The picture day for the women's and men's lacrosse teams was Wednesday evening.
Among the thousands of pictures taken, there was this one:
If that last name is familiar, it's because they are the children of Kit Mueller (and of course his wife Kristine). Kit, as you probably know, was a two-time Ivy League men's basketball Player of the Year before graduating in 1991, during one of the great runs in Princeton basketball history.
No list of the greatest Princeton men's basketball players of all time is worth anything if it doesn't have Kit near the top.
Ellie is a senior who has 25 goals and 15 assists in 28 games in a career that has been shortened by Covid and last year's injury. Cooper is a freshman who figures to make an immediate impact as a shortstick defensive midfielder.
The photo session lasted nearly four hours between the two teams. There were individual photos, class photos, prop pictures — even one where Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack jumped in with six women's lacrosse players.
Which one do you like better?
It was a very festive night, as TB has written before about such picture days. At one point, head football coach Bob Surace walked in, after his team's practice had ended.
He was also in a lighthearted, easy-going mood. He's always like that — during the week. He talked about anything and everything, mostly in his understated, self-deprecating way.
Come game days, his more competitive side comes out. His team has two more game days for the 2023 season. That's eight weeks gone already?
Those last two games are tomorrow at home at NOON against Yale (again, a reminder the game is at noon) and then next Saturday at Penn.
By the time the season ends, Princeton would have itself a championship — or finish ahead of only one team. Of course, the same is true about almost everyone in the league.
Harvard is 4-1. Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth and Penn are all 3-2. Brown and Cornell are 2-3. Columbia is 0-5.
As has been pointed out in basically any story about 2023 Ivy football, one more Harvard loss would mean that for the third time there would be a two-loss champion. Ah, but having said that, Harvard would win an outright title by sweeping its last two, which would be Penn tomorrow at home and then next Saturday at Yale.
The other two games tomorrow are Cornell at Dartmouth and Brown at Columbia.
Everyone in the league who doesn't wear Crimson is rooting for Penn tomorrow. Should Penn win, then it would be pure chaos heading into the final week.
Surace told his team after last weekend's tough loss at Dartmouth that all it could do was focus on what's directly in front of them. That would be Yale, a team that was the overwhelming preseason favorite but who finds itself in the same quagmire as everyone else.
Yale knows that winning out would mean no worse than a share of the title. It also knows that it loses that advantage by losing to Princeton.
The Bulldogs have won five of their last six, which means nothing this season. Every team that looked like it was about to sprint away from the others and play like the best of the bunch has come back down to earth.
Yale is the No. 3 scoring offense team in the conference (30.0 per game). Princeton leads the league in scoring defense (14.4). Yale also averages nearly twice as many rushing yards per game as Princeton allows (159.8 vs. 78.3).
If TigerBlog is seeing things correctly, this game will be the second time in league history that two returning Bushnell Cup winners go head-to-head. The first time was in 2014, when Princeton quarterback Quinn Epperly and Harvard linebacker Zach Hodges were both returnees.
This time it's Yale quarterback Nolan Grooms and Princeton linebacker Liam Johnson, last year's winners. Grooms leads the Ivy League in passing TDs with 19, including four a week ago against Brown.
It's the home finale for Princeton. It's a huge November game for two championship aspirants. It's the 145th meeting in the second most played rivalry in college football, behind Lafayette-Lehigh.
It's time for the competitive sides to come out.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment