What's Going On?

What's going on? 

*

The No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the ECAC men's hockey standings meet up for a home-and-home this weekend. The No. 1 team is Quinnipiac, the defending NCAA champion and current No. 5 team in the Pairwise rankings. 

The No. 2 team is Princeton, who is ranked eighth among ECAC teams in the Pairwise rankings. Eighth?

Princeton has 14 points on the season, trailing only the 22 that the 7-0-1 Bobcats have. The ECAC standings are pretty interesting right now, with the eight-point difference between the top and No. 2 and then seven points between No. 2 and No. 12. 

The weekend series starts tonight in Hamden at 7, followed by the second game tomorrow night at 7 at Hobey Baker Rink. 

*

The Lute Olson Award is given to the outstanding player in college basketball at season's end. The mid-season watchlist was announced earlier this week, and it had 30 names on it.

How many do you think you could name? It's what TigerBlog said the other day, that the women's game has the more recognizable names. 

As for the men's list, one of the players on it is Zach Eady, from Purdue. Another was Ryan Kalkbrenner, from Creighton. UNC's RJ Davis and Duke's Ryan Filipowski are on it as well.

The rest of the names are pretty unfamiliar — with one glaring exception. Princeton's Xaivian Lee is also on it. 

If nothing else, Lee has to be the most improved player in Division I basketball. He went from 4.8 points per game last year to 18.1 this year, as well as 13.4 minutes per game to 29.3 per game, 0.9 assists per game to 3.6 per game, 37.6 percent shooting to 48.9 and 23.2 three-point shooting to 39.5.

None of that even takes into consideration the intangible side of Lee and the impact he has every time he touches the ball. And now he's vaulted himself into a conversation among the very best players in college basketball, and deservedly so. 

*

The final Olympic field hockey qualifying tournaments begin tomorrow, and two Princetonians are chasing spots that will go to six of the 16 teams that are still playing.

Beth Yeager, who will be a junior next year, is on the United States team, which lost 2-1 to world powerhouse Argentina in the Pan Am Games final. Had the U.S. won that game, it would have qualified. Instead, the Americans are now in India getting ready to play Game 1 against the host team tomorrow, with group games against New Zealand and Italy to follow.

The Canadians have Princeton alum Elise Wong. They are in the other location, Valencia, Spain, in a group with Great Britain, Malaysia and Spain. 

Each team plays the other teams in the group, and then there are crossover games. The top three teams in each tournament will advance to Paris, joining the six countries that have already qualified (Argentina, France, the Netherlands, China, South Africa and Australia).

*

TigerBlog got this message from former Princeton men's basketball player/assistant coach and current Mercer County Community College head coach Howard Levy earlier this week:

Play Smart, Save Lives Webinar

A new coach-led initiative was recently launched to help address gun violence and safe gun ownership - Play Smart, Save Lives. Just before the new year, Coaches Ron Cottrell at HCU and Jamie Dixon at TCU hosted the first Play Smart game to raise awareness around gun violence and safe storage. Coming off that success, Play Smart will host its first webinar on Sunday, Jan. 14 at 4:00 p.m. ET for coaches and players. Experts on trauma-informed practices will walk through a few of the ways gun violence touches communities in different ways, how to talk to players and peers about it, and how to help prevent tragedies before they occur. Contact Howard Levy (howardl@hyphats.com) or Ryan Marks (coach.ryanmarks@gmail.com) for any questions.

 Whether you sign up or not, what Howard and the rest of the coaches involved are doing is on the highest level of caring. It speaks volumes about who Howard is and how much he cares about the game and especially about the people who play it. 

There are a lot of people out there who talk a good game. Howard is one of the few who is willing to try to actually do something to make things better. 

* 

Lastly, is Bill Belichik the greatest football coach ever? Is Phil Jackson the greatest NBA coach ever? It depends. Belichik never won a Super Bowl without Tom Brady, but Brady won one without Belichik, whose record without Brady as his QB is way below .500. It's like Jackson in some ways, since Jackson had the luxury of winning NBA titles with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in Chicago and Shaq and Kobe in Los Angeles.

It's up to you to decide for yourself. For TB, it's like what he's always said about Pete Carril and John Wooden. Just because Wooden was a lot of NCAA titles (10), it doesn't make him a better coach than Carril.