Parker Hill, new-look frontcourt guide Princeton into Ivy season
Hill, Tabitha Amanze and Katie Thiers are giving the Tigers new ways to win.
PRINCETON – The best game of Parker Hill’s Princeton career was one rebound shy of being even better.
Hill set career highs of 18 points and nine rebounds Saturday against Cornell, but with the game in hand, she subbed out for the final time without around five minutes to go. I asked postgame if she lobbied the coaching staff at all to let her get the final rebound needed for her first double-double, or if she didn’t know she was that close.
“I didn’t know. I would have!” Hill said with a laugh. “I knew I was close to 20 (points). I didn’t know I had nine.”
While Hill may not make nine shots per game the rest of the year, her evolution into a dependable scoring five is emblematic of the three-headed frontcourt guiding the Tigers into Ivy League action.
Princeton encountered little trouble in a 72-39 victory over Cornell on Saturday to kick off Ivy play. Holding a conference foe to less than 40 has become so typical of this program’s defense that it’s barely worth remarking upon – they did the same to the Big Red on Jan. 6 last year and kept three Ivy opponents below 40 in 2022-23.
The Tigers are accustomed to winning with defense. However, for the first time this decade, Princeton ranks higher in adjusted offensive efficiency than in adjusted defensive efficiency on BartTorvik.com, which has tracked women’s basketball metrics since 2020-21.
Credit Hill, Tabitha Amanze and Katie Thiers, Princeton’s top three options at center. Star shooting guard Madison St. Rose was primed for a big scoring season after improving her 3-point percentage to 34% last year; when she went down, it became more important than ever that the Tigers find new ways to win.
And while Skye Belker and Ashley Chea are doing great work from beyond the 3-point line, Princeton feasted in the paint on Saturday, scoring 44 of its points there.
Hill shot 6-for-6 in the first half and finished the game 9-for-11. Amanze continued a stellar run with 4-of-5 shooting for eight points in just 10 minutes after hitting double figures in her prior two games. Thiers added two buckets without a miss. Even reserve forward Taylor Charles poured in a career-high nine points, all in the second half.
Hill and Amanze are both 6-foot-4, something no Cornell player could match, but to be fair, they’ve been 6-foot-4 throughout their Princeton careers. It’s only now that they’re clicking on offense to this degree.
“I’m more of a consistent starter than I was last year,” Hill said. “Definitely playing a little bit more, scoring a little bit more. (In the offseason), I worked on just the shots around the rim, shooting a little bit. Nothing crazy, you know, simple basics, just getting (my) shooting percentage up.”
That she has. In three seasons in mostly a reserve role, Hill’s career 2-point percentage was a serviceable 50.6%. Saturday’s performance bumped her 2-point shooting for the season up to 74.1%, sixth in the country and second among players who have taken at least 50 shots.
She’s second nationally in effective field goal percentage (72.9%) and sixth in true shooting percentage (71.5%).
Berube has continued to experiment with playing a “twin towers” lineup with Hill and Amanze side by side. Amanze, a former top-50 high school recruit, drew her first start of the season on Dec. 31 against Le Moyne, playing next to Hill.
“We have some good posts in there that we want to get them touches. They’re big targets so why not put it in there?” Berube said. “They’re all really good scorers and they also know when the double’s coming that they need to kick it out. And yeah, just smart. But that’s where we’re going to.”
Hill and Thiers, both seniors, have been important leaders this year as well.
“I think they’re helping along the younger players like (freshman forward) Emily Eadie,” Berube said. “So yeah, they’ve been awesome. I think our senior class, not all play a huge amount of minutes but they are so impactful to our team and our program day in and day out.”
The centers have given Princeton a new dimension on offense different from the Ellie Mitchell era. But they haven’t sacrificed defense and rebounding, as versatile wing/forward Fadima Tall, Hill and Amanze have combined for more than 43% of the team’s total rebounds.
Amanze made life difficult for Cornell’s forwards on Saturday. Officially, she finished with two steals and one block, but she was involved in a few more of the Big Red’s 19 turnovers by deflecting and altering passes.
“Who wants to shoot over that? And it’s hard to pass through those arms,” Berube said. “I mean, she’s a big presence on both ends of the floor.”
Not for nothing: Just like Cornell, Harvard and Columbia don’t have anyone taller than 6-foot-2, either. So Saturday could have been a preview of how the Tigers will attack the other top two teams in the Ivy League, starting next week when the Crimson come to Jadwin Gym.
Berube said Harvard presents a “huge challenge” and Crimson guard Harmoni Turner is “probably the best all-around great player” in the Ivy.
“They’re a great team,” Hill added. “It’ll be a tough game, but I’m sure we’ll do all the preparation to be ready for it.”
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Happy Sunday, and thanks for stopping by. We’ll be keeping tabs on Princeton and women’s basketball in general throughout January, as I’ll be attending at least two more women’s games before the month is out.
For now, let’s clean the glass with other news and notes from around the state.
The one every Princeton fan had been waiting for: Caden Pierce appears to have avoided a major injury after hurting his ankle on Monday against Akron. Pierce wasn’t using crutches or wearing a boot of any kind and appeared to be walking around fine as he watched Saturday’s win over Division III Kean from the sidelines. “Yeah, we’re hopeful,” Mitch Henderson said. “Planning on playing him on Saturday (at Harvard).”
Other than some early defensive struggles, there wasn’t much to remark upon from the Tigers’ 92-71 win over a well-coached Kean outfit. Jackson Hicke got the start for Pierce and scored 12 points. Philip Byriel hit a few second-half threes to finish with a team-high 14 and freshman Peyton Seals chipped in 13 points, five rebounds and three steals as he carves out a bit of a bench role for himself. It appears Henderson has settled on Xaivian Lee, Dalen Davis, Pierce, Malik Abdullahi and Philip Byriel as his preferred starting lineup. He feels playing Abdullahi and Byriel together gives Princeton a bigger presence on the boards and more ways to win. It makes sense when you consider Byriel’s shooting and Abdullahi’s ability to get above the rim. “That’s going to be important for us once we hit league. Each game’s gonna require a little bit of a different look,” Henderson said.
Monmouth’s first two CAA results: a 78-56 thrashing of Stony Brook and an 84-64 loss at Delaware. After last season’s home/road discrepancy, it’s hard not to notice that the Hawks are 2-0 at home and 1-12 everywhere else. They get their next two at home against two of the best teams in the conference, UNC Wilmington and Charleston. The Hawks have won a program-record 15 in a row at home, but they didn’t host either of these programs last season.
The Seton Hall women won a 74-71 overtime thriller over Georgetown to move to 4-0 in the Big East. Freshman Jada Eads continued her breakout season by scoring all eight of Seton Hall’s overtime points – two clutch 3-pointers to move in front for good and the free throws that iced the game – while finishing with a career-best 27. Even with Savannah Catalon still sidelined, the Pirates are finding ways to win games. But there are no softies in the next four games on the schedule: Creighton, at Marquette, at UConn, St. John’s. Creighton and UConn are the only other unbeaten teams in Big East play.