Tournaments And Trivia

Okay, TigerBlog is looking forward to next week.

Why? Because he gets the answer to this trivia question, that came through here yesterday, anonymously at that.

Here it is:
Here's a random trivia question prompted by your comments yesterday about FieldTurf and tigers having their stripes painted on, not sewn on.What makes the 50-yard-line and end zone logos painted on the surface of Powers Field at Princeton Stadium different than the on-field paint markings of every other Division I football stadium? Bonus clue: Until last year, Princeton Stadium shared this odd distinction with Notre Dame Stadium. However, as of the 2014 season, now Princeton Stadium stands alone. 
Answer next week.

TigerBlog has no idea. None.

Anyone know?

Actually, before TigerBlog gets the answer, he's also looking forward to this weekend.

Why?

The Ivy League lacrosse tournaments.

TigerBlog will be in Providence this afternoon for the men's semifinal game between Princeton and Cornell, which faces off at 5. The second game will match Yale and Brown.

The women's tournament will be on Sherrerd Field. Princeton will play the second game, beginning at 7, against Harvard, after Cornell and Penn open the tournament at 4.

The men's final will be Sunday at noon. The women's final will be Sunday at 11 a.m.

The winner of each tournament gets an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The tournament does not determine the Ivy League champion; those were decided by the regular season.

For the record, Princeton's women won the outright Ivy League championship. The Princeton men shared the championship with Brown and Cornell.

Heading into the tournament, TigerBlog is wondering who has the advantage, the team that won the first game or the team that lost the first game.

This is the sixth year of Ivy League tournaments. That means that each tournament has had 15 games played to date.

TigerBlog added it up, and he found that on the men's side the team that won the regular season game is 8-7 in the tournament rematch games. On the women's side, the regular season winner is 11-4.

One of those four losses, though, was Princeton's 9-6 loss to Penn in the Ivy final a year ago, after Princeton had beaten Penn in the regular season.

TigerBlog brings this up because Princeton is playing Cornell in men's lacrosse for the second time in six days, after falling 15-10 in Ithaca last Saturday in a rather odd game. Odd? Well, Princeton led 5-0 after one quarter and trailed 9-5 at halftime, which meant that the first 14 goals of the game were all scored on the same side of the field.

Take the 5-0 start away, and it was 15-5 Cornell. Take away the second quarter and it was 10-6 Princeton.

The last time the Tigers and Big Red did this was two years ago, when Cornell beat Princeton 17-11 in the regular season finale. Princeton then won the rematch six days later 14-13 in overtime, getting seven goals from Mike MacDonald and the game-winner from Kip Orban.

Should Princeton win today, let's just say that those two will probably be a large part of why.

As for the women, Princeton has won 13 straight Ivy League regular season games, but as TB said, the Tigers lost in the final a year ago to Penn.

This time, Princeton plays a Harvard team it defeated 17-12 on March 21. The Crimson needed a win last week against Yale to even get into the tournament, and they more than got it, steamrolling the Bulldogs 15-4.

In other words, Princeton's women need the dominant trend on the women's side to continue, with the regular-season winner again victorious in the tournament.

The men? They need the regular-season losing teams to get to .500 in the tournament.

As for the whole tournament concept, TB loves it.

Wait, isn't this the same TB who hates the idea of a men's basketball tournament? Yes.

It's a combination of the doubler round-robin versus the single round-robin and the fact that the Ivy League will get multiple NCAA tournament bids in both men's and women's lacrosse pretty much every year.

The Ivy tournament has changed the dynamic of the regular season, without cheapening the regular season championship.

Either way, TB is excited for 5 this afternoon. Princeton-Cornell is always special. With so much on the line it is even more so.

Fittingly, it'll be unseasonably cold in Providence today. That's how it's been basically the entire way this season.

But it's May, as of this morning.

May is when it really matters in college lacrosse. Both Princeton teams hope to keep playing for awhile this month.

They'll find out this weekend whether that will happen or not.