Happy Birthday?

Today is December 26.

As TigerBlog thinks about it, this has to be the worst day to have a birthday. It's either today, or February 29. 

Actually, December 26 has to be way worse. When you're born on Feb. 29, yes, your birthday only comes around once every four years, but that has to be a pretty cool thing in a lot of ways. If you were, say, 28, you could tell people you were seven.

No, Dec. 26 is the worst day for a birthday. Yesterday, obviously, was Christmas. Today is the day that nobody really feels like doing anything after a long time, and actually a long month, of lead-up.

You don't want to be the one to say "hey, it's my birthday. What are we doing?" 

The answer has to be "nothing. You're on your own. We're all wiped out."

TB knows a bunch of people who were born in the week before Christmas, including his longtime friend and colleague Nancy Donigan. That's not ideal, but at least people are in a celebratory mood when your day rolls around.

Today? TB doesn't know anyone who is celebrating a birthday today, but if you are, hey, have a great one.

The time between Christmas and New Year's is always interesting. The weeks before Christmas seem to go very slowly, with a lot of build-up, a lot of putting up trees and lights, a lot of shopping, a lot of wrapping. Then it's over in a blink. 

Then it's the days between Christmas and New Year's, which become a blur of cleaning up, resting up and figuring what, if anything, to do for New Year's Eve.

For TigerBlog, the week between Christmas and New Year's always means putting together the Princeton Athletics Year in Review, with the top stories and moments both in Princeton Athletics and by Princetonians outside of Princeton Athletics.

Some years, it's quite clear what is the No. 1. Other years, you can make a case for a few things. This year sort of combines the two. You can make a case for more than one moment. At the same time, it's quite clear that these moments are extraordinary ones in the history of Princeton Athletics. They just happened to come in the same calendar year. 

You have to wait until the end of the week until TB spells it out for you. In the meantime, you can probably guess. After all, as Bill Carmody once said, "you're smart. You'll figure it out."

As far as the calendar goes, there aren't many events for Princeton teams between now and the end of 2023. 

The men's hockey team is the only Princeton team who has a home game this week, as the Tigers host Harvard in an ECAC game Saturday at 4. Princeton, who has not played in three weeks, sits in fifth place in the league standings, while Harvard is in 10th place at the moment.

This will conclude Princeton's season home-and-home with the Crimson, as the teams played a 4-4 tie before the Tigers won the shootout back on Nov. 3 in Cambridge.

There are two women's basketball games, both of which are on the road, first at Vermont Friday and then at Le Moyne New Year's Eve at noon. Vermont is 8-5 on the year, and the two most interesting results for Princeton fans would be a 54-51 loss against Courtney Banghart's North Carolina team and a 58-32 win over Dartmouth. 

The Catamounts are the defending America East champs. They were 25-7 a year ago, with a loss to UConn in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. 

As for Le Moyne, it also reached the NCAA tournament last year — the Division II tournament. The Dolphins are in Year 1 on the Division I level and are 2-9 to date, with wins over UMass-Lowell and Buffalo.

The men's basketball team has one game this week, at Delaware Saturday at 2. The Blue Hens are 8-4 on the season, with a 67-59 win over Brown and a 65-57 win over Joe Scott's Air Force team. 

The wrestling team is at the prestigious Midlands Tournament this weekend at Northwestern, whose strength and conditioning coach is former Princeton coach Mark Ellis.