Tied at 27 at the half. Offense ragged - scored 9 points in 2Q, most of them in the final minute, lots of missed shots. Team just does not look sharp.
Tigers lead by 2 after 3Q.
Tigers take over inn 4Q and win by 11.
As a bonus, Penn upsets Columbia, so Tigers back in 1st alone.
Here is my overly negative take. This team is basically 5 1/2 players. And they are exhausted, because Carlaâs really poor recruiting over the past couple of years has brought in no bench she can rely on. Itâs now the 4 junior starters (since St. Rose will not play for a while, and maybe not at all), Toby Nweke in for St. Rose, and a tiny bit of Charles and Eadie, neither of whom Carla has any confidence in. The two freshmen are just cheerleaders from the bench, and Parrella seems unlikely to play any more this year. The future of this program lies with the 5 recruits coming in next year. If they donât pan out, the dynasty will be over.
Hard to argue. I have thought for a while that recruiting was actually made harder when you have players on the roster who are clearly going to get most of the PT. I donât know anything about next yearâs class.
Youâre right. Way to overly negative. And itâs a little early to be that pessimistic. Letâs at least see what happens next year first.
I think we will be fine in the Ivies until the Juniors leave. After that, we will see.
I admit to the perhaps excessive negativity; perhaps I have read too many gokinsmen posts on the menâs side and they have infected my view of the future. I follow the recruiting maybe more closely than others and canât understand why Carlaâs success on the court doesnât translate into better recruiting (Princeton is not UConn, but how does Geno continuously get the best players in the country year after year after year after . . .?). She has ridden the wave of Courtneyâs recruits for most of her time at Princeton, and itâs time to make her own mark. As Local Tiger points out, when the Juniors leave what will the roster look like, unless some of the 2026 and 2027 recruits are potential 1st and 2nd Team All-Ivy? I donât know. We will see.
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Any info on these 5?
Courtney left after 2019. Carlaâs record speaks for itself. Excellence.
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First time poster, 20-year follower of PU womenâs hoops and 30+ year follower of womenâs college basketball. I wanted to provide some points to contextualize your assessment and keen observations:
- Regarding the lack of depth this year, consider that last yearâs back up center Tabitha Amanze took an NIL deal to transfer to Virginia this year. I donât know the backstory on why she left and Iâm not sure she would have started for Princeton this year as she is turnover prone but she is a starting center in the ACC this year on a solid, on-the-bubble team (and with a 20 point game against a ranked Duke team that though only 3 points against ranked Vanderbilt) and most likely would have provided solid minutes on this yearâs Princeton team in some capacity. Also, consider that Sydney Benally was originally a member of this yearâs first year class but switched her commitment very late to BYU as she apparently wanted to be closer to her New Mexico home. She has started every game at point guard for a solid, on-the-bubble Big 12 team and certainly would have been a solid back-up at Princeton and probable starter after the current junior class graduates. My understanding is that Princeton WBB doesnât take transfers, so there does not seem to be much that could be done at that late date about the loss of two players who have wound up starting for good Power 4 teams. Those two would have given Princeton some real impact depth this year in my opinion and would have made for a solid 8 player rotation if/when everyone is healthy. That overall depth would have been comparable to many Power 4 teams in my opinion.
- Regarding recent recruiting, Benally was a top 100 ESPN recruit. Next year, the headliner appears to be Ava Yoon, from perennial national powerhouse Sidwell Friends in DC. The school has produced many Power 4 players over the recent years, most notably Kiki Rice of UCLA. Yoonâs back court partner Autumn Fleary is headed to Duke and Yoon appears to hold her own in high level games. To me, it seems that Coach Berube has maintained guard play at a high level but Ellie Mitchell-like front court impact recruits are lacking (seems like Penn (Collins), Cornell (Kaus), Columbia (Page), Brown (Moreland), and Harvard (Wright) are all better off in the front court traditional forward position than Princeton). This is not to take away from the incredible perfrormance and development of Fadima Tall and Olivia Hutcherson on this yearâs team but they are both really guards forced to play front court positions in my opinion because of the lack of a true impact big on the roster.
