The Brown women’s basketball team fell to Ivy League competitors Princeton and Penn in back-to-back home games this weekend. Bruno (7-13, 1-5 Ivy) lost to the Tigers (14-5, 5-0), who maintained their position on top of the Ivy League with a 68-37 win. The Quakers (10-9, 3-2) also managed to edge out Bruno for a 65-48 victory.
“Princeton is one of the best teams in the league and has been for the past three years,” said Natalie Ball ’16. “They’ve definitely been the biggest challenge for us.”
The Bears stayed competitive in the first ten minutes of the contest. Though the Tigers maintained the lead, Bruno remained within five points of the Tigers — thanks to several jump shots by co-captain Sheila Dixon ’13. Dixon was lead scorer for the game, clocking in with 17 points, nearly half the Bears’ total.
But Dixon’s performance could only help the Bears’ offense so much — the Tigers took control of the court in the second half, going on a 10 point run that helped balloon their lead to 22 points. The Bears briefly narrowed the gap, but ultimately could not contend with the Tigers’ ferocious offense.
“They are very good shooters and rebound the ball well,” Ball said. “To beat a team like that we have to be just as offensively aggressive as we are defensively aggressive.”
Princeton left the court shooting 46 percent from the field, while the Bears finished with 25 percent.
Bruno was also shut down by the Quakers’ relentless defense during their Sunday night match.
“I think they obviously played really tough defense,” said Lauren Clarke ’14. “They were denying me the whole time — they made it difficult for me to score, so we had to look for other options.” Clarke led the Bears with 13 points.
The game’s lead scorer, Penn’s Alyssa Baron, helped the Quakers jump out to an early lead. A three-pointer by Baron had the Quakers leading 19-8 only nine minutes into the game. By the end of the first half, the Quakers held the gap of 11 points with a score of 33-22.
Bruno managed to narrow the deficit to eight points in the second half, but with ten minutes left in the game, Penn pulled ahead and finished the game 65-48.
“We just needed to have more team chemistry, working together,” Clarke said. “They both were very similar games. Both were very tough on defense and we just have to find our flow on offense.”
The Bears will play Columbia on the road this Friday and host Cornell at home Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Pizzitola Center.
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