Princeton University’s women’s basketball team is heading into the NCAA tournament undefeated. The team went 30-0 in the regular season, winning their last game with a 13-point lead over their archrival, the University of Pennsylvania.
“All these reporters are in our face, like, ‘You just made history, tell us, do something,’” said team captain Mariah Smith. “And we’re just like, ‘I don’t know what you want. I have a thesis and a midterm to get to.’”
Ivy League schools are not exactly known for their powerhouse athletic programs. The only other Ivy League basketball team to go undefeated was the University of Pennsylvania. That was in 1970, and it was the men’s team.
The Princeton women beat their record, playing and winning two more games than the Penn men. But they have an uphill battle. Only one women's Ivy League team has ever won a game in the NCAA tournament: Harvard in 1998.
Playing at an Ivy League
Smith, a forward, has been on Princeton’s team all four years. She’s graduating with a degree in Mechanical and Aerospace engineering with a certificate in Robotics and Intelligence Systems. She’s is in the middle of job interviews and her thesis: building a small robotic arm that can stow away into a cubic inch and pick up a grain of sand.
Her coach understands that academic success at Princeton is the priority.
Coach Courtney Banghart told ESPN she is coaching future CEOs. “That’s awesome," Smith said. "And that really inspires all of us each and every day.”
Head coach Courtney Banghart played at an Ivy herself. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2000 with a degree in neuroscience. The 36-year-old has an all-female coaching staff and a hand-picked basketball team.
“It’s finally starting to sink in just how amazingly, uniquely, crazy, ridiculously amazing, awesome this undefeated streak is,” Banghart said.
She heavily recruited each player, and unlike the more than 340 Division I schools in the country, the eight that make up the Ivy League don’t give full athletic scholarships. Scholarships are based on need and academics.
Banghart says some of her players walked away from free rides at top-ranked programs to attend Princeton.
“These are very high, major players that have turned down money for their future,” she said.
Under Banghart, the Princeton women have made it into the NCAA tournament for five of the last six years. (Only 64 teams enter). But the Tigers have yet to win a game there.
No ‘Star Factor’
At their first practice since their undefeated season, players in black and orange jerseys dribbled a basketball in each hand down the court. They dribbled low, then high, through their legs and shot a layup.
Banghart says they’re solid on both sides of the ball.
“Defensively we’re elite. We play with toughness, we’re accountable, we can guard the ball, we have good rotations and we rebound the ball well,” she said. “And then on the offensive end we’ve got a really dynamic, versatile attack.”
Their offensive and defensive efficiency is ranked in the top 5 in the country, according to Mel Greenberg, who blogs about women's college basketball. But there’s no star factor on this particular team. There is no standout player.
Greenberg says this year’s set of teams is probably the best year the Ivy League has ever seen. But Princeton didn't play any top-ranked programs in the regular season. “But of course because of the way Princeton has dominated, Princeton is looked at like the Connecticut of the Ivy League," he said.
Connecticut is the number one seed. Princeton is the 8th seed.
The Tigers have one game to prove whether they can compete with the top women’s college basketball teams in the nation. They play the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay at the University of Maryland Saturday morning.