With ten seconds left in the half, Columbia's Susan Altman hit a three pointer to give the Lions a 33-26 lead, the largest of the game up to that point. Junior guard Mary Cate Opila, however, would not let the Lions have the last word, sinking a two-point buzzer-beater to end the half.
Both teams shot over 50 percent from the field in the first half.
Columbia held the lead for most of the second half, but the Tigers threatened to take the lead, tying the game with an 8-2 run with eight minutes, 20 seconds left in the game. Just as quickly as the Tigers came back to tie, the Lions leapt ahead again on a 14-5 run. The Lions held the Tigers back for the remainder of the game, going on to the 75-66 win.
"[The problem] was the execution," Brown said. "Our loss at Columbia was mostly us, we were beating ourselves."
Princeton's 25 turnovers in the contest is proof of this failure to execute.
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