Catching Up From The Weekend

It's Thanksgiving Week, which means that today is a good day to catch up from last weekend:

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When TigerBlog saw the women's basketball final score of UCLA 77, Princeton 74, Friday afternoon, he thought back to another Princeton-UCLA basketball game — and not the one from the 1996 NCAA tournament.

This one was on Dec, 28, 1969, and though it is largely unknown to the modern Princeton basketball fan, you can make the case that it was actually a greater accomplishment than the one of the 1996 Tigers, who took down UCLA in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

In 1996, UCLA was the defending champion. In 1969, UCLA was in the middle of the most extraordinary run in college basketball history. The Bruins would win 10 NCAA titles in 12 years, starting in 1964 and ending in 1975. There would be seven straight from 1967-73, and so the program was right in the middle of that run when Princeton came to Pauley Pavilion early in the season.

The final that night was UCLA 76, Princeton 75. Sidney Wicks, who would be the Most Outstanding Player at the NCAA Final Four the following March and who played in the NBA for 10 years, hit a buzzer-beater to give UCLA the win. 

That game, by the way, matched Princeton's Pete Carril against UCLA's John Wooden. TB has written this before, but he defies anyone to prove to him that Wooden was a better coach than Carril. 

The women's score Friday was similar to that 1969 game. It was a great near-miss for Princeton against UCLA, who is ranked third in the country.  

The Tigers bounced back quickly, knocking off a good University of San Diego team 62-51 Sunday in the second game of the California State swing. Kaitlyn Chen, from San Marino, had 24 points against UCLA and 13 more against San Diego, and freshman Skye Belker, from Los Angeles, had 20 against the Bruins.

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Speaking of California, the men's water polo is headed there for the NCAA tournament at USC next weekend. 

The Tigers are the fourth seed — yes, the fourth seed. Just to have accomplished that is incredible.

The field has eight teams, the top four of whom are seeded. Princeton and Fordham are the only two non-California teams in the tournament.

Princeton's first game will be Friday, Dec. 1, at 5 Eastern, against UC-Irvine, a team Princeton defeated 11-9 at Irvine in the regular season. The winner of that game gets the winner of the game between top-seeded UCLA and Biola University, while the other half of the bracket has No. 2 Cal against Fordham and No. 3 USC against San Jose State.

Princeton earned its spot in the NCAA tournament by taking the Northeast Water Polo Conference title this past weekend, defeating host Harvard 8-5 in Sunday's final. Roko Pozaric had five for the Tigers in that game, moving the junior past the 200 mark for his career.

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The women's basketball loss Friday came as the opener of the "oh what might have been" day for Princeton women's athletics. The women's soccer team, playing in the NCAA tournament second round at No. 4 Texas Tech, fell in penalty kicks after 110 scoreless minutes. Princeton outshot the Red Raiders 16-9 in the game.

The game drew a facility-record 2,346. It was the kind of game that you dream of being a part of as a college athlete, even if you come up just short. Just ask head coach Sean Driscoll:

"What a fantastic endorsement for college soccer. What a crowd, what an atmosphere, and I know even one percent was rooting for us, but still, such a great atmosphere. It was really, really intimidating in a lot of ways, but so amazing."

Texas Tech lost Sunday in the Round of 16 to North Carolina, 1-0. All four Ivy teams were eliminated in the second round after going 4-0 in the first.

* The men's cross country team finished 11th in the country at the NCAA championships in Virginia Friday. It tied the best finish in program history, set in 2012.

The Tigers finished the fall with an Ivy League Heptagonal championship, an NCAA Regional championship and a tie for the best NCAA finish the team has ever had (as well as the top this season by an Ivy school). 

That is a pretty good fall right there.