Three For The Year

In case you forgot, Princeton trailed Harvard 34-10 with 12 minutes to go in last October's football game on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.

This was from TigerBlog two days later:

Princeton was outgained 415-51 in the first half, which ended 20-0 Harvard. It appeared that Princeton's chance was after its touchdown drive to start the second half and then fumble recovery on the Crimson 5, but when Princeton was held to a field goal and Harvard came right down the field to make it 27-10, TB thought it was over.
Harvard would end up with a school-record 448 yards and five touchdowns from its quarterback, Colton Chapple. One running back ran for 100 yards; three receivers had at least 100 yards, including Kyle Juszczyk, who caught 15 passes for 192 yards and three TDs.
In all, the Crimson rolled up 634 yards of offense.

He also wrote this:

As Powers Field was engulfed in a sea of orange and black humanity, the reason for the party hung over all of their heads, as if a reminder was needed. There it was anyway, lingering on the scoreboard:
Princeton 39, Harvard 34.

With the end of the 2012-13 academic year comes the need to recap it all in various ways, most immediately with the annual report.

The report is basically a summary of the year in Princeton Athletics, with a lot of facts about the number of athletes who competed - and the number of workout permits sold.

There are also sections about the on-field story of the previous academic year.

Princeton measures things like overall won-loss record of every team, record against Ivy opponents in all sports, stuff like that. It's usually pretty interesting.

TigerBlog isn't sure how closely it gets read. It's given, he assumes, to the higher-ups of the University, perhaps the Trustees. He seems to remember at one point that it was referred to as the Presidents' report, so he guesses it goes to Nassau Hall.

He can't guarantee how closely it gets read. Perhaps he should try including a page in the middle that just has the lyrics to the Star-Spangled Banner, as Penn legend has it one student did on a final exam and had it go unnoticed.

Anyway, the annual report got TB thinking about what the greatest games by Princeton teams in the 2012-13 academic year were. He came up with three.

The football game against Harvard is definitely one of them.

Princeton rallied from that 34-10 deficit to put up 29 points in 12 minutes and shock Harvard, who had the nation's longest winning streak at the time. Harvard went from an invincible force expected to roll to the league championship to derailed in those 12 minutes, and the Crimson would in fact not win the league.

TigerBlog had this to say as well:

The winning drive went 11 plays and covered 90 yards, without any timeouts, taking 1:44 off the clock. The touchdown was Quinn Epperly to Roman Wilson from 38 yards, after Michelsen had been knocked out of the game a few plays earlier, with 13 seconds left.
Really, it was something like from a sports movie, where the underdogs need the late touchdown and the ball seems to hang in the air forever - and nobody can really believe what happened.  

That game wasn't just one of the best of the last 12 months. It's one of the best TB has ever seen, and it was the best Ivy football game TB has ever seen.

What were the other two?

Princeton 3, North Carolina 2, in the NCAA field hockey championship game.

The ACC had won each of the previous 11 NCAA field hockey titles, and Princeton won this one the hard way, beating two-time defending champ Maryland 3-2 in overtime in the semifinal and then beating Carolina in the final.

Princeton trailed twice in the final, at 1-0 and 2-1, before rallying with two goals four minutes apart midway through the second half and then holding off the Tar Heels.

And the other?

Princeton 14, Cornell 13, in the Ivy League men's lacrosse tournament semifinals.

Like the football game, this lacrosse game will not have the historical significance of the field hockey game, as Princeton fell in the final to Yale to end its season.

Still, a game that was 6-6 at the half and 7-7 at the end of the third quarter exploded in a not-to-be-believed fourth quarter. The game included an epic seven-goal, two-assist day by Mike MacDonald and ended when Kip Orban, off a pass from MacDonald, rocketed a shot into the top of the goal to end it in overtime.

There were other great games this year.

TigerBlog will go with those three.