Bill Tierney mentioned to TigerBlog the other day that he was about to become the head coach of the Philadelphia Waterdogs in the Premier Lacrosse League.
It wasn't being announced until next week, though. In fact, it would probably be held off until Tuesday, since Monday was April Fools' Day and nobody would believe it.
As it turned out, word got out. It always does, it seems. There it was yesterday, everywhere in the lacrosse media world.
TB spoke to Tierney for the men's lacrosse podcast this week, along with head coach Matt Madalon. Tierney will be back at Sherrerd Field tomorrow, when the Tigers host Dartmouth at noon.
The occasion is Alumni Day, and Tierney will be on the field at halftime to celebrate an endowment that now makes it "The William G. Tierney P’01 P’02 Head Coach of Men's Lacrosse at Princeton."
TigerBlog probably doesn't have to run through the list of all of Tierney's achievements, so here's a bit of an abridged list:
* seven NCAA championships, with six at Princeton and one at Denver
* the only coach ever to win NCAA titles at two different schools
* 10 Final Fours at Princeton and five more at Denver
* 238-86 record at Princeton and 439-152 overall
Tierney, whom TB considers the greatest lacrosse coach of all time, retired at the end of last season from Denver. He's done a bit of broadcasting as he's adapted to his new life and he's writing a book about his life in the game, but there's something about being a coach that stays with the best forever. Because of that, TB wasn't all that surprised to learn that Tierney was heading back to the sidelines.
Madalon has the best winning percentage of any Princeton coach other than Tierney in the last 75 years, winning 56 of 91 games, for a .615 percentage. He's also fourth all-time in wins by a Princeton men's lacrosse coach, trailing only Tierney, Ferris Thomsen (115, 1951-70) and Al Nies (74, 1921-35).
In other words, since 1970, only Tierney has won more games at Princeton than Madalon. He's also taken Princeton to back-to-back NCAA tournaments, the 2022 Final Four and the 2023 Ivy tournament title.
His current Princeton team is back home after a big 14-11 win at Harvard last Saturday in the rain. How big was it?
The Tigers had lost to Cornell 15-14 in their Ivy opener a week earlier. Falling to 0-2 does not make it impossible to reach the Ivy tournament, but it's certainly a difficult road.
Penn and Cornell are now both 2-0, and they play each other tomorrow in Philadelphia. Princeton and Yale are both 1-1, while Harvard is 0-2 and Brown and Dartmouth are 0-1 each.
The top four will reach the Ivy tournament, which this year will be held at the home field of the Ivy champion.
Princeton is right in the thick of the race for the Ivy title and, should it not get the league's automatic bid, an NCAA at-large spot. In fact, the Tigers have a current RPI of 12.
With all of that, it's easy to forget just how young these Tigers are. Princeton's top six on offense consists of three freshmen, two sophomores and a junior. Princeton has scored 102 goals to date this season, and only six have come from seniors.
Junior Coulter Mackesy became the third-fastest Princeton player to reach 100 career goals when he scored against Harvard last weekend, in his 39th career game. Only Wick Sollers in the 1970s and Jesse Hubbard in the 1990s got there faster.
Hubbard holds the career record with 163. Mackesy set the single-season record a year ago with 55.
Will Mackesy catch Hubbard? And will Nate Kabiri catch Mackesy? Kabiri, a freshman, has played eight games and has 22 goals, including five a week ago against the Crimson.
Should he maintain his current season's average, Kabiri would finish the regular season with 35 goals. The freshman record at Princeton is 41, held by Michael Sowers. Mackesy is tied for second with 28 his freshman year.
The Princeton men's lacrosse program is all about the mixing of the past and the present. The alums who will be back tomorrow are an extraordinarily loyal group, and Madalon and his staff work hard to make sure that every current player is aware of the history of the team they now represent.
It'll all be on display tomorrow at Sherrerd Field. Face-off against the Big Green is noon. The forecast is good.
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