On Friday night, senior guard and co-captain Addie Micir led the Tigers to a 70-48 victory over Brown at Providence with 18 points, all from behind the arc. Despite a rough first half, Princeton relied on tight defense and a second-half spark by junior guard Lauren Edwards to pull off a 52-37 win over Yale in New Haven.
“This was a really big weekend for us,” head coach Courtney Banghart said. “We were coming off 20 days off, it was our first back-to-back, we’re playing without Niveen, and Brown and Yale is always a tough trip.”
Micir wasted no time in proving that she was not rusty, despite the long layoff. On the first possession of the game, just 14 seconds in, she hit her first of six three-pointers off an assist from sophomore forward Kate Miller.
Junior center Devona Allgood followed with a layup, but the Bears quickly found their rhythm. Riding back-to-back three-pointers by Lindsay Nickel, Brown went on a 9-0 run and regained control six minutes into the half. Edwards followed with three of her own for Princeton, however, and Brown never regained the lead. Paced by Micir’s 6-10 shooting from behind the arc, the Tigers finished the second half on an 18-8 run and never looked back.
“It’s just one of those things where your teammates find you with open shots, and you’re able to knock them down,” Micir said. “We moved the ball around, a lot of people got touches and a lot of people got shots up. It was a nice to get back on the court with a good solid win.”
While their defense did limit the Bears’ scoring to fewer than 50 points, it was the Tigers’ offense that stood out most in Providence. It marked the seventh time this season that Princeton scored 70 points or more, and the offense functioned much more fluidly than in the Tigers’ other two Ivy League games. They nailed 26 of 60 field goal attempts, including a remarkable 10 of 21 from behind the arc. Princeton also shared the ball effectively, recording 16 assists, including four by junior guard Laura Johnson. Micir, Edwards and Allgood all scored in double figures and freshman guard Alex Rogers added eight points in just 13 minutes.
“Our transition game was good,” Banghart said of her team’s offensive success against Brown, especially compared with the game against Yale. “We used our inside-out attack a little bit better.”
But just one day after their offense allowed them to control the game for the greater part of 40 minutes, the Tigers found themselves relying on getting stops in order to maintain their lead against Yale. The first half very much resembled the Penn game — a back-and-forth matchup featuring ties and lead changes in which Princeton was uncharacteristically unable to break away early. Led by forward Mady Gobrecht’s 11 first-half points, the Bulldogs maintained the lead throughout most of a period that contained three ties and four lead changes. Allgood and Micir were able to keep the Tigers in the game with 5-6 shooting in the first half, but Yale walked into the locker room with a 22-20 lead.
After the Tigers regained the lead six minutes into the second period, they were able to hold onto it by limiting Yale to a mere 15 second-half points on just four successful field goals.
“Defense is just about working hard and playing together as a team,” Edwards said. “You can’t just have four people playing at a time on defense; it’s an entire team effort. Communication was a big part of it, and it was good to see that on the court after 20 days off.”
Edwards led Princeton’s comeback with 15 second-half points on 6-12 shooting.
“She’s patient with her attack,” Banghart said of Edwards. “In the second half she mixed her patience with aggressiveness.”
The Tigers resume league play at perennial league powers Harvard and Dartmouth next weekend.
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