For the women's basketball team, the break from classes will serve as a way to get the final kinks out of a machine that hopes to be in contention for an Ivy League title come early March. Over the next three weeks, the Tigers (4-6 overall) will play four non-conference games, culminating in the tipoff of their league schedule at Penn on Saturday, Jan. 6.
As she has done in each game this season, junior forward Meagan Cowher must maintain her high level of offensive production over this stretch of games. Cowher scored a season-high 21 points against Rider on Tuesday night and eclipsed the 800-career-point mark for her career. She has posted reached double digits in scoring in 16 straight games.
Cowher, however, hasn't had to do the job all by herself this year. Senior forward Casey Lockwood averages just over 11 points per game, and junior forward Ali Prichard has been on a tear as of late. Having been inserted in the starting lineup five games ago, Prichard has scored in double digits in three straight games.
While Princeton, led by Cowher's 16.8 points per game, has had no problem scoring the ball this season, it has struggled at times to hold onto it. Turnovers have been the Tigers' Achilles' heel, as the team has had more than 18 turnovers, last season's average, in all but two games. Princeton is 2-4 when registering more turnovers than its opponent and .500 when tallying fewer.
The Tigers will attempt to win back-to-back games for the first time this season on Saturday night against St. Francis (N.Y.) in Jadwin Gym. Coming off a hot shooting performance at Rider, in which the team made 19 of its first 27 field goal attempts, the Tigers will again look to post a big number against the Terriers, who have lost seven of their past eight games. Princeton is 3-0 this season when scoring more than 70 points.
Standing in the way of the hoop, however, will be St. Francis' six-foot, eight-inch, German-born center Katja Bavendam, who leads the team in rebounds with 9.2 per game and is second on the team in scoring with 14.8 points per game. Nationally, Bavendam ranks 59th in the nation in rebounding, 66th in field goal percentage at .529 and 13th in blocked shots with 2.8 per game.
After finishing up the final game of a three-game home stand on Saturday, Princeton will hit the road at the end of December and early January as it travels to Duquesne, Vanderbilt, Lafayette and Penn.
The Dukes (5-5), a perennial Atlantic 10 Conference contender, will be coming off a two-week hiatus when the Tigers travel to Pittsburgh, Pa., on Dec. 22 to play the first contest of Duquesne's six-game home stand. Duquesne ranks 23rd of all the NCAA Division I schools for scoring defense, giving up under 55 points per game on average.
The following weekend, Princeton embarks on another plane trip, its third of the season, to face the South Eastern Conference's Vanderbilt Commodores in Nashville. The Commodores (8-1), ranked 11th in the nation after starting the season 8-0, just saw their undefeated record broken last weekend against No. 4 Duke. Princeton will have to keep its collective eye on forward Carla Thomas, who ranks second in the SEC in scoring with 19.3 points per game.
The Leopards of Lafayette (3-7), the Tigers' first opponent in the new year and final non-conference opponent of the season, sit near the bottom of the Patriot League standings and are coming off a disappointing loss to Princeton's Ivy League rival Penn, 78-74. Though the Leopards have struggled thus far, the team does lead its league in rebounding defense and field goal percentage, shooting just over 43 percent per game from the field. Like Princeton, Lafayette has struggled in the turnover department, committing at least 20 turnovers in every game but one.
All of these games, however, will just serve as preparation for what will prove to be a Saturday night showdown at the Palestra in Philadelphia. Last season, the Tigers swept the season series, destroying the Quakers in an 18-point thumping on the road. These two Ivy League rivals have two opponents in common this season. Both Princeton and Penn have handily beaten Lehigh and Rider.
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