Happy Halloween

It's Halloween!!

If anything deserves exclamation points, it's a holiday where the central theme is fun, costumes and candy, right? 

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When TigerBlog thinks of Will Venable, he'll always go first to that time he drove the baseline and dunked at Cameron Indoor Stadium. That was on Jan. 5, 2005, a game Duke won 59-46.

Here are two stat lines from that game: 

Player A - 39 minutes, 21 points, 3 for 10 from the field, 1 for 3 from three-point range, 14 for 14 from the foul line, two rebounds, two assists
Player B - 39 minutes, 21 points, 8 for 13 from the field, 0 for 1 from three-point range, five for six from the foul line, four rebounds, three assists

Player B is Venable. Player A is JJ Reddick.

Venable was a great all-around basketball player at Princeton, a defensive stopper who scored 1,010 points and who was at his best in the biggest moments. Those are great qualities in an athlete. If you asked TB to list the players he's seen at Princeton who were at their best in big games, Venable's name would be way up there.

Of course, Venable's future was not in professional basketball but instead Major League Baseball, where he played for nine seasons, for the Padres, Rangers and Dodgers. He then became a coach, winning a World Series a year ago in Texas, along with another former basketball/baseball player Chris Young, the Rangers' GM.

It was only a matter of time before Venable became a Major League manager, and that time appears to be here. Venable will be taking over as the head man for the Chicago White Sox.

His task will be not be an easy one. The White Sox are horrible, having set a Major League record with 121 losses last year. 

Still, being a Major League manager is a rare opportunity. And just think where Venable's stock will be if he can bring the Sox back to respectability. 

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One of TigerBlog's favorite days of the Ivy League calendar comes up Saturday — and TB won't be able to be there. 

The Ivy League Heptagonal cross-country championships will be held on the new Princeton course at the Meadows Campus. The women's race begins at 11, followed by the men at noon.

TB, for his part, will be at the Princeton-Yale field hockey game, which starts at noon on Bedford Field.

The Princeton men have won three straight Heps cross-country titles, as well as five of the last six. The Tiger men are currently ranked 22nd nationally, behind only No. 15 Harvard in the Division I rankings. 

No Ivy League women's team is ranked in the Top 30 nationally. Princeton is fifth in the incredibly loaded Mid-Atlantic Region.

Heps cross country is a great event. As much as anything else in an Ivy League year, Heps cross country combines high-quality athletic competition and a party atmosphere. If you're never been, the weather will be perfect. 

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There will be an Ivy League championship awarded Saturday in at least one other sport — women's soccer.

In fact, this one is pretty straightforward. Princeton is at Columbia Saturday at 2, and here's how it works for the Ivy title: Princeton gets it with a win; Columbia gets it with a win or tie. 

There is no mathematical chance for a co-championship. Whoever comes out ahead after Saturday's game will also be the host for next weekend's Ivy League tournament. 

The Princeton men are at Dartmouth at 7 pm Saturday. Penn is at Yale, with that game at 5.

Should Penn win or tie and Princeton lose, then Penn would win the outright championship and get to host the Ivy tournament. The same is true if Penn wins and Princeton ties. Anything else and the game a week from Saturday at Myslik Field between the Tigers and Quakers would decide the championship and where the tournament will be.

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There will also be home events in tennis, women's hockey, women's rugby, men's water polo and rowing (the Princeton Chase) this weekend. Oh yeah, there's also a football game against Cornell Saturday with a kickoff at 1.

The complete schedule is HERE.

In the meantime, have a happy and safe Halloween. 

Save some mini-Three Musketeers for TigerBlog.

New Friends

TigerBlog would like to tell you about his six new friends.

You're going to love this story.

Their names are Christa and her husband Tom, Linda and her husband Bill, Heidi and Lynda. TigerBlog had never met any of them before yesterday.

They were random strangers, thrown together in the name of democracy. How's that? 

TB lives in Pennsylvania, where yesterday was the last day for early voting. He could have gone at any point the last few weeks, and of course, he decided to go yesterday.

To vote early, he had to go to the courthouse in Doylestown. He figured he'd drive past in the early afternoon, see what the line looked like and then wait it out.

Why not just vote on Election Day? That was an option too, though he remembered back to the last Presidential election, when he waited in line for two hours or so.

How long would this take? Even it took that long, it was such a nice day that standing outside didn't seem to be so big a deal.

