Shortly after 9 p.m. on Nov. 14, Princeton sophomore Toby Nweke texted her older sister, Chet, a Princeton alumna and Georgetown graduate student. The Hoyas had just lost to George Mason, and for the second straight game, they’d surrendered a double-digit lead in the second half.
“I knew that she definitely was probably upset after the loss,” Toby told The IX Basketball two days later. “But I just told her to keep her head up. There’s another game soon, so she can’t dwell on that.”
Chet had 2 points, six rebounds and four turnovers in 26:24, and in her head, it seemed even worse. She guessed afterward that she’d had five or six turnovers. But she was trying to do what Toby had said and lead the Hoyas with her body language in the postgame locker room.
“I didn’t have the best game,” Chet told The IX Basketball that night, soon after Toby’s text. “… Typically, I just would hang my head, but I’m just trying to work on not doing that.”
With both sisters playing collegiately, it’s tough for them to watch each other’s games. Even when Toby and Princeton played at Maryland on Sunday, less than an hour from Georgetown, Chet couldn’t make it because the Hoyas had practice.
Still, Chet and Toby are appreciating that they both get to compete this season and are lifting each other up however they can — including with encouraging texts after tough losses.
“They’re a really close-knit family, and they support each other really, really well,” Princeton head coach Carla Berube told The IX Basketball on Saturday.
Chet and Toby, who are four years apart and describe themselves as best friends, grew up in Woodbine, Maryland. Their two older brothers, Ike and Odera, were also Ivy League athletes: Ike played basketball for Columbia, and Odera ran track at Yale. So there was no shortage of one-on-one competition — or of rebounders when they wanted to use the shooting gun their parents gave them as a Christmas gift.
Chet committed to Princeton to play for then-head coach Courtney Banghart, but Banghart left in the spring of 2019, during Chet’s junior year of high school. In came Berube, and after they got to know each other, Chet decided to keep her commitment.
But amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Chet’s freshman season was canceled, so she had to wait until her sophomore year to debut for Princeton. A 6’ forward, she averaged 2.8 points in 10.8 minutes per game off the bench in her sophomore and junior seasons.
“She was going to work her tail off to do whatever she could to make an impact on the team,” Berube said. “So you weren’t going to find someone in the gym more than Chet. …
“It was fun watching her grow. And she certainly became a huge part of our success down the stretch in her career.”
One hint that Chet would have a career year as a senior came that November, when she had 10 rebounds off the bench in a win over a ranked Oklahoma team. Midway through the 2023-24 season, Berube moved her into the starting lineup for a big game against Columbia. Princeton won by 15, and Chet delivered 9 points on 4-for-5 shooting, six rebounds and two assists in 32 minutes.
“I want to get my best defensive team out there, and Chet’s really been playing well on that side of the ball,” Berube told reporters after that game. “… I thought she really deserved the start, and she came up big.”
Chet stayed in the starting lineup the rest of the way, and her contributions were crucial to the Tigers winning their third Ivy League regular-season title and third tournament title in as many seasons. In 13 games as a starter, she averaged 9.8 points on 66.3% shooting and 6.2 rebounds per game.
Meanwhile, Toby became very familiar with Princeton over the years, even accompanying Chet on her official visit. Chet didn’t push her sister to follow her to Princeton, but it felt like home to Toby from a young age.
“Seeing it from her perspective, seeing it from my perspective … it’s just that feeling that I got,” Toby said. “I was like, I knew I need to be here.”
But when Berube and her staff first met the Nwekes, it was too early to tell what kind of player Toby would become. “Toby was so little,” Berube told The IX Basketball about the then-middle schooler. “… She was sort of just scratching the surface [of] thinking about playing basketball.” Berube and her staff kept tabs on Toby, but it was important to them that they recruit Toby for her own merits, not because she was Chet’s sister.
In Toby’s junior year of high school, the coaches saw her make a jump. Her shot had improved, and she’d gotten much stronger. She committed to Princeton in June 2023, ahead of her senior season, meaning that Berube was in line for eight years with the Nwekes.
“I’m kind of glad that we didn’t play with each other because we probably would have hated each other,” Chet said. “But I’m glad [Toby] made the decision to go there.”
After Chet graduated from Princeton in 2024, she headed to Georgetown. Because of the canceled 2020-21 season, she had a year of eligibility left to use as a graduate transfer. Her final season of college basketball was slated to coincide with Toby’s first. Instead, Chet’s 2024-25 season ended almost before it began, with a torn ACL in the first minute of the season opener against Virginia-Lynchburg.
When Toby heard about the injury, she knew she needed to go home and see Chet. They didn’t talk a ton while she was there; mostly, they just hung out in the same space. But it was important to Toby to “[be] there for [Chet] when she needed to laugh, when she needed to cry.”
“I was kind of not the nicest person,” Chet said of those early days. “… I was going through it for sure.”
Toby continued to support Chet as she went through a long rehab process and dealt with feeling like she wasn’t fully part of the team because she couldn’t play. And Chet helped Toby adjust to college, including advising her on which classes to take in their shared major of psychology and watching film with her to help her learn Berube’s defense. Chet also watched Toby’s games when she could and shared her feedback in the family group chat.
