On Your Mark ...

What's the difference between Fort Myers, Fla., and Princeton right now, other than the fact that it's 72 degrees in Fort Meyers and 27 degrees here at TigerBlog HQ?

Well, the local Division I men's basketball team in Fort Myers is Florida Gulf Coast University, which competes in the Atlantic Sun conference. As of this morning, Florida Gulf Coast has played more league games than any team in Division I - a total of 12.

Princeton (and Penn), on the other hand, are the only DI teams not to have played a league game to this point. That changes this weekend, when the two travel north to take on Dartmouth and Harvard Friday and Saturday

Princeton and Penn go through this each year, due to Princeton's academic calendar that features first semester exams in January.

What this does is set up a total sprint for the Tigers (and Quakers). Princeton has played 13 men's basketball games so far in 77 days since the opener against Central Michigan, which came before football season at Princeton ended.

Beginning Friday, Princeton will play its 14 Ivy League games in a 40-day stretch. It gets off to a tough stretch, with the trip north followed by a home game against defending champ and 2009 favorite Cornell.

There is little in college sports that can compare to an Ivy weekend, especially one on the road. TigerBlog remembers vividly its first experience on the Princeton men's basketball bus, back in the 1989-90 season, riding up Broadway after leaving Columbia on the way to Cornell, with 20 pizzas on board (TigerBlog and Sean Jackson were the only two who liked mushrooms, so we'd share one) and a 2 a.m. arrival time. It's a grind, no doubt, to play Friday night, hop on the bus, arrive somewhere in the middle of the night, have a shootaround in the late morning and then hang around until it's time to play again. Then it's back on the bus for the long ride home.

As for the Princeton women, they're off to a 1-0 start after having defeated Penn before exams. The Tigers will take on Dartmouth Friday night at Jadwin in a game that will always be special for Princeton head coach Courtney Banghart, who became the Ivy League's all-time leading three-point shooter for women's basketball at Dartmouth and later was an assistant coach for the Big Green. It will also mark the second Jadwin return for former Princeton assistant women's coach Mary Gleason, now a Dartmouth assistant.