Ivy Tournament Bound

The Princeton men's lacrosse bus was on Interstate 95 in Connecticut, around Exit 29, as the clock reached 3:30 Saturday afternoon.

Music was playing. Players were talking and laughing. There was food. It was something of a party.

And why wouldn't it be? Princeton had just finished off its second-straight huge win, this time 15-8 at Yale after a 15-10 win at home over Penn, and suddenly Princeton was in the Ivy League tournament as the No. 2 seed. 

You know what there wasn't? Anyone who was watching the start of the Harvard-Brown game, which faced off in Cambridge at that moment. 

Ah, how different it all could have been. How different it was the last time the bus had rolled past that spot after a game.

That was two weeks earlier, when Princeton rode home in silence after a 13-12 loss at Brown. Had Princeton won that game, it would have clinched its Ivy tournament spot right there.

Instead, Brown had its first Ivy win, which became two Ivy wins seven days later against Dartmouth, in a game that ended before Princeton-Penn began. Suddenly, Princeton's Ivy tournament spot was precarious.

Heck, there were even conversations about what would happen with a three-way tie at 2-4 between Princeton, Harvard and Brown, if it came to that. 

It didn't.

First there was the win against Penn, one that was a Vitamin B12 shot of confidence for the Tigers. That set up the game at Yale, which was a noon start, where a win would mean an ILT spot. A loss, though, would have meant Princeton needed a Harvard win over Brown, in a 3:30 start, to get in.

Add in that Princeton had not won in New Haven since 2012, and that it was Yale's Senior Day, and this was going to be anything but a layup. 

And so most of the story can be told by simply knowing that as 3:30 came and went, nobody on the bus was hanging on what was happening in Cambridge. 

Princeton's win over Yale earned the Tigers a rematch with the Bulldogs in the Ivy tournament semifinals Friday at Cornell at 6. The top-seeded Big Red will take on Penn in the second semifinal, with the winners to meet for the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament Sunday at 1.

The difference between Princeton at Brown and Princeton since is remarkable. What seemed so daunting after that game became reality, and it was based on something of a reinvention of a team in a very short time. 

For the second straight week, it was no longer about strategy, matchups or anything like that. It was about effort, and, again, it was there from start to finish. 

Princeton fell behind Brown 6-0 in the 13-12 loss. Princeton has not trailed at any point the last two weekends. 

What's even more impressive is that both Penn and Yale were playing for a share of the league title. Had either of them won against the Tigers, they would have had an Ivy title. It's not like they had nothing to play for.

The game that ended up mattering for Princeton Saturday was the Cornell-Dartmouth game, which started at 4. Because of traffic, the bus had only made it to Exit 11 by then. 

Had Dartmouth won, Princeton would have gotten a share of the league championship. Instead, it was all Cornell, who won 15-10.

Still, given where Princeton was not that long ago, this will do. 

If you recall last year, Princeton took down Yale and Penn to win the Ivy tournament. This time, it was the same two opponents just to get in again. 

When Princeton got back to Caldwell Field House after the trip back from Brown, the team gathered in its lockerroom to hear from the coaches. The message was simple: You're only guaranteed two more games together; if you want to keep playing beyond that, you have to be better.

Since then, Princeton has been. 

Now the Tigers get to keep playing as the calendar turns to May. That's the first goal every year. 

The next one is to keep going as long as possible. Two years ago, that meant all the way to Memorial Day. 

May lacrosse. There's nothing like it in the sport. Princeton has earned its place in the fun.

When the players got on the bus, a few of them did say that they were psyched not have to care about the outcome of the Harvard-Brown game. The coaches said the same, a bit more emphatically. 

The bus was on Route 1 when the Harvard-Brown game ended. TigerBlog was watching on his phone. 

When it ended, there was no reaction from anyone on the bus. Nobody even realized it had ended. 

The sound of the music and laughter was all that there was.