Tigers beat Yale, suffer first Ivy loss

On Saturday night the women's basketball did something that it had not done in over two months' time: it lost to an unranked team.

Princeton charged into this past weekend's action with a six-game winning streak and a 3-0 record in the Ivy League. The Tigers (13-5 overall, 4-1 Ivy League) continued their winning ways to open the team's two-game road trip on Friday by trampling Yale, 53-37, before Brown ended Princeton's streak by defeating the Tigers in a neck-and-neck battle by a score of 49-47.

The loss pushes the Tigers to third in the Ivy League rankings behind the Bears and a Dartmouth team that sits undefeated in league play.

Princeton struggled early against Brown (11-8, 5-1), which led 32-18 at halftime thanks, in part, to five threes compared to zero for Princeton. The Tigers ultimately could not hit a single shot from behind the arc in the contest, despite 12 attempts.

Even though the Tigers' overall shooting percentage was more than 30 percent higher than the Bears', the Tigers had difficulties rebounding, usually one of the team's fortes. Brown outfought Princeton on the boards, 40-30, including 22 offensive rebounds. On the season, the Tigers boast an average of 4.6 more rebounds per contest than their opponents.

"They out-rebounded us and out-hustled us to get those rebounds. Brown deserves a lot of credit for that, especially considering they were the smaller team. As for us, we just didn't come ready to play in the first half," junior forward Casey Lockwood said.

Princeton finally mustered offensive intensity midway through the second half in an ultimately futile rally led by the Tigers' post players, slimming the Bears' lead from nine down to two. Lockwood, sophomore post Meagan Cowher and senior center Becky Brown hit a slew of jumpers and layups and dominated the boards to shift the momentum in the Tigers' favor.

The Tiger control did not last long, though, as a four-minute scoring drought for both teams ensued before Sarah Hayes, Brown's leading scorer of the day with ten points, hit a layup and a jumper. Hayes' clutch performance the previous weekend had led the Bears to squeak a 64-62 win over Harvard and helped earn her League Honor Roll accolades for the week.

Princeton tried to answer Hayes' buckets as Becky Brown hit a jumper with 2:33 left in the game, followed by a Cowher score down low. Unfortunately for the Tigers, two missed shots and a free throw in the final twenty seconds killed any hopes of a comeback win.

Becky Brown's leadership propelled the Tigers into their triumph over Yale (1-17, 0-5) the previous day. With 13 points apiece, Cowher and Brown were the leading scorers for Princeton. The Tigers punished the Bulldogs in the paint, outscoring them 26-18 in the game.

Yale struggled to hit baskets, shooting just 30 percent from the floor and an abysmal 25.9 percent in the second half. Yale's Stephanie Marciano led the team with ten points.

Despite coming out victorious, the Tigers still had to work off some rust as they hit the court after 19 days of respite from competition. The Tigers amassed 25 turnovers in the game, complementing Yale's equally high 24.

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"A lack of mental focus ... in combination with Yale's extended pressure defense, I think was the main contributor to our number of turnovers ... I know that we missed some transition points because of turnovers, and we work on transition situations a lot," Lockwood said.

As the Bears discovered in similar fashion the next day, the key to victory often lies in a team's ability to box out and snag rebounds. Against the Bulldogs, Princeton dominated in that category by grabbing 13 offensive boards and 27 defensive boards on the game, out-rebounding Yale by a 15-board margin overall.

The Tigers first established their lead two and a half minutes into the game, and confidently maintained a buffer, gradually building on the margin throughout the contest. The Tigers' scoring edge reached nine at halftime and climbed as high as eighteen in the second half.