So, TB parked his car, walked over and got on the end of the line. The first person he met was Heidi, the youngest of the new friends. She was also the one who seemed to be the most dialed in on the process, which turned out to be simple — take a form, fill it out ... and wait. 

And wait and wait and wait. In the end, it would be three full hours between getting on the line and casting his ballot. And you want to know what? 

To quote Crista — "could it be that our little group almost made waiting in line for three hours fun?"

Yes. It was fun. Seriously. It turned out to be fun.

It started out like any long line with total strangers. A nod here, a "hello" there. Everyone had the same question: "How long do you think this will take?" Heidi gave instructions to the newcomers. And then the wait began.

By the way, it's human nature, TB supposes, to look behind when you're in a long line and be a little annoyed that there aren't more people who have to wait as long as you were. 

Lynda, for her part, was the most prepared, as she had brought along a book to read. It started to look like 1) the group would be in the line for a long time and 2) that she would finish her book long before she voted. 

If you're going to wait for that long, you might as well make the most of it. By the time it reached the front, the group of seven people knew what each other's favorite movies were, the best place they'd ever traveled to, that it was Bill and Linda's second marriage and that Christa and Tom had been married for more than 30 years. Lynda was an artist. Heidi was a caregiver. 

Bill had been a teacher and administrator in the Central Bucks School District. Linda was the bookkeeper at a local church. Christa and Tom were also retired; she had been a librarian, and he had  been a high school art teacher. 

It took about 30 minutes to find out that Lynda grew up close to where Bill did in New Jersey, and they both loved the Sloppy Joe sandwich at the Millburn Deli. And that's not Sloppy Joe as in ground beef. If you're from that area, you know the difference.

And, of course, it came out that TB was a writer. And that he'd be chronicling all of this.

The natural follow up question was what kind of writer? When TB mentioned Princeton Athletics, Bill said something about how his sister had been an athlete at Princeton.

When Bill said his last name was "Meier," TB immediately said: "You're Maggie Meier's brother?"

And he was. 

Maggie Meier's brother? TB was in line with Maggie Meier's brother this entire time? At one point about an hour earlier, TB had said that the group was closing in on the moment when "somebody knew somebody's sister." 

As it turned out, TB was right. 

Maggie Meier? How about that? 

TigerBlog wrote a long story about Meier just last year, when Ellie Mitchell was closing in on her longtime record for career rebounds at Princeton. You can read it HERE if you like.

Bill and Linda were amazed that TB was the one who'd written the story. They said it was a big deal in their family, and TB appreciate that. 

Maggie Meier graduated from Princeton in 1978, winning the von Kienbusch Award her senior year as Princeton's top female athlete. No player, male or female, ever had more than her 1,099 career rebounds, and that record stood until this past February, when Mitchell finally broke it.

TB and Bill posed for a photo together, which Linda sent off to Maggie. TB said to say hello. 

The line wrapped around the courthouse. When you eventually got to the front steps, you had to wait until you were allowed inside in groups of 10. Were you there already? Nope. There was still another line to wait on before you were issued your ballot. 

It was great to meet them all. They made the three hours seem more like 30 minutes or so. There were way more laughs and smiles than complaints.

And another great part of their time together? The subject of who was going to vote for whom never came up.

Hey, maybe there's hope after all.

Joy And Sorrow

This past weekend was a very good one for Princeton Soccer, both the men and the women. 

TigerBlog wants to talk about that, how both teams won and what the coming Ivy League tournament might look like.

First, though, he will share with you the feature story that he put up yesterday on goprincetontigers.com. It's title tells a great deal about it: Of Love, Sorrow And Cancer. 

You can read it HERE.

The piece tells the story of three women's soccer players — Esme Rudell, Ally Murphy and Summer Pierson — who have had someone hugely important to them have to deal with cancer. This became pretty personal for both women's soccer head coach Sean Driscoll, who lost his mother Patricia six years ago, and TB himself, whose mother passed away 30 years ago this December. 

Once the story was published, TB began to hear from people who also had been affected by cancer. As Sean says in the story: "Everyone knows someone who has gone through this."

The piece stretches through 4,500 words, and yet it is one of the pictures that was sent to TB that really hits home. Summer's best friend in high school outside of Boston was dealing with bone cancer, and the chemo caused her to lose her hair quickly. 

