Tee It Up

TigerBlog cannot think of any team in any season that has had to deal with the injuries that the 2025 Indiana Fever have. 

Their star, and the WNBA's No. 1 draw by far, is Caitlin Clark, and she was limited to only 13 games this season. Behind her, one by one, Fever player after Fever player went out with season-ending injuries, especially in the backcourt. 

Chloe Bibby. Sydney Colson. Sophie Cunningham. Aari McDonald. All gone for the year. The loss of Cunningham — a great shooter, defender and especially presence — was especially brutal. 

Bibby had emerged as a fortunate find when Clark went out, and then in a blink she and her dead-eye three-point shooting were gone. After that, Cunningham said that the team was "cursed" this season. 

Somehow the Fever managed to stay afloat and above .500 and reach the WNBA playoffs. And somehow, they managed to take down the Atlanta Dream last night 87-85 in the third and deciding game of their opening round series, vaulting them into the Eastern Conference finals. 

That game, by the way, was enthralling, as Indiana had its first and only lead of the second half with 7.4 seconds left. 

How can anyone other than Fever coach Stephanie White be WNBA Coach of the Year? 

TigerBlog hopes that the 2025 Princeton football team doesn't have to deal with even a fraction of the impact of injuries that Indiana had to deal with this season. 

For the Tigers, they'll tee it up tomorrow at noon against San Diego. The Toreros come across the country with a 1-2 record, with a win over Southern Utah sandwiched around losses to Cal Poly and Montana State. 

San Diego's coach is Brandon Moore, whose name might be familiar. He is, after all, a longtime NFL linebacker, mostly with the 49ers. He was also one of the key players on the 2000 Oklahoma Sooners, who defeated Florida State 13-2 in the Orange Bowl in January 2001 to win the national championship. 

Moore's counterpart this week is obviously Bob Surace, who enters his 14th season as the Tiger head coach. What is he thinking about his team's first game?

You can hear his voice for yourself right HERE, on the main page for Princeton podcasts. Surace joins play-by-play man Cody Chrusciel on the First In Football podcast, episode 1 for 2025.  

Here is a sneak preview: 

It's the 1st episode of the First in Football podcast with @CoachBobSurace!

Hear what Coach Surace has to say as he talks to @CodyChrusciel as the team preps for San Diego!https://t.co/AQVDrU6VYy#JUICE 🍊🥤 pic.twitter.com/cryGYLKMn9

— Princeton Football (@PrincetonFTBL) September 18, 2025

San Diego had one of the top defenses in the FCS a year ago. It also had the most opportunistic, with six defensive touchdowns, the most of any Division I school regardless of level. 

The Toreros have allowed at least 27 points in all three games and an average of 36.3, but their schedule has been tough. The defense has yet to score, but then again, the offense hasn't allowed its opponents to have a defensive TD either. 

In fact, you know how many times San Diego has turned the ball over in its first three games? How about zero. 

No fumbles. No passes intercepted. No other FCS school can make that claim (obviously this excludes the Ivy League teams).

San Diego also averages 173 yards per game on the ground, as opposed to 134 through the air. The team has only attempted 24 passes per game, and that's even with having been behind in its two losses. 

It's a great opportunity for the Tigers on their opening day. That's what Surace said on the podcast. 

The difficult part is playing a team that is on Game 4, which means that the early-season kinks have been worked  out. The difficult part for a team playing an opponent that has yet to play is that there is no film for the season yet, no idea what new pieces will be in what places. 

The weather should be perfect. The team has had Sept. 20 circled for the entire training camp. 

The ball gets put on the tee on Powers Field tomorrow, the start of a 10-game sprint into November. What kind of season will it  be? 

Hopefully a successful one, like the Indiana Fever's. 

And, unlike the Fever, a healthy one.  

The Ivy Openers

TigerBlog would like to thank whoever is responsible for this great honor. 

In some ways, he feels it's a long time coming, actually. Still, it means a lot. 

Okay, okay. It's not really about TigerBlog. Heck, he's not even sure what it is or where it is, only that a loyal reader and friend stumbled on it and sent it his way. 

Still, it does look nice, right? 

With that out of the way, TB can get to the main point of what he wants to talk about today — and it's not honoring himself.  He'll leave that to others. 

There have been, to date, 45 Princeton Athletic events for the 2025-26 athletic year. There have been some great non-league matchups and some exciting outcomes. 

