Crossover Chaos

If you were looking for chaos yesterday around 5 in the afternoon, then perhaps a good place to look would have been the lobby of the Newton Marriott hotel.

Everywhere you looked, you had a different college team. Army-West Point men's hockey. Lafayette women's soccer. The Citadel men's basketball. Cornell men's hockey. There were so many teams at the hotel that the little welcome message board needed multiple screens.  

Who else? 

Ah yes. Princeton field hockey. Yale field hockey. They play each other today at 2:30 in the Ivy League tournament semifinal No. 2, after host Harvard and Brown at 11:30. Yesterday afternoon? Their coaches were all smiles and hugs. 

In the middle of all this commotion sat an older man who had no connection to any of it. He was just a hotel guest who was waiting for his Uber driver to arrive. 

TigerBlog found that out when he walked up to him to see what his story was.

"Well, I was trying to listen to my book on tape before my ride got here, but that wasn't happening," he said. 

Yeah, no.

Oh well. As TB has been saying all week, it's full-on Crossover Season, bringing with it the requisite chaos that it always does. At Princeton, and all over college sports. The Marriott lobby was all the proof you needed for that. 

The Tiger field hockey team knows that its season will continue on beyond the Ivy tournament, win or lose. Princeton is in great shape with its 13-3 record, No. 3 RPI and eight wins over fellow Top 20 RPI teams. 

Still, the ILT affords a chance to build on the current nine-game winning streak and solidify a spot as a top four seed and therefore host for the NCAA tournament. Yale, for its part, is ranked 10th in the RPI and is playing for its own NCAA spot. 

For the winner, there could be a matchup with Harvard, who enters the tournament as the lone unbeaten team in Division I.

The Ivy women's soccer semifinals were played yesterday on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium, where Dartmouth defeated Columbia 1-0 in the first game and Princeton then defeated Brown 3-0 in the second. 

The first two Princeton goals came courtesy of Kayla Wong, who, in addition to being a mainstay of the Tigers, is that rare Princeton athlete who is from the same hometown as TigerBlog. Isabella Garces added the third goal for Princeton, who defeated Brown for the second time in five days and stretched its overall winning streak to six games. The Tigers have outscored their opponents 16-2 in those six games.  

The championship game will be Sunday at 1. The winner gets an automatic NCAA tournament bid. 

Speaking of Princeton-Dartmouth, those two will also meet in football tomorrow in Hanover. Kickoff is at 1. 

Princeton had a tough 20-17 loss at Cornell last Saturday, falling below .500 at 3-4 on the year. Both the Tigers and Big Green are 2-2 in the league. 

Dartmouth has the league's second-leading rusher in D.J. Crowther. Princeton has the third-leading rusher in Ethan Clark. Dartmouth quarterback Grayson Saunier and Princeton's Kai Colon are almost even in passing efficiency.

And of course what would a weekend of Crossover Chaos be without two basketball openers?  

The men are at Akron to take on the Zips, with tip-off tomorrow at noon. Remember the game the two played a year ago in Jadwin Gym? 

Dalen Davis won that one for Princeton 76-75 on a three-pointer with 1.6 seconds left, after the Tigers had been down by 15 in the second half. If you recall, Davis' winner was originally called a two before a video review changed it to a three. 

Akron, by the way, finished last year at 28-7 and won the MAC tournament before falling to Arizona in the opening round of the NCAA tournament.  

The women will be in Atlanta to take on Georgia Tech Sunday at 2. The Yellow Jackets have already played their season opener, having defeated Radford 82-36 yesterday. 

Georgia Tech went 22-11 a year ago and also reached the NCAA tournament, losing to Richmond in the opening round. The win yesterday was the first for new head coach Karen Blair, who most recently was the associate head coach at Maryland. 

Princeton's head coach is Carla Berube, who is already in Year 7 with the Tigers. Her record entering this season? How about 121-25? Not bad. 

For the whole Crossover Chaos weekend schedule featuring 16 Princeton teams, click HERE.

The Mayor Of The Ivy Women's Soccer Tournament

TigerBlog was waiting to get on the field hockey bus to Harvard yesterday for the Ivy League tournament when he saw his colleague Andrew Borders as he walked into Jadwin Gym. 

Andrew is the second-longest tenured person in the Office of Athletic Communications. He's also reached the rarefied air of working in the OAC for 20 years, something that happened back on Sept. 19 of this year. 

In typical Andrew style, he didn't mention it to anyone. Personal glory, or really any attention, is completely not what Andrew Borders is about. 

