Tigers win three of five

While most Princeton students used winter break to wind down, the women's basketball team used it to gear up for January's Ivy League games. Princeton (7-8 overall, 1-0 Ivy League) first faced St. Francis at home on Dec. 16 and then took to the road for four straight games. The last of these, against Penn on Jan. 6, marked the beginning of the Ivy League season, which will continue until early March. By the end of break, the Tigers had added three wins and two losses to their record, with the wins coming against Duquesne, Lafayette and league-rival Penn.

The first of the two losses came against St. Francis (5-9) with a final score of 53-54. The Tigers led by a point with 9.3 seconds remaining in the game after a free throw from senior forward Casey Lockwood put the Tigers up 53-52. St. Francis, however, answered back with the winning shot with just 2.1 seconds left in the game.

Sophomore forward Whitney Downs led the Tigers with a career-high 17 points. Neither team showed great accuracy, with Princeton ending the game making 31.7 percent of its shots and the Terriers making 33.3 percent. Still, the Tigers held a nine-point lead halfway through the second half, at which point they went nine minutes, 38 seconds without a field goal, allowing the Terriers to tie up the game.

"We've started to play a bit more consistently," head coach Richard Barron said. "Our transition offense and outside shooting have picked up, and we are showing more toughness. The St. Francis game was a poor performance. We just seemed to be on cruise throughout the game but missed several easy looks."

Princeton's four-game road swing began on a high note with a 62-59 win against Duquesne in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Dec. 22. Playing in her hometown, junior forward Meagan Cowher scored just nine points, her lowest total of the season, but also put up the winning shot.

Duquesne led for most of the game and had a 14-point advantage until two minutes into the second half, when the score was 43-29. With 8:21 remaining in regulation, the Tigers cut the deficit to three with a score of 53-50. The score was tied up at 59 with 3:28 left in the game after two free throws from freshman guard and forward Jillian Schurle. Schurle led Princeton with 12 points in the game, a career-high. The Tigers then capitalized on a Duquesne turnover, with Cowher scoring the winning layup. Princeton shot a season-high 56.3 percent and tied its season-low for turnovers with 14.

"I was very pleased with our response at Duquesne, especially being down double digits in the second half," Barron said. "We showed some great resiliency and confidence in that game. That carried over to our game versus Vanderbilt."

At Nashville, the next stop on its road trip, the Orange and Black lost to No. 12 Vanderbilt in its final game of 2006 on Dec. 30. The final score was 74-89.

The Tigers made 42 percent of their shots, while Vanderbilt (14-2) knocked down 45 percent. The more decisive statistic was the Commodores' 48-35 edge in rebounds. Turnovers also hurt Princeton, helping the Commodores gain a 53-35 lead at the half. The Tigers came out of halftime strong, cutting the deficit to 11 points, making the score 55-44, with 17:38 left in the game. But this was the closest Princeton came to catching up.

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"For 36 minutes of the game, we played dead even with a top-10 team in the country," Barron said. "Unfortunately, we had a four-minute run where we missed open shots and had turnovers that led directly to points for them. That run was the difference in the game."

Cowher tied her season high with 21 points in the game. Schurle tied her own season high, set in the previous game, with 12 points.

The Tigers returned to Pennsylvania to win their first game of the new year, beating Lafayette in Easton, Pa., on Jan. 3. The final score was 79-62.

Princeton took the court by storm, never once giving Lafayette (4-12) the lead and shutting the Leopards out for nearly the first five minutes of the game. The Tigers led by 40-28 going into halftime, and their lead grew to a high of 17 points with 15:20 left in the game. The Leopards could only shrink this lead to nine points, after which Princeton quickly brought its advantage back up to 17. Cowher put up a season-high 27 points to extend Lafayette's losing streak to 11 games. Junior forward Ali Prichard added 17 points, tying her career high. This game put the Tigers' record at 6-8 overall before heading into the Ivy League slate.

Princeton stayed in Philadelphia to get its first back-to-back wins this season, defeating Penn (4-8, 0-1), 78-72, on Jan. 6. The Tigers went on an early 9-0 run to take the lead, and they increased this lead to as much as 13 points in the first half. Princeton led by seven at the half with a score of 42-35. The Tigers out-rebounded the Quakers 21-14 in this half, but the Quakers out-shot the Orange and Black 48.4 percent to 45.9 percent.

The Tigers increased their lead to 15 points again five minutes into the second half but could not put the game away. The Quakers came within four points of Princeton with just 3:16 left in the game, but the Tigers iced the game after a steal by Prichard and a free throw by sophomore guard Jessica Berry gave them a five-point lead with just over a minute left.

While Princeton won on the scoreboard, the stat sheet reveals a close match. The Tigers hit 44.8 percent of their shots to Penn's 44.6 percent. The Tigers had 35 rebounds to the Quakers' 34 and 17 turnovers to the Quakers' 14.

Rebounding has proven to be key to the Tigers' success. Princeton has won all six games this season in which it has won the rebounding battle, and it has a 1-8 record for games in which it has lost it.

The Tigers also built their lead through three pointers, hitting 10 to the Quakers' six, with all but one of these three-pointers coming from the hands of Prichard or Downs. Prichard scored a career-high 20 points. Cowher led the Tigers with 22 points.

After the games against Penn and Lafayette, Cowher was named Women's Basketball Ivy League Player of the Week. She had a combined 49 points in the two games. She is the first Tiger this year to win this award, which she won three times last season. She has been the Tigers' leading scorer in 11 of 15 games this season and the leading rebounder in nine of them.

Though they have gotten off to a good start, the Tigers know they still have much to do.

"The Ivy League is going to be very competitive," Barron said. "Yale has been on a tear recently, Harvard is finally starting to come around and there are so many factors that go into back-to-back games on Ivy weekends. We need a good home run including next weekend with Columbia and Cornell and then to be prepared coming out of exams for Yale and Brown."