Stevens (left) and Brown are known ballers

IVY LEAGUE CHAMPIONS CHERYL STEVENS ‘10 and TANI BROWN ‘10 — CO-CAPTAINS of the BEST WOMEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM in PROGRAM HISTORY — SURF, SWAG, AND LIVE THE DREAM

Name: Cheryl Stevens / Tani Brown
Age: 22 / 21
Major: History / Religion
Hometown: Canyon Country, CA / Los Angeles, CA
Eating club/residential college/affiliation: Cottage, Mathey, Women’s Basketball Team / Cottage

Who’s your favorite Princetonian, living or dead, real or fictional?
STEVENS: Carlton Banks. Most of my dance moves are inspired in some way or another by him.
BROWN: My girl Meesh, a.k.a. Michelle Obama.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in Princeton?
S: Frist pizza at 3:30 AM post-the Street is pretty hard to beat.
B: Every Wednesday at Cottage… Member’s Night baby! Steak and a chocolate fountain for dessert.

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day?
S: Now that my thesis is in, I LIVE THE DREAM.
B: I surf and I swag.

What is your greatest guilty pleasure?
S: Watching the history channel.
B: I could eat butter lovers microwave popcorn all day.

What’s the last student performance you saw?
S: Women’s Lacrosse vs. Dartmouth in a double overtime buzzer beater. It was awesome.
B: BAC Dance, I love watching Grace Cineas shake it.

Do you know all the words to Old Nassau?
S: Absolutely not.
B: I don’t know one word in Old Nassau… my bad.

The hand gestures to Old Nassau: creepy or awesome?
S: I don’t know them, but I can only imagine that they are creepily awesome.
B: Awesome?

What do you hate most about Princeton?
S: That it’s making me leave and forcing me into the real world. Oh, and grade deflation is pretty bad too.
B: When I wave at someone and they pretend like we didn’t just have a full semester of classes together. COME ON NOW PEOPLE

What’s your drink?
S: Anything with orange juice.
B: Hypnotiq, Alize, or anything Notorious B.I.G. would approve.

What’s hanging above your desk and/or bed?
S: A “thug life” chain and a love letter from senior football stud Jeff Jackson.
B: A picture of my team and a picture of my family.

Where do you do your best thinking?
S: Laying in bed.
B: When I go running.

When’s bedtime?
S: When the DJ goes off at Cottage.
B: When I feel myself getting ty ty

What do you think of Connor Diemand-Yauman?
S: I feel like his name is everywhere I turn. He seems to have done a great job.
B: He’s got a great smile, I’d date that.

What do you think of Dean Malkiel?
S: I don’t know enough about her to answer that.
B: Soo Dooopppppe.

Where is the best place on campus?
S: The Mathey courtyard, the backyard of Cottage, and East Pyne.
B: East Pyne

Where is the worst place on campus?
S: My carrel and/or Jadwin Gym on the day of the pre-season run test.
B: Anyplace where I have to study for over 10 hours.

Who is your mortal enemy?
S: Life is too short for enemies.
B: Four Loko Energy Drinks

When’s the last time you used cash?
S: To buy a coffee at Frist because I forgot my prox.
B: Last night to get Bent Spoon in Frist.

In 25 years, I will be…
S: Happy… and potentially running the world along with Tan of CheTan. If you don’t know, you probably should.
B: Hopefully happy and healthy.

Where do you go to study alone?
S: Firestone C-floor.
B: My room, a.k.a. the Boom Tomb.

What makes someone a Princetonian?
S: Bleeding orange and black.
B: They are good at what they love, and love what they do.

Princeton's other (better) basketball team

Well, after all the excitement around the Princeton men’s basketball team possibly going undefeated in the Ivy League, we lost to Cornell and Brown in a span of three short games. There are still a few games left in the season, but Princeton has been all but eliminated from winning the Ivy League title.

But lost in our otherwise obsessive coverage of Princeton basketball has been this year’s real story: the women’s team is good.

Like, really, really, really good.

How good, you ask? Hold on to your socks:

How about a 21-2 overall record, including an undefeated 9-0 in the Ivy League?

How about their 21 wins being the most ever by the women’s basketball team. And they still have 5 games left on the schedule!