TigerBlog has worked in the OAC longer than anyone else ever has. This is Year No. 32 for him on the Princeton payroll, which doesn't count the five years before that when he covered Princeton sports for the old Trenton Times. 

The great Bill Stryker became the sports information director at Princeton in 1958. Like TigerBlog, Stryker was a New Jersey public school kid, in Stryker's case having grown up in Somerville.

Their backgrounds diverge quite a bit from there. Stryker went into the Navy during World War II after graduating from Somerville High School and then attended Princeton after the war as a member of the Class of 1950. After graduation, he spent the first part of his career at Western Union before coming to Princeton. 

He remained there from 1958 until his death in 1986, at the age of 59. Stryker's 28 years in the OAC rank second (his final title was Director of Athletic Relations).

As near as TB can figure it, nobody else other than Andrew Borders has reached the 20-year mark. Craig Sachson came close but left after 19.

TB offers a belated congratulations Andrew. He's been the sport contact for a whole bunch of Princeton's teams, and he's been the contact for women's soccer and softball since Day 1. He has worked tirelessly in all these years to make the best possible experience for the athletes on all of his teams.

Much like TigerBlog, Andrew has never lost the one thing you need to keep going in this business: the joy of being a part of it. You have to look forward to Gamedays, and Andrew certainly has.  

So far this fall, Andrew has referred to himself with two very endearing nicknames during OAC weekly meetings. The first was when he said he was "NOT the Arbiter of Cool" when it came to what the current generation of athletes would find to be to their liking on social media. 

TB prefers to drop the "NOT" part of that. 

This week, he referred to himself as once again "The Mayor of the Ivy League Women's Soccer Tournament." It's fitting. As the outright Ivy League champion, Princeton will again be the host for the tournament, for the third time in the three years of its existence. 

The tournament begins today, with the opening semifinal between No. 2 Dartmouth and No. 3 Columbia at 3:30 and then the second semifinal between the Tigers and No. 4 Brown at 7. The final will be Sunday at 1.

All three games will be on ESPN+. Tickets are available HERE.

To the winner will go the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.  

Good luck to the Tigers. And good luck to Andrew.  

Why talk about him today? Well, this is College Sports Communicators Appreciation Week.

The OAC has seven members. In addition to TigerBlog, they are Andrew, Elliott Carr, Warren Croxton, Chas Dorman, Alex Henn and Joanna Dwyer.

They'll all be busy this weekend, with the crossover season that TB mentioned yesterday. You'll be able to find them spread out all over. 

Warren will be at Dartmouth and Georgia Tech on consecutive days for football and women's basketball. That's not an easy doubleheader.

 TB will be at Harvard. Chas will be with men's hockey at Brown and Yale. Elliott is heading to Akron with men's basketball. Alex and her men's soccer team will be at Penn. Joanna has two home women's hockey games. 

And that doesn't take into account all the other teams who are playing — 16 of them this weekend — who need preview stories, in-game social media, game recaps and whatever else is part of what the OAC does. 

So yes, this was a good day to mention Andrew, and all of TB's colleagues. TB appreciates them all. 

You do as well, if you're a Princeton fan.  

Crossing Over

Yes, it's November, which means Halloween was so last month. 

Still, TigerBlog would like to share this little exchange he had with a friend who is the mother of an angelic little cherub of a three year old. 

The mom: Trick or treating was a disaster. She hated it. Someone’s decoration shared the bajeezers out of her and then that was it.
TB: What were the decorations? 
The mom: It was a howling skeleton dog. And it howled at her when she reached for the bowl. Motion detecting. Believe me, I couldn't help but laugh a little, but it was so bad. 

TigerBlog did apologize for laughing as well. Can you picture that? The poor little thing. 

And with that, Halloween is in the rearview mirror and Thanksgiving is only three weeks away. You know what that means? 

It's peak crossover season for Princeton Athletics.  

Consider the weekend plans of TigerBlog's colleague Warren Croxton, the football/women's basketball contact in the Office of Athletic Communications. He'll be heading up to Hanover Friday for Saturday's Princeton-Dartmouth football game and then coming back after. Then it'll be up before dawn Sunday to catch a flight to Atlanta for the Princeton-Georgia Tech women's basketball game and then flying back immediately after that game. 

Warren mentioned at Monday's OAC meeting that he might have to Zoom into next week's meeting. 

Between tomorrow and Sunday, Princeton will have 16 different varsity teams combine to have at least 31 competitions, with the potential for others depending on how it goes. That's a lot of athletes in a lot of places for a lot of events.  

You can also multiply Warren out by everyone else in communications, facilities, equipment, event management, athletic training and everything else that goes into putting teams on fields. It's taxing and challenging but also rewarding and a huge source of pride. 

