And The Winner Is ...

TigerBlog used to watch the Oscars. Now? Not anymore.

For starters, he hardly goes to the movies anyway. And then there's the narcissistic self-absorption factor that covers the entire Hollywood scene and makes it, well, dirty.

Talent? That's for athletes, singers, doctors, engineers, writers and the like. Acting? All you need is the right look and the opportunity. There are 50,000 people in Hollywood who can act as well as George Clooney but won't get the chance; there isn't anyone else who can play basketball better than LeBron James but just needs to be discovered.

And some silent movie won? Why, so they can show everyone how much more sophisticated they are then everyone else?

There have been some great snubs for Best Picture in the past - TigerBlog thinks of how "Raiders of the Lost Ark" lost to "Chariots Of Fire" or how "Shakespeare in Love" beat "Saving Private Ryan."

If you go to the IMDB Top 250, two of the top four movies were from the same year (1994's "Shawshank Redemption" and "Pulp Fiction) and neither won Best Picture. The vastly overrated "Forrest Gump" did.

TB also didn't watch the NBA All-Star game.

There's a big self-absorption factor there as well, not to mention the fact that this shortened NBA season didn't need an All-Star weekend. Of course, if you were going to have an All-Star game, you had to figure out a way to get Jeremy Lin into it, right?

Besides, the basketball TB cares most about now is confined to five things - 1) can Northwestern get to the NCAA tournament, 2) can Denver win the conference tournament and get there as well, 3) can Georgetown win it all or at least get to the Final Four.

Four and five?

Those are the Ivy League.

Let's start with the men.

Harvard lost to Penn 55-54 Saturday night in what was a make-or-break game for the Quakers. Had Harvard won, then the Crimson would have been two games clear of Penn with two to play.

Instead, Harvard and Penn both have two league losses. Harvard finishes the regular season this weekend with games at Columbia and Cornell, while Penn is home with Brown and Yale (who already beat the Quakers).

Should either team win one game (likely), the Princeton would be mathematically eliminated - but it doesn't mean the season would be over.

Should Harvard and Penn both sweep or split, then Penn would come to Jadwin Gym next Tuesday needing a win over the Tigers to force a playoff, in the opposite of last year's season-ending game between Princeton and Penn at the Palestra. That would be a wild scene.

On the women's side, there will be no playoff. All there is is awe at what the Princeton women have done.

The Tigers became the first team - men or women - to clinch a spot in the NCAA tournament by wrapping up a third-straight Ivy title. Princeton did so at home, no less, with three games left to go in the season.

Princeton defeated Harvard - competing with Yale for the second-place spot in the league and the WNIT bid that goes with it - by 30 points Friday night, which gave the Tigers two wins over Harvard by a combined 58 points. The 94-57 win over Dartmouth Saturday clinched the championship.

Princeton is 11-0 in the league, with one win over Brown by 12 points and 10 wins by at least 25 points.

Think about that. Night in, night out, complete domination.

Princeton's win over Brown came after a 19-day break for first semester exams, and the Tigers didn't play a good offensive game.

Think about that - making excuses for a 12-point home win.

As for the Tigers, they are now 42-1 in their last 43 Ivy games, and even losses in their last three games would still give the team the best three-year run in Ivy history.

All season, this team has been focused on the NCAA tournament, as if it was a foregone conclusion that the team would win the league. Well, maybe not foregone, as three people voted for Harvard in the preseason.

Now that the team has demolished its way into the field, it can look to achieve its ultimate goal, which is to win at least one NCAA game. Seed and matchup will be huge, but it's not going to be easy.

If any team can do it, though, it would be this group of Tigers.

The preliminary round is over now, and the main event is just around the corner.

A Slam Dunk

TigerBlog was watching "Nightline" on the night of April 6, 1987, back in his apartment in Plainsboro.

As an aside, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who was single in those days and who works in Mercer County now who didn't live in one of the Princeton Meadows apartment complexes at some point.

Anyway, watching "Nightline" was nothing unique for TigerBlog. This was back before the internet and 24-hour news cycles and cable news channels and all that, and in fact "Nightline" grew out of the Iranian hostage crisis with its debut in 1980.

On that night of April 6, 1987, Ted Koppel was discussing the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's having broken the color barrier in Major League Baseball, and one of his guests was Campanis, the longtime Dodger executive who had been close to Robinson.

As you probably know by now, Campanis said some pretty outrageous statements regarding the absence of blacks in managerial and general manager positions in baseball. To his credit, Koppel handled it about as flawlessly as anyone could have.

TB remembers being dumbfounded that somebody with Campanis' record, background and reputation could have said the words he was saying, and TB was positive he heard it wrong. In fact, he woke up his roommate at the time and made him watch the rest of the interview.

Not surprisingly, Campanis was forced out of his position with the Dodgers. Mention his name to anyone today, and the "Nightline" interview will be the first thing they say about him.

The interview became a huge issue obviously, even without the web to fuel the fire. And TB was about the only person who had actually been watching the show.

You know what else TB watched live? The 1976 ABA (not NBA, but ABA) slam dunk contest.

Back then, the dunk was a somewhat mystical event, and the coolest of the cool played in the ABA, with the red, white and blue ball and three-point shot.

The 1976 dunk contest featured the one where Dr. J. took off from the foul line and dunked, a first of its kind that has since been emulated by many, including most famously Michael Jordan.

Today, dunk contests are all over the place, from the NBA to college to even high school. These contests all follow the same basic format, and the idea is to come up with the most creative dunk, such as having Blake Griffin jump over a car with Baron Davis feeding him through the sun roof.

