“But that kind of stuff was coming, and it mattered.” Yet the stuff was a sideshow. “It wasn’t because we were necessarily better at the time,” says Addie Micir, the Lehigh head coach who was a guard for Banghart’s first two teams and later a Princeton assistant. Renovations had more meaning simply because the players weren’t expecting them. “People would hide in there, because the space was so big, and then jump out when someone was coming to get changed,” former Tigers guard Blake Dietrick says. Still, Princeton had started making investments, with former men’s player and Ariel Investments founder and co-CEO John Rogers donating a new team room in 2008. After Banghart’s first year, the locker room got much-needed upgrades: a sound system with actual speakers and wood-paneled lockers with a massive stowage area under the seat. “All you’re really talking about is how nice your locker room is. “I mean, the Ivy League, it’s not (recruits’) focus,” Banghart says, a few minutes before a practice at North Carolina, where she’s now the head coach. And Princeton’s women’s hoops was not exactly a mega-horsepower turbine, idling while it waited for the right person to hit the ignition. Banghart also was four years removed from coaching high school basketball and tennis in Alexandria, Va. In came Courtney Banghart, a then-28-year-old Dartmouth assistant who’d won two league titles as a player for the Big Green and helped lead the program to NCAA Tournament appearances in 20. So … how? It’s instructive to start at the start, because a lot and very little has changed since then.Īfter one winning season in six years, Richard Barron left Princeton in 2007 for an associate head coach gig at Baylor. Returning five of the top six scorers from last year, including All Ivy-League guard Julia Cunningham and defensive player of the year Ellie Mitchell, makes a first-ever trip to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament very doable.Ĭonsidering the competition levels in various eras, it’s arguably a dominance and visibility never before seen in Ivy League basketball, period. 24 team in the nation - a preseason distinction never previously earned by an Ivy League women’s squad. The Tigers’ 11-week run in the poll during the 2014-15 season represents the longest stretch any program from the conference has been ranked since Penn’s men’s hoops squad held a spot in 16 straight polls … in 1971-72. Only one Ivy League women’s program has ever crashed the Associated Press poll: Princeton, at 21 appearances total. In March, they reached the NCAA Tournament for the ninth time in the last 11 postseasons in which they’ve been eligible to compete. They don’t have any in the last two years of league play. The Tigers have 16 conference losses, total, since 2009. In the last 12 seasons, during which Ivy League schools have played basketball – you might remember a pandemic getting in the way that one year – Princeton has taken the floor 352 times. In its first 37 years of existence, Princeton women’s hoops lost more games than it won. But it ended up really being the best of both worlds.” “I didn’t think I’d get the best of both worlds. “Back at 17 (years old) I was like, I want to go to a top 25 program, I want to compete and go to the NCAA Tournament, and that really wasn’t something that was consistent from the Ivy League,” Rasheed says now. Princeton women’s basketball, as it turned out, was thinking substantially bigger. This wasn’t about bragging rights at mixers. But this wasn’t just another Ivy program on a good run. Four-plus years after that, Princeton had made four straight NCAA Tournaments and Rasheed was an honorable mention All-American, the first Tigers women’s player to earn that level of national recognition. What’s going on here?Ī few weeks later, she committed to play for a school she never expected to consider. She asked the players who else recruited them, and names such as Stanford and Wake Forest came up. Manage reports, messages, refunds and gifts to keep them hooked.As is customary on recruiting weekends, Rasheed jumped into pickup games with Princeton’s players. Access their profile and friends list cross-platform. Store your players' data together in one place. Sort, edit and manage everything, from cosmetics to currencies, UGC to DLC. Take charge of your game's content on all platforms, in one place. Completely off-the-shelf features, built to work with any game and platform. Save time and upgrade your game with leaderboards, progression, and more. Save time building features from scratch, so you can focus on the gameplay. Use our plug and play tools to manage your game, content and players all in one place.
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