The Ivy League women's soccer tournament will begin tomorrow on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. Princeton, the outright Ivy champion, brings its five-game winning streak into the event, whose winner will earn the Ivy League's automatic NCAA tournament bid. 

Your schedule is:

Tomorrow
Semifinal #1: No. 2 Dartmouth vs. No. 3 Columbia – 3:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Semifinal #2: No. 1 Princeton vs. No. 4 Brown – 7 p.m. (ESPN+)
Sunday 
Championship Game: Winner of Semifinal #1 vs. Winner of Semifinal #2 - 1 p.m. (ESPN+) 

Unlike years past, this time the tournament is spread over an additional day, so keep that in mind if you're attending or watching. Tickets are available HERE.

The league field hockey tournament starts Friday at Harvard, where Princeton will play 

Friday
Semifinal #1: 1: No. 1 Harvard vs. No. 4 Brown – 11:30 a.m. (ESPN+)
Semifinal #2: No. 2 Princeton vs. No. 3 Yale  – 2:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Sunday
Championship Game: Winner of Semifinal #1 vs. Winner of Semifinal #2 - 12 p.m. (ESPN+)

You can get tickets for that event HERE.

Unlike in women's soccer, the Princeton field hockey team is certain to be playing in next weekend's NCAA tournament, regardless of the outcome of the Ivy tournament. That is not to say that there is nothing to play for if you're the Tigers. 

Princeton does have a very real chance of playing at home next week, with a current RPI of No. 3. Also, Princeton has won nine straight heading into the tournament, which, by the way, is on the home field of the only unbeaten team in Division I, a team with a No. 2 RPI. 

If you want to see men's soccer, you can head to Penn Saturday to see Princeton, the team ranked No. 1 in Division I RPI, try to close out a perfect Ivy season. In fact, it could end up being the most perfect Ivy season ever. Kickoff is at 5.

No team has ever gone through an entire Ivy schedule without allowing a goal. Princeton is 6-0-0, having already clinched the Ivy League outright title and host role for next weekend's tournament. Princeton also has six Ivy shutouts; the record for fewest league goals allowed in a season is one, by Yale in 1986. 

Doing so won't be easy. Penn, who is locked into the No. 3 spot in the Ivy tournament and will play No. 2 Cornell in the semifinals, is the second-highest scoring team in the league. Princeton will play the No. 4 seed, which is still to be determined. 

What else is on the dance card? 

Men's basketball at Akron. Men's and women's tennis. Men's and women's hockey. Fencing. Swimming and diving. Women's volleyball.  

The seasons are crossing over. 

It's a busy time — and a fun one.  

Catch Of The Day

TigerBlog thought of an interesting question related to what he wrote about the catch Andy Pages made to save the World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers Sunday night. 

Would Pages have made that same catch had it been a game in May or June or so? The catch he made was about 98 percent effort. Can you dial up that same kind of effort for just another regular season game? 

Also, TB has a friend named Andy Page. There's no way she would have made that catch. 

Moving along to some football stuff, did you happen to notice who the FCS Special Teams Player of the Week was? The answer is the entire William & Mary special teams unit. 

The Tribe defeated Albany 37-7 Saturday afternoon. How did they get to 37? 

There were four touchdowns, for 24 points. There were four extra points, which made for 28. There was one field goal, taking it to 31. William & Mary's placekicker, by the way, is Keegan Shackford, whose last name should be familiar to Princeton women's soccer fans.

So that was 31 points. Where did the other six come from? A touchdown with a missed extra point? Nope. Two field goals? Nope. 

Those six came from three safeties. That's right. Three safeties, all of which came on blocked punts. Oh, and one of those four touchdowns? It came on a fake field goal. 

That's quite a day for the special teams. 

If you're wondering, the FCS record for safeties in a game is four. W&M became the fourth team ever to reach at least three in a game. 

Then there was Andrei Iosivas, the Princeton alum who is now a wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals. Iosivas should have had the game-winning touchdown reception against the Bears Sunday afternoon in what was just a crazy, crazy game. 

Our guy @AndreiIosivas snagged five catches for 66 yards along with his 11th career touchdown for the @Bengals today. #JUICE 🍊🥤| #WhoDey pic.twitter.com/OgArh2Hg7V

— Princeton Football (@PrincetonFTBL) November 2, 2025

Iosivas' TD reception came with 58 seconds to play in the fourth quarter and put the Bengals up 42-41. Would that be enough? Uh, no. 

Yes, the magic number would be 58. Unfortunately, it was because Chicago won the game 47-42 with a 58-yard TD pass with 17 seconds to go. 