What there hasn't been is an Ivy League game. If you recall a year ago, Princeton teams combined to win 17 Ivy titles, the all-time record in the league. What does this year hold? 

It all starts tomorrow, when the first two take place. And the opponent for both is Penn.

The women's soccer team starts its league schedule at Penn, with kickoff at 6 in West Philadelphia. Princeton is the defending league champion and Ivy tournament champion.

There aren't many sports where the Ivy League is as competitive as women's soccer. Remember, it was two years ago that four teams — half the league — reached the NCAA tournament. 

There are currently two Ivy teams in the RPI top 100, with Brown at 63 and Cornell at 79. The other six are all in the 100s. 

Princeton is currently at 121, and if it's any consolation, the Tigers are the highest ranked one-win team in the country. So far this season, Princeton is 1-3-3, despite having outshot its opponents by a combined 138-81. Penn comes into the game at 4-1-2.

The teams have one common opponent, and that's Villanova, whom Princeton defeated 1-0 and who beat Penn 3-1. That, of course, means next to nothing.

Princeton has scored seven goals so far this season, and those seven have come from six different players. Only Zoe Markesini has more than one.  

The field hockey team is home tomorrow at 5 against Penn, who in many ways is also at home. The Quakers have already played two of their four games at Bedford Field after starting the season at the Tiger Invitational, and they have yet to play any games on their own home field.  

There are two Ivy teams in this week's NFHCA Top 10, with No. 5 Harvard and No. 9 Princeton. The first RPI of the season will not be released until next week. 

Princeton comes into the league schedule after splitting a pair of games last weekend, both of which were scoreless through 60 minutes of regulation. The Tigers lost last Friday to No. 4 Syracuse and then beat No. 18 Rutgers Sunday, both in OT. The Princeton game-winner came from Ella Cashman, by the way, who also had the game-winner in overtime last year in the regular season against Harvard. 

Princeton is 2-2 on the year. The other loss was by a 3-2 score to No. 2 North Carolina, who was the most recent team to score a goal against Princeton in regulation. That goal came 2:21 in the third quarter of that game, which means Princeton has not allowed a goal in its last 147:39 of regulation time. 

Penn is also 2-2. The Quakers fell behind UNC 4-0 on opening day before scoring twice in the third quarter to get back into it. The Tar Heels answered with the final two of the day for a 6-2 win. Game 2 for Penn was against Princeton's Game 1 opponent, Old Dominion, and the Quakers won that game 4-2 (Princeton defeated ODU 2-1). 

The Quakers also have a 3-1 loss to Maryland and a 2-0 win over American. 

Penn is averaging 2.25 goals per game. Princeton is 13th in Division I in goals-against average, at 1.19 per game. 

Between now and the spring, the Ivy League will crown its champions in 34 different sports. Will past performance be an indicator of future success? 

There is nothing ever promised. It has to be earned on the fields. 

And it starts tomorrow.  

Countdown To Kickoff

Robert Redford passed away early yesterday at the age of 89.

Here's a trivia question for you: Other than a lifetime achievement award, Redford won only one Academy Award. For what did he earn this award? TB will give you a few paragraphs to think about it. 

If you're below a certain age, then you probably know the name but don't appreciate the impact that he had on the history of American movies. If you're above that line, then you probably spent a least some time yesterday discussing with someone else what your favorite Redford role was. 

TigerBlog's favorites: 3) the Sundance Kid in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," 2) Roy Hobbs in "The Natural" and 1) Johnny Hooker in "The Sting." Honorable mention? His roles in "The Hot Rock," "Downhill Racer," "All The President's Men" and "Brubaker."

Redford also had a very underrated performance in a very underrated movie called "Legal Eagles." He had no role in "The Godfather," though he could have — he turned down the role of Michael Corleone. How'd that work out for everyone involved? 

One of his biggest successes came in "Out Of Africa," a movie TB still has never seen. Perhaps one day he'll watch it; he hears it's good.  

Trivia answer: Redford won the award for Best Director for "Ordinary People" in 1980. He was nominated only once for an Academy Award for acting, for Best Actor for his role as Hooker in 1973. The winner that year? 

Jack Lemmon, for "Save The Tiger."

If you've never seen that movie, Lemmon plays a quarterback who throws for hundreds of yards per game in Palmer Stadium. Just kidding. Just kidding.

There's no Princeton football in the movie. 

