Thoughts From Gate A13

 Want to hear something TigerBlog did that was pretty dumb? 

Yesterday, as you know, was the last day of February. TB needed to get his car registration renewed, so he went online Tuesday morning and took care of it. 

He also needed to get his car inspected by the end of the month, so he made an appointment with his guy Ron, the official mechanic of TigerBlog. He took the car over to Ron's bright and early yesterday — and then Ron told him his car didn't need inspecting until July.

What? July? The little sticker on the car said "2/24," no? Uh, no. It said "7/24," only the seven looked a bit like a two. 

"Take the car, and then when it gets to be really, really hot out, bring it back and I'll do it then," Ron said. 

TigerBlog actually wrote this last night at Gate A13 at Philadelphia Airport, where he ended up sitting for a few hours as he and the men's lacrosse team waited for its flight to Raleigh-Durham, where the Tigers will play North Carolina tonight (8, on the ACC Network) and Duke Sunday (noon, ACCNX). 

The team got to the airport so early that the people at Gate A13 actually were waiting for a flight to Miami, which left an hour and a half before Princeton's flight to RDU. In fact, Princeton's plane was still in North Carolina when the team got to the gate.

As TB has mentioned a few times, it's a big weekend for Princeton in the Research Triangle area. There are the two men's lacrosse games, and there is also a three-game baseball series between Princeton and UNC. Princeton head coach Scott Bradley, as you probably know, was a longtime Major League catcher who played collegiately at UNC. 

If you're not making the trip down here, then you can see two other Princeton teams played in Jadwin Gym this weekend. 

It's a doubleheader weekend of basketball at Princeton, with the women at home against Harvard tonight (at 5) and Dartmouth tomorrow night (at 4), followed both nights by the men, who take on Columbia tonight (8) and Cornell (7) tomorrow.

Don't tell TigerBlog who won. He's going to try not to find out and watch all four games after the fact, something that didn't work out at all last weekend. 

At this stage, as every league basketball team has three remaining regular season games, every moment of all four games in the building will be important.

Both teams enter the weekend tied for first place, the women with Columbia and the men with Cornell and Yale. All five of those teams have clinched their spots in the Ivy League tournament, as has Harvard's women's team. 

That, of course, leaves only two spots remaining for bids to the tournament in two weeks, one in each tournament. On the women's side, that fourth team will be either Penn, Brown or Yale. On the men's side, it'll be either Harvard, Brown or Columbia.

The automatic bids to the NCAA tournament go to the tournament winners (the official Ivy League champion or champions will be determined by the regular season). As such, being the top seed is big, as it means you avoid one of the other teams who's already clinched its spot, which presumably is a bonus. Remember, to win the tournament, you have to win two games in two days. 

Both Princeton teams would get that No. 1 seed, and no worse than a share of the Ivy league title, by winning these final three games. Both play Penn in the final game of the regular season, with the women home and men away next Saturday.

Why? Because at worst, they would be in an unbreakable tie, which would then decide the top seed by virtue of best NET ranking, where Princeton cannot be caught at this stage. 

That's good to know, but it doesn't mean a thing when you're actually playing the games. 

There are subplots, of course. Princeton has players who are in the thick of the race for Ivy Player of the Year. There are Tigers who are chasing rcords. 

Those are individual things, though. This isn't the time to focus on any of that. 

If you're in North Carolina, come see the Tigers this weekend.

If you're in New Jersey this weekend, come see the Tigers this weekend.