Next up is The Catch of the Day: red snapper, with a pineapple-mango salsa and fingerling potatoes. Just kidding. TB just made that up.  

The real Catch of the Day, or at least the weekend, went to Princeton freshman Josh Robinson. Did you see it?  

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That was incredible. TB would have thought higher than the No. 10 Play of the Day, but hey, he'll take it. 

What was the most amazing part? Was it the fact that Robinson's knee or elbow never hit the ground? Or was it how many Cornell defenders had him pinned? Or was it that he had the presence of mind to get it into the end zone? 

There haven't been too many better individual efforts by a Princeton player to match that. Maybe Jesper Horsted's tip to himself on the big drive in the epic game against Dartmouth in 2018, a completely even game where every single play had the potential to change the outcome. Princeton won that one 14-9 in a matchup of unbeatens. 

The TD Saturday at Cornell came in what became a 20-17 loss for Princeton, but that hardly detracts from what Robinson did. That play went a long way to earning Robinson his fourth Ivy Rookie of the Week Award.

Robinson's 26 receptions are three off the Princeton freshman record, set by Matt Costello in 2011. Costello also holds the freshman record for receiving yards with 341; Robinson will bring 318 into the game Saturday at Dartmouth.  

 

 

A Four-Championship Weekend

Today's theme is, not shockingly, "Championships."

TigerBlog will get to the four that Princeton won this past weekend in a minute. First, there was the little matter of Game 7 of the World Series, won by the Dodgers over the Blue Jays 5-4 in 11 innings. 

If you watched it, you immediately had to put into the top 10 best baseball games you ever saw. And the catch that Andy Pages made in the bottom of the ninth at the base of the wall with the bases loaded and two outs? That might have been the most clutch catch in baseball history. 

Consider that if Pages hadn't made that catch, the Blue Jays would have won the World Series. And to make that catch, Pages had to essentially body slam his teammate to get it. You won't see a more clutch catch ever. 

Pages should have been the MVP of the World Series, despite batting only 1 for 16 for the seven games. Okay, maybe not. Still, no Pages, no title for the Dodgers. 

And with that, TB segues quickly into the Princeton Tigers and their four Ivy League titles this weekend. 

It started Friday with the women's cross country title at the Ivy League Heptagonal championships at Van Cortlandt Park in New York City. Anna McNatt and Meg Madison finished 1-2, and both beat the former Heps Princeton record held by Olympian Lizzie Bird. The Tigers literally ran past the field, with 27 points, 55 ahead of runner-up Yale

About an hour later, the men matched that title with one of their own. Myles Hogan won the men's race by 48 seconds (that seems like a lot) as the Tigers went 1-5-7-8-11.

Then came Saturday, when the women's soccer team took down Brown in Providence 2-1 on a pair of goals from sophomore Alexandra Barry. Then it was the men's soccer team's turn, and those Tigers used a Sam Vigilante goal for a 1-0 win over Dartmouth at home.

Here's a look at Vigilante's goal, courtesy of Karla Donohoe: 

That's four Ivy League championships in a little more than 24 hours. If you went to goprincetontigers.com, you saw the first four stories were all celebration shots.  

If you want to read the stories, you can do so at these links:

women's cross country
men's cross country
women's soccer
men's soccer 

It was a two-title weekend for the Vigilante family alone, as Jason — Sam's father — coaches the men's cross country team. That's five straight in men's cross country, by the way. 

And two straight in women's cross country and women's soccer. And, while it wasn't exactly two straight for the men's soccer team, the Tigers did win the Ivy League tournament a year ago. 

The men's soccer team clinched its outright championship with a full week still to go in the regular season. As such, the Ivy League tournament will be on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium in next weekend (not to be confused with this weekend, when the women's tournament will be on that field Thursday and Sunday). 

A few weeks ago, that seemed like a very unlikely possibility. And yet here it will be. 

For the record (from the Ivy League website):

Second-seeded Dartmouth will take on third-seeded Columbia in the first semifinal at 3:30 p.m. The top-seeded Tigers will have a rematch with the fourth seeded Bears in the second semifinal at 7 p.m. The winners will square off at 1 p.m. on Sunday for the league automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. All matches will be broadcast on ESPN+. 

As you probably know, Princeton did not get off to a great start, but all of that changed after a 2-0 loss to Harvard and a 1-0 loss to Yale on consecutive Saturdays to fall to 1-2-0 in the league. Neither of those two opponents, by the way, will be in Princeton this weekend. 

