Senior Day With Kit And Sandi

Want to see a picture of 3,229 points scored in basketball at Princeton? 

Here you go ... can you name them? 

That's Kit Mueller (1,546 points) and Sandi Bittler Leland (1,683 points). Kit graduated in 1991 after being a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year. Sandi, Class of 1990, was a three-time first-team All-Ivy League selection, as well as a two-time national Academic All-American and an NCAA post-graduate scholarship winner. 

No other Princeton women's basketball player in program history has all three of those items on her resume.

Kit was second to only Bill Bradley in scoring in men's basketball when he graduated. Now, all these years later, only two players have passed him. Can you name them?

Mueller scored most of his points in the paint. He had any number of low-post moves, including one that was not really a move at all but simply a dribble across the lane while the defender waited for something else, only to find the ball already in the basket. He was a great passer as well, and his 381 assists rank third in program history. Who are 1-2? 

As for Sandi, she was the all-time leading scorer in Princeton women's basketball history from graduation through 2020, when Bella Alarie caught her. Today she remains the all-time leader in three-pointers at Princeton in women's basketball, with 246.

The answers to the two above questions, by the way, are: Ian Hummer and Doug Davis are 2-3 in scoring at Princeton, and Billy Ryan and Spencer Weisz are 1-2 in assists. 

The picture of the Kit and Sandi was taken over the weekend in Princeton. Kit was here for the lacrosse doubleheader, since he has a child on each team — Ellie on the women's team and Cooper on the men's. Sandi? She was here just check out the campus after she and her daughter Emma had spent some time in New York City.

It was Senior Day for the men's and women's teams in lacrosse this past Saturday, and there haven't been too many Senior Days that have ever gone better. TigerBlog wrote all about the men's game, 15-10 win over Penn, this past Monday.

The women's game was the first of the day. For a team that had played almost all of its home games this year in torrential rain, the Princeton women got sunshine in every way Saturday. 

The game against Dartmouth was over almost immediately after it started. By the end of the first quarter, Princeton led 9-0. It was 15-3 at the break, before Dartmouth made it closer in the second half, with a final of 17-10.

Even with that, the second half had a great moment too for Princeton. It came with four minutes to go in the third quarter, when Olivia Koch scored the first goal of her career on her Senior Day.

A Senior Day To Remember!

Olivia Koch scores her first collegiate goal to set off a raucous celebration at '52 pic.twitter.com/5NHDLlpNqG

— Princeton Women's Lax (@princetonwlax) April 20, 2024

The win over Dartmouth improved Princeton to 5-1 in the Ivy League, with a game at Harvard this Saturday in the regular season finale. After that, it'll be the Ivy League tournament, which will definitely be held at Yale, who is now 6-0. Princeton could still get a share of the league championship, with a win over Harvard and a Yale loss to 0-6 Columbia. 

The four teams in the Ivy League tournament will be Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Penn. That drama long ago ended. 

What will the seeds be? Yale is the No. 1. Princeton, with a win over Harvard, would be the No. 2. Penn and Harvard are both 4-2 in the league, and Penn holds the tiebreaker with its win over the Crimson earlier this year. Should Harvard beat Princeton and Penn beat Dartmouth, then there would be a three-way tie for second, and TB is pretty sure it would come down to goal differential between Princeton, Penn and Harvard in their head-to-head games, where Princeton is currently plus-five and Penn is currently plus-six. 

That's what the future holds. In the immediate past, there was a practically perfect Senior Day. 

And in the way past, like in the late 1980s, there was Sandi Bittler's playing days at Princeton. TB isn't sure why out of all the athletes he met back then that he and Sandi have stayed friends all these years, but they have. TB has been to the house in Oregon she shares with her husband Michael and their three kids, and he has seen her when she comes this way.

Oh, and, in addition to being 4-2-4-2-4 today, it's also the birthday of none other than Sandi Bittler Leland. Happy birthday, old friend. 

As always, it was great to spend some time together.