Eight Goals, Eight Players

TigerBlog turned on the TV Friday night just in time to see Rocky drink six raw eggs on one channel and Victor and Ilsa talk about how Rick said Ilsa might know something about the letters of transit on another channel.

Clearly, TigerBlog had hit the daily double here.

Rocky is of course the title character in the "Rocky" series, and this was the first one of the six. As an aside, the trailer for the seventh move in the series, entitled "Creed," looks great.

Victor, Ilsa and Rick form the greatest fictional love triangle of all time, edging out Jay, Daisy and Tom, in TigerBlog's opinion. The latter is, of course, from "The Great Gatsby," in which among Tom's other shortcomings was the fact that he played football at Yale. They were, though, "careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and beings and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that held them together, leaving others to clean up the mess they had made."

Really, what chance did Jay Gatsby ever have?

So that leaves Rick, Ilsa and Victor. Hopefully you now that those three were the good guys in "Casablanca." If you didn't know that, go watch the movie. Now, if possible.

"Rocky" and "Casablanca" are TigerBlog's two favorite movies of all-time, just ahead of "The Godfather," "The Godfather Part II" and "Goodfellas," which sort of have a common theme between them.

And here they were, his two favorites, both on TV at the same time. They started at the same time, but as "Rocky" is 17 minutes longer than "Casablanca," TB was able to see the end of both.

Even now, after watching these two movies dozens and dozens of times each - TB wonders what the actual number is - he still gets chills when he watches them.

And when he says he gets chills, he means pretty much throughout both. There are too many great scenes and great lines in each, and he was flipping back and forth between the two, hoping not to miss his absolute favorites.

He succeeded perfectly, especially when he went back to "Rocky" just in time to hear him tell Paulie that if he can make money of his name, make it, which is followed by asking him to help him off with his gloves and then THIS.

As for "Casablanca," he saw the great scene where Rick and Victor talk about destiny and then back after the training scene in "Rocky" in time to see Rick tie up all the loose ends while starting a "beautiful friendship."

As for "Rocky," the best parts of the fight scene are when he knocks Creed down in Round 1 and when he gets up in Round 14.

Ah. Chills. Lot of chills.

TigerBlog missed the beginning of both movies because he was at the first athletic event of the 2015-16 academic year, which also happened to be opening night for women's soccer and the first game as head coach of the Tigers for Sean Driscoll.

It was the start of what turned out to be a pretty good - and fascinating - weekend for the women's soccer team.

First of all, TigerBlog had no idea what to expect from the visitors Friday night, when Howard came to Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. Howard had won its most recent game 17-0 over first-year program Hampton.

On this night, though, it would be all Tigers. Even with a disallowed goal early in the game, Princeton still won 6-0. Next up was a trip yesterday to Fordham, where the Tigers won 2-1.

So that's two games and two wins. Not a bad way to start off a season, or a Princeton coaching career.

That's not the only interesting part, though.

Princeton has scored eight goals in two games. There are eight players who have one each.

Eight goals. Eight players.

That's extraordinary. Princeton had only seven players score at least one goal in all of 2014. Now eight have at least one.

Princeton scored 35 goals last year, and one player, Tyler Lussi, had 18 of them, or more than half.

This year, Lussi is one of the players with a goal. But there appears to be greater balance, right, at least through two games.

The game Friday night was the 27th time in program history that Princeton has scored at least six goals in a women's soccer game. TigerBlog has no way of knowing, though, if Princeton had at least six players score at least once in any of those other 26.

Of the six goals Friday night, two were extraordinary.

The second goal came off the right foot of freshman Mimi Asom and was a laser into the top corner from outside the box. The third goal was a corner kick from Vanessa Gregoire that curled in, clanked off the far post and dropped into the goal.

You can see both goals in the highlights HERE.

Princeton next plays at home against Rutgers Thursday. That game can be seen on ESPNU, by the way, with a 5:00 kickoff.

Eventually, someone will score her second goal of the year. For now, Princeton's stats look incredible.

Eight goals. Eight players.

That's a good weekend.