Since then, the Tigers are undefeated, with four league wins and one non-league win in that stretch. In those five games, Princeton has outscored its opponents by a combined 13-2. 

To cap it off, Princeton had to go to Providence and win that game, or else the champion would have been Dartmouth. That's impressive stuff. 

Of course, so is winning four Ivy League championships in one weekend. 

And most impressive? It's not the first time Princeton has ever done this.  

 

Halloween Heps And Heading To Ithaca

There have been 13 movies in the "Halloween" franchise.

TigerBlog saw only one of them, the original, and he saw it in the theater on the day it came out 48 years ago this week. The actual day it was released was Oct. 25, 1978. Why didn't they wait until Halloween to do so? 

Like most movies of that genre, TB wasn't a fan. Ah, but apparently others were: the movie was made on a budget of $350,000 and ended up making $70 million at the box office. In all the 13 movies have earned nearly $1 billion.

Of course, "Top Gun Maverick" did that all by itself. That sort of movie is more TB's "speed."

Today, as you know, is Halloween. 

For many, it's a day of trick-or-treating, Halloween parties and trying to figure out how Little Susie's parents could let her dress up like a Kardashian. 

Unless you're, say, otherwise occupied. 

The Princeton football team is one such group. The Tigers will spend their Halloween on the bus to Cornell, where they will take on the Big Red tomorrow, with kickoff at 1. 

Cornell started the year 0-4, averaging 16 points per game. Since then, the Big Red have wins over Bucknell and Brown, scoring 30 points in each. 

A win would give Cornell its first three-game winning streak since 2016.

As for the Tigers, they are one of four teams at 2-1 in the league, along with Dartmouth, Yale and Penn. While playing the Red, the Tigers will also be rooting for the Green — the Big Green that is, as Dartmouth takes on 3-0 Harvard tomorrow as well. 

Here's an interesting fact that begs additional research: Princeton's Ethan Clark has a 55-yard touchdown run (against San Diego) and a 51-yard touchdown reception (against Harvard last week). Who is the last Princeton player to do so? 

TB will look into it.  

In the meantime, who else will be busy on this Halloween? That would be the 16 Ivy League cross country teams.

Those runners will converge on Van Cortlandt Park today for the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships, an event that Princeton hopes will go as well as the one last year did, when both the men and women won. 

The women's race heads out on the venerable course at 11 am, with the men to follow at noon. 

The men will be looking for a fifth-straight Heps cross country title. Princeton is the highest ranked Ivy team at this point of the season, coming in at No. 19 in Division I, as well as No. 1 in the Mid-Atlantic Region. Harvard is the next-highest Ivy team, at No. 21, with no other Ivy team among the 30 ranked teams.

If you're wondering who are the top five, that would be Iowa State, Oklahoma State, New Mexico, Virginia and Colorado. 

The women won their 10th Ivy Heps cross country title, a first since 2015, with last year's victory on the Meadows Course. No Ivy League team is currently in the top 30 of the national rankings, where the top five goes like this: BYU, NC State, Florida, Oregon and Notre Dame. 

The Ivy teams are pretty bunched in the regional rankings though. Princeton and Penn are 5-6 in the Mid-Atlantic. The other six are all in the top 14 of the Northeast, with Harvard and Yale at 3-5. 

The Heps cross country meet is a one of the best events on the annual Ivy League athletic calendar. It's a colorful party with friends, families, alums of each school, all out on the course or under the team tent. 

It's also great competition, especially at the finish, where each individual runner's finish can swing the team finishes, or even which team wins. 

The two Heps championships will not be the only Ivy titles of the weekend. 

The women's soccer champion (or champions) will be crowned tomorrow on the final day of the regular season. The men's soccer one could be decided. Harvard has already clinched a share of the field hockey title, but Princeton could its own share if Yale beats Harvard tonight and Princeton beats Columbia tomorrow. 

As a reminder, the Princeton men's soccer team is home against Dartmouth tomorrow at 4. Should Cornell lose at Harvard in a game that starts tomorrow at 1, then Princeton will have already clinched at least a share of the championship before its game kicks off. If Cornell wins, then a Princeton win would mean at least a share of the championship — with many other scenarios, given that there are still two games to go.

On the women's side, Princeton is at Brown at 1, where a win for the Tigers means an outright championship and host role for the league tournament.  

The entire weekend schedule for Princeton Athletics can be found HERE. 

Hockey At Home — And An Important PSA

TigerBlog is here today to save your life. 

Literally. 

TB recently found out that he has malignant melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer. Left untreated, it would spread to his lymph nodes and from there throughout his body, ultimately killing him. 