Or, as Iman Shumpert was planning to do this year, jump over a couch as Jeremy Lin pretended to be asleep, only to have Lin lob Shumpert the ball.

The Princeton Plays Pink commercial on goprincetontigers.com was pretty creative as well.

In the commercial, women's basketball players Devona Allgood, Lauren Edwards and and Laura Johnson are sitting on the side court of Jadwin, appearing to chat among themselves. As the camera pulls back, Ian Hummer of the men's team leaps over the three of them and dunks.

Pretty creative stuff, no?

Both basketball teams are part of a huge weekend of sports, one that actually began last night with Day 1 of the Ivy League women's swimming and diving championships.

Between now and Sunday, at least three and as many as five Ivy champions will be crowned. If you're a Princeton fan, you're hoping that number is actually four.

To wit:

* the women's swimming and diving championships began last night at Harvard, where the host Crimson are the favorite but the Tigers can never, ever be counted out, not after having won 10 of the last 12 titles. Princeton also had a very good first day, as the Tigers sit just three points behind the Crimson.

* the indoor Heps track and field championships for the men and women will be held at Cornell this weekend. The Princeton men are a heavy favorite to win their fifth straight Heps title (between cross country, indoor track and outdoor track), while the women are in a group of schools including Columbia, Cornell and Dartmouth

* the men's basketball team is at Harvard tonight and Dartmouth tomorrow night. While this game against the Crimson isn't quite as make-or-break as the Ivy playoff game last year, it might as well be. Harvard has one league loss (two weeks ago to Princeton at Jadwin Gym), while Penn has two and Princeton and Yale have three each.

Here's what Princeton needs to get a share of the title: win out and have Penn beat Harvard. Should Harvard sweep this weekend, then the Crimson would clinch a tie for the title and need to win one of two next weekend at Columbia/Cornell, which essentially is a sure thing, to get the outright crown. Should Penn win out, it knows it's assured of at least a tie for the title. That means winning tomorrow, of course.

* on the women's side, Princeton can wrap it all up this weekend. The Tigers are 9-0 in the league, while Yale is 8-2 and Harvard is 7-3. Should Princeton sweep this weekend, then Harvard would be eliminated and the best Yale could do would be to tie. Princeton needs to win two of its five remaining games to clinch a tie and three of its five to win outright. All of these come against teams Princeton has already beaten by at least 12, and four of them are against teams Princeton has beaten by at least 25.

Quite the weekend, no?

And oh yeah, lacrosse starts as well.

In Defense Of Men's Lacrosse

The last time that the Princeton men's lacrosse team played at the University of Virginia was in 2007.

The Tigers lost that game 7-6, and TigerBlog's biggest memory is that there was something of a controversy around the game-winning goal, which came with 26 seconds left. TB cannot remember what it was, and the game recap makes no reference to it.

The box score, though, says that George Huguely scored one of the UVa goals that day.

TB did the game on the radio, which means that he called Huguely's name at least that one time and possibly more and never really gave him any further thought. He was just another kid with another uniform number on another opponent.

Today, of course, Huguely is a convicted murderer, one who is looking at spending more than a quarter-century in prison after the jury in the Yeardley Love murder case recommended a 26-year sentence. He will not be formally sentenced until April.

TigerBlog read several accounts of the trial and verdict, and it was hard to find a headline that didn't include the word "lacrosse" or "lax."

And why wouldn't it? The case became national news because it seemingly had all of the ingredients: a rich white guy who played a country club sport and thought that none of the rules applied to him, combined with a pretty young victim whose deep blue eyes stared back at you anytime you looked at her picture.

This was all about the lacrosse sub-culture, right? Wrong.

This wasn't about lacrosse at all.

If you want a story that's about lacrosse, then read the one TigerBlog wrote about how the members of the Princeton men's lacrosse team have rallied around head coach Nick Bates and his 10-year-old son Nick after the passing of Ann Bates, wife/mother to the two.

This is a lacrosse story.

The sport of lacrosse is filled with people who do these kinds of things every day. Don't think so?

Go to the Lowe's Senior Class Award website and click on any of the 20 candidates for the award, which honors outstanding performance in the 4 C's of classroom, community, character and competition.

Go to any team in the country, and you'll find players who succeed in school, who give back to others, who are nice and polite and funny and friendly. You'll see little kids flock to them in hopes of getting a stick or glove or autograph and almost always come away happy.

You'll see people who play a sport because they love it, not because they're using it as a precursor to a professional career. For the most part, they're not there on a full scholarship.

Yes, many of them traditionally have come from rich backgrounds, but that is changing as the sport grows.

What happened in the George Huguely case is not a symptom of lacrosse. On balance, there is so much more great about lacrosse than bad, and the game continually gets an unnecessarily bad reputation.

Hey, some of the greatest people TigerBlog has ever met in his life have been college lacrosse players and coaches. Many of them are the kind of people you marvel at, wondering how this combination of intelligence, athletic ability, sense of community, sense of team and humility can be wrapped up in one person.

And TB can give you hundreds of examples of people like this, from Princeton and from any number of other schools that he's seen Princeton compete against, even schools that TB wouldn't root for in a hundred years. And yet TB will be the first to admit that their rosters have been stocked with great kids, the kind TB would have rooted for hard if they'd been Princeton Tigers.

That's not to say that the Huguely story is an isolated situation and that college athletic administrators and coaches don't need to look at the larger issue.