To show her love and support, Summer shaved her head as well. This is the picture after it happened:

If that doesn't touch your heart, what will? 

TB spoke to the three women before the Tigers played Dartmouth last weekend on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. 

This was the second-to-last game of the regular season. The last game of the regular season comes up this Saturday in New York City, where Princeton will play Columbia at 2.

The Tigers needed to take down Dartmouth to set up what is now a huge game this coming week. Columbia rallied past Yale to win 3-2 Saturday, leaving the Lions at 5-0-1 in the league for 16 points. 

Princeton and Dartmouth were scoreless at the half. A loss to the Big Green with the Columbia win would mean that the Lions would have clinched the league. 

Instead, Pietra Tordin scored twice and Brooke Dawahare and Drew Coomans scored once each after the break, and the Tigers sprinted away 4-0. Princeton is now 5-1-0, for 15 points. 

Both teams have clinched their Ivy League tournament spots. What's at stake Saturday? A Princeton win and the Tigers win the Ivy title and host the tournament. A Columbia win or a tie, and both of those go to Lions.

Who will be the other two teams? One will definitely be Brown, who has also clinched a spot. The fourth team will either be Harvard (if it beats Yale), Yale (if it beats Harvard) or Cornell (if it wins and Harvard and Yale tie). 

The Ivy League field hockey tournament will be in Princeton. Will the women's soccer tournament be there as well? They're both on Nov. 8-10.

The men's soccer tournament is a week later. That one too can be in Princeton. What will it take? 

Princeton defeated Yale 1-0 in the second game on Myslik Field Saturday, scoring the only goal it would need on a Jack Jasinski free kick midway through the first half. The win leaves Princeton at 4-1-0 with 12 points in the league and assured of a spot in the Ivy tournament.

Like the women, Princeton's men can win the league championship and host the tournament by winning out. In this case, Princeton's men have two games left — at Dartmouth Saturday and then home against Penn Nov. 9. 

The only team ahead of Princeton right now is Penn, who has 15 points at 5-0-0. The Quakers are at Yale Saturday.

Penn and Princeton are the only teams to have clinched ILT spots so far. It's possible that the game against Penn will be a winner-take-all game like the women's game this weekend is. 

Dartmouth comes into the game in fourth place with seven points, two behind Cornell and one ahead of Harvard in the race for the other two spots. 

Princeton, by the way, hosts Seton Hall tonight at 7 in its final non-league game. 

It's an exciting time for Ivy League soccer, and Princeton's two teams are right in the middle of it all. 

Before the games, though, check out the feature story. It was very personal for TB to write it — and it's likely that it's personal for most of the people who read it.

An Even More Perfect Senior Day

The game had long since been won. The Ivy title was clinched. The Ivy League field hockey tournament was headed to Princeton.

And yet this was Senior Day, and so in the end Lily Webb and Clare Brennan took a perfect day and made it better. 

Princeton defeated Dartmouth 5-1 yesterday on Bedford Field, and with that win came all sorts of prizes. TigerBlog will get back to those in a moment.

Before that, there was the fact that Princeton's first four goals all came from juniors — three from Beth Yeager and one from Talia Schenck. Had the game ended that way, the celebration still would have a happy one. 

And then the last 20 seconds or so happened. 

Brennan and Webb are both seniors. Brennan took a long pass with 20 seconds to play and brought the ball down the left side and then stopped, pivoted and sent a long pass into the circle to Webb. As time wound down, Webb trapped the ball, made one move to her right and slapped it into the cage.

The clock showed eight seconds remaining.

The perfect end to Senior Day!!! Lily from Ceebs, and the Tigers win 5-1. Ivy title No. 28!!! Ivy tournament to Princeton. pic.twitter.com/fUhbqeixCl

— Princeton FH (@TigerFH) October 27, 2024

If you look closely at the video as Brennan gets the ball, check out the Princeton bench. You can see the excitement begin to build. 

Of course it would. On Senior Day, who wouldn't want to see two seniors combine for a goal to wrap things up?

Meanwhile, back at the prizes Princeton won, as TB alluded to those in the beginning. First, the win ensured Princeton will have no worse than a share of the Ivy League championship. 

For Princeton field hockey, that's Ivy title No. 28. The next-best league total? That's seven. 

More than that, no other Ivy League women's team in any sport has ever won as many (Princeton field hockey began this year tied with Harvard women's squash, with no other team in any sport all that close). 

