Following its first-ever trip to the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament this past spring, expectations are high for Columbia University women’s basketball. The team will look a bit different this year as dynamic scorer Abbey Hsu has graduated. After becoming Columbia’s first WNBA Draft pick—chosen by the Connecticut Sun—Hsu is currently playing professionally in Belgium.
“Every day is an opportunity for us to all get better,” said Columbia head coach Megan Griffith. “I’m excited to see what this group is going to do. I really believe that we’re going to have an exciting brand of Columbia women’s basketball that’s going to be different than last year.” Building this year’s non-conference schedule was challenging, said Griffith. Now that Columbia has built a solid reputation and defeated ranked teams, it is harder to find challenging opponents as well as pace the team to build toward Ivy League conference action that begins in January.
“We are trying to prove ourselves in November, which is one of the hardest tasks in college basketball,” she said. “That’s the first month of your season, when your team is new. We don’t have summer access. … We really, with a lot of attention, tried to spread that out across November and December as much as possible, but also be as ready as possible for the Ivy League season. That’s ultimately what is the most important thing to our program.”
Senior captains Cecelia Collins and Kitty Henderson said it’s exciting to develop a new team identity. “Obviously, it’s really important that we find our identity,” said Collins. “The most successful teams find their identity as soon as possible and then they pound into that every single day.”
For Princeton University, it’s about continuing more than a decade of success. Since 2010, Princeton has played in the NCAA Tournament 11 times. This team also looks different than last year with the graduation of Kaitlyn Chen, three-time Ivy League Tournament Most Outstanding Player, who will play for the renowned UConn Huskies this season as a graduate student.
“We feel like we have a good balance of some experienced players with some young players,” said Princeton head coach Carla Berube. “They’re coming together as a team slowly but surely. … Younger players are stepping up into new roles on the court.”