It's just that it's not about the sport of lacrosse.

It's about alcohol.

It's clear from any account of what happened that alcohol was a prime contributor, and not just on the day of the murder.

In fact, TB was talking to one of the people in lacrosse he respects the most about this very subject a few days ago, and they both agreed that it's fairly fortunate that there haven't been other stories like this through the years.

The prevalence of alcohol among collegians - and athletes who play all sports - and the pressure that some of these kids feel to consume it are enormous and inescapable.

And the reality is that alcohol consumption changes personalities, makes kids do things they otherwise wouldn't do, over time becomes addictive. There is nobody - prosecutors, jurors, anyone - who thinks that Huguely set out to kill Love, or for that matter would have had he not been drinking all day.

How many other young lives have been affected by alcohol? Maybe not to the degree of committing a murder, but how many DUIs, how many health issues, how many serious car accidents, how many innocents killed by drunk drivers have there been?

There isn't a college administrator out there who doesn't know what binge drinking can do to a campus, and there are no easy solutions to the issues.

The fact is that George Huguely was a few days away from graduating from Virginia, and the odds are good that he was headed down the path of being successful. Now, instead of career, marriage, children and all that, he's headed to prison for a long time.

And let's keep in mind that while that is awful for him and his family, it's not tragic. The only tragedy here is the death of Yeardley Love.

And let's also keep in mind that Huguely is not in the situation he is because he played lacrosse.

It's because of alcohol.

Playing Pink

TigerBlog got out of the shower and realized that he had given no thought to what he was going to wear to work today.

Then he tried to remember if this was an everyday thing or when it is that he figures out what he's going to wear.

Not that it's all that complicated for him. He has four pairs of pants to choose from, and then about 100 Princeton athletics shirts. Every now and then he'll wear the navy blue button down shirt, though that's about the only non-Princeton option in the closet.

TB's sense is that women plan out what they're going to wear more than men do, but it's possible that he's wrong. Not sexist. Just wrong.

When TB first started working here, he dress code required a tie every day between Labor Day and Memorial Day. As he looks at old pictures or of the remaining ones that hang in the closet, TB can conclude that he had some ugly, ugly ties.

As an aside, tying a tie is an important skill. TB learned it from FatherBlog, who would wear a suit and tie to the beach, and taught it to TigerBlog Jr., who has to wear a tie to school every day.

Anyway, these days, with Princeton's nearly perfect Nike deal, it's almost always something swoosh-related.

The result is that there is all kinds of orange and black in the closet.

One color TB doesn't have is pink, though he does have a key to Jadwin Gym, which will enable him to get into women's basketball this Saturday for free.

Anyone who doesn't have the key can also get in for free, simply by wearing something pink.

Well, not a small pink stripe across a sweater or something. It has to be a predominantly pink garment.

The occasion is Princeton Plays Pink, in conjunction with the Princeton-Dartmouth women's basketball game.

From the release:
The event, formerly known as Think Pink and Pink Zone, will support the Kay Yow Cancer Fund, the YWCA Breast Cancer Resource Center and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

All fans wearing pink will get into the game for free. If you forget to wear pink, Pink Zone short sleeve t-shirts will be available for purchase for $10 and long sleeve shirts are available for $20, with proceeds going to local and national breast cancer organizations.

Fans will see pink around Jadwin Gym including balloons, decorations and programs. Princeton University Dining Services will provide free coffee, hot chocolate, pink cupcakes and cookies. Fans who wear the most pink will have an opportunity to win prizes throughout the game.

The coaching staff and cheer squad will all be wearing pink. The Princeton Tigers, who currently boast a 19-4 overall record and a perfect 9-0 record in Ivy League play, will weave pink laces in their sneakers and wear pink socks. The officiating crew will call fouls using pink whistles.

At halftime, members of the audience who have been affected by breast cancer will be asked to come down to the court and form a human pink ribbon at center court.

Donation boxes to support breast cancer research can be found in the lobby of Jadwin Gym, where Robert Wood Johnson Health System and the YWCA Princeton Breast Cancer Recourse Center will have booths set up to provide information and education about their organizations and breast cancer.

In addition to the pink experience, there is also the matter of the significance for the women's basketball team this weekend.

The Tigers are currently 19-4 overall and 9-0 in the Ivy League. No other team has fewer than three league losses (Harvard and Yale).

Princeton has five league games remaining. Here are the opponents and the margin of victory for Princeton the first time around (keep in mind that Princeton needs to go 3-2 in these five games to clinch the outright championship and NCAA tournament bid):
Harvard - 28
Dartmouth - 31
Yale - 25
Brown - 12
Penn - 39

In other words, Princeton's chances of winning a third straight title are pretty good. TigerBlog would never, ever crown a team before it's won, though if he was ever going to make an exception to that rule, this might be the time.

But he won't. Not until it's actually over.

Should Princeton defeat Harvard and Dartmouth, though, then Harvard would for sure be eliminated and Princeton would clinch at least a tie, or the outright title if Yale were to lose one of its two games this weekend (at Columbia/Cornell).

There is a lot of pressure that goes along with being the prohibitive favorite. Every team you play circles that date on the schedule and certainly is trying to bring its best that night.

The level of methodical consistency that Princeton has played with this Ivy season has been remarkable. Now on the verge of a third-straight NCAA appearance after never having played in the tournament before, Princeton is so close that it would be normal to start looking ahead.

But these Tigers won't.

Not until it's official. No matter how good it's looking now.

41 And Counting

TigerBlog's exercise of choice is squash.

When he tells the non-believers about the sport, the first response is always the same: Isn't that like racquetball?

Well, no, it's not. They're both played on courts where there are four walls and involve hitting a ball, though that's where it ends.

In racquetball, the ball does all the work, bouncing like mad all over the place.

In squash, if you take a ball before a match and drop it on the floor, it will hardly bounce at all. As the match goes on and the ball gets hotter, it starts to bounce more, but it's still the players who have to chase it all over the court to make shots.

Also, in squash, the shot has to be above the tin, which is 12 inches off the court.

There's something addictive about the game. Basically anyone here who gives it a chance gets hooked.

And why not? It's a great workout. And it's competitive.

If you don't think it is, try playing with former men's hockey coach Guy Gadowsky, or current basketball coaches Mitch Henderson and Brian Earl.

TB watched the squash championships here this past weekend - you know, the ones where Princeton ended Trinity's 13-year run as national champion - and thought that those guys were playing something of a different sport than TB when he plays.

It's not that they hit the ball so much harder. It's not even that they put the ball anywhere they want every time.

It's that they can cover any part of the court, have way fewer mis-hits and return almost any shot. TB? He can't do any of those things consistently, especially the court coverage part.

In watching them play, TB sometimes wondered if some of the points were ever going to end, as the players effortless tracked down shots that TB would never dream of reaching, extending the play what seemed like an eternity.

In the end, it came down to a perfect drop shot from Princeton's Kelly Shannon, and that was that.

For Princeton, it extended the rather remarkable national championship streak, one that dates back now 41 straight years with at least one team or individual who won one.

For the record, this does not mean an NCAA championship. Squash, for instance, is not an official NCAA sport.

It is, though, 41 straight years with at least one team or individual national champion in a varsity sport, which is remarkable.

Each year, TB wonders if this will be the one where the program's long-running streaks of success come to an end. In addition to the national championship streak, Princeton has also won the Ivy League's unofficial all-sports points championship 25 straight years.

This year, Princeton had a few other opportunities for national champions, even if squash didn't win. It could have come down to the very end, when Donn Cabral and Conor McCullough could win NCAA track and field titles.

This time, though, the streak was pushed forward in February, thanks to the men's squash team.

For the record, here is the complete list:

2012 - men's squash
2011 - Todd Harrity (squash), women's open rowing (1st varsity 8)
2010 – men’s lightweight rowing
2009 – men’s lightweight rowing, women’s squash
2008 – women’s squash
2007 – women’s squash
2006 – women’s open rowing (1st varsity 8), Yasser El Halaby (squash),
2005 – Yasser El Halaby (squash)
2004 – Yasser El Halaby (squash)
2003 – women’s lightweight rowing, women’s lacrosse, Yasser El Halaby (squash)
2002 – women’s lightweight rowing, women’s lacrosse, Tora Harris (indoor and outdoor high jump)
2001 – women’s lightweight rowing, men’s lacrosse, Soren Thompson (epee fencing), David Yik (men’s squash
2000 – women’s lightweight rowing, Eva Petchnigg (foil fencing), Julia Beaver (women’s squash), Peter Yik (men’s squash
1999 – women’s squash, women’s lightweight rowing, Julia Beaver (women’s squash), Peter Yik (men’s squash)
1998 – men’s lacrosse, men’s heavweight rowing, men’s lightweight rowing, women’s squash
1997 – men’s lacrosse, Katherine Johnson (women’s squash)
1996 – men’s lacrosse, men’s lightweight rowing, men’s heavyweight rowing, Max Pekarev (saber fencing)
1995 – women’s open rowing
1994 – men’s lacrosse, women’s lacrosse, men’s lightweight rowing, women’s open rowing, Harald Winkmann (epee fencing)
1993 – men’s squash, women’s open rowing
1992 – men’s lacrosse
1991 – women’s squash
1990 – women’s open rowing, men’s swimming 200-yard medley relay (Mike Ross, Ty Nelson, Leroy Kim, Erik Osborn)
1989 – men’s lightweight rowing , women’s squash, Demer Holleran (women’s squash), Jeff Stanley (men’s squash), men’s swimming 200-yard medley relay (Mike Ross, Ty Nelson, Rich Korhammer, Rob Musslewhite)
1988 – men’s lightweight rowing, Jeff Stanley (men’s squash)
1987 – Demer Holleran (women’s squash)
1986 – men’s lightweight rowing, Demer Holleran (women’s squash)
1985 – men’s heavyweight rowing
1984 – women’s squash
1983 – women’s squash
1982 – men’s squash
1981 – women’s squash, John Nimik (men’s squash)
1980 – women’s squash
1979 – women’s squash
1978 - women’s squash
1977 – men’s squash
1976 – women’s squash, Nancy Gengler (women’s squash)
1975 – women’s squash, men’s squash, Wendy Zaharko (women’s squash)
1974 – women’s squash, men’s squash, Wendy Zaharko (women’s squash)
1973 – women’s squash, Cathy Corcione (100 butterfly, 100 free), 200-yard freestyle relay (Cathy Corcione, Jane Fremon, Barb Franks, Carol Brown)
1972 – Wendy Zaharko (women’s squash), Charlie Campbell (200-yard backstroke)

Yeah, Bob

TigerBlog was just getting out of his car this morning when a Subaru pulled in at the same time.

Out stepped a man wearing a green jacket, white shorts that resemble the kind that players like Arthur Ashe and Rod Laver used to wear at Wimbledon, white socks and black sneakers. He held a green backpack and a plastic supermarket bag that held his lunch.

