Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Women's Basketball Tabbed as Favorite in Ivy League Preseason Media Poll
November 14, 2006 | Women's Basketball
PRINCETON, N.J. -- If those who cover Ivy League women's basketball are prescient with their picks, Princeton will be in the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever.
The Ivy League office announced the results of the preseason media poll Tuesday morning, and 10 of the 16 media members polled said that the Tigers would finish atop the league in March. Each school chose two media members from its market to vote.
The Tigers return three of five starters from a team that came within one game of making the NCAA Tournament last season and have started 1-0 this year with Saturday's win over Wagner. Among the returnees are First-Team All-Ivy junior forward Meagan Cowher, senior captain Casey Lockwood and sophomore point guard Jessica Berry, an all-rookie team pick a year ago. The two new starters, center/forward Ariel Rogers and guard Caitlin O'Neill, started well with Rogers earning a double-double and O'Neill playing a game-high 33 minutes.
Dartmouth, which won a three-way Ivy playoff last year with Brown and Princeton to capture the league's NCAA berth, finished second, earning five first-place votes and 110 poll points, nine fewer than the Tigers.
Harvard earned one first place vote to finish third overall in the balloting, with Brown, Cornell, Penn, Columbia and Yale rounding out the poll.
Princeton has won seven Ivy League titles, but five of them were before the Ivy League gained an NCAA Tournament automatic berth in 1994. Both times since then, in 1999 and 2006, the Tigers ran into Dartmouth in an Ivy playoff after tying with the Big Green in the regular season.
Princeton will continue its season this weekend in Minnesota, playing a two-game tournament. Ivy double round-robin play will begin Jan. 6 in Philadelphia.
Ivy League Preseason Media Poll
1. Princeton (10 firsts), 119 points
2. Dartmouth (5 firsts), 110 points
3. Harvard (1 first), 96 points
4. Brown, 81 points
5. Cornell, 56 points
6. Penn, 44 points
7. Columbia, 37 points
8. Yale, 33 points