New Women’s Basketball Coach and Stellar Seniors Shoot for Another Ivy Title

Princeton’s Olivia Hutcherson ’27 was chasing down Harvard’s Saniyah Glenn-Bello as she drove to the basket in the women’s championship game of last season’s Ivy League Tournament. Teammate Skye Belker ’27 made a move to help on defense but quickly cleared out when she saw Hutcherson sweeping in to block Glenn-Bello’s shot. 

“She knew what to expect from me,” Hutcherson said. “I think that chemistry has helped us have those highlight plays and just made it really fun to be able to play together.”

Whether using a moment of eye contact to set a cutter in motion or simply knowing where perimeter shooters will be waiting for a pass, the Tigers’ seniors have built a familiarity that is hard to quantify but easy to appreciate. The group includes four returning starters from a 26-4 team that won the Ivy regular-season and tournament titles in 2025-26. They enter their final season aiming to stay on top of the league and win their first NCAA Tournament game together in March.

While the roster is largely unchanged, the coaching staff will be different: Lauren “LB” Gosselin has taken over as Princeton’s head coach after seven seasons as an assistant to Carla Berube, who’s now at Northwestern. Gosselin added three newcomers to her staff, including former shooting guard Grace Stone ’23, the director of basketball operations. 

“We know LB and she knows us already as well, so it’s a lot of keeping the same standards … the same intensity that we practice with and the togetherness that we want to play with,” said Belker, who will co-captain the team with Hutcherson.

Gosselin called the senior class “a shining example” of the different development paths players can take in four years. “You have [Hutcherson], who didn’t play a lot as a freshman but now is so critical to our success, and you have Skye, who started basically every game of her career,” Gosselin said, adding that their examples give younger players a sense of how they can grow into larger roles.

“Just because you might not be a starter this year or getting the minutes that you hope for this year, [there are] many ways to get to that point. I think it’s the process of growth, developing, learning from those above you and just trusting that. [That’s] the beauty of the Ivy League, the beauty of Princeton, where you get that retention.”

Forward Fadima Tall ’27 took a big step forward last year, leading Princeton in rebounds and steals and earning the Ivy League Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award. Ashley Chea ’27 has been a consistently dynamic presence at point guard. Her scoring average and shooting percentages dipped slightly last year, but she played some of her best games in March and led the team with a career-best 113 assists. 

Related coverage

Sports

Experienced Men’s Basketball Team Looks to Prove Last Season’s Dip Was an Outlier

Tigers’ 2026-27 roster returns 100% of its minutes played and 100% of its scoring

Mari Bickley ’27, a reserve guard who played valuable minutes in her freshman and sophomore seasons, has returned to the team after taking a year away from basketball.

Belker is already a 1,000-point scorer, and by this season’s end, Tall and Chea could also reach that milestone. Last year, all five Princeton starters averaged at least 10 points per game. 

Leading scorer Madison St. Rose ’26 graduated (and will play as a graduate transfer at Notre Dame), but Gosselin does not seem concerned about her team’s scoring output, pointing to Toby Nweke ’28 and Grace O’Sullivan ’29 as players who should see more opportunities this year. “I think we have a lot of people who can put double figures on the board on any given night,” she said.

The Tigers will play 29 regular-season games (up from 27 in previous years), and the nonconference slate includes seven opponents from major conferences, including defending national champion UCLA, along with three mid-majors that reached the NCAA Tournament last season (Richmond, Murray State, and Rhode Island). In several cases, Princeton will only be playing with one rest day between games.

“I think that’s going to challenge our bodies and challenge our minds,” Belker said. “And so that’s going to prepare us really well when the Ivy League comes around and we have those back-to-back games, especially on the road.”

Gosselin said the nonconference games seem to get harder each year, in part to prepare the Tigers for potential NCAA Tournament matchups. “I think we have the personnel to handle it well,” she said. “Do I expect us to be perfect? No, but I expect us to use November and December to learn a lot about ourselves and be ready to attack the Ivy League.”