Must-win games in Ivy chase

In sports, teams don't get many second chances — but they do get some, and how they capitalize on them dictates the quality of the squad.

This weekend, with the Ivy championship slipping from the grasp of the fourth-place Tigers, they'll effectively have one last shot to show what they've got. The women's basketball team (10-11 overall, 4-3 Ivy League) now faces another weekend on the road in which it hopes to show that it has learned from its mistakes.

The Tigers will face all three teams that have beaten them this season within the next two weeks. Their first challenge will come in Ithaca, N.Y., where the Tigers play Cornell (9-12, 5-3) tonight at 7 p.m. Cornell is just ahead of Princeton in the league after defeating Brown but falling to Yale last weekend. When the Big Red came to Jadwin in the middle of January, they walked away with a 70-66 victory.

"I am very eager to see how we respond playing them the second time around," head coach Richard Barron said. "Our intensity has been inconsistent this season, and it starts on the defensive end. We have to play with a greater sense of determination and toughness of the defensive end, and we must rebound every single time and pursue the ball with vigor and purpose."

The Tigers' defense hurt them in the last match against Cornell, when even junior forward Meagan Cowher's career-high 35 points could not keep the Tigers on top. Princeton allowed Cornell to hit 51 percent of its shots while making just 38 percent of its own. The defense could not stand against Harvard or Yale last weekend either. The Crimson hit 45 percent of its shots to Princeton's 37 percent and out-rebounded the Tigers 42-36 last Friday. The next day the Big Green hit 51 percent to the Tigers' 31 percent, and it won the rebounding battle 41-29.

Still, Princeton's four-point loss in its last game against Cornell was the smallest deficit in its first round of Ivy games, so it will hopefully be the easiest loss to avenge.

The Tigers cannot look past their Saturday evening foe either, as the Tigers' 79-73 defeat of Columbia (5-17, 1-7) on Jan. 12 was also a relatively close call. The Lions had been within two with just 17 seconds left in the game. Columbia hosts the Tigers after a weekend on the road when the Lions defeated Yale and fell by a small margin to Brown.

"Anyone can beat anyone else in the league this year," Barron said, "and each game you must be prepared and determined."

The nail-biter against the Lions back in January taught Princeton that it must make sure to establish this determined attitude from the opening whistle.

"We've been sobered since the last time we played Cornell and Columbia," sophomore guard Jessica Berry said. "All of our weaknesses have been exposed — going after every board, valuing the basketball and overall intensity."

The Tigers will also need to reinvigorate their offense. Against Dartmouth last weekend only one Tiger, senior forward Casey Lockwood, scored in the double digits. She led the Tigers with 12 points in that game, with Cowher coming in second with nine points.

Against Harvard, Cowher led the offense with 14 points, and only Berry joined her in double digits with 13 points. Before last weekend, Cowher had scored over 20 points in every Ivy game this year.

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A performance from Cowher similar to her first-round games against Cornell and Columbia would break her into the top-15 all-time on the Princeton career scoring list. She is currently 30 points away from 15th place on the list, and Cowher surpassed 30 points against both the Big Red and the Lions in January.

If Cowher can muster the same momentum she had early this season, the Tigers have a great shot at moving up in the rankings. They are just two games behind leader Harvard, who is 6-1 in the league. Dartmouth is second with a record of 5-2.

"At this point, anything can happen," Berry said. "We still have another round of Ivy games to play, and we're going to fight for every one of them."