There is Princeton football this coming Saturday, at noon, on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. San Diego will be the opponent for the start of the season. 

Remember - Princeton is using a new ticketing system this year, so if you haven't set up your new account yet, make sure you do. This Saturday will also be the annual PVC Youth Sports Clinic, with a free introduction to Tiger sports and athletes for kids ages 5-12 on Finney/Campbell Fields before the opening kickoff.  

TB's longtime friend and former colleague Craig Sachson is as dialed in on Tiger Football as anyone. He and head coach Bob Surace bonded long ago over, among other things, Princeton and the Philadelphia 76ers. 

Craig posted his preview of the offense two days ago and then followed that with the defense and special teams yesterday. You can read them HERE and HERE.

Like every other football team in every other season, all discussions start with the quarterback position. But is that fair? 

Look at the NFL. The first two weeks of the season have seen star quarterbacks (or almost-star quarterbacks) who have gone down, some for extended periods of time. Perhaps the conversation should start with offensive lines? 

Yeah, no. That's just not how it works in the sport. 

Princeton has four captains this season, and two of them are senior quarterbacks — returning starter Blaine Hipa and Kai Colon. The offensive preview references the idea that Princeton could go back to using two-quarterbacks, sometimes even on the same play. 

If you look at last year's stats, Princeton does not have huge numbers returning. If you read Craig's previews, you'll see that there are all kinds of new names on the horizon. And depth. Lots of it. 

This time of year drips with optimism. That's how it should be heading into the first game of the year. 

This team has practiced for nearly a month now. There is no chance that the Tigers won't be swarming at the chance to play another team, and that first opportunity is right around the corner. 

Surace, for his part, has won four Ivy League titles in his first 13 seasons as the Tiger head coach. This is one of the lines Sachson wrote in his preview of the offense, way up near the top:

Determined to return to the elite level of the Ivy League, he pushed his team throughout spring and preseason, turning anything and everything into a competition.

That should have every Princeton fan as eager for kickoff as the players.   

Tiger Royalty

Patrick Schreiber was making his first-ever appearance on the Princeton campus when TigerBlog happened upon him.

As TB said hello, Patrick gave him a look that said "I don't know you and right now, I don't want to know you."

In fairness, Patrick was otherwise engaged in polishing off the last of his yogurt drink. Also, he was sitting in a car seat, facing the rear window of a car that had just pulled into the circle outside Caldwell Fieldhouse.

As such, TigerBlog was not offended at all. 

Patrick is a cute little guy. He is currently the youngest of two children, with an older sister Lillian. 

That will all change in the next few weeks, when he will move up one spot and become the middle child of three. It was certainly clear that his mother is not far away from giving birth, even while she sat in the driver's seat. 

His father was the one who said it was his first time on the campus. That was something that really resonated with TigerBlog, given who Patrick's parents are. 

His mother is Kat Sharkey, one of the greatest college field hockey players of all time. His father is Tom Schreiber, one of the greatest college lacrosse players of all time. They met as Princeton athletes, more than a decade again. 

TigerBlog was walking from the Stadium Garage parking lot yesterday when he saw the car pull up. At the time, TB was talking to BrotherBlog, until he noticed the two adults in the car were waving to him. Once he realized it was Sharkey and Schreiber, he immediately told BB he'd have to call him back and hung up quickly. 

Certain people will get you to do that. 

It was at that point that he got to meet Patrick. Will Patrick one day follow in their footsteps of being a Princeton student and Princeton athlete? Will Lillian? Will the little girl who is about to join the family? 

TB wouldn't want to put any kind of pressure on any little kids to have the kinds of successes their parents did. And of course that's all years and years away. 

There have been a lot of marriages between former Princeton athletes, as TB has been mentioning this summer. There aren't really too many that matched up athletes like Sharkey and Schreiber.

How about these facts: 

* Sharkey and Schreiber combined for eight first-team All-Ivy League selections. That's all you can get, right? 

* The two have six first-team All-American selections after both were third-team All-Americans as freshmen

* Sharkey is the all-time leading scorer at Princeton for field hockey with 107 career goals; no other player has more than 71. That's a huge gap. In reality, it's probably just as untouchable as Bill Bradley's 2,503 career points in men's basketball. 

* Schreiber had 106 goals, one fewer than his wife, but he did have a 94-31 edge in assists. 

* Sharkey was an NCAA champion and a U.S. Olympian.

