Opening Tips

Here's a quiz for you to start your Friday:

Well, it's not quite a quiz. More like a game of logic and luck.

In the calendar year of 2023, which current Princeton athletes had their bios clicked on the most? TigerBlog is looking for a top 10 here.

This is from Jan. 1-Dec. 31 2023.

The only hints TB will give you are that six different teams are represented and that there are six men and four women. He'll come back with the answer shortly. 

Also, the athlete in first has more than the next three athletes combined. 

In the meantime, the first Ivy League basketball games of the year take place tomorrow, when there will be four women's games and two men's games. The two most interesting parts of the first weekend's schedule is that 1) the men's games and women's games are not the same matchups and 2) there are two men's games tomorrow and two more Tuesday.

As far as Princeton is concerned, the women begin the chase to another Ivy title and return trip to the NCAA tournament — where they have won a game each of the last two years — with a trip to Cornell. Tip-off in Ithaca is at 2. The men host Harvard tomorrow at 2 as they also look to get back to the NCAA tournament. As you know, Princeton was a Sweet 16 team a year ago.

Elsewhere on the women's side, you have Yale at Harvard, Brown at Dartmouth and Penn at Columbia. 

What is there to expect? Who knows. As the teams head into the league season, Princeton has the best non-conference record at 10-3, followed by Brown and Columbia at 9-4. Every team is .500 or better except Dartmouth (5-6) and Yale (3-10).

Those results don't really tell you much. It's all a matter of scheduling. And then there are any number of transitive games you can play among common opponents. That doesn't matter either.

Brown beat Providence by five. Columbia beat Providence by 25. It doesn't matter. Princeton beat Seton Hall in two OTs. Columbia beat Seton Hall by 11. That also doesn't matter.

As for the men, the other game tomorrow is Dartmouth at Penn, and then the Tuesday matchups are Columbia at Cornell and Yale at Brown. 

The non-league standings have Princeton at 12-1 after its win over Delaware to end 2023. The next-best record belongs to Cornell at 10-3, followed by 9-4 Harvard. The only teams below .500 are Dartmouth (4-9) and Brown (4-11).

Caden Pierce was the Ivy League men's Player of the Week this past week after his 21-point, 10-rebound performance against the Blue Hens. Pierce shot 9 for 11 in the game.

The Rookie of the Week was Harvard's Thomas Batties II, who won for the first time. His classmate, Malik Mack, won it the first four weeks of the season, though he has missed the Crimson's last two games. 

Again, the first goal is to get into the top four in the league to reach the Ivy tournament, which this year will be at Columbia. The winners of those tournaments get the league's automatic NCAA bids.

And that brings TB back to the question of most viewed player bios. TB regrets that he didn't make his own list before looking at the numbers, because he's not certain how well he would have done. He definitely would have had four of the players (No. 2, No. 3, No. 7 and No. 9).

The list, as TB said earlier, had six different sports and six men and four women. He has no idea why No. 1 has so many more than everyone else.

Here is the list:

No. 10 - Skye Belker, women's basketball (2,452 views)
No. 9 - Ozzie Nicholas, football (2,473 views)
No. 8 - Arthur Smith, men's hockey (2,578 views)
No. 7 - Caden Pierce, men's basketball (2,725 views)
No. 6 - Pietra Tordin, women's soccer (2,799 views)
No. 5 - Chloe Ayres, wrestling (2,876 views)
No. 4 - Jalen Travis, football (3,277 views)
No. 3 - Blake Stenstrom, football (3,868 views)
No. 2 - Kaitlyn Chen, women's basketball (4,063 views)
No. 1 - Xaivian Lee, men's basketball (13,059 views)