This is what the morning after looked like for Bob Callahan.

The Princeton men's squash coach was a few hours removed from a 5-4 win over Trinity to win the national championship and end Trinity's 13-year reign.

And now he was walking into the building like it was just another day. Callahan is unflappable, if nothing else.

Or seemingly.

Every time TigerBlog saw him this weekend, he sensed that underneath the relatively calm exterior, Callahan's heart was racing. Pounding.

Of course, you couldn't really be on C level of Jadwin during any part of the College Squash Association championships this weekend - especially during the championship flight matches - and not feel the energy and emotion.

Watching the action? That was a bit different.

At times when TB was there Friday and Saturday, the closest he could come to actually seeing the points was to try to get a view of the scoreboard on each court - and to hear the reaction of the jam-packed crowd.

TigerBlog isn't a huge fan of being wedged in like sardines in the first place, what with all the germs and stuff. And yet it was inescapable if you wanted to be part of the event.

For the final, Craig Sachson - the OAC squash contact - wedged himself between two courts and didn't move for five hours as he watched - and Tweeted.

As for TB, he couldn't get there yesterday, so he did the next best thing - he watched the videostream.

It actually was a great view of the courts, except for when someone would stand up right in from of the camera, and this didn't happen too often.

This plan apparently didn't make TigerBlog unique, as the coverage on Court 1 (there were three cameras set up) was the most-watched subscription videostream Princeton has ever had.

That means more people watched the squash yesterday than have ever watched a Princeton football game, or basketball, hockey, lacrosse or anything else for that matter (other that two NCAA tournament men's soccer games, which were streamed for free).

Each of the last three times Princeton reached the national finals, it lost 5-4 to Trinity. Included in that was the epic heartbreaker in 2009, when Princeton had two match balls to close out the Bantams and couldn't do it.

The win yesterday came down to the need for a Princeton sweep of the final shift of matches, with Todd Harrity at No. 1, Kelly Shannon at No. 4 and Dylan Ward at No. 7.

Ward won his match first, rallying after dropping Game 1 to win in four. Harrity won it three - at which time TB shifted over to the stream of Shannon's match and found him up 2-0 in games and pretty even in Game 3.

It didn't take long after that for Shannon to close out the match. The final point came on a perfect drop shot, at which point the feed disappeared behind a mass of humanity, leaving only the sound of loud cheers to confirm that the Tigers had indeed won the national title.

The win extended Princeton's national championship streak to 41 straight years (with at least one team or individual national champion), which itself is remarkable. But that's not what this is about.

This is about the men's squash team and the remarkable end of Trinity's streak and the incredible joy that came out of it on C level.

Afterwards, the Trinity people were extraordinarily gracious, which couldn't have been easy, given the pressure that exists to keep any long streak like that alive.

And then there was Callahan, who when asked how he celebrated said that he was going to go to Teresa's in Palmer Square because he had a coupon but there was a 30-minute wait, so instead he ended up ordering from Papa John's.

Oh, and opening a bottle of champagne.

And why not?

He was the coach of the team that won the national championship, that ended one of the most remarkable runs in the history of college sports.

TB has seen Callahan after enough tough losses to Trinity, seen how he handles himself with such total class, even at what have to be the most excruciating moments of his professional career.

To know that he was the coach who ended that streak, well, it couldn't have happened for a better guy.

CSA Welcome

If the Princeton men's basketball team can sweep its home games this weekend against Columbia and Cornell, then the Tigers would be 6-3 in the Ivy League.

With a Yale win over Harvard mixed in, then Princeton would be back in the situation of knowing that if it won the rest of its games, it would be assured of no worse than a tie for the league title.

As an aside, TigerBlog hates the term "controls one's own destiny," because your destiny is your destiny and as such just happens and cannot be controlled.

Disclaimer from above - if Cornell sweeps this weekend and gets the same help, then it would know the same thing.

On the women's basketball side, Princeton is two games clear of the field (in losses anyway). Princeton has already beaten every team in the league by double figures and has beaten six of the seven by at least 25, including Columbia and Cornell, this weekend's opponents.

For the women's basketball team, there are two issues. First, the second time around is rarely as easy as the first time around through the league. Second, there is the matter of not looking ahead to the NCAA tournament before the league is sewn up, or there could very well not be an NCAA tournament (though with an RPI of 24, the Tigers are looking pretty good).

There is a track and field meet this weekend at Princeton as well. It's not quite the Heps or anything, but there should be some pretty good events.

The hockey teams are making late-season pushes for the ECAC playoffs, especially the men, who still could get a home series in Round 1.

There are also home events in wrestling, women's water polo and men's tennis, all with their own significance.

Still, with all due respect to those, there is no doubt what the No. 1 event at Princeton is this weekend: men's squash.

Jadwin Gym currently has a banner out front flapping away in the warmish breeze that reads "CSA Welcome," and it is serving as an invitation to come in and head to C level, which will be jammed beyond anyone's wildest imagination for the men's national team championships.

The event begins today and runs through Sunday's championship match, which starts at 12:30 and should run most of the afternoon. Admission is free.

The top 16 teams are here at Jadwin, with the top eight in the main flight that will decide the champion.

For more than a decade, it's been merely a formality, as Trinity would almost without exception roll to another title.

One major exception, of course, was 2009, when Princeton pushed Trinity for more than six hours before finally dropping a 5-4 decision. That was the last time the event was held at Jadwin.

This time, it's as wide open as it's ever been.

