NCAA Champ Tristan Szapary

Welp, the fun part of the NCAA men's basketball tournament is over.

Unless, like last year, Princeton advances to the Sweet 16, the best part of the tournament ends at the end of the first Sunday. The field goes from 68 teams on Selection Sunday to only 16 left, and from here forward the excitement is not what it was heading into the first games. It happens so quickly.

That's part of the tournament's charm and uniqueness. What other championship event has its apex of excitement in the beginning and then sees it dwindle from there? 

If you're looking at the 16 teams that are left, you have all four No. 1 seeds, all four No. 2 seeds, two No. 3 seeds, two No. 4 seeds, two No. 5 seeds, one No. 6 and one No. 11. 

The 11, by the way, is North Carolina State, which won five games in five days at the ACC tournament just to get into the tournament in the first place. That's impressive, and it makes for a good story, but a team from a power league is hardly a good underdog story, especially with wins over Texas Tech and Oakland. 

There are 16 teams who are still going, and only one is higher than a six. It makes for quality basketball, but the charm of the tournament is behind everyone now.

On the women's side, there are still way fewer upsets than the men's tournament has each year. Only one double figure seed made it out of the first round on the women's side, and that was No. 11 Middle Tennessee State, whom Princeton defeated in the regular season, by the way.

Oh well. Enjoy the rest of it, even if you'll enjoy it less than you did this past weekend.

As for the rest of the world of college athletics, there were national championships on the line this past weekend in other sports. Princeton senior Tristan Szapary earned one of those, when he took the NCAA epee fencing title Sunday at Ohio State.

Szapary became the ninth Princeton male fencer to win an NCAA individual title and the first since 2012. The individual championship comes out of the team portion, as the four individuals in each weapon with the most wins advance to the semifinals. 

From the goprincetontigers.com story: 

Szapary held off Notre Dame's Jonathan Hamilton-Meikle 15-14 in the final after knocking off Harvard's Henry Lawson 15-9 in the semifinal. Lawson was the top seed after the pool round as he a won 17 of 23 bouts to 16 for Szapary and Hamilton-Meikle.

The final itself ended in a way that TigerBlog didn't even know was possible. Szapary trailed 1-0 and then led 7-0 before Hamilton-Meikle got it to within one four different times, the last at 14-13. The winning point came on a double-touch, something TB didn't know existed. 

When TB watched the video of Szapary's win on X, he was a bit surprised by how calm Szapary seeed. It was actually a pretty understated reaction to becoming an NCAA champ, which is an honor that very few ever accomplish.

The Princeton co-ed team finished fourth overall, which is the 10th time in its last 12 appearances that the Tigers have been in the top four as a team. In addition to Szapary, Princeton had five other fencers who earned All-American honors: senior Ryan Jenkins (saber), freshman Alexandra Lee (saber), sophomore Matthew Limb (saber), junior Jessica Lin (epee) and senior Ariana Rausch (epee).

For Rausch, it was her first trip to the NCAA championships and came in her final season. Jenkins, a semifinalist, and Lin earned All-American honors for the third time each.

TigerBlog looked up Szapary's bio on the webpage, and it's filled with impressive stuff. He finished 10th a year ago, earning All-American honors, and he was the NCAA regional champ this year, as well as the 2023 Ivy epee champ.

Oh, and he also summited Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania when he was 12. That's a 19,341-foot peak, by the way. 

Hey, like TB said, impressive stuff.