W. hoops looks to recover in contest with Sacred Heart

After women's basketball's loss to Lehigh on Wednesday night, head coach Richard Barron remarked that his team "played about as poorly as [it] could possibly play."

Struggle as it did, the team lost by only three points to Lehigh. Still, the Tigers (1-3) will need a near-complete turnaround from Wednesday's game for a shot at defeating Sacred Heart (4-1), who they challenge tomorrow afternoon in Fairfield, Conn.

Princeton faces a tough opponent in the Pioneers. Though its one loss, which came at the hands of Maryland, was a 90-49 blowout, Sacred Heart has dominated its other competition. This team has taken each of its four wins by over 10 points in games against Massachusetts, Lafayette and Louisiana-Lafayette. Most recently, the Pioneers easily downed Yale, 79-68.

The Tigers, by contrast, enter Saturday's game after Wednesday's 56-53 loss to Lehigh in a game that came down to the wire.

'A step backwards'

Head coach Richard Barron referred to the Lehigh game as "a step backwards" because Princeton couldn't find its rhythm. Against Sacred Heart the team hopes to start with a clean slate and show its fans it can play better than that.

This weekend, Princeton will see young talent from the other side of the court. The main question will be whether the Tigers can contain freshman Amanda Pape, the only Pioneer in double-digit scoring figures with 18.8 points per game. She has led her team in scoring with over 20 points in three of its five games this season and has been shooting .571 from the field. Only Maryland has been successful in shutting her down, holding her to just seven points when the two teams met on Nov. 28.

"That's going to be a tough matchup," Barron said of Pape. "We'll have [freshman wing] Casey Lockwood and [sophomore wing] Lauren Nestor on her. She struggles to the right — she's left-handed — so we're going to try to force her to the right."

So far, it seems that when Pape has a good game, so does her team. But Sacred Heart isn't entirely a one-woman team. Senior Kate Maher has pulled down 44 rebounds for an average of 8.8 per game, including 11, helping her to a double-double, against Yale. Nicolle Rubino has not been demonstrating the same level of play as she did last year, when she earned Northeast Conference Rookie of the Year honors. Rubino has still stepped up, however, when opponents shut Pape down, leading her team in scoring in two of its games.

But don't count the Tigers out — Princeton has its own young talent. Three Tigers are averaging double-digit points per game, including freshman post Katy Digovich with 15.8, Lockwood with 13.5 and sophomore Becky Brown with 12.0. Lockwood and Digovich also lead the team in rebounding with 8.8 and 5.0 per game, respectively.

"We've got to work on better execution," Barron said. "We need to execute the little things, like screens and cuts, which we didn't do [against Lehigh]."

Princeton will try to penetrate the Pioneer zone defense and cut to the basket, but it will also keep its options open from three-point range, from which the team has been shooting .424.

Sacred Heart's defense has certainly not been impenetrable this season, as it has given up several runs on its way to its four wins. The Pioneers allowed Massachusetts to go on a 17-5 run in their season-opener and let Yale score 15 unanswered points before recovering. In their loss to Maryland, the Terrapins put together two big runs of 13-2 and 23-8.

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Princeton will play without junior guard Karen Bolster on Saturday and for the rest of the season.

"She decided she didn't want to play anymore, and she went on to do other things," Barron said.

Without Bolster, the roster grows even younger: two seniors, ten underclassmen. Even so, Princeton's game remains the same. The team has been depending on Digovich, Brown and Lockwood to carry the team offensively.

Young Tigers, young season. Princeton has plenty of room to grow this year. The team hopes Saturday's game will be less about growing pains and more about the resulting progress.