RICHMOND, Va. — Princeton’s five seniors have no shortage of motivation this season, knowing that their path to a potential Ivy League championship will be filled with “lasts.”
But they are also motivated by some “firsts” — specifically, the ones that first-year head coach Lauren Gosselin is experiencing after spending seven years as a Tigers assistant coach and associate head coach.
“It’s LB’s first year. It’s our last year,” senior guard/forward Fadima Tall told The IX Sports postgame, using Gosselin’s nickname. “[We] would love to be the team that gets her off on a great note.”
“Also Lucas,” senior guard Ashley Chea chimed in, referring to Gosselin’s 16-month-old son. “We’re honestly playing for Lucas.”
Through the first two games of the season, no one has done more with that motivation than Tall. On Monday, she had 29 points and 22 rebounds in a win over Belmont, which was the first 25-20 game by a Princeton player since 1985. (Still, some of her teammates jokingly needled her for not getting 30 points.) Then on Friday, Tall had 27 points and 10 rebounds to fuel a dramatic comeback win at Richmond.
Tall told the ESPN+ broadcasters on Monday that she’d never had a game like that before at any level. But her fourth quarter on Friday looked very similar, as she scored 11 points during Princeton’s 14-0 run to end the game.
The Tigers had struggled for most of the game before their fourth-quarter onslaught. In the first half, they shot just 40.7% from the field and committed seven turnovers, which led to 10 Richmond points. Defensively, they struggled in transition at times and allowed Richmond to score 24 of its 31 points in the paint. That sent the Tigers into the locker room down by 4.
“We just were a little timid [offensively],” Gosselin told The IX Sports postgame. “And when we did execute, there was just … one X and O part of it that was wrong, and that throws off the play. And then we got sped up because, oh, the first option wasn’t there because we didn’t execute well, and now we’re trying to force a little bit one-on-one.”
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Tall had a relatively quiet first half after dominating on Monday, tallying 6 points on 2-for-7 shooting and six rebounds. In the third quarter, both she and the Tigers started to find more of a rhythm. She scored 7 points on 3-for-5 shooting, and Princeton started to execute offensively and take better care of the ball.
Yet the Tigers still trailed throughout the third quarter, and the Spiders’ lead stretched to as many as 9 points with 5 minutes and 52 seconds left in the game.
Once the clock dipped under five minutes, though, it was Tall’s time to go to work. She had a 3-point play that cut the deficit to 4 points, and after Richmond guard Ally Sweeney scored at the other end, Tall started the game-deciding run with a 3-pointer.
“I guess my brain activated [in the] fourth quarter,” Tall said.
That 3-pointer wasn’t even supposed to get to her: As the shot clock wound down, Tall motioned to senior guard Skye Belker to shoot the ball. But Belker instead threw a long pass to Tall in the left corner. Tall barely had enough time to catch and shoot, but she swished it anyway.
Richmond missed its next three shots, and Chea hit a baseline fadeaway to pull the Tigers within 1. Then with 2:08 left, Tall made an elbow jumper to give Princeton its first lead since the 3:24 mark of the second quarter.
From there, Tall kept pouring it on. She had a 3-pointer, a layup and a free throw in just 61 seconds, and Belker pushed the final margin to 8 with a free throw. All told, Richmond missed its last eight shots, while the only shot Tall missed during Princeton’s run was a free throw.
“She was one of, if not the main player on our scout, and we just let her have a game and essentially win the game for them,” Sweeney told reporters postgame.
“I’m gonna be so honest with you: I don’t remember anything that happened in the fourth quarter,” Tall said. “But I did feel the energy of my teammates, and … that’s what I thought … happened on Monday as well. Having that confidence, having them in my face really juicing me up, really helped me.”
Tall flipped that switch from a player who was mostly kept in check to an unstoppable force by attacking the paint more. Through three quarters, she’d missed two threes and had just four free-throw attempts, and Gosselin thought she was settling.
