A 76-Point Weekend

Back when TigerBlog was a sportswriter covering Princeton basketball, he used to keep track of how many times during Ivy League weekend back-to-backs that Pete Carril's team would not give up more than 100 total points between the two games.

In Carril's final season, the 1996 Ivy season, Princeton held its Ivy opponents below 100 four times in six weekends. 

He thought about that as he watched Carla Berube's women's team do its defensive thing this weekend, Friday night as he watched on ESPN+ and then Saturday in person. Between its wins over Cornell and Columbia, the women's basketball team allowed a total of 76 points.

That's incredible. 

The final scores were 75-37 over Cornell and 57-39 over Columbia. The win over Columbia came in the first meeting this year between the teams who entered the game unbeaten in the league at 7-0.

If you're keeping track, Berube has coached seven weekends in which her team has played league games on consecutive nights, plus one other when it played on a Saturday/Monday (earlier this year against Penn and Brown). If you include all eight, only once has the team allowed more than 100, and that was in the 2020 final weekend, when Columbia and Cornell scored – wait for it – 102, in games Princeton won 77-52 and 69-50. 

There was also one other weekend where the opponents combined for exactly 100 (66-45 over Dartmouth and then 87-55 over Harvard).

Princeton is now 8-0 on the season in the league. Here are the first quarter point totals in those eight games for Princeton's opponents:

10, 5, 8, 9, 3, 11, 5, 4. Again, that's incredible. 

Columbia came into the game averaging 71.2 points per game, by the way. Princeton did what Princeton does, which is to say the Tigers were swarming, harassing and letting nothing be easy.

In the interest of complete fairness, you do have to keep something in mind about Columbia. The Lions are obviously good. They are 16-4 and 7-1 in the league now under former Tiger assistant Meg Griffiths, and they ran into a buzzsaw Saturday night. There is still the rematch two weeks from Wednesday in New York City, and then a possible third meeting in the Ivy League tournament. Even after falling behind 35-16 at the half, the Lions did outscore the Tigers by one in the second half, so there was no quit in them. They will still make their presence known moving forward.

There was one moment in the third quarter when Columbia made things a bit uneasy, cutting it to 12 at 41-29. If there was to be drama in the fourth quarter, it ended when Julia Cunningham hit threes on consecutive possessions and then Abby Meyers hit two free throws to end the quarter at 49-29. 

The run grew to 14-0, and the lead to 26 points, when Cunningham and Chet Nweke drained threes to start the fourth quarter.

Ellie Mitchell continued to play like Dennis Rodman used to. If you never got to see Rodman in his prime, he was a force who impacted every game he was in without having to score big numbers. He played with limitless energy, and he was impossible to miss when you watched.

That's a good description of Mitchell too. 

Rodman averaged, for his career, 7.3 points and 13.1 rebounds per game. Mitchell, for the season, averages 6.3 points and 10.1 rebounds.

This was Mitchell's line against Columbia: 38 minutes, three points, 14 rebounds (nine offensive), five assists and three steals. What you can't tell from her stats are the job she did on the defensive end, which was epic. Or, perhaps, Rodmanian. 

Hey, if TigerBlog can compare Meyers to a fictional character, like he did last week when he likened her to Jimmy Chitwood in "Hoosiers," then why can't he compare Mitchell to Rodman. Hey, he was named one of the NBA's top 75 players of all-time and is in the basketball Hall of Fame.

One of the best parts of the games this weekend was that they were back open to the fans. The weather Friday night prevented a large crowd, but Jadwin Gym had energy and noise for the game Saturday. 

The home team that the fans got to see Saturday night was quite impressive, one that rose to the occasion for a big game.