PRINCETON: Tiger teams past first tests

Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
   Princeton University’s exam break didn’t seem to have a negative effect on many of its athletic teams.
   Princeton exam break comes later than most colleges’, which opens up debate about how it affects Tiger teams. It comes a little later in the winter season, right in many cases, when teams are building momentum heading into the most critical part of the season.
   The basketball teams are preparing to open Ivy League play tonight. The hockey teams are returning to league play, all gearing up for the stretch run.
   The Tigers men’s ice hockey team took 16 days off, but it didn’t seem rusty. It returned to the ice Tuesday at Baker Rink with a 7-1 win over Sacred Heart. The 19th-ranked Tigers shook off the rust with three goals in the first 11 minutes. Six Tigers put up multiple points and 13 players found their way onto the scoring sheet.
   The Tigers showed no signs of slowing down after going into the break 6-1-1 in their previous eight games. They picked it up right where they left off and now head on the road to play at St. Lawrence tonight and at Clarkson on Saturday.
   The Princeton women’s ice hockey team will host St. Lawrence 7 p.m. tonight at Baker Rink and Clarkson 4 p.m. Saturday. They couldn’t have been happy to see exams break up their momentum. The Tigers, after starting the season 2-10-1, evened their record going into exams by reeling off eight straight wins. Even more impressively, they allowed just one goal in their last five games, including a 3-0 win over fifth-ranked Boston College.
   The Princeton men’s basketball team will play host to Brown 7 p.m. tonight and Yale 6 p.m. Saturday to open Ivy play. The Tigers had the opportunity to return to the court early with a 73-40 win over The College of New Jersey on Sunday. Princeton had won nine of its last 10 games before its break and its 11 wins tied a program record for wins before the break.
   The Tigers got back on the court for one final non-conference, which should help against two teams that have already played two of the hyper-intense Ivy games. For Ivy Leaguers, their conference tournament begins now.
   The PU women’s basketball team has used what time it can find since exams ended to fine tune for their second Ivy game. The defending Ivy champion Tigers went into the exam break after a 56-45 win over Penn, their ninth win in 10 games. They will look to remain unbeaten in Ivy play at Brown tonight and at Yale on Saturday, and they will be doing so without their leading scorer and second leading rebounder, Niveen Rasheed, who is out for the year with a knee injury.
   The break allowed the Tigers a little time to rethink roles and figure out how to pick up the slack for Rasheed, who was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year last season.
   The breaks don’t get much greater than for the Tiger women’s swimming and diving team. Princeton last competed in the Big Al Open on Dec. 5, but seven weeks later, they returned to action with a 131½-106½ win over Dartmouth. Even stranger, it was Senior Night as the Tiers won’t host another dual meet this season, but will host the Ivy League championships Feb. 24.
   Nothing seems to affect the PU swimmers. The women ran their dual meet winning streak to 35 straight with the victory, and they will face a strong challenge from Harvard today and Saturday. The Crimson feature former Montgomery High School standout Meghan Leddy, now a sophomore at Harvard.
   The Princeton men’s swimming and diving team also will have a tough challenge from Harvard today and Saturday. The Tigers returned to the pool victorious as well, 156-85, over Dartmouth on Sunday at DeNunzio. The Tigers have not lost a dual meet at home in 20 years, and have one more home dual meet this season.
   The men’s and women’s squash teams also had seven-week layoffs. The Tiger men, ranked third, were to play Penn on Thursday, while the PU women, ranked fourth, also took on Penn on Thursday.
   Even some of PU sports are starting new seasons with exams behind them. Women’s tennis topped Rutgers on Wednesday to open the dual meet season. The men’s volleyball team opened their year with a loss at UC-San Diego on Wednesday. At least, their seasons weren’t broken up by the exam break, not that it seemed to affect too many Tiger teams.