* Schreiber has won three championships between Major League Lacrosse and the Premier Lacrosse League and  two World Championships with Team USA, including scoring the game-winning goal in the final second of the 2018 final and serving as team captain in 2023. He is a three-time Most Valuable Player in the professional leagues and a five-time PLL midfielder of the year. 

* They were ranked 13th (Sharkey) and 14th (Schreiber) on the Princeton Alumni Weekly's list of the top 25 athletes in Princeton history.  

So yeah, it's not unreasonable to think that there might be some athleticism in the family.

If the kids inherit that, hey, wouldn't that be awesome? The next generations of the Sharkey/Schreiber family at Princeton? 

Their parents, though, are more than just great athletes. There is no sportsmanship award that Schreiber hasn't won. They both long ago made their reputations as amazing teammates.  

Do not, though, ever confuse that for a lack of competitiveness or a lack of desire. They wouldn't have become the athletes they did without having that fury to win. 

They are both exactly the kind of people you want wearing the same gear that you are. You can't ask for more from your athletic program than to be able to claim people like this as your alums. 

It was great to see them. It always is. 

And good luck on the new addition when she arrives.  

Game Week

The inarguable highlight of the weekend in college football came in Piscataway, where A.J. Surace threw the first two touchdown passes of his career for Rutgers. 

As for the rest ,TigerBlog was watching a college football game Saturday when heard the announcer say essentially this: 

"The transfer from someplace on the carry, and the transfer from another place on the tackle."

Which game was it? All of them. Who won? The casual fan like TigerBlog didn't really care. 

Hey, that's where the sport is right now on the Power 4 level. There are graphics of quarterbacks who are on their third teams. One team (TB thinks it was Virginia) has nine transfers in its secondary alone. What happened to the guys they recruited at those positions? 

Rob Hegner is the public address announcer for Princeton field hockey. He is also a West Virginia graduate. He mentioned the other day that his alma mater had 70 transfers on the roster. 

How can anyone be a fan of such a team in this day and age? And yet you look at the crowds on TV, and they're the same as always.  

It is amazing. Nobody seems to care about anything other than winning games, and they don't care who does the winning for them. 

It's like the time when Pete Carril was asked about playing an opponent in one of those old holiday tournaments, and his response was essentially that they had a lot of big guys. When it was pointed out to him that Princeton also had some big guys, Carril, without flinching, responded: 

"Yeah, but I didn't go down to the docks to get them."

 TB hopes it's worth it to them. For him? He'll continue to root for the Surace Family. 

It's Game Week for Ivy League football. After the long grind of training camps, Game Week is here. 

Those are great words for the players on all eight teams. For Princeton, Game Week No. 1 for the 2025 season means a home game against San Diego this coming Saturday at noon.

The Ivy season actually kicks off Friday night, when Columbia is at Lafayette. The rest of the games Saturday are: Georgetown at Brown, Holy Cross at Yale, New Hampshire at Dartmouth, Penn at Stonehill, Harvard at Stetson and Cornell at Albany. 

This year, of course, will be unlike any other in Ivy League football history. The big news in the off-season was that the Ivy champion for the first time will be headed to the FCS playoffs. 

That alone will be fascinating. You know what else is fascinating? 

Princeton announced its four football captains last week, and two of them are quarterbacks. This is not an unprecedented situation; the 2017 Tiger football captains were quarterbacks John Lovett and Chad Kanoff (along with defensive lineman Kurt Holuba). 

Lovett, if you recall, missed that entire year due to an injury. It worked out well for him after that, as he came back the next year to quarterback the Tigers to a perfect 10-0 2018 season and then won a Super Bowl ring with the Kansas City Chiefs before injuries derailed a promising NFL career. 

There are four captains for this season. The two non-quarterbacks are Nasir Hill and Marco Scarano, both of whom were second-team All-Ivy League defensive selections a year ago. The two quarterbacks are Blaine Hipa and Kai Colon.  

As for the first opponent, San Diego is 1-2 on the season. The win came over No. 24 Southern Utah 30-27 in overtime.

The Toreros have given up 41 points in each of their two losses, with a 41-17 opening day loss to Cal Poly and then a 41-7 loss to No. 4 Montana State this past Saturday. The game against Montana State was the first road game for the season for San Diego, who now flies across the country to come to Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. 

Kickoff is at noon. Or, if you look on San Diego's website, kickoff is at 9 am. 