“At one timeout or substitution, I said, ‘I need you to get in the paint. I need you to get to the rim,’” Gosselin said. “… And when she’s able to do that, then you know the next three is going in. So I think just resetting her mindset of, ‘Yes, I’m a shooter, but I’m also a force to be reckoned with inside,’ and that makes our team better.”
When Tall started attacking the rim, Richmond was often late to react, Spiders head coach Alisa Kresge told reporters postgame. The Spiders struggled to defend some of Princeton’s cross-screen actions, which scrambled their defense and gave Tall more angles to exploit. And other times, Tall seized on the young Richmond bigs’ fatigue.
“We were late on some of that, our communication, and she can go to work,” Kresge said. “And we let ourselves just kind of rest, and she sees that and she takes advantage. She’s an outstanding, experienced player [who’s] elite at what she does.”
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Tall has taken big strides every season of her career. As a first-year, she played just 88 minutes all season, but she became a mainstay in the lineup the following year. As a junior, she was named second-team All-Ivy for the second straight year and was the Ivy League Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
She has elevated her game again this season, to the point that she’s an early contender for Ivy League Player of the Year. When Chea was asked what areas of Tall’s game she thinks have improved, she responded, “Everything. I mean, you can see it.”
Tall was “all in” over the summer, Gosselin said, living near campus and working on her conditioning, nutrition and mindset. Tall said a key goal for herself was to increase her motor — though Princeton’s past opponents would attest that it was already quite high. She also worked on her 3-point shooting and her reads out of double-teams.
“She came in in great shape, confident, and you’re just seeing that kind of in real time now in the games,” Gosselin said.
On the court, Tall’s confidence is rubbing off on her teammates. They believe in her, and they know she believes in them, too. After Chea shot 0-for-8 on Monday, Tall told her that she was going to have a great game on Friday. Chea delivered with 13 points on 5-for-10 shooting, six rebounds and five assists against just two turnovers.
In addition, the supreme confidence the Tigers have that they’ll win any game is something that separates them from other teams — and has separated them for several years. No one on the team is used to losing, as Princeton’s “worst” season since the COVID-19 pandemic was when it went 21-8 in 2024-25, finished second in the Ivy League regular season and lost in the First Four of the NCAA Tournament. And when the Tigers do find themselves trailing, they aren’t fazed. They’ve pulled off late comebacks enough times to be confident that they can and will do it again.
That championship swagger can’t be taught, Gosselin said. Instead, it’s a mode she sometimes reminds her players to activate, as she tried to do at halftime and in a second-half timeout on Friday.
When and how to push those buttons as a head coach is part of what Gosselin is learning this season. She has faced some trial by fire so far with two close wins, but coaching at Princeton under Carla Berube for so long helped prepare her for this.
“I kind of know the blueprint,” she said, “and now it’s really just putting my own swing on things.”
After Gosselin onboarded her staff this summer, she and her assistant coaches spent lots of time getting to know each other and developing their chemistry. They made and presented mock scouting reports, which allowed them to hear how each staff member talks about different concepts, get on the same page with terminology and learn from each other’s ideas.
With the season now underway, Gosselin is getting reps at what she called “game management,” which includes substitutions, play calling, where she stands on the sidelines and managing timeouts. Even calling a timeout comes with several decisions: Do you want a timeout? Do you want a full or a 30-second timeout? Where do you want to advance the ball, if it’s late in the game? What is your message in the huddle and how do you deliver it?
Gosselin said she knows what to do; she just needs more practice at game speed for it to feel routine.
“You don’t have time to second-guess your choice,” she said. “You just got to come in confidently and get the girls to execute. And luckily, they were able to do that enough times tonight.”
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Largely because of Tall’s dominance, the Tigers are now 2-0 under Gosselin. Tall said on Monday that she thought the win would give Gosselin more confidence as a head coach, to go with the confidence the team already has in her. And Friday’s win was yet another reminder for everyone that, even when Princeton isn’t playing its best, it can always flip a switch late.
“We weren’t going to lose this game, no matter what,” Chea said. “… We just knew that we’re playing for LB, we’re playing for each other, and … we would come out with the win.”
The IX Sports’ Natalie Heavren contributed reporting for this story.
