Forty-eight hours after being snubbed for a spot in the National Invitation Tournament, Princeton beat Evansville 95-86 to keep its season alive in the College Basketball Invitational. Princeton will now travel to face Pittsburgh on Monday night in the second round of the 16-team tournament. The Panthers (18-16) advanced by throttling Wofford 81-63, as they used a 16-0 first-half run on the path to victory.
Senior epeeist Eunice Chan is co-captain of the women’s fencing team, which swept its opponents in the Ivy League Championship earlier last month. The fencing team is gearing up for the NCAA Championship in Columbus, Ohio, but between preparation and her thesis, Chan took the time to sit down with the ‘Prince’ to talk about the different weapons in fencing compeition, the best team chants, her love for Greece and her favorite word.
Behind several quick scoring runs, the men’s lacrosse team picked up its second win over a top-20 team this season, defeating No. 13 Villanova 14-8 on Tuesday evening. With a strong record and even stronger goal differential against a difficult slate of opponents, the No. 14 Tigers appear to be in good shape entering Ivy League play this weekend.
On what would have normally been a foreboding first day of midterms week, the women’s basketball team was instead in a celebratory mood. On Monday afternoon, the Tigers learned they were ranked No. 24 in the national Associated Press poll, the first top-25 ranking ever for an Ivy League team. Hours later, they were placed as a No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the highest seeding in conference history.
The baseball team was swept this weekend, managing to score only three runs in a three-game series. Under these circumstances, a little pessimism might be expected, but that’s not how the Tigers say they feel.
After dropping two close games to non-conference opponents last week, the women’s lacrosse team dominated its Ivy League opener on Saturday afternoon against Brown. The No. 17 Tigers historically have a strong record in the series, and the 18-8 victory over the weekend was their 22nd consecutive win against the Bears.
When junior first baseman Alex Peyton stepped up to the plate in the first inning against Maryland pitcher Lexi Carroll on Saturday afternoon with the bases loaded, she only had one thing on her mind — to put the ball in play. The junior did more than that, however, using of the strength in her 5-foot-10-inch frame to pull the first pitch she saw over the fence, giving Princeton (2-7) a 4-0 lead over the Terrapins.
On Monday afternoon, the women’s basketball team debuted in the AP Top 25 poll with a No. 24 ranking, becoming the first Ivy League team ever to be listed in a national poll. Hours later, the Tigers learned their NCAA Tournament draw: Princeton will face Kansas State in Bridgeport, Conn., at 11:20 a.m. Saturday.
For the second consecutive year, the men’s and women’s fencing teams will likely have the maximum 12 competitors at the NCAA Championships. Princeton filled 11 slots, plus five alternates, at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic/South Regional on Saturday, with three fencers winning individual titles.
The No. 14 men’s lacrosse team dropped a nail-biting 9-8 game in the Konica Minolta Face-Off Classic against No. 8 North Carolina this weekend, eight days after losing 10-8 to No. 2 John Hopkins. The pair of heartbreaking defeats leaves the Tigers, who are averaging over 10 goals per game this season while only allowing eight, with an underwhelming 2-2 record.
For the men’s basketball team, a victory over Penn last week did not mean the end of the season. After it was not selected to compete in the National Invitation Tournament on Sunday night, Princeton accepted an invitation to play in the College Basketball Invitational. The Tigers will visit the University of Evansville at 8 p.m. on Tuesday night for their first-round game.
In a weekend that was critical to the EIVA standings, the men’s volleyball team lost to both the New Jersey Institute of Technology and George Mason. The defeats drop the Tigers (6-7 overall, 5-5 EIVA) into fifth place, putting their postseason hopes in a precarious position, as only the top four finishers in the eight-team EIVA will make the playoffs.
Going into the bell lap of the NCAA mile championship final, junior Peter Callahan sat comfortably in eighth place. After a relatively slow and tactical first half, the race was shaping up to favor Callahan and his devastating kick. At the front of the bunched pack, Chris O’Hare of Tulsa and Miles Batty of BYU began to move, spurring the star-studded field of sub-four minute milers into high gear. Driving forward, Callahan struggled to find an opening in the crowd before finally moving out into the outside lanes off of the final turn and sprinted to a sixth-place finish and his first All-American honor.
Competing in the final races of the indoor season last weekend, the men’s and women’s track teams continued to wipe more records off the books. The women’s team went to the Eastern College Athletic Conference championships in Massachusetts, while a few select athletes from the men’s team traveled to the Columbia and Notre Dame last-chance NCAA qualifying meets.
The baseball team doesn’t shy away from competition.Good thing, since the Tigers (2-2) will be taking on the two-time reigning national champions this weekend. Princeton is heading down to No. 2 South Carolina for a three-game series against the Gamecocks (10-1), starting tonight at 7 p.m. The Gamecocks will undoubtedly be the top competition for the Tigers this season, but they say that they remain undaunted.
Princeton’s No. 14 men’s lacrosse team will travel to Baltimore this weekend to take on No. 8 North Carolina in the Konica Minolta Face-Off Classic. The Tigers (2-1) are looking to rebound from a heartbreaking 10-8 loss against a strong No. 2 Johns Hopkins squad and maintain a winning record. Despite the tough loss, Princeton has looked impressive in 2012 and will need another solid performance against the Tar Heels (4-2) to confirm the increasingly apparent notion that it has improved dramatically from last season.
Brown (2-1 overall, 1-0 Ivy League) will host the women’s lacrosse team on Saturday afternoon in Providence, R.I. Both the Bears and No. 20 Princeton (1-2) will be participating in their fourth contest of the year, but this weekend will open conference play for the Tigers. Princeton’s conference and non-conference schedule is highly integrated, however, and it will continue playing non-conference games through late April. This is the third consecutive season that the Tigers have opened Ivy League play against Brown. The Bears already began their Ivy League games with a victory over Columbia this past Saturday.
For many new and inexperienced fans of men’s lacrosse, the strategy of the game is often compared to basketball. The offense will settle a possession around the goal and pass while moving in complex patterns to find an opening for a goal.However, unlike basketball, scoring does not necessitate that the opposing team gets the ball. In lacrosse, after each score the two teams must fight for the next possession in a specialized ritual called the face-off. A face-off occurs at the beginning of every quarter and after each goal, and in a typical game a team can expect to face-off about 20 times.
Two players on the men’s basketball team were named to the 2012 All-Ivy team. Junior forward Ian Hummer — who leads the Tigers in scoring, rebounds and blocks — was a unanimous selection to the All-Ivy first team. Senior guard Doug Davis was named to the second team.