Women's Basketball: Hoyas end Tigers' season in NCAA Tournament

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The women’s basketball team lost only four games in the regular season. Each defeat came by single digits, and the Tigers had a chance to win each in the final minute.

But in the last game of their season, their fate was sealed well before the final horn. No. 12-seed Princeton (24-5 overall, 12-2 Ivy League) could not handle a high-octane Georgetown defense in the first half, falling behind 22-5 early and never closing within single digits. The fifth-seeded Hoyas (23-10, 9-7 Big East) got more than enough offense from star guard Sugar Rodgers and cruised to a 65-49 victory.

“To say I’m disappointed would be a gross understatement,” Banghart said. “That was not the version of Princeton basketball I have seen all year. Give all the credit to Georgetown, they got us completely unraveled, but we didn’t look prepared and we backed down a little bit.”

Georgetown advances to face four-seed and regional host University of Maryland, which defeated 13-seed St. Francis (Pa.) earlier in the afternoon, 70-48.

The game started out as a defensive battle, as each team was scoreless in its first three possessions. Junior guard Lauren Edwards opened the scoring with a floater in the lane, but the Tigers could not handle Georgetown’s pressure for long. The Hoyas forced turnovers on three consecutive possessions, scoring nine unanswered points to take control.

Senior guard and co-captain Addie Micir sank a three-pointer to stem the tide, but 5’3” guard Rubylee Wright responded with her second triple of the game, kick-starting another Georgetown run. Moments later, Rodgers stole a pass near halfcourt, pulled up for three and hit nothing but net. On the ensuing possession, Rodgers stole a pass near halfcourt, pulled up for three and hit nothing but net, capping a 13-0 Georgetown run.

The Tigers turned the ball over 14 times in the first half, while Georgetown committed just three miscues. Many of the Hoyas’ steals came from a full-court press, which the Tigers could not handle, to Banghart’s frustration.

“I never thought I would be up here telling you that what beat us was their pressure, because we worked on it for six days,” Banghart said in the postgame press conference. “I want to have manners, so I would say that it was all Georgetown, they played great. But as a basketball coach, I can tell you, we just didn’t execute.”

More than six minutes passed before Georgetown would score another basket, a scoop from the post by forward Adria Crawford, but the Hoyas’ defense did not let Princeton back into the game. A steal and fast-break layup by Edwards and a post-up from sophomore center Meg Bowen provided the Tigers’ only baskets, part of a ten-minute span in which they managed just four points.

Rodgers outscored the entire Princeton team in the first half, 16-14.

“We thought we had a gameplan, we tried to execute that gameplan, and we made some mistakes in the first half,” Micir said. “We were helping off when we shouldn’t have, leaving other people open. We tried to dare her to take contested threes, and she knocked them down, so give her credit for that.”

Early in the second period, sophomore forward Kate Miller scored four points in a one-minute span, the latter two coming on a short pull-up jumper in transition, and Micir sank her second three-pointer. But each time, Georgetown forward Tia Magee answered with a basket of her own.

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After another lull by both teams, a three and a half-minute scoreless stretch, Rodgers hit a deep step-back three to extend the lead to 49-23. The guard, who entered the game shooting just 33.5 percent from distance, made four of nine from beyond the arc and finished with a game-high 26 points.

The Tigers trailed by as many as 26 points in the second half before they found their groove. Princeton reeled off a 10-0 run midway through the period, with Bowen scoring six to lead the charge. The sophomore finished with nine points and five rebounds in 15 minutes of play.

“We started attacking the basket [in the second half]”, Banghart said. “We got to the free throw line. We didn’t turn the ball over. They came out when their backs were against wall and fought, and I’m not sure why they got so shelled up in the beginning.”

Princeton committed only four turnovers in the second half, but allowed the Hoyas to grab nine offensive rebounds after conceding only three in the first period.

The Tigers made 37 percent of their attempts for the game, though they hit just four of 18 three-pointers. Georgetown was only slightly more accurate (40 percent) but attempted 14 more shots, thanks to ten fewer turnovers.

This marks the second consecutive year that the Tigers have been handily defeated by a Big East team in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Last season, sixth-seed St. John’s dropped Princeton by a nearly identical score, 65-47, though the game unfolded much differently – the Tigers matched the Red Storm in every area save for shooting.

For Micir and senior guard Krystal Hill, this year’s loss marked the end of their four-year collegiate careers, which began at the same time that Banghart took over. The Tigers went just 7-23 that season but quickly improved, winning 50 games over the past two years and reaching the NCAA Tournament for the first and second times in program history.

“The saddest thing is…this is the last time I get to play with my teammates,” Micir said through tears after the game. “Only one team gets to have a happy ending, so it’s going to happen either in this round, or the next round, or the round after that, unless you’re one of the top teams in the tournament.”

Banghart also kept the loss in perspective.

“I tried to tell them you just can’t forget [what they accomplished],” Banghart said. “You can’t throw up an egg like this unless you got here, so at least we got here. I told the kids that they have another chance to put themselves in the shoes of Addie and Krystal. There’s no worse thing in the world than to not have another chance.”

“We will get one in this tournament,” she said. “I don’t know when…I know how hard it is, I have a lot of respect for this tournament, but we will get one.”