Look At That

TigerBlog was going to include this in yesterday's group of photos and then he thought it would be better to start off today with it. 

You'll see why in a second.

 

What do you think? 

TigerBlog asked two people whose opinion he trusts to tell him in which picture Carla Berube looks better, and neither one of them figured out it was actually two different women. The one on the left is obviously Carla; the one on the right is London Lions' women's coach Stella Kaltsidou, who coaches Princeton alum Abby Meyers.

 

When TB saw Meyers in England last month, he was struck by how much the two coaches look alike. Remember what Kaltsidou said when TB pointed it out to her: "That's good for her then, isn't it."

One of the two people TB showed it to was Duncan Yin, whose guest blog from the other day received a ton of great feedback. Duncan asked to TB to add this:

 

Incredibly, Princeton quarterbacks had only thrown *ONE* touchdown pass prior to the Harvard game.  Two of our three total touchdown passes had been thrown by field-goal holder Tom Moak on busted plays where he kept his composure and threw downfield for a score.  This happened in consecutive games.  If we're judging the remarkability of any event by its rarity, when was the last time that a field-goal holder threw for touchdowns on non-designed fake plays in consecutive games?  Maybe never?

 

Moak in fact was 2 for 2 for 24 yards and two touchdowns in the 2012 season. That's a 530.8 passing efficiency rating. 

Meanwhile, back at Carla Berube, her team is home tomorrow at 2 against Cornell, a team the Tigers defeated 79-38 in Ithaca on Jan. 6. Princeton is 4-0 in the Ivy League, the lone unbeaten, and interestingly will have completed its two games against Cornell before ever playing Penn, Yale or Brown.

 

If you're in Jadwin for women's basketball, you can also see men's and women's squash as they host Harvard in what are always huge battles. The Princeton women are ranked third nationally, while the Crimson women are first. The Princeton men are ranked fifth, while the Crimson men are ranked second. 

The men start at noon, followed by the women at 2:30. Both teams play Dartmouth on Sunday, with the same start times.

 

While that is going on in Jadwin tomorrow, the men's basketball team will be in Ithaca in a big-time Ivy matchup. While there is only one unbeaten Ivy women's team right now, there are three on the men's side, where Princeton, Cornell and Yale are all 3-0.

As long as Mitch Henderson is the Princeton coach and Brian Earl is the Cornell coach, this game will always be special, regardless of what's at stake. Henderson and Earl, of course, have a ton of history, as teammates on Ivy championship teams with the Tigers from 1996-98 and then as coaches together at Princeton when Henderson first took over.

They're also incredibly close friends, as is everyone from that era of Tiger basketball.

Tomorrow at 2, though, they are again on opposite benches. Between them, their teams are a combined 29-4 overall, 6-0 in the league. Cornell is 14-3, with losses only to George Mason, Syracuse and Baylor.

Cornell is the top offensive team in the Ivy League, as it usually has been under Earl, with an average of 85.4 per game. That's a lot of points. In fact, it ranks the Big Red 11th in Division I, and that's out of 351 teams.

 

Earl's team is also eighth nationally in field goal percentage, shooting 50.1 percent for the year. That's 526 made shots and 525 missed shots. 

Princeton is the No. 1 defensive team in the league, allowing 63.2 points per game. That's 13th in the country. 

As interesting dynamics go for a game, that's a good one. The No. 11 scoring offense team against the No. 13 scoring defense team. 

Princeton and Cornell are both excellent three-point shooting teams, ranking 1-2 in the league and 8-12 in Division I, both with more than 10 per game. 

Just like the women's game last weekend in Jadwin against Columbia, the game tomorrow in Ithaca is big but also early. There will be at least a second game and possibly a third come Ivy tournament time, and both teams are hoping to play beyond that weekend as well.

Also like last weekend's women's game, it'll be well worth checking this one out. If you're not in Ithaca, you can watch it on ESPN+.