Meet The Alaries

Where to start today?

How about with a great video about Bella Alarie?


As you probably know, Alarie is already a two-time Ivy League women's basketball Player of the Year, and she's led Princeton to two NCAA tournaments in her first three years.

As you also probably know, she is the daughter of Mark Alarie, the former Duke star who played five years in the NBA. The video tells the story of how Bella came to play at Princeton, and it includes great interviews with father and daughter, including advice that Mark Alarie threw out there for all fathers of daughters (and something that TigerBlog can attest to first hand).

There are also great family pictures of her and her family, including her grandfather Norman, a member of the Princeton Class of 1957 who also got a Masters' degree at Princeton and later taught here.

If you've been an Alarie fan for the last four years, it's a must-see video.

TigerBlog remembers Bella's first game at Princeton, when she started on Day 1 as a freshman and put up 24 points and seven rebounds in her debut game against Rider. As hard as it is to believe, this weekend is her final Jadwin Gym appearance, as the Tigers will host Brown tomorrow (6) and then Yale Saturday (5, Senior Night).

Alarie comes into this weekend with 1,643 career points, which leaves her third all-time at Princeton in women's basketball and fourth all-time among male or female basketball players. The list goes like this:

1. Bill Bradley 2,503
2. Sandi Bittler 1,683
3. Meagan Cower 1,671
4. Bella Alarie 1,643

With four regular season games left and then, presumably, two postseason games at a minimum, Alarie's chances of catching Bittler are pretty good. Bittler had a great run with the record, which has lasted 30 years.

Alarie had a 21-point night against Penn Tuesday in what was one of the most dominant performances the Tigers have had in Alarie's four years. Princeton won that game 80-44, using a 20-0 first-half run to sprint away from the Quakers.

Keep in mind, Penn came into the game 17-5 and one of the top defensive teams in the country, not to mention still in the hunt for a league title and a national top 50 team.

If you think Princeton is just Alarie, then the game Tuesday showed you otherwise. In fact, Alarie wasn't even named the Player of the Game, which instead went to Ellie Mitchell, a freshman who had 13 points and eight rebounds.

Oh, and she also had six steals. She played incredibly hard the entire night, and she essentially imposed her will on the game.

Abby Meyers came off the bench for 11 points in 19 minutes, and on any given night, it could be anyone who reaches double figures.

What makes Princeton head coach Carla Berube smile the most, though, is what happens at the other end of the court.

In the game Tuesday night, Princeton held the Quakers to 1 for 10 shooting in the second quarter, and for the night the Tigers allowed one assist while forcing 19 turnovers. Everything Penn did was hounded, as you would expect from the team that ranks first in Division I in scoring defense at 48 points per game, making Princeton the only team in the country allowing fewer than 50 per game.

Princeton is 22-1, with 18 straight wins now. They are on the verge of an Ivy League championship, something that the Tigers would clinch at least a share of with a win tomorrow night and would win outright with two wins this weekend.

And there's still next weekend's trip to Columbia and Cornell.

After that is the Ivy League tournament, in which Princeton has already clinched its spot. This is the exciting time of year for the Tigers.

When it finally ends, wherever that is, Alarie will move into her place among the greatest athletes ever to compete at Princeton.

This weekend, though, is the last home weekend for her and her roommate Taylor Baur.

What would be tremendous would be to see Alarie get the scoring record at Jadwin. She'd have to go way above what she did against this weekend's opponents the first time around, as she had a 25-point weekend, including a nine-point night against Yale in New Haven that marks the only Ivy game in the last two years that Alarie has not reached double figures.

And before any of that, check out the video above.

If you're a Princeton fan, you're guaranteed to love it.