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Princeton University
Penn
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Players Mentioned
Ivy Champs: Cowher's 20 Leads Women's Hoops to Win over Penn, Share of League Title
March 07, 2006 | Women's Basketball
March 7, 2006
Box Score
PRINCETON, N.J. - Nine of Meagan Cowher's 20 points led the Princeton women's basketball team (21-6, 12-2 Ivy) on a 9-0 run in the second half that turned a three-point lead into a 12-point advantage over Penn (5-22, 3-11) on Tuesday night at Jadwin Gym. From there, the Tigers cruised to a 67-55 win and a share of the Ivy League championship. And while team success was the goal, the Tigers were also able to crown an individual champion as Becky Brown got the 16 points she needed for the Ivy League scoring title.
The win, coupled with Dartmouth's 76-55 win over Harvard on Tuesday, leaves the Tigers and Big Green at the top of the Ivy League in a three-way tie with Brown. It is the first three-way tie in Ivy women's basketball history. Princeton also won a random coin draw held at halftime of the men's Penn-Princeton game on ESPNU that allowed the Tigers to play on Sunday at 2 p.m. at Yale for the league's NCAA Tournament bid against the winner of a Brown-Dartmouth game to be held on Friday night at Yale.
The win also made program history, breaking the 20-win record held by the 1988 and 1996 teams and the 11-win Ivy record set by the '87, '88 and '99 teams. It was also the first time Princeton has won seven straight Ivy games.
Brown became Princeton's first Ivy scoring champion since Sandi Bittler '90 in 1988 on a layup with 2:06 to go in the game, giving the Tigers a 66-53 lead. That came after the 9-0 run that deflated Penn and all but guaranteed that Princeton's season would continue into the league playoff. The run began when Cowher hit a shot with 8:19 to go that expanded Princeton's lead from three to five. Then came four more points from the field followed by a trio of free throws, and with 4:13 left, Penn had been held without a point for four-and-a-half minutes and the Tigers had opened a 12-point lead. The advantage never got lower than 11 the rest of the way. In the first half, Princeton never led by more than six, a margin the Tigers earned courtesy of an Ali Prichard layup and a pair of free throws by Katy O'Brien inside the final minute to give Princeton a 35-29 lead heading into the locker room.
Just as in the first meeting between the two, the Tigers benefited from Penn committing fouls in the shooting lane, leading to 10 more Princeton free-throw opportunities than had the Quakers. Princeton converted 18 of those to 11 for Penn. The Tigers also outrebounded Penn 25-14 in the second half and 39-27 for the game. Princeton outshot Penn 44.2 percent to 38.5 percent on the night.
While Joey Rhoads had a game-high 25 points, Princeton held the Ivy League's rebounding champion, Penn center Jennifer Fleischer, to six boards, below her season average of 9.8 entering the game. Brown and Casey Lockwood each had a game-high nine rebounds. Behind Cowher's 20 points and Brown's 16 in the scoring column were freshman point guard Jessica Berry, who had 11, and O'Brien, who had 10.
In another historical note, Berry's five assists on the night gives her 142 for the season, just seven behind the school-record 149 that Andrea Razi '96 had in her junior season. Thanks to Princeton's victory, Berry will have at least one more game to chase that single-season mark.