Senior Day Sweetness

Is 22-9 a good first quarter? 

What if it's not the best first quarter of your weekend? Is it still a good first quarter? 

The Princeton women's basketball team was home twice this weekend. Both games were essentially over after 10 minutes. 

It started Friday night, when the Tigers sprinted out to a 33-10 first quarter lead over Brown. You have to give the Bears credit for not quitting and even getting within nine in the fourth quarter before Princeton closed it out 78-67.

The game Saturday night against Yale started out 22-9 and ended up 71-42. That's called taking care of business at home.

The two first quarters, if TigerBlog's math is good, were a combined 55-19. When you have those kinds of leads, you're going to be awfully hard to catch — and that's how it played out. 

TB wrote last week about the idea of holding teams under 100 total points for a weekend. Princeton didn't do that this weekend, but this whole first quarter thing might be more fascinating. 

Getting out by that kind of margin makes you almost impossible to beat, especially when you defend like Carla Berube's teams do. TB will have to go back to do some research on that, though his hunch is that if you spot Carla Berube a 36-point edge in two first quarters, your chances of winning aren't going to be great.

In the meantime, this weekend was also Senior Day for the women's basketball, and it was an extraordinary Senior Day at that. 

In the course of a season, or a career, for that matter, there will always be some moments that stand out no matter what. Senior Day is one of them. 

No player or parent who has gone through a college Senior Day will ever forget the emotions of the experience. Nor should they. You'll have to trust TB; he's speaking from first-hand knowledge here. 

Senior Day 2025 for the women's basketball team couldn't have been more perfect. The Tigers have five seniors this season — Amelia Osgood, Parker Hill, Paige Morton, Katie Thiers and Adaora Nwokeji. 

Because the classes immediately ahead of them were stacked — with Kaitlyn Chen, Ellie Mitchell and Chet Nweke — and because of the talent that has come to Princeton since, there haven't been overwhelming minutes to be had for this class. 

Still, they have made huge contributions to Ivy League championship teams and teams that have won NCAA tournament games. And this was their Senior Night. 

So what happened? The five seniors combined for 42 points, matching Yale's total.

Osgood scored 13 points, shooting 5 for 7 from the field and making her only three. Nwokeji had 10 points of her own; she and Osgood combined had 15 for the year coming in. 

Morton and Thiers went for 15 between them, on 6 for 12 shooting. Thiers also seemed to have a huge family support in the stands, including a "Katie Thiers Is My Sister" poster held by a young man who might have been the rower from the University of Washington TB once wrote about. 

Hill, the only regular starter in the group, had four. To see them put up 42 between them on their special night was awesome. 

Meanwhile, there is the small matter of the Ivy League race. As TigerBlog said last week, the biggest game of this weekend in Ivy women's hoops was yesterday's game between Harvard and Columbia, and the result has turned the league race in a vastly different direction. 

Harvard took down Columbia 60-54, handing the Lions their first Ivy loss. Could there be a three-way tie for the championship?

Princeton and Columbia are both 9-1, a game ahead of Harvard. Princeton hosts Columbia Saturday at 5:30 (the men play Dartmouth at 8 afterwards) and then is at Harvard on Feb. 28. Should the Tigers beat the Lions and Harvard beat Princeton and none of those three lose any of their other games, then there would in fact be a three-way tie for the championship. 

All three teams are ranked in the top 50 of the NET ratings. Having games against the other two still to go will help Princeton's.

That's all for the coming weeks, though. This coming Saturday will be a big one Jadwin Gym. 

This past Saturday was a different kind of vibe, a Senior Day vibe that couldn't have been scripted any better. None of the members of the Class of 2025 will ever forget it.