Yale could win it all - or lose today to Cornell in the quarterfinals.

Harvard could win it all - or lose today to Rochester in the quarterfinals.

The No. 1 seed is Trinity, followed by the second-seeded Tigers. Yale is No. 3; Harvard is No. 4.

Yale beat Trinity earlier in the season. Princeton (the Ivy champ) beat Harvard and Yale but lost to Trinity.

In squash, home court is a huge thing, and not for fan support. It's the courts themselves.

Trinity plays with a white ball on a three-walled glass court. Yale has four-glass wall courts.

Each wall is different. The ball bounces differently on different floors.

TigerBlog has played on the courts in Dillon and Jadwin, and those are radically different. The Jadwin courts that will be used for the championships are most similar to those at Harvard, so maybe the Crimson can do well here.

Regardless, it will build to a wild scene come Sunday.

TB has said it before, but that 2009 final would have gone down as the greatest college sporting event of all time had it been the basketball or football equivalent.

Can this weekend match that? Who knows.

But also, who knows who the champion is going to be. Unlike most years, that alone makes this go-round special.

School Night

This was an actual headline in this morning's New York Post: "Jeremy Lin inspires drink, food concoctions at New York restaurants."

This is the lead headline on ESPN.com as TigerBlog is writing: "Following His Lead - Jeremy Lin shared the spotlight, and the ball, in proving another point Wednesday night."

As TigerBlog drove into New York City yesterday afternoon, he listened to callers on the radio try to equate the Lin phenomenon with other events in the past - and this was on a political show. Over on the sports stations, it was all Lin, all the time.

At 4:10, there was an interview on WFAN with a spokesman from Time Warner Cable, who is locked in a dispute with MSG over the price of MSG's programming. As a result, MSG Network is unavailable in Manhattan if you have Time Warner, and the crux of the discussion was whether or not Jeremy Lin was going to force a conclusion to the dispute, because there might be rioting on the part of those who can't watch him on TV. Even without Time Warner's offering the games, MSG's ratings have skyrocketed since Lin began his current run.

At 4:30, there was an interview with Carmelo Anthony, who will return from injury in the next few days. About 90% of the questions related to whether or not Anthony feels like he can fit in with Lin.

If you google "Jeremy Lin," then you get 556,000,000 results in 0.14 seconds.

When Jeremy Lin hit the game-winning three-pointer against Toronto Monday night, the entire building exploded - and this was in Toronto.

When TB parked his car about 20 blocks south and four block east of where Lin would be playing last night, the attendant was wearing a Lin t-shirt.

As TB write this, Director of Athletics Gary Walters walked by, and he is wearing his Jeremy Lin jersey.

Right now, there is no bigger athlete in the world than Jeremy Lin. Think about it - when was the last time you heard the name Eli Manning. Or read a word about how the Giants won the Super Bowl 11 days ago?

Right now, it'd be hard to find two people on Earth who have a higher approval rating than Lin and Adele.

It's shocking, to say the least. What is it about Lin and his meteoric rise? Athletes have made an impact before, seemingly out of nowhere. Look at Victor Cruz with the Giants.

Why is Lin so special?

One, he went to Harvard. Two, he's Asian-American. Three, in basketball, the players are so visible, with faces not hidden by helmets. Four, he has been such a dominant player. He hasn't just been good; he has been Michael Jordan good for seven games now, all Knick wins. Five, he seems to be having so much fun out there. Six, he's not a huge jerk.

And seven, and most important, he seems like Everyman. It makes him so easy to root for and want to see succeed.

Regardless of the reasons, Lin is all anyone wants to talk about, and it was especially true in New York City, where TB overheard conversations about Lin, saw Lin t-shirts and jerseys and heard person after person say things like "it's been years since I've watched an NBA game, but I'll be watching tonight." Even without Time Warner.

TB was in New York to speak at a seminar in a sports management class at New York University. The class featured a mix of grad students and seniors, and it lasted from 6:20 until 8:50.

The professor is Connee Zotos, who had been the athletic director at Drew University for 12 years before returning to academia. TB met Zotos through the College Athletic Administrators of New Jersey organization.

TB hopes the 15 students learned something from him. TB certainly learned from them.

TB was essentially talking about issues in marketing and communications in college athletics in general and Princeton specifically, with an emphasis on how it's all evolved in the last 20 years or so. Eventually, it became mostly a Q&A on anything and everything in college athletics, from marketing and communications to recruiting, conference realignments, NCAA rules, admissions and financial aid, the nightmare at Penn State, policing of social media and any number of other topics. Including, of course, Jeremy Lin.

The questions that TB was asked were fascinating, and they gave great insight into what the students were focusing on during the discussion and in general, beyond school.

The topic of Penn State and how Princeton would handle something similar was an important topic. So was the time spent on videostreaming and the money related to that.

As always, TB found some misconceptions about Princeton and Ivy League athletics. Specifically, there is the issue of tiering in college athletics, where sports are given varying degrees of institutional support depending on a bunch of factors. At Princeton, that is not the case.

A few times, TB asked general questions like "how many page views does goprincetontigers.com get in a year" or "how much money does Princeton University allocate from its general funds budget for marketing," to see what the responses would be. He talked about "student-athlete experience," from Princeton's perspective and from the perspective of a BCS basketball player and how radically different those two definitions are.

As he articulated all this, it once again become crystal clear to him why he loves working at Princeton so much, how lucky he is to be here, how unique a place this is.

