Who Loves Ya Baby

TigerBlog stumbled onto a great marathon on TV the other day. 

Of course, you have to be around TB's age to appreciate it. First, there were about four or five episodes of "The Rockford Files," followed by a similar number of episodes of "Kojak." 

Ah, TV in the 1970s. It's never been equaled. If you were born too late, then you missed out. But hey, who loves ya, baby?

One interesting thing that TB noticed was during a commercial that played over and over and over, though it faded into the background for the most part. It was for a medication, though TB isn't sure which one. 

He does know at the end, when the announcer listed the side effects, among them were diarrhea and constipation. What? How could it be both? That was risk management at its finest, no? 

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The Olympic track and field trials are being held in Eugene, Ore., this weekend. Princeton has two women who qualified: Alexandra Kelly, who competed last night in the long jump, and Shea Greene, who goes in the javelin tonight (7 Eastern). 

Greene finished in 16th place at the NCAA championships earlier this month, earning second-team All-American honors. 

One Princetonian who is not there who otherwise almost certainly would have been is Kate Joyce, the two-time All-American javelin thrower who underwent Tommy John surgery that shut her down for essentially two years. 

The Olympic Games are filled with stories of athletes who missed out four years earlier because of any number of reasons, mostly injury. What you don't see on TV during the Games are the stories of those who missed out on their chance for the current Olympiad and who have to rededicate themselves for another four year cycle. 

Hopefully Joyce will get that chance. 

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The Premier Lacrosse League has four games this weekend in Minneapolis. If you don't know how the league works, it has eight teams, and for the first time, the teams now have home cities.

That does not mean that they play half their games at home and half on the road. Nope. They each get one home weekend, in which they will play two games while one other team has the weekend off. The weekends like this one that are at a "neutral" site will have all eight teams play one game each.

Princeton has more alums in the PLL than any other Ivy League school, with seven this year. 

You can see the games this weekend on ESPN+, including a matchup tonight at 8:30 between the Boston Cannons and the Utah Archers. It's a game that will feature a pair of rookies — Boston offensive midfielder Alexander Vardaro and Utah shortstick defensive middie Beau Pederson — who battled each other every day in practice as Tigers. 

The Philadelphia Waterdogs play tomorrow night (8:30) against the Carolina Chaos. The 'Dogs are 0-3, all by one goal, two in overtime. Their head coach is Bill Tierney, who is in his first season with the team and the league. 

Tierney first coached the Princeton men in 1988, going 8-21 in his first two seasons. In the 20 seasons that followed, he had only two losing streaks of at least three games: in 1999, when the team started 0-3 and then won nine straight, and in 2005, when the team started 0-5 and before winning five of the next seven.

Yes, it's not college lacrosse. Still, TigerBlog has a sense that Tierney is not thrilled with being winless, especially the way it's happened.

Here's an interesting stat: The PLL keeps touches, which is the number of times a player has the ball in his stick. Michael Sowers and Tom Schreiber have combined for 225 touches and only four turnovers. Vardaro, for his part, has no turnovers in 20 touches. 

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What are you doing Nov. 2? 

Circle that date on your calendar now. On that Saturday, Princeton will host the Ivy League Heptagonal cross country championships. 

Given that there has been a massive construction project where the old cross country course was, it'll be interesting to see the dynamics at play in the new one. No matter where it's run, of course, Heps cross country is always one of the best events in any sport in the league all year. 

Plus, once the races is over, you can head over to Powers Field at Princeton Stadium for the Princeton-Cornell football game.

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Nov. 2? It seems so far away, but it isn't.

June is ending. July begins Monday, which means that starting Monday, you'll be able to say Princeton has sporting events next month. 

In the meantime, have a great summer weekend.