How about the only two losses on the year coming to perennial national powerhouses UCLA and Rutgers?

How about all of this coming from a team that went 14-14 last year?

But if you want to know if a team’s really good, listen to the way its coach talks after a blowout win. Following Saturday’s 64-38 drubbing of Brown in Providence, head coach Courtney Banghart said, “That wasn’t our best game, but it was a win. We will regroup and be ready for Cornell and Columbia next weekend.”

God help Cornell and Columbia.

In other words, this is our mea culpa basketball blog post. Yes, it was fun and exciting to write about a team that Pat Forde talked about on ESPN. But at the end of the day, only one Princeton basketball team has played this season in a way that’s truly transcendent, and that’s the Lady Tigers. Sorry it took us 23 games to figure that out.

(image and statistics from goprincetontigers.com)

Keep the faith Pat Forde!

Pat Forde, ESPN.com columnist, actually mentioned Princeton in his most recent edition of the men’s basketball column “Forde Minutes”! Not only that, he thinks we could go undefeated this year!

Well, only kinda sorta. He thinks we could go undefeated in Ivy League play, since, at 4-0, it’s still technically possible. But we’d have to beat Cornell twice, who’s also undefeated in the Ivy League.

How does PF Flier (Pat Forde needs a nickname!) handicap the odds? Umm, well, he gives Cornell an 80% chance of going undefeated and Princeton, err, a 1% chance.

Jim Carrey, bring it on home!

(image source: http://assets.espn.go.com/media/motion/2008/1201/dm_081201_cfb_forde_bmoc.jpg)

Enjoy it, Cornell. We've been here before.

After the boys from Ithaca crushed their Crimson cousins Saturday night by a score of 86-50, Cornell moved into the top 25 in the ESPN/USA Today coaches’ poll for the top teams in college basketball.

This is a big deal for Ivy League basketball. The Ancient Eight haven’t had a ranked team since back when I was in the second grade, otherwise known as the 1997-1998 season.

(And who was that team? The Princeton Tigers of course.)

It’s been a good run for Cornell basketball. They’ve made the NCAA tournament the last two years, and it looks like they’ll be headed back to the big dance.

We’re actually  a little intimidated. Basketball used to be our thing, our defining sport. Cornell has now officially seized that mantle. And we can’t even take comfort in our new(er) sport of dominance, lacrosse, because Cornell bounced us from the NCAA tournament last year.

So instead we’ll do what we always do in these situations: hearken back to our glorious past, and remind the young up and comers who still stands dominant in the annals of Ivy League Basketball history (other than Penn).

(This also gives us the opportunity to make fun of Harvard’s impressive ZERO men’s basketball Ivy League titles. And making fun of Harvard always makes us feel better.)

Full feel-good historical standings after the jump!

Without further ado, the list of Ivy League champions in men’s basketball.

(Hat tip to stormingthefloor.net for putting these numbers together and enabling this moment of bittersweet nostalgia.)

Penn: 37 (1906, 1908, 1916, 1918-21, 1928-29, 1934-35, 1937, 1945, 1953, 1966, 1970-75, 1978-80, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1993-95, 1999-2000, 2002 (shared), 2003, 2005-07)

Princeton: 28 (1922, 1925, 1932, 1950, 1952, 1955, 1960-61, 1963-65, 1967, 1969, 1976-77, 1981, 1983-84, 1989-92, 1996-98, 2001, 2002 (shared), 2004)

Columbia: 13 (1904-05, 1911-12, 1914 (shared), 1926, 1930-31, 1936, 1947-48, 1951, 1968)

Dartmouth: 12 (1927, 1938-44, 1946, 1956, 1958-59)

Yale: 11 (1902-03, 1907, 1915, 1917, 1923, 1933, 1949, 1957, 1962, 2002 (shared))

Cornell: 7 (1913, 1914 (shared), 1924, 1954, 1988, 2008-09)

Brown: 1 (1986)

Harvard: 0

And there you have it. You may be enjoying your success now, Cornell, but it’s going to take at least four times as many championships before you can hang with us in the record books. And, as always, better luck next year, Harvard.

(image source: ivy-style.com)