Is this the only cross-country flight of the year for the Toreros? Nope. TB wouldn't have asked if it was. San Diego in fact has upcoming games at Marist (coached by former Tiger offensive coordinator Mike Willis), Davidson (North Carolina), Valpo (Indiana) and Stetson (Florida). 

That's a lot of air miles. That has to be more than some NFL teams this year, no?  

Anyway, Game Week is here.  

It'll be way better than anything you'll see on TV. 

Provincial Squeamishness

TigerBlog would like to share two humorous moments from his Thursday, both of which happened about five minutes apart.

First, he found himself stopped behind a school bus when he saw a woman jogging and pushing a stroller at the same time. As she got closer, it was clear that there was nothing in the stroller — no baby, no dog, no bag, nothing. 

TB put his window down and called out to her to say that her stroller was empty, to which she responded "I know." TB left it at that. He prefers to never find out why a woman was jogging and pushing an empty stroller, largely because he's afraid it might make sense. 

And then she was gone, rid of TB's provincial squeamishness forever. 

TB, by the way, didn't write that last part. Can you tell him what classic book that's from?  

Then, as he started to move again, he saw another woman who was walking her dog, only the dog had stopped in a series of bushes and wouldn't move, no matter how much she pulled the leash. Then the dog appeared, holding a small branch in his mouth. 

This wasn't some English Mastiff or something. This was an average-sized dog. And the branch had to be six or seven feet wide. 

Off the dog went. And the owner looked in TB's direction, saw him laughing and threw her hands up as if to say "oh well. 

And now, the weekend in Princeton sports:

*

There are 12 events on the Princeton calendar for the next three days.  

Of those 12, there are 11 that are away from home. That's a rarity. One home event. 

HERE is the full schedule.  

Maybe the highlight is the men's water polo trip to the Navy Invitational in Annapolis. Princeton went 5-0 last weekend in its own invitational, and now it heads to Maryland for three matches, the first of which is tonight at 7:30 against Salem.

Then there are two games tomorrow, the first of which is against the home team. And who is the home team coach? That would be Luis Nicolao, who spent 20 years as the Princeton head coach and won 844 games between the men's and women's teams.

The Tigers, by the way, are ranked 10th nationally. Who is ahead of them? Eight schools from California and Fordham.  

*

The lone team to be home this weekend is the field hockey team, who was almost home twice before a late schedule change. 

Princeton opened its season last weekend with a 2-1 win over Old Dominion and then a 3-2 loss to No. 2 North Carolina. The Tiger reward was to drop from 10th to 11th in the poll. Oh well. 

The college field hockey season starts with pretty much every team to play Friday and Sunday games. For this weekend, it's Princeton at home today at 5 against No. 5 Syracuse, who is 4-0 on the young year. 

Then it's off to No. 18 Rutgers Sunday at noon. That game would have been in Princeton, but the teams decided to flip flop home games between this year and next, so that the Tigers wouldn't open their season with seven straight home games. 

Interestingly, the visiting team has won the last five games between Princeton and Rutgers. 

*

If you want to watch Princeton soccer this weekend, you need to get in your car, unless you happen to live on the Main Line or West Point. 

The Princeton men, who lost a tough and physical game Wednesday night 1-0 to Hofstra on a penalty kick in the second half, are at Villanova tomorrow at 1. Princeton is 1-1-0 now with that loss and an opening 3-1 win over Rutgers, while Villanova is 2-1-2, including a 0-0 tie against Columbia and most recently a 2-0 loss to Army.

The Princeton women are at Army Sunday at 1. Army is 4-2-1, with a most recent 3-0 loss to West Virginia.   

* 

Trivia answer: It's from "The Great Gatsby." 

It's probably TB's favorite turn of a phrase in literature — possibly because Nick was giving up forever on a Yale guy. 

24 Years Later

The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was like so many other mornings in the Northeast at that time of year. 

Until the entire world changed on a dime. 

Now it's 24 years later. How is that possible? It's nearly a quarter-century later. There are no longer Princeton athletes who had been born before that horrific Tuesday all those years ago. 

They only know what they've been told or what they've read. For those, like TigerBlog, who were there, for whom the events and the emotions of that day will never fade, today will always spark feelings of unease.

To that end, TB will again share with you what he has for the last few years about 9/11: 

He was dropping off TigerBlog Jr. at the University League Nursery School, on the far side of the parking lot outside Jadwin. It was the most perfect weather day, crystal clear, sunshine, no humidity, not a cloud to be found.