- Speaking of development, I would not sell this yearâs freshmen short just yet. Hutcherson scored all of 4 points her first year and now she looks like a first-team all-Ivy player her junior year. Tall has also made vast improvements in her game. The coaches certainly had some role in this. So this year, Grace OâSullivan looks to be an excellent 3-point shooter (on an admittedly super small sample size) and a stout defender (to my eye, the Cornell offense, which was crushing the defense yesterday on repeated pick and rolls, was not as effective when OâSullivan was in the game). And Sarah Lessig is an amazing athlete with an untapped potential that hopefully the coaches can harness in the next year or two.
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Perhaps a bigger criticism than falling short in recruitment of top talent is that Carla has not been able to develop a bench of secondary players to give breathers to the top-notch starting 5. It hard to play 30 games without a bench.
CC 89, unless you have information that you would like to share linking the departures of Almanze and/or Benally to Carla Berube specifically, then the critique of lack of bench development seems unfair to pin on Coach Berube. I cited NIL in the case of Almanze (look up Alexis Ohanian, Serena Williamsâ husband and UVa grad, who in 2024 donated a âtransformationalâ amount to the womenâs basketball program for NIL use; UVa has completely overhauled its womenâs team since the donation and has been very aggressive in the NIL market) and homesickness in the case of Benally (which is what she said in public statements). So, without those late and perhaps unexpected player losses, Princeton would have a rock solid 8-player rotation this year. Can you name a team outside of UConn or South Carolina that goes more than 8 deep in meaningful games?
Thanks for this reminder. I had forgotten about Yoon, as she committed over a year ago (I think I even commented on it on the old BB Board). FYI, per one source, she is currently the number 4 recruit in DC (amazingly, two of her teammates are 1 and 2 - going to Duke and Maryland â how is that for a HS team?).
Amanze was criminally underutilized in her time at Princeton and thatâs why she left (she was leaving whether she got the NIL bag or not). There isnât a single âbigâ in the Ivys with even remotely the same skill level/physical profile as Amanze and Princeton would have walked to another title had Berube invested in her.
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She had plenty of opportunities. Was hurt a lot and was outperformed by among others katie thiers last year.
Amazing. After her first two years most people were speculating as to when Carla would leave and where she would go next. Now sheâs being criticized for not being able to recruit depth. Someone remind me whoâs in first place and coaches a nationally ranked team. Had Maddie St. Rose not been injured last year, Princeton would have won the league every year since sheâs been here. I shudder to think how bad the abuse will be if two years from now turns into a similar scenario as 2017.
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I agree that Berube is a gem, and hope we donât lose her.
We will use talent after next year, but my guess is recruiting will be easier when playing time is less spoken for.
Well said MikeK!
And just keep in mind that Princeton WBB is currently the second highest ranked non-Power 4/Big East team in the NET and 23rd in the whole country in Wins Above Bubble, a new, results-based metric used by the NCAA selection committee to evaluate team resumes for tournament selection and seeding (WAB quantifies how many wins a team has accumulated against a certain schedule compared to what a hypothetical average âbubbleâ team would achieve). Princetonâs NET ranking is ahead of dozens of SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and Big East schools Princetonâs WAB is better than powerhouses such as NC State, UNC, and Iowa State. Their success against an incredibly hard non-conference schedule is showing up in the various evaluation tools.
And also remember that Coach Berube does all this without scholarships, without NIL, without taking transfers (Columbia routinely takes transfers, including a starter and key bench player this year; Yale added two transfers this year, both of whom start; Harvard had great success recently with transfer McKenzie Forbes), and without running up the score against over-matched opponents even though the NET rewards that unfortunately.
Finally, this is all in the context of a vastly improved Ivy League top to bottom. Long a one-bid league for the conference winner, last year saw an unprecedented 3-bid Ivy and this year it seems like 2 bids are still in play. Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, Brown, and Penn have all shown they can make the Ivy League tournament along with Princeton so a romp through the league is not a given anymore for the Tigers. In my opinion, Princetonâs success on the national stage this last 15 or so years from Coach Banghart to now has led to other Ivy League schools trying to match those results and stepping up their level of recruits and play. The closer competition in league games is in many ways a tribute to Princetonâs successful run.
