Celebrations

Happy Birthday wishes to the great John McPhee, who turns 93 years old today.

If you recall, back on his 90th birthday, McPhee and TigerBlog bicycled 11 miles together. That is a pretty good life goal — riding 11 miles on your 90th birthday. 

McPhee goes way, way back with Princeton Athletics, all the way to when he was a kid and his father was the Princeton Athletics team physician. McPhee graduated in the Class of 1953 and of course went on to a long career as one of America's greatest non-fiction writers, not to mention as a Princeton writing professor.

While at Princeton, one of McPhee's roommates was Dick Kazmaier, the Heisman Trophy winner. The subject of his breakthrough writing piece was another Princeton athlete who wore No. 42, Bill Bradley, about whom McPhee wrote a piece called "A Sense Of Where You Are." 

It was that story that would be picked up in 1965 by the New Yorker, and McPhee has written for the magazine ever since. An expanded version of the story also became the first of his more than 30 books.

And now he's 93, and still writing.

TB and McPhee have ridden a lot more than 11 miles together through the years. In all of that time, TB has heard so many incredible stories from McPhee about his life and experiences, all of which can be considered extraordinary. 

Happy birthday to one of the best people TB has ever met.

As Mr. McPhee celebrates his birthday, this weekend will answer the question of which teams celebrate Ivy League basketball championships.

There are six regular season Ivy basketball games left, all of which will be played tomorrow. Harvard and Dartmouth finished their regular seasons Tuesday evening.

The four teams that will be advancing on each side to next weekend's Ivy Madness at Columbia have already been determined. As a reminder, that's Princeton, Yale, Cornell and Brown for the men and Princeton, Columbia, Harvard and Penn for the women.

The seeds, and the championships, will be settled this weekend.

For the men, there could be one champion or a two- or three-team tie. For the women, it'll either be an outright champion or a two-team co-championship.

Both Princeton teams play Penn tomorrow, the women at home at 2 and the men in Philly at 6. By the way, it's also Senior Day for the Tiger women.

The other games are Cornell-Columbia and Yale-Brown for both men and women and Harvard and Dartmouth for the women.

Should Princeton beat Penn, then it would have no worse than a share of the Ivy title — and that goes for both the men and the women. 

Princeton and Yale are tied for first on the men's side at 11-2. Cornell is a game back at 10-3. Should Princeton and Yale both win, then they'd be co-champions. Should both lose and Cornell win, then there'd be the three-way tie.

The tiebreaker for seeding between 12-2 Princeton and Yale teams would be NET ranking, where Princeton is currently 51 and Yale is currently 82. Should it come down to three teams at 11-3, then it gets a bit dicier in the tiebreakers, but Princeton (TB believes) would still be the No. 1 seed, based on the fact that Cornell and Yale would both have lost to Brown but Princeton would not have.

As for the women, Princeton and Columbia are both 12-1, with a loss to each other. Princeton's NET as of right now is 31, while Columbia currently sits at 57.

This weekend will see at least two and as many as five teams celebrate a league championship. Remember, the Ivy tournament determines only the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament; the league champion will be the regular-season winners. 

Between now and the start of the tournament, there will also be the All-Ivy teams and the league's Players of the Year. Princeton's teams will be well-represented in postseason honors, and that will all be a nice subplot.

The big story will be which teams are playing after next weekend. This weekend will help set the table for all of that. 

Then the fun will really begin.