Princeton also clinched the No. 1 seed in the upcoming Ivy League tournament, as well as the right to host the event, which will be held Nov. 8 and 10 on Bedford Field. 

It was a big weekend for Princeton, who defeated RPI No. 5 Maryland Friday 2-1, with both goals from Yeager. Princeton already had defeated Harvard, RPI No. 10 last week 2-1 in Cambridge, and Harvard then took down No. 4 St. Joe's yesterday 2-1 in OT, a decision that helps Princeton's RPI and therefore its chances at an NCAA at-large bid if it should not win the Ivy tournament. 

The Tigers are now 6-0 in the league, followed by 5-1 Harvard, who has clinched the No. 2 seed. Who else will be in the field? That will come from two of the following five: Yale, Brown, Penn, Cornell and Columbia. 

There is one Ivy game left in the regular season, and the odds that there will be a five-way tie for third place is not that outrageous now. For their part, Princeton plays Yale this coming Saturday, where a win would be the outright league championship.

In other words, there is a long way to go in this season. Princeton is 11-4 overall right now, with five straight wins and two of its losses to No. 1 Northwestern (3-2) and No. 2 North Carolina (2-0). 

No matter where it goes, though, Senior Day 2024 will always be really special. It began before the game in the team room at Class of 1952 Stadium, an hour before warmups. There were funny videos, heartfelt speeches, laughter, tears, hugs — and everything else that team sports bring out in those who compete together. The bond that is created is very strong. 

At one point head coach Carla Tagliente stood in front of the room and talked about what it is that they will all remember about each other — and it's not going to be the specific details of specific games. 

TigerBlog has heard this before. He's heard it in moments like that, when the players might not yet have considered what the next few decades would bring. 

He's also heard it from those decades later. They remember the friendships, the relationships, the times away from the field. The moments in the games? They're usually lost to time.

Not all of them, though. Not the one that came at the end of the game yesterday for Tiger field hockey. 

It was an even more perfect end to Senior Day.

Princeton At Harvard

How much celebrating did the people who run Major League Baseball do when their World Series ended up being the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers?

It couldn't have worked out better. Remember last year's World Series? If you're a Princeton fan you do. That was the all-Princeton World Series, as Texas (with GM Chris Young) defeated Arizona (with GM Mike Hazen).

Princetonians remember it with great fondness. Non-Princetonians probably don't remember it at all.

The Yankees-Dodgers? That's Major League Baseball gold.

It's the most-played World Series ever, with this the 11th meeting between the two. It is two huge market teams. It's Aaron Judge against Shohei Otani. a

What could be better? 

TigerBlog remembers another Yankees-Dodgers Series, back when he was a high school sophomore. His English teacher (who taught TB one of the two most important things he learned in school — grammar; the other was typing) that year made a deal with each student in the class, which was primarily American Literature. 

Here was your option: You could take the Dodgers or the Yankees or not play at all. If you did opt in, though, your next test would add or subtract the number of points that would be the difference between the number of games your team won and the other team won.

TigerBlog took the Dodgers. The Yankees won in six, or four games to two, so TB's next test score was docked two points. 

It was a genius move by the teacher in 1978. Would it get him fired today? 

Can you imagine if those two points had kept TB out of Penn? Phew. Then he'd really, really hate Reggie Jackson.

Game 1 of the World Series is tonight. TB is rooting for the Dodgers, solely because of Otani. If he had a big test coming up, he'd go with the Dodgers and hope not to lose points. 

Now imagine if college football tests could work the same way. If you were Bob Surace and you had a big test at Harvard tomorrow, would you be willing to risk four points for a chance to win four points? TB knows which team Surace is rooting for, and it's not the one with Ohtani.

Princeton heads to Harvard, with kickoff at Harvard Stadium set for 3 tomorrow. Every point figures to matter.

Last week, Princeton faced a team nicknamed "Bears" for the second straight game. This time, Princeton faces a former Surace offensive coordinator for the second straight week. 

Princeton knocked off Brown and head coach James Perry 29-17 last week, squaring its league record at 1-1. This week will be the first matchup between Surace and new Harvard head coach Andrew Aurich, someone else whom Princeton fans find difficult to root against, though they certainly will figure out a way to do so. 

Harvard is 1-1 in the league, having lost to Brown and then having defeated Cornell. Each Ivy team has played two games, and now each is looking at five straight weeks of league games to end the season.

