Lax and Lax Makes 10

Before TigerBlog gets into the part about how Princeton's two lacrosse championships have given the athletic program 10 Ivy League titles this academic year, he'd like to say that Zach Currier is unlike basically any player he has ever seen play lacrosse at Princeton.

And that takes into account a lot of players.

TB isn't even sure how he would describe Currier. He's an offensive middie, or is he a defensive middie?

Currier is impossible to define through just stats. Yes, he has nine goals and 13 assists as a first-line midfielder. So what? That doesn't tell anything about what he brings to the field each game.

Currier leads Princeton in ground balls with 59, which is 20 more than the next-best total. That sort of gives a hint as to what kind of player he is, more than just his goals and assists anyway.

Basically, Currier makes every little play a player can make, and added together, they make up a huge part of Princeton's success game after game - even if it's really hard to quantify. All you have to know about him is that, as TB wrote after the Tigers defeated Harvard 12-11 Friday night, Currier's fingerprints are usually all over any success Princeton has.

Princeton led Harvard 12-7 after three quarters, but with 35 seconds left, the Crimson had pulled within one. The face-off would be huge, right?

Currier went out to take it for Princeton. It would have been easy to simply win it. Instead, Harvard's Keegan Michael won it.

So what did Currier do? He caught Michael before he reached the box and took it away from him. Harvard never touched the ball again.

Currier brings a degree of tenacity that TB has rarely seen matched at Princeton. The world of college lacrosse saw that with his epic performance against Johns Hopkins, one that earned him national Player of the Week honors.

But really, he does those sorts of things each week. He does tenacious things. Winning things. He does a lot of everything, basically.

Oh, and in Friday's game, he came within an inch or so of scoring as spectacular a goal as TB has ever seen. Currier caught the ball in traffic in the middle and then went behind the back with a ton of velocity, so much velocity that it bounced all the way over the sideline after it rocked off the crossbar. Had it gone in? It would have been incredible.

So that's where TigerBlog wanted to start today, with Currier. He'll get back to the 10 Ivy titles shortly. In the meantime, let's talk Princeton lacrosse. Men's and women's.

He could have started with Kip Orban and Mike MacDonald, who are putting together epic senior seasons. Or he could have started with the women, who are now a game away from a perfect Ivy season, one year after dropping the opener and then winning out from there.

But instead, he started with Currier. Even now, TB doesn't think he did a really good job of describing him. Maybe it's just impossible to do that.

Now, about the Princeton women.

The big game for Princeton was last Tuesday, when the Tigers defeated Penn to take control of the Ivy League race. Princeton then followed that with a win over Columbia this past Saturday and now hosts Brown this Saturday in the regular season finale.

It won't be the end of lacrosse in Princeton though. The Tigers are assured of at least a share of the Ivy League championship, and no matter what happens this weekend, Princeton will be hosting the Ivy League women's tournament in two weeks.

It'll be the second straight year that Princeton will be the host site for the women's tournament. The Tigers will be joined in Princeton by Penn, Cornell and the winner of the Harvard-Yale game.

Simple.

Olivia Hompe won the Ivy League's Offensive Player of the Week Award after her seven-goal week, which included three against Penn and four against Columbia. It was the fourth time this year Princeton had the Ivy Offensive Player of the Week; Erin Slifer won the other three.

Hompe leads Princeton with 33 goals, which is 1.5 times as many as she had last year, when she scored 22 as a freshman. Slifer leads the team in points with 48, on 29 goals and 19 assists.

The Brown game gives Princeton a chance to win the outright league title. Of course, the Bears are the only Ivy team to beat Princeton in the regular season the last two seasons. It was Brown who beat Princeton in the 2014 season opener, before the Tigers ripped off six straight then and six more this year.

And the men?

The Tigers have also clinched at least a share for the Ivy title. Princeton would win the outright title with a win at Cornell Saturday and then would also host the Ivy tournament, which would be a first in the six-year history of the event, one school as the host for both tournaments.

Of course, there's a long way to go until then. Princeton might be in sole possession of first place in the league, but it's also the ranked behind Yale, Brown and Cornell in the national poles.

Oh well. Princeton will get to prove it on the field. The Tigers are in the Ivy tournament for sure, which was Goal No. 1 after missing it a year ago. Goal No. 2 is the Ivy title. Goal No. 3 is getting into the NCAA tournament.

Without the automatic bid that comes with the tournament championship, the Tigers will be right on the bubble, one way or another.

No matter what, Princeton will have won an Ivy League championship.

And the two lacrosse titles bring Princeton to 10 for the year. For the record, that's: field hockey, men's soccer, men's cross country, men's swimming and diving, women's swimming and diving, men's indoor track and field, women's basketball, women's tennis and the two lacrosses.

For Princeton, it's the 22nd time the program has reached double figures in Ivy titles. Harvard is the only other school to reach double figures, and the Crimson have done it seven times.

Double figure Ivy titles. That's always a goal each year when the academic year begins.

TigerBlog will never take it for granted that Princeton will get there. Hey, the Tigers didn't do it last year, when there were six.

As for the lacrosse teams, there's a lot left to do in 2015.

It starts this weekend, when the regular season ends.

How far beyond that will the season extend?