Influential

Because the Silver Waves Media Group's listing of the 100 Most Influential People in women's college basketball was done in alphabetical order by first name, the person directly ahead of Carla Berube was ... ?

Think about it for a few paragraphs.

It reminded TigerBlog of his college yearbook, in which the person ahead of him was Laurene Powell. Perhaps you recognize her more as Laurene Powell Jobs.

Berube, Princeton's head coach, was named to the list, and deservedly so. Is 95-15 a good overall record? How about 50-2 in the Ivy League? How about wins in two consecutive NCAA tournaments? 

Factor in all of her success at Tufts before coming to Princeton in 2019-20 and her UConn playing days, and she's clearly building a Hall of Fame resume. 

The person named on the list before her? Caitlin Clark, who would be No. 1 if the list had been done in order. 

Also, the person who is seven places ahead is former Tiger head coach and current North Carolina head coach Courtney Banghart, who is also president of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association. 

Missing from the list? Mel Greenberg. No discussion of making an impact on women's college basketball is complete without mentioning Mel, who has done more on the media side to grow the game than any other individual anywhere ever. 

Berube, of course, has more important things to worry about these days than individual accolades. Knowing her the way TB does, he knows she wouldn't care about individual accolades even if she wasn't in the middle of an Ivy League championship race and bid for another NCAA trip.

Princeton went on the road last weekend and swept Brown and Yale, running its record to 20-3 overall and 10-0 in the Ivy League. Before TB gets into the upcoming games, there is a matter of just how Princeton swept those games.

First, Friday night in Providence, the Tigers allowed 33 points in the final five quarters combined. That's an average of not a lot of points per quarter.

Princeton broke open a tight game against Brown for a 74-62 win, outscoring the Bears 19-8 in the fourth quarter. The final score Saturday night in New Haven was 70-25. 

Princeton did not allow Yale to reach double figures in any quarter. The Bulldogs score by quarters was eight, seven, six, four. 

TigerBlog wishes there was an easy way to see how many women's games have been played this year where a team held its opponent in single digits in all four quarters.

By the way, when TB did some research on Ivy women's basketball, he found out that Princeton actually ranks second in the league in scoring defense (56.4 points per game). Who is first? Dartmouth, at 55.4. Despite that, the Big Green are tied for seventh in the league at 1-9, 7-15 overall.

Princeton, at 10-0, has a one-game lead on Columbia, who is 9-1 after its win at Harvard Sunday afternoon. The Lions have one more regular season game on their home court, and it's sort of a big one, as the Tigers will be there Saturday at 2. The math on this one is obvious.

There's only one game this weekend for the women's teams, which means that Princeton and Columbia have no other opponent to prepare for as well. Of course, these are two teams that already know each other very well. 

This is Game 2 between them this year. If there is to be a Game 3, it'll also be at Columbia. The Tigers and Lions have clinched spots in the Ivy League tournament, which begins March 15 at Columbia's Levien Gym.

Harvard is 7-3 and in third place. The Crimson are 7-0 against the rest of the league and 0-3 against Princeton and Columbia, with a game at Princeton March 1 still to go.

With four games to go, Brown is 5-5, followed by 4-6 Penn, 3-7 Yale and then 1-7 Cornell and Dartmouth. Brown got a huge win Saturday in Providence 61-59, putting the Bears a game up with four to go. Had Brown lost, it would have been swept by the Quakers this season, which would have given Penn the first tiebreaker edge for the fourth Ivy tournament spot should it come to that.