Because it was caught early, it'll be removed surgically and that'll be that. No spread. No follow-up treatment. No big deal. 

It wasn't caught because it looked like anything suspicious. It was just a freckle on the top of his foot. It's been there forever.  

It was caught early because he goes to get regular dermatology check-ups every six months. His dermatologist saw it and said that it had gotten a little bigger since the last time, and so she scraped some of it off and had it biopsied. It came back as melanoma. 

It's very likely that this all started way back around 1990 or so, when his foot was badly sunburned — painfully sunburned. Since then, he has been diligent about putting on sunscreen, especially on his foot. And yet all these years later, there you go. 

If you think you're too young to worry about this, one of the leading groups who at a high risk for melanoma are women under 30.  

So let that be a lesson to you. Go to the dermatologist. Get checked regularly. Always use sunscreen. 

You can thank TB later. 

*

There will be a lot of hockey on Princeton's campus this weekend, of all kinds — men's, women's and field. 

TB will start with field hockey. The last game of the regular season comes up Saturday at noon at home against Columbia. After that, Princeton will be at Harvard next weekend for the Ivy League tournament, with the NCAA tournament the week after that. 

Princeton is currently ranked fifth in Division I in the NFHCA coaches' poll and third in RPI, with an astonishing eight wins over fellow RPI Top 20 teams. Being in the NCAA tournament is an almost certainty. The question is whether or not the Tigers will be one of the four host teams for the first two rounds. 

Princeton takes an eight-game winning streak into the game against the Lions Saturday. The Tigers will also have the reigning Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week (sophomore Izzy Morgan) and reigning Ivy Defensive Co-Player of the Week (Ottilie Sykes). 

You know all about Beth Yeager, the Olympian who is one of the greatest players in Princeton history. What you might not realize about this team is that Yeager is its only senior starter. 

*

By the way, if you run into a member of the field hockey team, ask her about TigerBlog's performance of "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" during Bus Karaoke on the way back from Brown last week. 

Other highlights were senior tri-captain Ella Hampson's rendition of "Someone Like You" (Hampson can really, really sing) and Yeager and fellow senior Helena Große's duet of "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart." It's really their song now. 

*

Baker Rink will be the home for four hockey games this weekend, with a pair of doubleheaders tomorrow and Saturday. 

The weekend will begin with the women against RPI at 3 tomorrow, and the men will play Alaska-Fairbanks at 7. The teams will have the same start times Saturday, with the women against Union and the men against Alaska-Fairbanks. 

Courtney Kessel pick up her first career win as Tiger head coach last weekend, with a 4-2 win at Brown. RPI and Union were both swept in their ECAC openers last weekend. 

*

The Princeton men are opening their regular season and doing so against a team that flew 4,318 miles to get to Baker Rink.  

When TB went to the website for Alaska-Fairbanks (which was the coaching stop for Guy Gadowsky before he came to Princeton), he was distracted by the lead story, which was of the Nanooks' shooting team and its third-place finish at Air Force. Which two teams finished 1-2? How about Georgia Southern and TCU? Seems very random.

Meanwhile, over on the men's hockey page, Alaska-Fairbanks is 2-6-0 on the young season, but don't be mislead. The team split two games against Quinnipiac (in Arizona, of all places) and against Michigan Tech, and was swept by Minnesota-Duluth and Wisconsin in games that were hardly one-sided. 

Princeton won its exhibition game 2-0 last week against Simon Fraser. 

Almost Time For Tip-Off

Remember when the Philadelphia Flyers used Kate Smith's recording of "God Bless America" instead of the national anthem and then went on win the Stanley Cup? 

The Flyers' record when Smith's voice filled the old Spectrum pregame was amazing. It became a rallying cry. 

The team even brought Smith out for an in-person performance during the 1974 Stanley Cup finals, in which Philadelphia defeated the Boston Bruins. 

By the way, the late, great Marvin Bressler was a longtime sociology professor at Princeton who was the model for the Princeton Athletic Fellows program for his unofficial work with the men's basketball team in the 1960s. He and TigerBlog had many conversations through the years, and one that stands out now is the time that Marv, a Philadelphian, talked about those Stanley Cup winning teams and said "why should I care if our Canadians can beat their Canadians?"

The Los Angeles Dodgers don't exactly have the same relationship with singer Brad Paisley, who reportedly is a huge fan of the team and who has sung the national anthem at Dodger Stadium many times. Still, there is something amazing about Paisley and the Major League Baseball postseason. 

There have been exactly two 18-inning games in World Series history, both of which were won by the Dodgers (the other was in 2018 against the Red Sox). And who sang the national anthem both times? Paisley. 

