For all of the attention that the NCAA basketball tournaments get this time of year, the unquestionable single greatest individual play came in the NCAA men's hockey tournament.
In case you missed it, the play happened in the regional final game between rivals Michigan and Michigan State and came courtesy of Michigan's Frank Nazar.
TigerBlog could describe it for you, though he probably wouldn't do it justice. He'll just leave you with the video and a "how in the world did he do that?"
This pass from @umichhockey's Frank Nazar is 🤯
— Big Ten Hockey (@B1GHockey) April 1, 2024
📺: ESPN2 pic.twitter.com/Ih4ArLQKeh
Seriously. Did he do that on purpose? Was that what he was trying to do? Or did it just work out that way in the moment?
Forget the puck. The part where he puts his stick between his skates and doesn't end up tumbling to the ice is impressive enough. And then add in that it was a perfect pass for a goal?
That could be the best pass TB has ever seen in any sport. Michigan, by the way, won the game 5-2, returning the Wolverines (and former OAC veteran Kristy McNeil) to the Frozen Four for the third straight time.
TigerBlog's pre-tournament basketball selections of South Carolina on the women's side and Purdue on the men's side both made the Final Four.
And how about North Carolina State, who has reached the Final Four in both tournaments? That's the same NC State women's team that Princeton beat in the opening round last year. And the men? They've won nine straight elimination games. Crazy.
TB is interested in the ratings for last night's Iowa-LSU women's Elite Eight game. Will any game in either tournament eclipse them?
Also, how do you have two different three-point distances on the same court and have nobody notice, or at least say anything, until four games had already been played on it? Kudos to Texas and NC State for playing anyway.
Closer to home, there are four events on the Princeton Athletics calendar between today and the weekend, and that number is quite likely to be cut in half by the rains that are expected between now and Friday, putting the baseball game at Seton Hall and the softball game at Lehigh for tomorrow in jeopardy.
The other two Princeton teams who play are no strangers to doing so in the rain this season.
The men's lacrosse team hosts Lehigh tonight at 7, while the women's lacrosse team host Penn tomorrow night at 7. The women will be playing for the first time since defeating Cornell back on March 23 and having last weekend off. The men will be playing their second game in four days after defeating Dartmouth Saturday but then will have this coming weekend off and no game until April 13 at Brown.
Princeton and Lehigh, despite their close proximity, have not played that often in men's lacrosse. Exactly how often they've played depends on what you consider Princeton vs. Lehigh to be.
Princeton played Lehigh back in the 1888 season, one game after playing Rutgers and one game before playing the Druids of Baltimore. Scheduling was a bit different back then.
There are two differences in the record books between the teams. The first is in 1934 and 1935, when Lehigh's record book says it played Princeton and Princeton's says it played "Lehigh LC." The other is in 1939 and 1940, when Lehigh says it played Princeton and Princeton does not say it played Lehigh.
A bit of sleuthing shows that Princeton's junior varsity played Lehigh's varsity in those latter two years, both times with a Princeton win. Do those count?
Either way, the modern era is still pretty thin. Whatever that 1940 game counts as, it was the last time the teams met until 2014, when Tom Schreiber scored an overtime goal to give the Tigers a win. The teams also played the next three years but haven't played since, meaning no current player on either team has ever played against the other.
Princeton is 6-3 and 2-1 in the Ivy League. Lehigh is 4-5 and 2-2 in the Patriot League. Both are far more concerned with getting into their conference tournaments — the top four make the Ivy field, while the top six do so in the Patriot.
Still, the games the teams played from 2014-17 were all entertaining. And, of course, you only get 13 game days guaranteed this year if you're Princeton, so you cherish all of them.
Face-off tonight on Sherrerd Field at 7.
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