TB dropped TBJ off at the school, and the woman who was the office manager said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

TigerBlog walked outside, looked up, and thought "how in the world did that happen?" By the time he got to Jadwin, he found out how.

Most of that day was spent huddled around the only television around, the one in the athletic training room in Caldwell Field House. It was a day where people spoke very little, where everyone had dazed looks on their faces.

By mid-afternoon, he went back to get TBJ at the nursery school. He can still see the children, swinging on the swings, playing in a sandbox, oblivious - happily oblivious - to what had happened to the innocence of the world outside that playground.

Later that night, after it was dark, TigerBlog walked outside to the end of his driveway and looked up. There were no planes in the sky. They'd all been grounded. TB remembers it vividly, the sight of the stars, without planes, above a world of confusion, angst, uncertainty, fear.

If he had to pick one word, it would be scary.  

In fact, when TB got to Jadwin that day, the first person he saw was John Mack, now the Ford Family Director of Athletics and then in his first year of working in the department. 

There were 14 Princetonians who were killed on 9/11. There were hundreds more who were near Ground Zero when it all happened.

One of those who died was men's lacrosse player John Schroeder, known to everyone in the program as "Stinky.". TB wrote about him on the 20th anniversary. It's as emotional and heartbreaking a story as TB has ever written.

When TB went to meet with John's father Jack, he was struck by the American flag that hangs in his kitchen. The stripes are composed with the names of every person who was killed that day.

It's an overwhelming thing to see them all there and to imagine all of their stories. And, each time the anniversary roles around, there are people who mark another year without them.

By the way, here is what one of Schroeder's teammates wrote about him shortly after 9/11:

“There are two images that run through my head over and over. One is of Stinky picking off that pass. It was as if he said ‘I’ll do my job when it’s asked of me. I am part of the greatness that is this team.’ The other is an image of Stinky on Tuesday. This is how I picture it – Stinky was badly injured initially but was capable of escaping from the building. He was on his way down the stairs when he ran into some rescue personnel heading the other direction. He did the right thing and turned back to help. I imagine him carrying a worse-injured person down the stairs, making typically Schroederian sarcastic remarks on the way to help the other person out, when the building collapsed. I agree with you, T, that Stinky is in heaven, probably playing lax, with too many members of our family watching in the stands. When we do gather, Stinky will be there too, and the first and last rounds will be on him.”

Sept. 10 is the last day of innocence.

Sept. 11 is the day it all changed. It's a day that always needs remembrance, and reverence.

Nice To Meet You

TigerBlog was busy yesterday rebuilding his catalytic converter. 

And by "rebuilding," he doesn't really mean what you think he means. 

The check engine light had gone on in TB's car two weeks ago. Given that his car has 172,000 miles on it, he did the only logical thing anyone would do in that situation — ignore it and hope it went off by itself. 

When that didn't happen, he finally broke down (well, thankfully not really) and called Ron, the official car guy of TigerBlog. As he headed over there to have it checked out, he tried to figure out the number it would cost to repair such a well-worn car that would make him say "nope" and get a new one. 

He figured it was in the range of $2,500.  

Upon arrival, Ron hooked up the little machine that tells you what the problem is. At most places, they charge you money for that. Those 30 seconds that it took Ron to do this were on the house. 

And the verdict? The catalytic converter needed a cleaning additive. Total cost: $21 — which is less than $2,500, so TB will be keeping his car. He did have to go to AutoZone and get the cleaner himself. And on top of all that, he actually opened the container and poured it into his gas tank.

So yeah. He rebuilt it. 

Oh, and did you have the same experience as TB for two consecutive mornings this week? That is to say, did you turn off an NFL game and wake up the next day to see that the team you were sure would lose rallied to pull it out in the fourth quarter? 

That was the Ravens-Bills game Sunday night and the Vikings-Bears game Monday night. TB can't be the only one who did that. 

The other kind of football, the internationally recognized use of the word, has an intriguing midweek game tonight on Princeton's Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. The Princeton men will be hosting Hofstra tonight at 7 (admission is free).

Here is something TB would never have guessed: Princeton and Hofstra have never met in men's soccer before.

How is that possible? Hopefully someone affiliated with Hofstra men's soccer knows enough to leave early to get to Princeton on a weeknight. Or weekday. Or weekend. Or really any time you drive from there to here or here to there. 

