Critical league games on tap

The Tigers will first head to New Haven, Conn., to take on the Bulldogs. Yale (5-14, 3-3) is in slightly better shape than Princeton, sitting in fifth place in the Ivy League. The Bulldogs also have a streak to snap: They have lost their last three games to Cornell, Harvard and Dartmouth. Last year, Yale finished sixth in the league, two games behind the Tigers.

Yale only has one player, Melissa Colborne, averaging double-digit games, with 15.1 points per game. Yale’s Lindsey Williams has been averaging 6.3 rebounds per game, but as a team the Bulldogs have been out-rebounded by their opponents by about five per game. They have also been less accurate than their opponents, hitting 35.6 percent to their opponents’ 46.8 percent.

“Yale is a young team with mobile posts and quality shooting from long range,” head coach Courtney Banghart said. “They play a unique style of defense, where they face-front the posts and make entry passes very difficult. With [senior forward and co-captain Meagan] Cowher our leading scorer, we have worked on how to incorporate her into our offense against Yale as well as [how] to attack the way they play defense with the dribble.”

The Tigers are shooting and rebounding slightly better than the Bulldogs despite their lesser league record, so the game is definitely winnable.

The Bears (1-19, 0-6) head into the weekend on a 12-game losing streak dating back to the first week of December, when they secured their only win this season against Howard.

Having lost all six of its conference games, Brown sits in eighth place in the league, which is where it ended the season last year after finishing conference play with a 3-11 record. Princeton has a three-game winning streak against the Bears. Two years ago, the Bears finished the season in a three-way tie for first place with Princeton and Dartmouth.

Freshman Sadiea Williams leads Brown’s offense, averaging a paltry 7.2 points per game. Sophomore Ashley Alexander leads the team in rebounds with 5.3 per game.

“Brown is a young team that loves to put the ball on the floor to penetrate hard to the rim,” Banghart said. “It is a difficult place to win on the road.”

Princeton’s offense has been formidable so far this season.

Cowher scored 19 points last Saturday against Columbia, giving her 1,500 career points for fourth place on Princeton’s all-time list, 108 points behind Becky Brown ’06. She is also third on Princeton’s career free-throw list, with last weekend’s seven free throws putting her total at 307.

Junior guard Jessica Berry, who returned from a semester abroad in late December, has scored in the double digits in four of the last five games, with a high of 14 points against Cornell last Friday, while freshman guard Krystal Hill had a career-high 18 points against Cornell. Sophomore guard Jillian Schurle also set a career best against Cornell with 13 points. As a team, the Tigers have turned the ball over a league-low 16.3 times per game and have hit 6.2 three-pointers per game.