Highly Offensive

The best show ever on Sunday nights was, of course, "The Sopranos." The second-best show ever for a Sunday night?

How about the English Premier League Review Show on Fox Soccer Channel? Each Sunday at 8, the top moments from the top games of the previous weekend are shown, complete with the commentary from the world's best announcers.

The big surprise of the early season is, of course, the fact that Blackpool currently sits in fourth place with seven points. Blackpool, a seaside resort town in northwest England, is in its first year in the EPL after a remarkable 3-2 win in which the team came from behind twice in the Championship League play-off to beat Cardiff City to advance.

As an aside, the whole concept of relegation in professional sports is tremendous. Imagine if American pro leagues split into a premier league and a championship league, and teams in the middle were constantly battling to move up or avoid moving down?

Anyway, back at the review show, it's basically all goals and big saves, with some near misses mixed in.

In other words, it's not too much different than yesterday's women's soccer game on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium, where Princeton defeated James Madison 6-3 in a wild up-and-down track meet of a game.

The game was remarkable in that the average soccer game doesn't have nearly that number of goals, and yet in this one, all of the scoring seemed like part of the normal flow of the game.

Princeton's offense was so efficient that it finished with six goals on just nine shots. Jen Hoy, a sophomore, had three goals on just three shots.

TigerBlog doesn't have any way to look up the last time a Princeton player had at least three goals without missing any shots. He could, on the other hand, look up some other stuff.

The game against James Madison marked just the sixth time in 489 Princeton women's soccer game that a team has scored three or more goals and not won. It was also the first time in the 266 games that Julie Shackford has been the Tigers' head coach that it has happened.

Of the six games in which the losing team reached three, four finished 4-3. The only other time besides yesterday where Princeton allowed at least three and scored more than four was in 1984, when the Tigers defeated Kean 6-4.

On the men's side, there have been 14 games in the 1,091 in program history where the losing team has scored at least three. Jim Barlow has been the current head coach 252 and has only had one game in which the losing team reached three - his team fell 7-4 to Yale in 1998.

There was also one 4-4 tie with Rutgers back in 1963.

Added together, there have been 1,580 games in Princeton soccer history, and only 21 of them (.013%) have seen a team score at least three goals and not win. It had been 12 years since the last one.

The Princeton women's team was shut out in its first game, a 2-0 loss to No. 24 Rutgers, but since then the Tigers have scored 10 goals in three games, all wins. Of the 10 goals, seven have been scored by sophomores, including four by Hoy, who had four all of last year.

Contrast that with a year ago, when Princeton, playing mostly freshmen, went 7-7-3. Of those 17 games, nine finished either 1-0 or 0-0, and a 10th was 1-1.

Against James Madison alone, Princeton scored three goals in less than 10 minutes in the first half and then in the second needed 62 seconds to answer a goal by the Dukes.

The Princeton men are 1-2 against a strong early season schedule following the NCAA tournament season a year ago. There is a soccer doubleheader at Roberts Stadium Friday, as the women take on LIU at 5 followed by the men's game against Georgetown.

The Ivy League season begins the following week for the women with a huge game at Yale and the week after for the men with another doubleheader against Dartmouth.

If you're expecting the losing team to score at least three goals every game, history suggests it's unlikely.

If you're looking for great soccer - for free, no less - than Roberts Stadium is a great place to start.

Well, that and the English Premiere League Review Show.