Princeton University Athletics
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Princeton Women's Basketball Travels to Volunteer State to Face No. 1 Tennessee on Tuesday
December 16, 2005 | Women's Basketball
Dec. 16, 2005
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A tough task: Princeton heads to Knoxville, Tenn., to face the undefeated Tennessee Lady Volunteers, ranked No. 1 in the nation in both the Associated Press poll and the USA Today/ESPN coaches' poll.
A good start: At 6-3, Princeton is off to its best nine-game start since the 1995-96 season when the team was 7-2 through nine games.
Trouble with the SEC: Princeton is 0-5 all-time against Southeastern Conference schools. The Tigers are 0-2 against Arkansas and 0-1 each against Florida, LSU and Vanderbilt. The last time Princeton played an SEC school was on Dec. 21, 1999, in an 85-30 loss to Vandy in Honolulu.
Welcome home!: A few Princetonians have ties in the southeast. Becky Brown and Whitney Downs are from Nashville, Tenn., and Shelly Slemp is from southwestern Virginia, just a couple hours from Knoxville. Head Coach Richard Barron went to middle school and high school in Knoxville, coached at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., and his family still resides in Knoxville.
The center of attention: Senior center Becky Brown, who led the league in shooting percentage and rebounding when the statistics were released earlier this week, has been instrumental in Princeton's fast start this year. She is currently shooting .620 and pulling down 8.6 boards a game. Showing the importance of her teammates, however, the Tigers are 2-0 when Brown scores less than 10 points. More SEC: The Princeton-Tennessee game is just the second Ivy-SEC matchup of the women's basketball season and first on an SEC team's home floor. On Nov. 26, Brown lost to Mississippi 56-47 at a tournament hosted by the University of Rhode Island.
Against the Volunteer State: Princeton is 1-1 all-time against teams from Tennessee and will be playing its third game in the Volunteer State including a two-game tournament at Vanderbilt two years ago. Three games into the 2003-04 season, Barron's squad topped Tennessee-Martin of the Ohio Valley Conference, 92-74. UT-Martin is also the alma mater of Tennessee Head Coach Pat Summitt. The first meeting between Princeton and a Volunteer State team was the Vanderbilt game in Hawaii six years ago.
On the Vols: Tennesee is led by 5-10 senior guard Shanna Zolman and 6-3 redshirt freshman forward Candace Parker. Zolman has a team-high 16.7 points per game while Parker is right behind at 16.4 ppg with a team-best 9.4 ppg. Parker is also the team's leader in field-goal percentage among regular shooters at 54.3 percent. She first came on the national scene by winning the slam dunk contest at the McDonald's High School All-America game in March 2004, though a highly anticipated dunk in a Tennessee uniform is yet to come.
More dunk: The rarity of the slam dunk in women's college basketball is plain when it's a note that a dunk in a women's game has occurred at all. Tennessee became a part of that history when former Lady Vol Michelle Snow became the third woman to dunk in a college game in Nov. 25, 2000, making national highlight reels. According to WNBA.com, West Virginia's Georgeann Wells became the first woman to dunk in a game during the 1984-85 season, and Charlotte Smith did so for N.C. State 10 years later.
See `em while you can: Princeton has two home games left before a five-game road swing to start the Ivy season. The Tigers host Fairleigh Dickinson on Dec. 30 and Lafayette on Jan. 3. After that, Princeton does not play in Jadwin Gym again until Feb. 10.
Chart climber: On Wednesday night at Rider, Becky Brown scored seven points to move her past Ellen Tomasiewicz (1978-82) into sixth place on the all-time Princeton scoring list with 1,281 points. With another 10 points, Brown will move past Ellen DeVoe (1982-86) into fifth place.
O-Beee for threee: Ranked second in the Ivy League with 2.38 three-pointers made per game heading into the week, senior Katy O'Brien stands seventh with 149 buckets from beyond the arc in her career. She co-led the Tigers with 14 points on Sunday against Rutgers and had another 14 against Rider to mark her fourth double-digit scoring game. The Tigers are 3-1 when O'Brien drops in at least 10 points, with the lone loss coming to No. 6/7 Rutgers.
Keep an eye on that ball: The Tigers rank number one in the Ivy League in steals per game with 10.3, ahead of Brown's 10.25 per game. Princeton upped that on Wednesday with 13 picks against Rider. All five of Princeton's regular starters have at least 11 steals this year, with Casey Lockwood's 18 (2.0 per game) and Jessica Berry's 17 (1.9 per game) leading the team. Cowher had a game-high four steals Wednesday.
More Berry: Just a freshman, Jessica Berry has quickly become an important cog in the Princeton offense. She averages 10.4 points per game, ranks second in the league in assists at 5.2 per game, and carries an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.38 helpers for each giveaway. That's good for fifth in the league. She scored 30 points, just one off the Princeton freshman record, against St. Mary's on Nov. 25, earning Ivy League Rookie of the Week honors.
Cowher power: Sophomore Meagan Cowher has scored a double-digit number of points in seven of the last eight games, including a season second-best 19 against Rider. She had 25 against Central Florida in the 91-87 shootout in California last month. The team is 5-1 when she scores more than 10 points, with the lone loss coming to No. 6/7 Rutgers.
All in: In five games this season, including against Rider, every dressed Tiger has seen floor time. Princeton has won all five of those games.
Broadcast info: The Tennessee game will not be broadcast online, though fans will be able to follow the contest on collegesports.com's Gametracker. Click on the Gametracker link next to the Tennessee game to find the up-to-the-minute score and statistics. Online broadcasts of Princeton women's basketball will resume with the Dec. 28 game at Mt. St. Mary's with Derek Jones on the call.
It's TV time: Five games this season are scheduled to be shown via local cable provider Patriot Media on the Patriot 8 channel. The Nov. 22 game vs. Lehigh was shown locally, as was the Dec. 11 game against Rutgers. Next up is the Jan. 3 game vs. Lafayette, plus the Feb. 10 game vs. Harvard and the Yale game on Mar. 4.
Injury report: Healthy through its first five games, Princeton had its first major injury of the season on Dec. 3 when junior Elyse Umeda went down with a torn ACL. She will miss the rest of the season.
Head Coach Richard Barron: In his fifth season, Princeton head coach Richard Barron stands fourth on the school's wins list. With 46 wins, he is behind Liz Feeley's 68 wins from 1995-2000, Pat Walsh's 72 wins from 1974-79, and Joan Kowalik's 163 wins from 1984-95.
Looking ahead: Princeton has a week-long break between games after its meeting with the Lady Vols. On Wednesday, Dec. 28, Princeton visits Mt. St. Mary's. The Tigers won the only series meeting, 79-58, last year at Jadwin Gym. Mt. St. Mary's stands at 3-3 with two games in Mexico this weekend.