All in all, the seminar was a fascinating experience for TB, to see a group of students eager to here what he had to say. They scribbled notes at times, but mostly they just listened and engaged in dialogue, which is what TB was hoping would happen.

When TB sits at his desk and looks out across the track at the football stadium every day, handling that day's tasks, it's easy to forget that so much goes into running a Division I athletic program, especially one with 38 varsity sports and 1,000 athletes. How many subjects there are that can be discussed in detail, how many seminars could be devoted solely to how Princeton runs its program vs. how the rest of the league runs theirs vs. how the rest of Division I runs theirs.

At one point last night, TB looked up and noticed that most of the 2.5 hours had passed, in what seemed like seconds rather than minutes.

His hope is that the students had the same feeling.

Brave New World

TigerBlog recently entered the iPhone crowd.

Now he can't figure out what he used to do in his spare time, back when he wasn't playing "Scramble Words" and getting second-by-second updates on Jeremy Lin.

TigerBlog used to love the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes." While it was no "Bloom County" and lacked characters like Opus the Penguin and Bill the Cat, it was still a high-quality strip.

And who knows, maybe it was where the original idea for "Toy Story" came from, what with the way Hobbes came to life when nobody else was around.

There was one Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin asks his dad: "why aren't we hooked up to an on-line service so we can connect with other computers," to which his dad replies: "because it's bad enough we have a telephone."

In truth, it's hard to imagine how TB used to get by back in the days when he had just a flip phone, with only calls and texting available. Of course, those days were about two weeks ago.

It's not that he wants to be glued to his phone. Quite the contrary.

It's just that once the ease of staying in tune with email or taking pictures that can actually be used on the webpage or seeing that Lin had nine points and six assists at halftime against Toronto (by the way, TB can't believe how that game ended) or what the other Ivy scores are - not to mention playing Scramble Words - it's impossible to imagine not having that kind of instant access.

TB was a holdout, that's for sure.

That sort of immediate access comes with it a certain lack of privacy, so that people who are trying to get in touch with you expect you to respond immediately.

As an aside, TB still hasn't gone down the whole "Suri" path.

Anyway, TB's introduction to the iPhone came around the time he was interviewed (under an alias) by Jonathan Tannenwald for his very well-researched and well-written piece on the current state of Ivy League sports and television.

The two are not unrelated.

As TB understands it, Tannenwald's piece started out of a question about why last Friday's Penn-Harvard men's basketball game wasn't televised. From there, all kinds of questions grew about the bigger picture of where the Ivy League is in terms of a national television package and how Ivy League games come to be on TV.

Tannenwald was able to get fairly forthcoming comments from Ivy League executive director Robin Harris and Penn AD Steve Bilsky, as well as TB.

Basically, unlike a league like the Big East or SEC, the Ivy League schools have traditionally retained the TV/streaming rights to their home contests. Whereas schools from power conferences view TV rights as a revenue source - one that is enhanced by pooling the league's schools - the Ivy League is much more interested in the exposure.

One way to earn that exposure is to pay for air time, though that can be prohibitively expensive. Another way is to not pay but to also get no financial benefit, so that all advertising goes to the production company.

Princeton is fortunate to be in its ESPN and Verizon Fios arrangements, which guarantee multiple events across several sports in the case of ESPNU and greatly enhanced videostreaming quality (in the case of Verizon Fios).

Still, there are more questions than answers about TV right now:

* is there a large audience for Ivy League athletics on TV?
* is TV more important than videostreaming
* should Ivy schools move their streaming to a centralized website with a pay-once philosophy, so that fans can buy one Ivy package and get every school's feed, even if it hurts the revenue streams that have been created under the current setup?
* should it be a free or pay model for videostreaming (see above for revenue issues)?
* how much should be invested in improving streaming if the audience numbers aren't there now?
* would audience numbers go way up with higher quality streaming?

And most importantly: what's next?

These are questions to which TB does not currently have the answers. At the same time, he has some ideas of what he believes to be the case.

Right now, the league and its eight schools are working hard to figure out what the answers to those questions are and what to do about them.

This is all being done in the context of television possibilities as well.

For TB's money, there is no bigger issue that the league's athletic communications/marketing offices - and the league itself - is currently discussing.

Oh, and whatever happens, the idea of making sure that it can all be found on your iPhone - or whatever you're using now and whatever will replace it in three years - has to be part of the discussion.

In the meantime, TB has four games of Scramble Words to play.

Grammys And Tigers

TigerBlog did something the other night that he can't remember ever doing before.

He watched the Grammy Awards.

The show started at 8:00 Sunday night on CBS. Of course, TB couldn't have avoided knowing that, since he got four identical text messages within five seconds of each other, all announcing that Bruce Springsteen was going to be opening the show.

And so TB tuned in to see The Boss, and he stayed tuned in for most of it.

This came on the heels of a pretty strong weekend of Princeton Athletics, and it all left TB with these thoughts:

* The new Springsteen album comes out in a few weeks, and TB has pre-ordered it on iTunes. Springsteen could put out an album of Gregorian chants and TB would pre-order it.

* The men's basketball game against Harvard featured a great atmosphere in Jadwin Gym. The building was designed to be a multi-purpose facility and as such sacrificed some of the amenities that a basketball-only building would have (not to mention it's 43 years old), but when it's nearly filled like it was the other night, it's still a great place to see a game.

* The song "We Take Care Of Our Own" that Springsteen has released and then performed with the E Street Band at the Grammys is pretty good, and TB can see himself using it for the Princeton Varsity Club senior banquet video in a few months. When the band plays live, it just looks like they're having an insane amount of fun, as opposed to trying so hard for the right look or statement or whatever so many other groups try to do. It's part of what makes them by far the best.