Princeton and Hofstra have played dozens and dozens of times in other sports. Why not in men's soccer? TB has no idea. 

If you're wondering, Hofstra has played Columbia 24 times, and that's more than it has played the other seven Ivy schools combined.  

Princeton is playing its second game of the young season, after having defeated Rutgers 3-1 Sunday night in a very strong opening performance. The Tigers were first in the "others receiving votes" category in this week's United Soccer Coaches' Top 25. 

Hofstra comes into the game at 2-2, with wins over St. John's and Northeastern and losses to Bucknell and Binghamton.

Hofstra, by the way, has a great tradition in the sport, both over the decades and recently. In fact, the Pride have won four straight CAA championships and won five NCAA tournament games in that time, reaching the third round twice and second round once. Hofstra has also finished nationally ranked three times as well, including 23rd a year ago. 

Princeton got goals from three different players against Rutgers (Kevin Kelley, Jack Jasinski and freshman Jackson Martin). Jaskinski also had an assist, earning honorable mention weekly honors from Top Drawer Soccer. 

It is the head coaching matchup here that TB finds really intriguing. Princeton's Jim Barlow is in Year 30 as the Tiger head coach, which makes him the less experienced head coach in this one. Hofstra's Kevin Nuttall — who played for Leeds and Stoke City in the English Premier League at one point — is in his 33rd season. 

Between them they have won 574  games. And yet their teams have never faced each other? 

Oh, and this does beg a question: How many games are there where the two head coaches have both been in their job for at least 30 years? That goes for any sport.  

TigerBlog will think about that one. If you know one, let him know. 

And in the meantime, it's Princeton-Hofstra tonight at 7 on Myslik Field and on ESPN+. 

Packing Bedford

TigerBlog kept ducking his head out of the press box window at Bedford Field every few minutes Sunday afternoon to admire just how big the crowd was. 

A few hours earlier TB walked from the parking lot to the field with his umbrella, given that it was raining pretty hard. At that point, the forecast for the afternoon was iffy, and the stands were completely empty.  

The occasion was the second day of the Tiger Invitational field hockey event, a rotating early-season event that used to be the Ivy/ACC Crossover Challenge that brings four teams to Bedford Field once every four years. The first game Sunday saw Penn beat Old Dominion 4-2 in a game that started in rain, was played mostly in rain and ended with clouds.

Too bad, TB thought. Even the threat of rain usually is enough to deter a crowd. 

And yet? He couldn't have been more wrong. 

As it turned out, it was the largest crowd he'd ever seen at the facility. The stands were packed. People were outside the facility looking in through the fence. It was great to see.

They came for the second game Sunday and the fourth of the weekend, a Top 10 matchup between Princeton and North Carolina. You couldn't have asked for more from an early September game. 

Well, maybe there was one more thing Princeton could have asked for — a win. Unfortunately for the Tigers, it was UNC who came away on top by a 3-2 count. 

The biggest winner might have been the fans. They saw a great game, something even Princeton had to grudgingly admit afterwards. Are they likely to come back? Why wouldn't they? 

The game of field hockey moves quickly. The ball changes ends on a dime, as teams go from defense to offense in a blink. If you've never seen it, you should have been there Sunday. 

The good news is you have eight more chances to see Princeton play at home this year, starting Friday against Syracuse at 5. 

And what kind of team does Princeton have? There are 24 players on this year's roster, and the breakdown by class is six seniors, five juniors, seven sophomores and six freshmen. That's a great balance.  

Princeton began the weekend with a 2-1 win over ODU Friday, after UNC had beaten Penn 6-2. As TB mentioned last week, the Quakers will be back for the Ivy opener Sept. 19 and after that game will have played three games at Princeton and zero on their home field. 

The same 10 field players started both Princeton games this weekend. The breakdown of those 10 by class? 

There were two seniors, two juniors, three sophomores and three freshmen. That's a young team.

Of the two juniors and three sophomores, four of them have already been All-Ivy League, with three first-team selections.  

Both senior starters are members of the US National Team program, with Beth Yeager on the senior team and Talia Schecnk on the U21 team. Both came back from South America with silver medals this summer, Yeager from the Pan Am Cup in Uruguay and Schenck from the Junior Pan Am Games in Paraguay.

