Thanks Guys

TigerBlog's second favorite statistical oddity from this past weekend in Ivy League men's lacrosse was that Brown could finish 3-3 and not make the Ivy tournament but go 2-4 and make the tournament.

TB's favorite was that after Yale beat Brown in four overtimes Friday night, Yale was 3-2 and had clinched a spot in the Ivy tournament while Princeton was 3-0 - including a win over Yale - and had not.

Princeton took care of that little anomaly with its 21-6 win over Dartmouth Saturday afternoon, one that improved the Tigers to 4-0 in the league.

With its spot in the league tournament assured, Princeton can look ahead to Step 2, which would be winning the regular-season title and hosting the tournament.

Both of those prizes will go to the winner of the Princeton-Cornell game on April 28 on Sherrerd Field at Class of 1952 Stadium. Though the possibility of a co-championship at 5-1 still exists, the winner of the game on April 28 will definitely 100% host the Ivy tournament.

Before Princeton can worry about Cornell, there is the game this Saturday at Harvard. As hard as it is to believe, there are only two weeks left in a regular season that feels like it just began 10 minutes ago.

Speaking of how time flies, there was the matter of the group of men, mostly in their 40s, who wore orange jerseys and took the field at halftime of the Princeton-Dartmouth game. Had it really been 20 years since these guys won the first of Princeton's six NCAA men's lacrosse titles?

There they were, the team of 1992. Scott Bacigalupo. Kevin Lowe. David Morrow. Justin Tortolani. Andy Moe. Mike Mariano. And about 20 others.

Some are doctors. Some are businessmen. Some are in the lacrosse Hall of Fame (Lowe, Bacigalupo). Another (Morrow) will be, both for his contributions as a player (1993 national player of the year, U.S. national team member) and for what he did for the sport by founding Warrior Lacrosse.

TigerBlog was a newspaper reporter back then, one whose main beat was Princeton and Trenton State football and Princeton and Rider basketball.

One really cold spring day in 1990, he was sent out to cover a game that he had seen only once before, back when he saw Brown-Penn while a college student. This time, it was Princeton-Bucknell, on Finney Field.

By the time the 1990 season ended, TB was hooked on the game. By the time Princeton won the 1992 title, he had covered almost every game Princeton had played in those three years and was already a lifetime member of the Bill Tierney fan club.

Since then, he has seen basically every Princeton men's lacrosse game, missing maybe 10-15 at most in all that time.

He has become involved in the sport in a major way, both through Princeton and through youth and now high school lacrosse as TigerBlog Jr. and Little Miss TigerBlog both began to love to play a sport that TB barely knew existed when he was their age.

TB has had the great good fortune to be the athletic communications contact during the Jesse Hubbard-Jon Hess-Chris Massey years, for the great emotions of the 2001 NCAA championship, for the opportunity to see the wondrous ability of Ryan Boyle, to be inspired by the strength of current head coach Chris Bates as he builds his own program after Tierney left for Denver.

The sport of lacrosse has been great to TigerBlog, and he's had the chance to meet hundreds of great young men who have played the game here, as well as some great coaches, players and families on the youth level.

And none of that happens without the guys from 1992.

As he said hello to a few of them after the halftime ceremony, TigerBlog wasn't sure how many of them even remembered him, back when he would come to their games, uncertain of the rules, uncertain of the skills involved, uncertain of what he was seeing.

With no knowledge of the sport, TB focused on the people who played it.

If none of those guys had come to Princeton and the program never took off,  TB almost certainly would never have gotten involved in lacrosse the way he has.

Through the years, TB has had conversations with whoever the current group of Princeton players was about the team from 1992, how they had put their faith in each other and in the still-unproven Tierney and top assistant David Metzbower and how they had grown from below-.500 to NCAA champion.

He's told any number of youth players and coaches about how great those players were, how hard they played, what they meant to the development of the sport.

He's always gotten back a sense of awe when he's said that he saw Bacigalupo's flair for the dramatic in goal, saw Lowe smoothness and vision, saw Morrow wipe out the other team's best time after time, saw Tortolani's reliability near the goal.

Of all the teams that TB has been around in his life, no team has impacted him like the 1992 Princeton men's lacrosse team.

Seeing them out on the field Saturday afternoon hammered that point home for him.

These were not just a group of guys he saw win a championship. They were a group of guys who started him down the road to falling in love with the sport they played and all that is good about it, a group of guys who opened the door to so many great experiences for TB centered around the game of lacrosse.

It's a relationship that's 20 years now - and counting.

And to the guys in the orange jerseys, TB says thanks.