* TB isn't a huge fan of the rushing the court phenomenon, but he understands why the Princeton students did so after the win over Harvard, a it was a very spontaneous expression of excitement. As with the four text messages that he got about the Springsteen appearance, TB got four text messages from people watching on TV who wondered why Princeton would rush the court after beating Harvard, something Princeton has now done 23 straight years at Jadwin.

* There is no doubt what the highlight of the Grammys was (shockingly, it wasn't Springsteen), and TB will get to that in a few paragraphs. Hint - it wasn't the appearance by Super Bowl champs Victor Cruz and Mario Manningham, but that was fun to write.

* Harvard has to really hate Princeton when it comes to men's basketball, after the way Princeton beat the Crimson last year in the Ivy playoff and then this year at Jadwin, knocking Harvard out of the Top 25 like that. From the opening tip-off Saturday, it was clear that this was not just another game, and the electricity was present in the building from start to finish. From what TB understands, the ESPNU broadcast did a great job of capturing it.

* While not THE highlight of the Grammys, TigerBlog thought the Beach Boys tribute was outstanding. Maroon 5 did a great job on "Surfer Girl," especially lead singer Adam Levine, who was handed a song that is not easy to do. And then the group that TB had never heard of - Foster the People - did an even better job on "Wouldn't It Be Nice." When the original Beach Boys came out for "Good Vibrations," TB thought there was no way they'd be able to harmonize the way they used to, but they came close enough for it to be impressive. Except for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Beach Boys are up there with any musical act TB has ever heard.

* The Princeton win over Harvard might not derail the Crimson from the league title and NCAA tournament, but it did make the challenge much greater. A Harvard win would have left the Crimson two games clear of the field, instead of the one-game edge that the team has over Yale and Penn (and two on Princeton and Cornell). Harvard has to play all four again, and Yale and Penn now know that if they win the rest of their games, they're assured of at least a tie for the league title. Had Harvard beaten Princeton, the race was over.

* Taylor Swift's performance was, well, impressive. As anyone who has a current middle school daughter can understand, TB has heard a million Miley Cyrus songs (from the days when elementary school girls couldn't get enough Hannah Montana) and very little Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is a way better performer and doesn't appear to be heading towards the same train wreck that Miley seems to be embracing these days.

* Had Harvard's women beaten Princeton Saturday in Cambridge, then things would have looked much different in that race. Instead, Princeton defeated Harvard by 28 after leading by as many as 45, running its record to 7-0 in the league and, unlike the Harvard men, going up two games (in the loss column) on the field. Princeton has won its first seven league games by these margins of victories: 12, 25, 28, 29, 31, 35 and 59 points. TB is pretty sure that this year's Harvard and Yale women's teams are comparable to many teams that have won the league title; it's just that this Princeton team is extraordinarily special.

* TB has always been a Glen Campbell fan, and that part of the show was tremendous. Even if he's never heard of the country singers who did "Southern Nights" and "Gentle On My Mind," they were both awesome. Seeing Paul McCartney mouth the words of "Rhinestone Cowboy" was a little weird, and TB actually thought McCartney was borderline awful in his performances.

* Niveen Rasheed scored her 1,000th career point in the win over Harvard, which for any other player is a great accomplishment. For Rasheed, she can score two points or 30 points; she's the best Ivy League women's basketball player that TB has ever seen. And were it not for her torn ACL last year, she'd be at about 1,400 points right now. Still, scoring points isn't just what she does. She plays with ferocity, and she imposes her will on every aspect of every game she's in.

* TB was at the men's basketball game Saturday night when he found out that Whitney Houston had died. The Jennifer Hudson tribute at the Grammys was extremely well done, under difficult circumstances no less. When TB thinks of Whitney Houston, he will think of the inspirational version of the national anthem she sang at the Giants-Bill Super Bowl shortly after the start of the 1991 Gulf War. No other national anthem version has ever approached what she did.

* Princeton won the men's squash Ivy title with wins over Cornell and Columbia this weekend, and now attention turns to this weekend's national championships, here at Jadwin Gym. Princeton has as good a chance as anyone of coming away with the title, which Trinity has won 13 straight years.

* What in the world was Nikki Minaj thinking? And it was a little too much Chris Brown. And TB is not a fan of Bruno Mars, though he was pretty good in his performance. And Katy Perry fell into the category of "trying too hard."

* Princeton swept the fencing titles this past weekend, winning the women's championship as expected and defeated Harvard and Columbia 14-13 each to win the men's. That's five Ivy fencing titles between the team in the last three years.

* The duet of "It Had To Be You" with Tony Bennett and Carrie Underwood? Pretty close to perfect. TB would love to be able to croon.

* Princeton now has five Ivy titles for the academic year. Reaching the 15 that set the record a year ago is probably not going to happen, but the goal is always double figures. Can the Tigers get there? TB thinks so, though he doesn't want to get too far ahead of anything with any team.

* Finally, the highlight of the Grammys was without a doubt the performance of Adele, who sang "Rolling In The Deep." Adele won basically every award there was to win, and why not? She is a startling talented singer whose voice overwhelms the audience from the second she opens her mouth. Add in the fact that she's just singing her song while wearing a nice, simple outfit and without having to perfect some "look" or "brand" or without having to be a jerk about it, and she's even more impressive. It was impossible to watch/listen to her without being mesmerized.