In fact, Paisley has sung the anthem four times before a World Series game, and all four of those games have gone to extra innings. 

Also in that 18-inning game Monday night, Shohei Ohtani reached base a record nine times, with two home runs, two doubles and then five walks, four intentional. The run he's been on of late is insane. 

There was a time when the World Series would have been long over by now. Up until 1969, the World Series matched the champion of the American League and the champion of the National League. Then there were four divisions, so a league championship series was added to precede the World Series. 

There was also a time when college basketball didn't start until Dec. 1. That's another thing that's come and gone. 

Now the World Series routinely extends into November. And college basketball has started earlier and earlier, also moving to early November. 

For Princeton, that means the opening tip-offs a little more than a week away, as wild as that might seem. 

The Tiger women will play eight games in November. The men will play 10 in the month. That's around 18 or so games between them.  

Opening day for the men is Nov. 8 at Akron. The women start a day later, at Georgia Tech. Between then and the end of the month, the men will play in an event in Kissimmee, Fla., and the women will head to the Bahamas. 

Yesterday was Ivy League basketball media day, which featured comments by and questions for all 16 league coaches. The preseason polls have also been announced, with the Princeton women picked to finish first and the Princeton men picked to finish fourth. 

You can watch the media day on youtube:

The Princeton women welcome back Madison St. Rose after she missed almost all of last year due to an injury. In her absence, the Tigers earned an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, one of three bids for Ivy League women's basketball a year ago.

Princeton also returns unanimous first-team All-Ivy League selection Ashley Chea and second-teamers Skye Belker and Fadima Tall. 

On the men's side, Princeton enters the season with any number of its players who could possibly emerge as the leading scorer, or starters for that matter. It has 2001 vibes, when Princeton went from preseason question mark to Ivy champion. 

Of course, the Ivy League season is a two months away still. For now, it's almost the start of college basketball season. 

There are plenty of quality opponents on the November schedule for both teams. This is the time of year to see what combinations will work best, which players will have vastly different roles and what the teams might look like come the 2026 part of the schedule. 

Enjoy it. 

November has become a fun month of basketball.  

Marathon Woman

John Joseph Schauder ranks among the very best people TigerBlog has ever met. 

The maternal grandfather of TB's two kids, John Joseph Schauder took one look at the infant who would become Miss TigerBlog ’22 and said to TB: "She looks just like you. I hope that doesn't come back to bite her in the ass on prom night."

Then he flashed his huge grin and let loose with his low, firm laugh, something TB can still hear, all these years after the man they called "Pop-Pop" passed away. He was a man of great strength, right until the very end. He was tough — and he was also tender. He would have definitely appreciated what MTB’22 did the other day. 

Among his other lifetime milestones, Pop-Pop was at one point a United States Marine. And there was his granddaughter (who long ago raced past her father in terms of looks) this past Sunday, running in the United States Marine Corps Marathon in and around Washington, D.C. 

And she wore her grandfather's USMC pin while she did. There was something very, very wonderful about that. 

All biases aside, Miss TigerBlog is simply an amazing human being. TigerBlog has never met anyone with more grit than his daughter. Whatever she sets her mind to doing she does. 

Play four years of lacrosse at Princeton as a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering major? Done. 

Work full-time in the aerospace engineering field while pursuing her Master's? No problem. 

Like he said, it's grit. Her tenacity defines her. It's how she went from overwhelmed Princeton freshman in 2018 to graduation day in 2022.  

The same is true of how she came to run the marathon. She decided she wanted to do it and put her head down and did it. 

Actually, that's what it says on the box of the necklace her father sent her after the race Sunday: "She believed she could, and she did." The necklace itself has a "26.2" symbol.

TigerBlog is not a runner. He has never enjoyed going for a run, and so training for a marathon was something he would never have dreamed of doing. 

For MTB, it seemed to come naturally. To prepare for the race, she went onto the Boston Marathon site and found a training guide for first-time marathoners. Being an engineer, she followed it to the letter, or, more accurately, to the yard. 

Unfortunately for TigerBlog, the race was the same day as a home Princeton field hockey game (Tigers 6, Penn State 1), so he was unable to be there to see his daughter. There was, though, an app on which he could follow her pace through her bib number. 

The race began at 7:30. TB tracked his daughter pretty much the entire time, and he was probably more nervous than she was as she made her way around the course. 

TB was struck by the fact that once she passed the 20-mile mark, it seemed like she had it made — only to realize that she actually had two more 5Ks to run to get to the finish. She was at the 24-mile mark when the field hockey game began, and TB was having trouble focusing on the stats and clipping highlights because he kept refreshing the app. 

