Deja vu for PU women

Cahill, Lane hit milestone in same hoops game

By: Justin Feil
   Three years ago, Allison Cahill and Maureen Lane were freshmen on the Princeton University women’s basketball team when Maggie Langlas and Kate Thirolf each scored their 1,000 career points in a loss to Fairfield.
   "I just remember it was in Hawaii," said Cahill, who is a senior along with Lane. "We were playing pretty badly, and it was really exciting for them to do it in the same game, but it was kind of not emphasized and celebrated that much because we weren’t doing well. But it was so exciting. They were our leaders. And to have them do it in the same game, and have them be such close friends was a neat thing."
   Three years from now, it could be current freshmen like Rebecca Brown, Katy O’Brien and Ali Smith who recall the time when Cahill and Lane duplicated the feat. It’s a game that would be hard for any Tiger player to forget.
   While it wasn’t sunny Hawaii but dreary New Haven, Conn., that they lit up, Cahill scored 24 points while Lane had 21 for almost half of Princeton’s points in a 94-92 triple overtime win at Yale on Saturday.
   "It was very exciting," said Princeton head coach Richard Barron, whose team improved to 8-13 overall, 3-4 in the Ivy League. "It was a game where we played really well in the first half. They played really well in the second half."
   It was in the first half, according to Barron, that both hit the 1,000-point mark. Cahill needed eight points while Lane needed 14 entering the game.
   "I kind of tried not to think about it," Lane said. "I tried not to focus on that. I knew it was getting close."
   "I knew I only needed eight," Cahill said. "My family was more keeping track of it than me. It was an away game and I wasn’t expecting a celebration or anything. My mom was pretty excited. She did the announcement herself."
   Cahill hit the milestone one night after a scary moment for her and her family. Her grandfather had to be revived after his heart stopped beating five minutes into Princeton’s game at Brown, less than an hour from where Cahill grew up in Uxbridge, Mass.
   "It was pretty overwhelming," Cahill said. "I had a lot of confidence that he was going to be OK."
   With her grandfather stabilized, Cahill was able to eclipse the 1,000-point mark Saturday in the same game as Lane, whose parents were at the previous weekend’s Ivy games and will be at Jadwin this weekend, but missed the milestone moment at Yale. It was fitting that the two did it together. From the outset, they were tops in their class.
   "I think I might have been a bit of a surprise," said Lane, a Seattle resident who unlike Cahill, did not score 1,000 points in high school. "I don’t know if they were expecting me to play as a freshman, but it fit."
   Lane can still remember her first Princeton points, a three-pointer against Lehigh. She had six points the night that Langlas and Thirolf went over 1,000 while Cahill had three. Cahill had five points in her Princeton debut against Lehigh.
   "My freshman year, when two of our seniors did it," Cahill began, "looking at their numbers over their career, I thought it was possible seeing as how I was playing as a freshman. You don’t have to put up huge numbers like in high school."
   Cahill finished her freshman year at Princeton as the team’s third-leading scorer with 6.9 points per game. Lane was the team’s eighth-leading scorer at 4.3 points per game, but led the team in scoring the next season at 14.3 points per game. Cahill was second on the team at 9.5 points per game. Last season, Cahill led the team with a 14.2 points per game average while Lane was third with 11.5 points per game. Going into tonight’s 7 p.m. game against Dartmouth at Jadwin Gym, they both have exactly the same total points, 198, and scoring average, 9.9, which has them tied for third on the team.
   "They were the two top offensive weapons the last two years," Barron said. "This year, Kelly Schaeffer has emerged and Becky Brown has given us more of a one-two punch. They’re right at 10 points a game and it’s not a surprise that they both made it."
   There are similarities in their games, but there are some contrasts as well, beginning with their stature. Lane is a 6-foot wing player, who can score either inside or outside. Cahill is a quick 5-foot-6 guard. They log more minutes than any other Princeton players, and they’re valuable leaders.
   "Both are good three-point shooters," Barron said. "Allison has the ability to create shots for herself a little more. Mo’ has the ability to create more matchup problems. If they put a taller person on her, she can go by them. If they’re shorter, she can post up. Al’ has made the transition to play some point guard for us. They’re both great kids who want to see the program improve."
   Improvement is what both point to as what they’d like to leave as their legacy as much as their ability to score.
   "Hopefully they’ll remember me as a scorer and as someone who helped the program turn around," Lane said. "I want to be someone they can look back on and see they got the program headed in the right direction."
   As freshmen, they won nine games, then won just twice as sophomores and 11 games last season. With wins in more than half of their remaining seven games, they’ll at least tie last season’s marks.
   "We’re just hoping to be a lot more consistent this second half of the season," Cahill agreed. "We’ve showed glimpses of it. We haven’t really played consistently well. That’s our main goal."
   Both would easily shelve their scoring achievements for a chance to win more games. In a way, winning Saturday’s game is what their individual honors that much more special.
   "The game was so exciting, the 1,000 points for both of us was just part of the game," Lane said. "The most exciting part of the game was winning in triple overtime."
   "Even if it wasn’t the game I scored my 1,000th point," Cahill said, "it would be one of the best games ever. The 1,000 was like icing on the cake."
   It was the second double layer of icing on a cake in four years for the Princeton women’s basketball team after Allison Cahill and Maureen Lane eclipsed 1,000 points in Saturday’s thrilling win at Yale.