Women's Basketball: Young team sets sights on Ivy title

With just four upperclassman players and their smallest roster in more than five years, the women’s basketball team has all the characteristics of a squad entering a rebuilding year. Nevertheless, the Tigers are certainly excited about the upcoming season.

“This team is extremely talented, and by no means is it out of reach to say that we do have the potential to win the league,” senior center and co-captain Cheryl Stevens said. “An Ivy League championship is absolutely our team goal.”

Even head coach Courtney Banghart seems excited about this year’s possibilities.

“What we have in that freshman class is a ton of talent,” Banghart said. “Those kids make plays. No matter what you are running, it takes time for a new group to play together, and the fact that we have real playmakers in the freshman class puts us a little bit ahead of last year.”

Part of the excitement stems from the fact that, despite the youth of the team, the four incoming freshmen have shown an enormous amount of potential. This gives the Tigers some depth at every spot on the floor.

“We have prided ourselves in the defensive end,” Banghart said. “So far in scrimmages, we’ve been a very hard team to score on, and that has triggered our offense. I think we are still trying to figure out who we are, but our backbone is going to be our defense.”

Last year, the Tigers’ defense finished second in the league, and it returns its best defensive player, sophomore center Devona Allgood, who had a team-high 6.9 rebounds per game and posted 44 blocks.

Augmenting the strength at center is Stevens, whose height and aggressiveness, combined with her experience, add strength to plays made in the paint.

Outside of Allgood and Stevens, however, Princeton will be relying on a lot of less experienced players to step up in the post, among them freshman guard Niveen Rasheed.

“Niveen is tremendous,” Banghart said. “The thing that makes Niveen exciting is that she competes so hard. The kid does whatever it takes to win, and that pervades in every practice and every game. The kid competes like no other, is also wildly athletic and can score in a million different ways. I think she is going to be a tough matchup for a lot of Ivy League people.”

Despite their rookie status, both Rasheed and guard Kate Miller will likely see a lot of playing time at the power forward position early in the season. The 12-person roster gives them a chance to become playmakers — something that is true for all of the freshmen.

“We are just so excited to be part of this team,” Rasheed said. “We didn’t go through what [the returners] went through last year with the close losses, so we are sort of fresh, and we have all of this positive energy, and we just want to win. We don’t doubt our team. When [senior point guard and co-captain] Tani Brown tells us we want to win, then we think, ‘Well, we want to win.’ We just have so much hope, and hopefully we can share that with the rest of the team.”

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The freshmen are certainly a talented group, and they will get hands-on experience in the Ancient Eight matchups.

“I think that there is no substitute for experience, especially at an Ivy League school that has the academic component,” Banghart said. “We are ahead of where we were last year, but we are young, so there are going to be a lot of unforeseen challenges. For seniors and juniors, you know what to expect. They understand the rhythm of the season, they’ve played in half the gyms before, whereas our freshmen haven’t even been on a road trip yet. They haven’t had to play through exams, they haven’t had to play through having three midterms in a day, so I don’t know how they are going to react to that.”

With a freshman class that still has much to learn, the leadership of the four upperclassmen will be crucial.

“This is definitely the least amount of experience we’ve had since I’ve been here,” Stevens said. “But this freshman class are really fast learners, and we are clicking really well, so I’m not worried about it at all. Tani and I try to lead by example, and I think they are picking it all up.”

Paramount to the learning process for the freshmen is Brown, who will not only need to teach the rookies to handle themselves on and off the court, but will also need to play dominantly in her role as point guard.

One of three possible starters at the position, Brown will get the game running in transition while at the same time adding a defensive edge to the spot.

Sophomore Laura Johnson returns to the team, and though she only started one game last season, she played in every match and demonstrated her ability to score in the position.

Rounding out the trio is freshman Lauren Polansky, who started in Princeton’s two preseason scrimmages and has displayed athleticism and an ability lead the offense.

All three point guards bring a slightly different flavor to the position, and fans of the Orange and Black will likely see time split among these players.

“Right now, no one person has emerged,” Banghart said. “They each provide a pretty unique skill set from each other, and I would say that position is really committee-based. I’m not even sure we will have a consistent starter at that position.”

While youth will dominate at most positions, there is one spot that will likely be the strongest and most exciting aspect of the Tigers’ team: the wing. Junior guard Addie Micir has started since she arrived at Princeton, and she led all Tigers with 11.8 shots per game and .367 shooting from three-point range. Adding to Micir’s strength is sophomore Lauren Edwards, who earned Ivy rookie team honors and averaged 9.6 points per game last season.

While defense may be the Tigers’ strength this season, the power of Micir and Edwards at the wing, along with Allgood at center, guarantees that Princeton will have a potent offense.

As confident as the Tiger squad may be in its own abilities, the rest of the basketball community seems to be a bit more skeptical: The team was picked to finish third in the preseason poll.

But not even that fact can keep the confident Princeton squad down.

“It’s kind of exciting [to be picked to finish third],” Rasheed said. “If you go in No. 1, you are kind of cocky. But as No. 3, the preseason [poll respondents] picked us and they’ve never seen us play, so we can go in as the underdog and just take the championship.”