“She helped me so much,” Toby said. “… I’m definitely an overthinker, so if I feel like I’m just really stressed out about something, she’s the first person that I’m gonna text.”
“She’s struggled mentally, and I’ve just kind of been that person to tell her, like, ‘Girl, you’re not alone. Everybody goes through that,’” Chet said.
As a first-year, Toby was the Tigers’ sixth player, playing 15.2 minutes per game and averaging 2.7 points and 1.6 rebounds. The 5’10 guard scored a career-high 10 points in just 19 minutes against Dartmouth in January, but she also went scoreless in 10 games.
“She can really shoot the ball. She’s … gonna be a really strong defender for us,” Berube told The IX Basketball in December 2024. “It’s just for her, any first-year, it just takes some time to understand what we do defensively and just being a confident playmaker. But … I know she’s gonna have a great career here.”
Over the summer, Toby played for the Nigerian national team at the FIBA Under-19 World Cup. She started every game except the opener and averaged 8.9 points and 3.1 rebounds in 25.5 minutes per game.
“I joked with my family … that it kind of felt like the Olympics,” Toby said.
“That was just really cool for me to see her represent our country,” Chet said. “… I will always be her biggest fan. I love her to death. I actually would never say that to her, but yeah.”
On the Nigerian team, Toby gained confidence taking shots in key moments and having the ball in her hands. That has helped her now that she’s back at Princeton and in line for a larger role than last season.
Late in Princeton’s 5-point win at Villanova on Nov. 12, Toby was in the game for her defense and rebounding. She helped Princeton hold Villanova to one made field goal in the fourth quarter.
“She’s got great length. She’s got these long arms that just can wreak some havoc,” Berube said on Saturday, outlining why she went with Toby in that situation. “She can switch onto a big if she needed to; she can switch onto a point guard. … We needed that down the stretch to get those big stops and rebounds, and she certainly came up big.”
In Toby’s homecoming game at Maryland on Sunday, she played a season-high 27:30, with many of those minutes coming at point guard. She said she told herself not to freak out going against Maryland’s length and aggressiveness — seven Terps are 6’2 or taller, including guards Yarden Garzon and Saylor Poffenbarger. She handled it well, committing only one turnover, and added 6 points, two rebounds, two blocks and two steals.
“We’ve known that Toby is a tough, gritty player, does some things great on the defensive end, and then can knock down threes from [the] corner, from the wing,” Berube told reporters postgame. “So she’s going to be key for us coming off the bench and giving that spark that we need on both ends of the floor.”
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Meanwhile, Chet is Georgetown’s “grandma,” on her sixth year of college and her second master’s degree. Though she dislikes that nickname, she values being someone her teammates look to in moments of uncertainty.
“Chet has been great,” Hoyas head coach Darnell Haney told The IX Basketball on Nov. 14. “She’s a great leader. … She’s like [the] mama bear of the group. She makes sure everybody’s good. And I’m proud of her and her being able to come back.”
Like at Princeton, much of Chet’s role at Georgetown is about defense and rebounding, but she also describes herself as someone who can “boogie in the post” and drive to the rim. She has shifted from playing the four at Princeton to playing the five at times for Georgetown, which is something she’d never done before but has embraced.
“I kind of like it because you see me and it’s like, ‘Oh, she’s so undersized. She probably sucks,’” Chet said. “But I get to finish more around the rim and stuff like that, which I feel like … [creates] good scoring opportunities for me.”
In Georgetown’s own game against Maryland on Nov. 9, for example, Chet had 6 points on 3-for-4 shooting against the Terps’ size. On the season, she has started every game, though Haney has been conscious of managing her minutes as she eases back into competition. She is averaging 3.8 points, 3.8 rebounds and 1.5 assists in 19.6 minutes per game.
“I’m just super excited for her — so happy that she’s out there again,” Toby said. “And she just has all the confidence in the world, and [I’m] so happy to see her just play super freely.”
Beyond Chet’s production, she is trying to teach the Hoyas how to come together and win close games. Last season, they went just 12-19, and they’re trying to create chemistry with several new faces after graduating leading scorer Kelsey Ransom.
“At Princeton … we could go down 10, and everybody’s kind of like, ‘We’re not losing this game. I’m not gonna let us lose this game,’” Chet said. “So I think it’s just a matter of being more of a collective, like ‘one band, one sound.’ We always say that. So kind of just trying to embody that in everything that we do. … We’ve shown that we can be a really good team, but we just need to do that for 40 minutes.”
Chet and Toby have helped Princeton to a lot of wins — 98 and counting over their careers. They’ve suited up for the Tigers in different seasons, but they’ve still done it together, by supporting and loving each other through the hard times and the memorable moments.
So when Toby graduates in 2028, it’ll feel like the end of an era for Berube and Princeton.
“I don’t know,” Berube said about how she’ll handle that. “… There’s always been a Nweke around me.”
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