25.0. 25.2. 25.8. 26.0. 26.1 .... and then 26.2. She'd done it. 

TB was mesmerized with the pride he felt that day three years ago back in Princeton Stadium, when he saw his daughter graduate. This was a different kind of pride, though one that in some ways actually eclipsed that moment at graduation. 

And hey, he'll admit it. Just like at graduation, he teared up a bit when she saw "26.2" flash next to her name. 

For the record, her time was 4:48:56. She finished in 14,252nd place out of 30,644 runners. She was 4.931st out of 12,612 women, 1,202nd of 2,354 women between 25 and 29.

How impressive is that? 

Afterwards, she texted a picture from the finish, by the Iwo Jima memorial. It's a picture of pure joy, the kind that can only come from accepting such a challenge and then completing it. She had the same smile in her graduation pictures as well. 

Somewhere, Pop-Pop had his own smiles, and his own tears. 

His granddaughter is something very, very special.  

 

Soccer Success

Hey, remember that time when the Princeton women's soccer team lost to Yale 1-0? 

When was that? Seems like years ago. 

Actually, it was Oct. 4, a little more than three weeks ago. If you recall what TigerBlog wrote after that one, then you can skip ahead. If not, here is the reminder: 

The women's soccer team is home against Cornell Saturday, with kickoff at 1. The Tigers are in the fight for the Ivy tournament spots, currently tied for fifth with the Big Red.  

Yup. That does seem like it was a long time ago. 

In a span of three short weeks, Princeton went from tied for fifth and hoping to get into the Ivy tournament to where the Tigers sit now: first place. 

It's been a remarkable turnaround. Since that Yale loss, Princeton is 4-0-0, including three Ivy League wins in that run. The Tigers have outscored those four opponents 11-1; in the three league games, that composite score is 6-0. 

The third of three straight 2-0 league wins came this past Saturday, when the Tigers took down Columbia by that score. When the weekend's games shook out, there were the Tigers, alone atop the Ivy stnadings. 

Then there is the Princeton men's team. For Jim Barlow's group, it's hard to tell where one streak ends and another begins. 

The most recent outing for the Tigers was a 4-0 win at Yale Saturday night. TigerBlog watched that game on ESPN+ and saw an early Princeton goal that was being reviewed.

While the officials checked it out, TB thought about how momentum would switch to Yale if the call on the field was overturned. That's how those things work sometime. 

That never happened. The goal stood — it was the first of his career for Liam Beckwith. It was 1-0 Tigers. 

Then 4-0 Tigers. In all, those four goals came in a span of exactly 17 minutes. In a blink, Sam Vigilante added his first career goal, Daniel Ittycheria scored his eighth of the season and Bardia Hormozi added his fifth of the season. 

And with that, TB switched over to see, in short order, the ends of the football games between Missouri and Vanderbilt, Alabama and South Carolina and Texas and Mississippi State. 

The Tiger men's soccer team, if you've been paying attention, is the No. 1 team in Division I RPI and a top five team in the coaches' poll. 

Okay, so where does that leave everyone? 

The women have 12 points, ahead of both Dartmouth and Brown, who have 11. Harvard and Cornell are next with 10 each. 

That's five teams for four Ivy tournament spots, two of which are already clinched: Princeton's and Dartmouth's. Where will the tournament be played? 

Princeton is at Brown this coming Saturday at 1 for the final weekend of the regular season. A Tiger win brings the Ivy tournament back to Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. 

A tie? It's still possible. A Brown win? Then the Tigers will be on the road again for the tournament. 

A win also clinches an outright Ivy League championship, something that would be extraordinary given where Princeton was after that Yale loss. A tie could also get Princeton an Ivy title, depending on what else happens. 

The other games Saturday are Harvard at Columbia (2), Cornell at Dartmouth (5) and Yale at Penn (7). 

The men have two more weekends of the regular season. Princeton's enters those final two games with a perfect 15 points, three better than Cornell (whom Princeton has already defeated) and seven better than anyone else. 

Princeton obviously has clinched its Ivy tournament spot, and only Cornell can catch the Tigers in the standings. Ah, but because Princeton has the head-to-head tiebreaker, Cornell would have to be ahead of the Tigers to host the Ivy tournament. 

Princeton's last two games are home against Dartmouth Saturday at 4 and then at Penn the following Saturday. One win in either of those games means the Ivy title and the host role for the tournament. 

The month of October has come and gone, at least in terms of the Ivy soccer schedule. November figures to be wild. 

This weekend's Tiger soccer success certainly gets you excited for what's to come.