Paging Anita Gomez

TigerBlog begins today with a question of ethics, courtesy of a good friend of his.

What would you do in this situation: You're waiting for a red-eye flight, only you're on standby. The gate agent has told you that your only chance of making this flight, and subsequently your connecting flight, is by having someone not show up. 

As the flight is boarding, there is one person who has not arrived. The gate agent makes an announcement over the PA, asking for "passenger Anita Gomez to come to the front." No one responds. 

Ah, but at the same time, you see a woman who has fallen asleep near the gate. Actually, she's not just asleep. She's 1) set up a sleep area, so that she has a blanket and pillow and such, and 2) she is out of view of the gate agent.

Could that be Anita Gomez? Do you wake her and ask if she's Anita? Do you alert the gate agent, even though doing so could mean you miss the plane? Or do you just get on the flight? 

As an aside, TB's friend told him this story from Atlanta, where he was waiting for his connecting flight, so that will tell you what he decided. 

Would you have done the same? Let your conscience be your guide.

Meanwhile ...

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The forecast for the weekend is for clear skies and temps around 60. In other words, it's springtime.

If there has ever been a team that deserves to play in the sunshine, it's the Princeton women's lacrosse team. Just when you think it can't rain any harder on Jenn Cook's team, along comes another Nor-easter to leave them and their fans once again soaked.

So naturally, with the weather forecast promising, there is no women's lacrosse game this weekend. Next up for Princeton is Penn, the Ivy League preseason favorite, who will be on Sherrerd Field Wednesday night. Princeton is 1-1 in the league after a huge win over Cornell last weekend, while Yale and Penn are both 2-0.

The men will be home Saturday against Dartmouth, with face-off at noon. Princeton's men are also 1-1 in the league, after bouncing back from a brutal 15-14 loss to Cornell two weeks ago with a 14-11 win over Harvard last Saturday — in the rain, of course. 

The men's game comes on Alumni Day, and former coach Bill Tierney will be recognized at halftime (even though he's a Cortland State alum).

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The baseball team is home for three games this weekend against Yale (DH Saturday, single game Sunday) after taking two of three from Cornell last weekend. Should Kyle Vinci hit a home run in any of those games, then he'd take over sole possession of Princeton's career record, which he currently shares with Matt Evans (Class of 1999) with 26. 

The softball team is also home this weekend, with three against Penn (also DH Saturday, single game Sunday). Again, the great thing about the current location of the two fields is that you can see pretty much every pitch of both games at the same time if you position yourself correctly, or you can at least wander back and forth inning-by-inning. 

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The highest rated women's college basketball NCAA game this past weekend was Iowa-West Virginia, which, in fact, was the highest rated women's NCAA non-Final Four game ever and the third-highest NCAA game in the last 20 years. The previous record? It was set two days earlier, by the Iowa-Holy Cross game. Iowa-West Virginia drew 2.5 times as many eyeballs as the next-highest rated second round game; Iowa-Holy Cross drew nearly five times what any other first round game did.

If you haven't figured it out yet, the draw is Iowa's Caitlin Clark. Had Princeton defeated West Virginia in the opening round, then that record would have been set for the Tigers' second round game. That would have been cool.

There is, of course, the risk that the pendulum will switch back and the sporting public will be tired of having all-Clark, all the time in its collective face. That's how it always works. 

In the midst of all of this Clark-mania, UConn coach Geno Auriemma said that his star, Paige Bueckers, is the best player in the college basketball. Down the road for Iowa would be LSU in the regional final if both win their Sweet 16 games (against Colorado and UCLA, a team Princeton lost to by three), and then of course there is still South Carolina and USC and any number of other compelling teams still around.

Should the Final Four feature Clark, Buekers and South Carolina, the ratings for the women could exceed those of the men. The women certainly have the bigger stars this year, that's for sure.

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The last remaining winter team to compete is the men's swimming and diving team, which is at the NCAA championships today through Saturday in Indianapolis. Princeton will be represented by four divers — Aidan Wang and Luca Fassi will compete in the 1-meter, 3-meter and platform events and George Callanan and Taso Callanan will compete in the platform.

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There are more teams who compete in the spring than in the fall or winter, and so every weekend this time of year is a busy one. This weekend, in addition to the home baseball, softball and men's lacrosse games, there is also home rowing (lots of it), women's tennis (Ivy opener against Penn), women's rugby (Sunday) and track and field (Sam Howell Invitational).

The complete schedule, home and away, can be seen HERE.