Drexel, Princeton women's basketball teams each punch ticket to NCAA Tournament
PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP) - Two women's basketball programs from the Philadelphia region will compete in the NCAA Tournament this week after winning their conference tournaments.
The Drexel University women's basketball team will be the No. 16 seed and face the University of Texas, the No. 1 seed, in the Portland 4 Region on Friday, March 22 at 3 p.m.
The Princeton University women's basketball team will face No. 8 seed West Virginia University as the No. 9 seed in the Albany 2 Region on Saturday, March 23 at 5:30 p.m.
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Drexel women's basketball wins CAA championship
Drexel punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament on Sunday with a 68-60 victory over No. 1 seed Stony Brook University in the Coastal Athletic Association championship in Washington D.C.
It's the third time in program history the Dragons are heading to the NCAA Tournament.
Junior guard Amaris Baker, who went to Cardinal O'Hara High School in Delaware County, led the Dragons in scoring with 19 points. She also had four assists and three rebounds. The win marked Baker's 11th straight game with double-digit points.
Graduate student guard Brooke Mullin, a Langhorne, Pennsylvania, native who played at Neshaminy High School, had 16 points in the win. She also drilled four 3-pointers, corralled six rebounds and dished three assists.
Senior guard Erin Sweeney, who played at Archbishop Carroll, scored 16 points off the bench for the Dragons in 26 minutes.
It's the first time the Dragons are heading back to the NCAA Tournament since the 2020-21 season, which was Amy Mallon's first year as head coach at Drexel. In that trip to the tourney, Drexel lost to the University of Georgia, 67-53, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
The Dragons won four games in the CAA tourney, including Sunday's victory, to go dancing. They upset Monmouth University, and Towson University before taking down Stony Brook.
Princeton women's basketball wins the Ivy League
Coach Carla Berube has Princeton headed back to a familiar place — the NCAA Tournament.
Madison St. Rose scored 18 points, Kaitlyn Chen added 17 and the Tigers beat Columbia 75-58 on Saturday to win the Ivy League, earning the conference's tournament for a fifth straight time.
"I think it's just a standard our coaches set day in and day out," said Chen, who was the outstanding player of the tournament for a third straight year. "The people who came before us set that standard. We try to live up to it."
Princeton (25-4) has been in the championship game of the Ivy Tournament every year since its inception in 2017. There was no tournament in 2020 and 2021 because of the coronavirus. Princeton has won an NCAA Tournament game each of the last two years, pulling off upsets as an 11-seed in 2022 and 10-seed in 2023.
"We're experienced now at the NCAA level and March Madness. Ellie (Mitchell) and Kaitlyn have been there a couple of times. Experience can help us," Princeton coach Carla Berube said. "We have a lot of young players and new players that haven't been on this journey and these leaders will help us along."