$500,000 Per Win

It's been three weeks and three days - 24 whole days - since Florida Gulf Coast defeated Mercer in the Atlantic Sun championship game.

FGCU had gone 13-5 during the A-Sun season and had to beat Mercer, the regular season champ at 14-4, on its home court.

Back then, nobody outside of the A-Sun world had heard of Andy Enfield, with the exception of Ernie Larossa, the Johns Hopkins Associate Director of Athletics who had watched Enfield play college basketball for the Blue Jays as the athletic communications contact.

Yesterday, Enfield signed a contract that will pay him more than $1 million a year - he made $157,00 at FGCU - to be the head coach at USC. TigerBlog wonders if Pat Haden, USC's athletic director, knew Enfield's name 25 days ago.

His new job, new contract and new-found status as one of the great young coaches in college basketball is based on two games in the NCAA tournament.

Yes, they were two spectacular games, the wins over Georgetown and San Diego State. Still, they were two wins.

Hey, maybe Enfield is a once-in-a-generation coach. And there's no denying that USC has gotten a huge splash from hiring him, completely overshadowing UCLA's hiring of Steve (my 10-year deal from last week at New Mexico notwithstanding) Alford.

And at USC, that's apparently what it's all about - overshadowing UCLA.

And TB realizes that there have to be some high-end high school players who would love to play the kind of up-tempo, throw-it-at-the-rim style that Enfield and FGCU turned into "Dunk City."

Still, it's two wins. That's $500,000 a year per win.

And you can't really blame him. What's he supposed to do? He'll never be a hotter commodity, and there's no guarantee he could ever have equaled what he did this year at FGCU.

So yes, it's been a pretty good few weeks for Andy Enfield.

Closer to home, it's been a pretty good few weeks for Princeton women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer.

For starters, her team put together a pretty cool video wrapped around the idea that Ellen DeGeneres should come to a game. Mostly it's just the women's lacrosse team have a good time, but it's very effective in terms of showing a team with good chemistry.

As an aside, TB wonders 1) if Ellen DeGeneres is aware of the video and 2) if she were, would she come to a game? 

Princeton has won all three of its Ivy League games and has won three straight overall, with two of those wins against ranked teams (Johns Hopkins and Cornell).

The Tigers were others receiving votes last week. This week, they're the highest ranked Ivy League team at No. 14.

What's most important for Princeton is to be in the Ivy League tournament, with the opportunity to play for the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. And to win the league championship.

Right now, Princeton, Penn and Dartmouth are all 3-0, while every other team in the league has at least two losses.

The big stretch for the league title will be an eight-day run from April 12-20, when the three teams all play each other, beginning with Dartmouth at Penn a week from Friday.

For Princeton it means two road games with almost no turnaround, as the Tigers are at Penn April 17 (a Wednesday) and then at Dartmouth April 20.

Princeton also has two huge non-league games remaining, at No. 1 Maryland next Wednesday and then home against Penn State (No. 7 this week) April 27, as it also builds its resume for a possible at-large NCAA tournament bid.

For Princeton, this season actually started with the fall break trip to Malta and London. Princeton's losses this year are to teams ranked ninth (Georgetown), 13th (Virginia) and 17th (Rutgers), and Princeton is playing better as the season goes on.

And tougher. The Tigers came from behind to beat both Hopkins and most recently Cornell, holding the Big Red to just two second half goals Saturday after allowing eight in the first half. The defensive lockdown enabled Princeton to go from 8-5 down to win 12-10.

Added together, and Princeton outscored Hopkins and Cornell 12-5 in the second half after trailing at the break in both.

Hey, maybe they weren't worth $500,000 each to Chris Sailer, but they were still two pretty good wins as well.