A Full Friday

TigerBlog has a theory that elementary and middle school concert bands and orchestras play songs that nobody has ever heard of so that if they do it wrong, nobody knows.

At least he's operated on that theory every since TigerBlog Jr. started playing the sax back in fourth grade.

Last night, TB went to watch Miss TigerBlog play her cello with the high school orchestra. This time, finally, they were playing songs TB recognized.

In fact, they were playing movie themes. Like "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which you are now reflexively hearing in your head. That was the first one. Then there was the theme from "Star Wars." And "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings."

TigerBlog has mentioned this before, but he has good stories about "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Star Wars."

He saw "Raiders" in the movies in 1981 with BrotherBlog. Sitting behind him were three young women TB didn't know, and when the movie ended, everyone got up to leave.

As is usually the case after a movie, everyone asked the people they were with if they liked it. And what did one of the young women say? "That was sooooooooo unrealistic." TB can still hear her, as she said one of the dumbest things TB has ever heard. Of course it was unrealistic. It was supposed to be.

As for "Star Wars," TigerBlog went to the movies to see the original and got there too late, so he saw only the second half. That's it. He's never seen the first half of the movie or any other "Star Wars" movie.

Of course, had the band director asked TigerBlog for his suggestions for movie themes, he would have referred her to the three best ever - "Rocky," "Patton" and "The Great Escape."

Anyway, the concert last night was very good. And TB was able to get out of there in time to be in front of ESPNEWS by 8:30, when Princeton women's basketball coach Courtney Banghart was going to be on live from the Lewis Library broadcast center.

When TB turned on the TV, he saw the list on the left side of the upcoming that "Princeton Undefeated" was the next story. Then it disappeared. Then it came back as the next story. Then it disappeared again.

Eventually, because of some issue on the Bristol end of the connection, Courtney was only able to be on the phone, as opposed to video. Instead, the screen then was filled with women's basketball highlights as the coach's voice was being heard.

Princeton women's basketball has been deluged by media attention of late. Not a day goes by when someone - or multiple someones - want to tell the story of Division I's lone unbeaten women's basketball team, one currently ranked 14th.

It's very reminiscent for TigerBlog of the 1998 men's team, who went 27-2 and reached the national top 10. That year they came out of everywhere as well, and TB was the teams' athletic communications contact. For the record, the current women's basketball contact is named Ben Badua, who in addition to doing things like downloading every single Princeton game from the Ivy League Digital Network onto a portable hard drive to overnight to ESPN and coordinating all of these interviews also had to write previews for baseball and Heps track and field.

It's helped Princeton that Kentucky's men's team is unbeaten, so every time the high profile Wildcats are mentioned, the Princeton women are also brought up.

Among the questions asked of Courtney last night was whether or not her team would match up well with once-beaten UConn. Courtney handled it well, talking about how good UConn is but that she can only "control the controlables" and worry about who is on the schedule.

Princeton is 25-0, and the closest the Tigers have come to a "1" on the right side of its record was two weeks ago at Yale, when Princeton won 56-50 in a game that was one possession in the final minute.

The rematch comes up tonight at 7 here at Jadwin Gym, where TigerBlog is currently sitting. He has no intention of going outside between now and the start of that game, except when he goes to work out and has to get over to Caldwell to change. So he'll be outside for about 10 seconds walking over to the field house and 10 more walking back.

Other than that, he has a pretty good planned here. There's squash (individual national championships) and men's swimming and diving (Ivy championships) that can watched, though he might be outside for another 10 seconds each way if he goes over to the pool.

Speaking of the pool, Princeton had a great night in it last night, to open up the early lead over Harvard after Day 1. There is still a long way to go.

There are preliminaries this morning and finals this evening on Day 2. It repeats tomorrow, with the champion to be crowned at night.

As for the squash tournament, TigerBlog was walking in before just in front of three athletes from St. Lawrence, one of whom said "how about this weather?" TigerBlog couldn't figure out if that meant that they couldn't believe that it wasn't warmer in Princeton or that it seemed warm to them, after their own winter near the Canadian border.

The squash men's individual final is Sunday at 11:45. The women's final is at 1. Princeton has two legitimate contenders on the men's side, Tyler Osborne and Sam Kang. The women's side figures to belong to Amanda Sobhy of Harvard, who is the heavy favorite to win her fourth straight individual championship, which would make her only the second woman and third person overall to do so. The other two? Princeton head women's coach Gail Ramsay and, on the men's side, Yasser El-Halaby.

As for TB's day, at 4 this afternoon he will be in front of his computer or the TV in his office (computer is a better bet) to watch No. 1 Denver play No. 4 North Carolina in men's lacrosse. That would be Denver, coached by Bill Tierney, and North Carolina, with assistant coach David Metzbower.

TB was asked by ESPNU to send along a picture of the two of them when they coached together at Princeton. TB told Metz that he's rooting for both teams to make it to Memorial Day weekend and the NCAA final four.

Of course, he'd love for Princeton to be there as well. He'll be in his car bright and early tomorrow, heading to Baltimore, to see the Tigers play Johns Hopkins.

Before then, though, is his rather full Friday.

The cornerstone event is the women's basketball game. Will it be close again? Princeton has played two opponents in the league twice now.

Against Dartmouth, Princeton went from winning the first game by 18 to winning the second by 39. Against Harvard, it went from winning by 50 to winning by 21. That meant that the margin of victory was more than doubled once and more than halved the other time, but all four of those wins were very comfortable.

Yale had a good game plan against Princeton the first time, with great patience offensively. And the Bulldogs had a way better night from three-point range than it usually does, with seven makes, nearly double the 3.6 average.

What will happen tonight?

And then there's the big picture. People can talk about how Princeton might be playing at home in the NCAA tournament - as ESPN's bracketology suggests, with Louisville unable to host as a third-seed. And those same people can talk about how well Princeton might do in the tournament.

The reality is that Princeton has to get there first. Are their chances good? Yes. But, TB never takes anything for granted.

Here's the doomsday scenario for Princeton. It's not going 30-0 and then losing at home in the first round of the tournament. That would be disappointing.

Here's the doomsday one: 3-1 in the next two weekends (Brown tomorrow night, then at Cornell and Columbia), combined with Penn at 4-0. Then Princeton has to go to the Palestra for the final regular season game, which under that scenario would mean that the Quakers would be playing for a share of the championship.

That's your doomsday scenario. Penn is still out there lurking. All it will take is one loss the next two weekends to change everything.

Yale and Cornell are both 6-4 in the league. Princeton beat Cornell by 28 here the first time. It beat Yale by six.

Was that game a fluke? Or does Yale know something?

TigerBlog will be here to find out later. He's not going anywhere.