Yeager, for her part, currently ranks fourth in Division I in career goals scored by active players. Her two this weekend brought her up to 46. Actually, three of the top six were in the game Sunday on Bedford, with UNC's Ryleigh Heck (47) and Charley Bruder (42). If you're wondering who the leader is, it's Makenna Webster with 48, so it's a fairly bunched group (New Hampshire's Tasmin Webster also has 47).

Yeager is the only active player in Division I who ranks in the top five in goals per game and assists per game in a career.  

The freshmen who made their debuts this weekend hardly looked like rookies. More than anything else, TB was looking to see whether they were wide-eyed or if they competed right from the opening whistle. The answer is the latter. 

And then there is the team's depth. As TB said, there's a lot to like here this coming fall. 

It's certainly worth coming out to see for yourself. 

If you have any doubts, ask someone who was there Sunday for the packing of Bedford.  

DeNunzio Offense

This weekend's award for honesty goes to Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin.

His Rebels had just held off Kentucky Saturday 30-23, and now Kiffin was being interviewed on ESPN. The question was what he thought of the way his defensive line had stopped Kentucky in the fourth quarter, and this is what he said: 

"That's why we're paying them all that money." 

It looked to TigerBlog as if Kiffin wasn't sure he should say that or not and that he briefly hesitated before he spoke. Either way, it was honest. 

It was a great weekend to watch football and tennis on TV. TigerBlog certainly did Saturday. He saw South Florida come back to beat Florida for the first time ever — helped along considerably to 30 yards in penalties on the final drive, including one for spitting. 

What the heck? Spitting? That happened in the Cowboys-Eagles game Thursday night too. Six seconds in, for that matter.

The New York Giants? Just put Jaxson Dart out there and don't look back.  

The US Open tennis championships ended. This is unfortunate, because 1) it's a great event to watch for two-plus weeks and 2) because John McEnroe will not be broadcasting anything in the near future. McEnroe and his brother Patrick should be the broadcast team on every possible football game that they can fit into their schedules. 

As for the tennis, there was the women's final Saturday, when Aryna Sabalenka defeated Amanda Anisimova 6-3, 7-6. TB was rooting for Sabalenka, because she's his favorite player on the women's side and also because Anisimova's sister played at Penn. 

You do have to give Anisimova a ton of credit though. She lost the Wimbledon final 6-0, 6-0 to Iga Swiatek but then came back to beat her in the semifinal at the US Open, something that is just remarkable. Sabalenka was too much in the final, but Anisomova's day is coming. 

And the men? They should have two tournaments, one for everyone else and then a separate one where Alcaraz and Sinner play a best-of-seven. Alcaraz won yesterday's final in four sets, meaning those two split the four Majors this year. And last year. 

Meanwhile, back at Princeton, the men's water polo team started its season by going 5-0 at its own invitational at DeNunzio Pool.

The men's water polo team is one of three Princeton teams — along with the men's and women's lacrosse teams — that needs to replace its graduated all-time leading goal scorer. In the case of the men's water polo team, that means replacing Roko Pozaric, who finished his career with 281 goals, or 27 more than any other player in program history.

For good measure, Pozaric was also the 2025 Roper Trophy winner as the top senior male athlete. 

The first weekend of the new season had Princeton take on Mount St. Mary's, Cal Baptist, Santa Clara,  Bucknell and Wagner (as well as an exhibition game against European Cup champ Pro Recco). The five games against the U.S. college teams all went for Princeton, who put up big offensive numbers, even without Pozaric.

That's a really good sign, obviously. 

Princeton scored 18, 18, 12, 19 and 14 goals. The only really close game was against Santa Clara, which was a 12-11 Tiger win. Finn LeSeur scored six goals, on six shots, in that one. 

The first game of the weekend was an 18-10 win over the Mount, in which freshman Otto Stothart scored five times in his college debut. The Cal Baptist game? That was another 18-10 win, and this time Princeton had four players with three goals each.

That's how you replace your all-time leading goal scorer. 

Next up for the Tigers will be another invitational, this one at Navy. A trip to Annapolis will always be special, or at least for as long as former Princeton head coach Luis Nicolao coaches the Mids.

Ahead will be not one but two trips to California, as well as the Northeast Water Polo Conference regular season. The league tournament will be held Nov. 21-23, at Brown.

Doesn't that seem so far away right now? 

For the first weekend, it all went well for Princeton at DeNunzio. Even without Pozaric, there were still plenty of goals to go around.