Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Women's Hoops to Open Home Ivy Slate with Columbia, Cornell This Weekend
January 10, 2007 | Women's Basketball
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Energized by back-to-back wins, including a victory over Penn to open the Ivy schedule, the Princeton women's basketball team will welcome Ivy League teams to Jadwin Gymnasium for the first time this year when Columbia and Cornell come by Friday and Saturday, respectively. Both are 7 p.m. tip-offs and can be heard and seen live here. Saturday's game is also on Patriot 8 in the Princeton area.
Records: Princeton 7-8, 1-0 Ivy; Columbia 3-10, 0-0 Ivy; Cornell 4-9, 0-0 Ivy.
Big win to start Ivy season: Princeton had a lead of as much as 15 points over Penn last Saturday night at The Palestra and held off a Quaker run in the last few minutes to secure a 78-72 win. It is the first time since 1998 and 1999 that Princeton has won back-to-back games at The Palestra.
How sweep it was: Last season, Princeton swept both Columbia and Cornell for the season for the first time since 1999.
Memorable meetings: Games against Cornell and Columbia last year provided noteworthy performances. A season ago on the road trip to the two schools, Meagan Cowher scored 32 and 27 points for a total of 59 for the weekend. Cowher was one of seven Tigers in double-figures against Cornell as Princeton nearly reached its record for points scored in a game, 97, in a 94-80 win.
Last 100: Meagan Cowher scored 22 points in her last game at Penn, the third straight game in which she has broken 20. That total gave her exactly 900 for her career entering this weekend. She is bidding to become Princeton's 17th 1,000-point scorer and is on a pace to do so when the Tigers visit Cornell and Columbia next month.
Aiming to stay there: Princeton and Harvard opened the Ivy season in first place with wins last weekend as half the league got the intra-Ivy schedule underway. This weekend, Harvard and Dartmouth are off and Brown and Yale will face each other while Cornell and Columbia make the Penn-Princeton trip. The league won't have a full four-game weekend until Feb. 2-3.
Puttin' up the points: Princeton's largest two scoring outputs of the season have come in the last two games with 79 points at Lafayette and 78 points at Penn.
68 and feeling great: Head coach Richard Barron tied Liz Feeley, Princeton's head coach from 1995-2000, for third place in wins at Princeton with last weekend's win at Penn. Both Barron and Feeley have 68. Second place is not far ahead as Pat Walsh, the head coach from 1974-79, has 72 wins.
Prichard picking up: The Tigers are reaping the benefits of a recent surge by junior forward Ali Prichard. In last week's two games, Prichard scored 37 points with 17 at Lafayette and 20 at Penn. The Lafayette game matched her previous career-high, set in the last game of the 2004-05 season at Harvard. With 119 points this year, Prichard already has more this season than in her two previous seasons combined (116).
Whittling it down: Through the first 12 games of the season, head coach Richard Barron had tapped anywhere from 11 to all 17 players on the roster for floor time. In the three games heading into the weekend, Barron used 10 players against Vanderbilt and Lafayette and a season-low nine at Penn. Seven of the nine players to play at Penn were sophomores and juniors with just one freshman and one senior.
From way Downs-town: Sophomore forward Whitney Downs scored 16 points against Penn, just missing her career-best 17-point effort against St. Francis (N.Y.) last month. She was also a career-high 4 for 4 from three-point range at Penn.
The three zone: Princeton has hit 89 three-pointers this year, heading into the weekend. The Tigers are on pace for the fifth-most threes in program history, with 166. The record is 214, set in 2000.
Listen to the game, see the game: Derek Jones will call both games this weekend from courtside at Jadwin Gym. Fans can access just the audio broadcast or the video stream as well at www.GoPrincetonTigers.com by clicking on the speaker or video camera icons on the women's basketball schedule page or on the right side of the front page under “Schedule.”
On Columbia: The Lions have dropped 10 of 12 since a season-opening win over Loyola (Md.). Columbia is allowing an Ivy-high 45.3 percent shooting clip by its opponents, and the Lions are also eighth in the league in rebounding margin at -8.7 per game. Megan Griffith leads the Lions with 14.2 points per game while leading the Ivy League with 2.31 steals per game. Columbia is also the league's poorest free throw shooting team at 59.6 percent.
On Cornell: Despite losing their first seven games, the Big Red has won four of its last six heading into the weekend. Cornell leads the Ivy League in scoring defense, allowing 64.1 points per game and one less than Princeton. But teams are also shooting well against Cornell with a 44.1 percent clip. The Big Red is the Ivy League's best free throw shooting team at 74.9 percent. Claire Perry is the league's top free throw shooter (with a minimum of two per game) at 93.5 percent. Last season's Ivy League Rookie of the Year, center Jeomi Maduka, leads Cornell with 14.6 points per game.
The series: Princeton leads both series by considerable margins, 31-13 over Columbia and 36-16 over Cornell, but results have been more mixed in recent years. Columbia had a nine-game winning streak over Princeton that lasted into the Richard Barron era, though the Tigers have won the last three. Barron is 6-4 against Cornell in his five seasons.
Princeton in the Ivy rankings: The Tigers allow an Ivy-best 40.9 percent shooting rate to its opponents from the field and 31 percent from beyond the arc. Meanwhile, Princeton's 34.5 percent success rate from distance is also the best in the league. Princeton's Ivy-best 3.47 blocks per game is led by Ariel Rogers' 1.33 per game, which ranks second in the league. The Tigers also lead the league in assists per game (15.33), defensive rebounds per game (25.47) and threes per game (5.93).
Individually, Meagan Cowher's 17.1 points per game ranks third, while Ali Prichard's 43.1 success rate from beyond the arc and 1.87 threes per game are both second.
Princeton in the NCAA rankings: The Tigers are ranked in the top 100 of the 324 Division I teams in four categories, including threes per game (49th, 5.9), assists per game (58th, 15.3), three-point percentage (65h, 34.5), and field goal percentage (87th, 42.6). Individually, Meagan Cowher is the nation's 67th-leading scorer at 17.1 points per game.
Rebounding: Princeton has had exactly as many rebounds as its opponents this season: 558. But game-by-game, rebounding has been a telling statistic. The Tigers are 1-8 when not winning the rebounding battle and 6-0 when they do.
High school reunions: Two Princeton players and two Columbia players go back quite a while. Princeton senior forward Casey Lockwood and Columbia junior guard Michele Gage are both graduate of Marin Catholic north of San Francisco, while Tiger senior guard Elyse Umeda and Lion senior forward Becky Hogue both came east from Punahou School in Hawaii.
Looking ahead: The Tigers will be away from competition for 19 days for finals before welcoming Yale and Brown to Jadwin Gym. The Bulldogs, entering the weekend, are the only Ivy school with a .500 record, having ridden a five-game win streak to a 7-7 mark heading into Ivy play.