Since clinching the outright Ivy League championship on March 6, the women’s basketball team has been anxiously awaiting its placement in the NCAA tournament. The brackets were finally revealed on Monday evening, and the Tigers will be traveling south. Princeton earned a No. 11 seed and will face No. 6 St. John’s in Tallahassee, Fla., at 12:20 p.m. on Saturday, March 20.
This will be Princeton’s first NCAA tournament appearance in program history. The Tigers (26-2 overall, 14-0 Ivy League) received the highest seeding in Ivy League history — no team from the conference has previously been ranked higher than No. 13. Only one Ancient Eight team has ever won a tournament game: Harvard in 1998, when the Crimson became the first and only No. 16 seed in either the men’s or women’s bracket to defeat a No. 1 seed.
But the Tigers will not be an easy opponent for St. John’s (24-6). Princeton has won 21 consecutive games, the third-longest such streak in the country, behind only No. 1 Connecticut and No. 2 Stanford. Each of the Tigers’ victories during this stretch has come by a double-digit margin, and they averaged to outscore their Ivy League opponents by 21 points per game during their perfect season. Princeton received the most votes of any team outside the top 25 in Monday’s ESPN/USA Today Poll and also earned votes in the AP Top 25 Poll.
The Red Storm finished tied for fourth in the difficult Big East with a 12-4 record and lost to Notre Dame in the conference tournament quarterfinals. St. John’s is ranked No. 15 in the AP Top 25 and No. 17 in the ESPN/USA Today polls, and is No. 18 in the RPI, according to RealTimeRPI.com. The Red Storm is paced by a pair of 6-1 underclassmen, Da’Shena Stevens and Shenneika Smith, who average a combined 27.2 points per game.
Princeton shares one common opponent with St. John’s: The Red Storm defeated Rutgers, 60-52, while the Tigers dropped a 60-50 contest at home to the Scarlet Knights. Princeton will be facing another team without much postseason experience, as St. John’s is in the tournament for only the second time in 22 years.
Princeton’s game may be aired on ESPN2, and all tournament games will be shown on ESPN360.com. If the Tigers win their first game, they will play the winner of No. 3-seed Florida State (26-5) and No. 14-seed Louisiana Tech (23-8) in the second round. The Seminoles and the Lady Techsters play at Tallahassee immediately after Princeton, and the second-round game will be at the same site on Monday, March 22. Princeton was seeded in the Dayton Region, which also features No. 1 Connecticut and No. 2 Ohio State.
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