Enjoy this team and Coach Berube!
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Agreeing with what Jerseygreen and MikeK laid out: this is the kind of âproblemâ that would have about 700 Division I menâs and womenâs fan bases saying, *please⌠send some of that misery over here. *
Recruiting-wise, Princetonâs current lack of depth is almost predictable - and similar to many Ivy experiences. When you land a monster class - one where multiple kids can realistically start by sophomore year - the next class or two becomes harder to close. Why? Because playing time becomes the lever every competing coach pulls. And P4 coaches now can use the NIL / rev share offer to outbid a team for talent.
The flip side is that having a core that can start together for 3+ years is a genuine competitive advantage.
Why a âlightâ freshman class isnât always a red flag
That said, being light on freshmen and sophomores this year does look thin on paper. My guess itâs some mix of the natural strategy any coach has to employ to take a team with a solid core of very good talent to the next level of the tournament:
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The true 4â5 star tier choosing P4 To make the Round of 16, you need to land 1 or 2 superstar player â three top tier Ivy kids and a generational talent took USC to the Elite 8 - but the P4 have more resources, more NIL, more national exposure; harder to land that truly special player, but you have to go all out to make the case â itâs resource intensive.
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The ânext tierâ waiting⌠You likely have the next tier kid, one that helps but does not elevate like a 4-5 star, ready to commit, but you have to slow play them until the 4-5 star kids decision. The natural next-best recruit will likely hold out until their next best option says, âcommit now or weâre moving on.â And there are other high profile teams constantly saying, come with us â we want you more, they are looking to over recruit you come now.
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Roster math: when the 4-5 goes elsewhere, and the ânext tierâ is gone, who is left - do you take a very good player now if you expect to over-recruit that same spot next cycle?
Roster building is seldom a failure of recruiting effort. Most times itâs the math of timing, and the reality that the Ivy pool is, by definition, narrower.
The bigger question for me: what is the Ivy ceiling in womenâs basketball?
In other Ivy sports like hockey, lacrosse, field hockey, fencing, squash, the ceiling is straightforward: compete for the national title. In womenâs hoops, the overall quality of the sport has deepened dramatically nationally. There are more quality teams than ever, but the tiers (starting with the UConn / South Carolina circle) while deeper are still real. To push into the ânational contenderâ tier would require an unusually perfect alignment of: talent, health, timing (classes stacking correctly), getting lucky on P4 kids, and a bracket break that doesnât immediately hand you a buzzsaw
Is the Round of 32 the natural cap?
No Ivy womenâs team, no matter how good or close in the Round of 32 game, has ever made the Round of 16. Is that the natural upper bound for an elite mid-major operating without scholarships? Does the opening pod and the next level talent a top 16 team attracts, make the task nearly impossible? Could an Ivy ever host an opening-round pod? Both feel materially harder than the milestone everyone talks about: three NCAA bids.
Investment + constraints = parity
And thatâs where the league is shifting.
If Ivy constraints (admissions, no scholarships, financial aid dynamics, limited transfer usage) create a de facto talent cap and more Ivy programs are investing seriously in their womenâs basketball programs, then what we should expect going forward isnât âone dominant team forever.â
Weâre seeing a convergence toward parity: three to six teams with legitimate talent and coachingâcompeting for a limited (but perhaps slight growing due to more grad players at P4 and Ivy success) slice of players who both can academically and financially attend an Ivy and will be meaningful rotation contributors on a top-30 to top-50 caliber team.
The result
For fans? It means fun (and slightly stressful) weekendsâwhere multiple Ivies can win on any night, and multiple teams can make the NCAA tournament.
For dynasties? Probably not ideal.
For the League? Ivy womenâs basketball is an ever higher quality product. Honestly⌠itâs great.
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