The standings right now are symmetrical, with two 2-0 teams, four 1-1 teams and two 0-2 teams. 

At the end of the weekend, there will definitely be only one 3-0 team and one 0-3 team. The unbeatens are Dartmouth and Columbia, and they meet in New York City tomorrow. The winless teams are Yale and Penn, and they meet in Philadelphia tonight in the ESPNU game.

It was that ESPNU game last week that saw Princeton sprint out 19-0 and then hold off a Brown rally before closing the game out. As TB wrote earlier in the week, the key was turnovers — Princeton committed two, while Brown committed five. Even worse for the Bears was the fact that all five were in Princeton territory.

That sort of thievery would come in very handy tomorrow. Harvard is second in the league in time of possession, which is often an overrated stat. In this case, though, the Crimson have the ball on average six minutes more per game than the Tigers. Brown had a similar edge in possession time last week, but the turnovers neutralized that. 

Harvard quarterback Jaden Craig has thrown 13 touchdown passes and one interception. Princeton is the top passing defense team in the league. 

The forecast in Cambridge for Saturday at 3 is for 64 degrees and zero chance of rain. 

It would be well worth your time to be there. If not, watch it on ESPN+.

The five-week football sprint is about to begin. 

A Soccer Doubleheader In Perfect Weather

So where does TigerBlog go to arrange to have the weather in Princeton be like this year-round? 

Is there an app for that? Are there forms he can fill out?

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It's a big weekend for Princeton soccer, both the men and the women. There will be a doubleheader Saturday on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium, with the women against Dartmouth at 1 and the men against Yale at 4. 

The weather will be perfect. 

The field for the Ivy League women's tournament is officially half set, with spots clinched by Princeton and Columbia. There are two weekends left in the regular season, and there are all kinds of possibilities for the other two spots and the host role for the No. 1 seed.

Right now, Princeton trails Columbia by a single point in the standings, with the Lions at 4-0-1 for 13 points and the Tigers at 4-1-0 for 12. Oh, and Princeton ends the regular season at Columbia Nov. 2 (kickoff at 2).

The next three in the standings have Brown with eight points, Yale with seven and Cornell with six. The remaining games this weekend are Cornell at Brown, Columbia at Yale (the team who defeated the Tigers) and Harvard at Penn.

Should Princeton win out, it would have an outright Ivy title and would host the tournament. The same is true for Columbia. 

In addition to the implications for the women's tournament and championship, the game Saturday for Princeton will be Senior Day and Alumni Day.

Princeton leads the Ivy League in goals scored and fewest goals allowed, which is a pretty good combination. In fact, Princeton's 29 goals are six more than any other league team, and the nine allowed are five fewer than the next-best Ivy team. 

Princeton's RPI is 53, which is the best in the league. Columbia is next at 63.

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The Princeton men's soccer team also starts the weekend in second place in the league, though on the men's side, there are still three Ivy games to be played. 

Right now, Penn is in first place in the league at 4-0-0 for 12 points, followed by Princeton at 3-1-0 for nine points (with a loss to Cornell). Just as the women, the regular season for the men ends with a game against the team currently ahead of it in the standings, which also means that the men would be the host for the Ivy tournament by winning out, as would Penn.

No other team in the league can say that. 

In addition to the game against Yale this weekend and the home game against Penn Nov. 9, Princeton also has a game Nov. 2 at Dartmouth. The Big Green can't host by winning out, but they do have games remaining against the two teams they trail in the standings, beginning at Penn this Saturday night.

The Big Green have seven points, followed by Cornell with six, Columbia with four and the remaining three with three each. 

When it comes to RPI, Penn is the highest-ranked Ivy at 12, followed by Cornell at 18 and then Princeton at 66. 

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The new-look NCAA tennis world will have its individual singles and doubles championships in the fall, with direct qualification through the 13 ITA Regionals. Princeton's men competed in theirs last weekend at Penn and came away with qualifiers in both draws. 

On the single side, junior Fnu Nidunjianzan earned his spot by reaching the regional final. On the doubles side, Filippos Astreinidis and Paul Inchauspe won the championship, which also vaults them into the NCAA tournament. 

The Ivy League individual championships will be held this weekend, with the women at Penn and the men at Yale. 

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The women's hockey team has its first two ECAC games this weekend, as it travels to Yale tomorrow and Brown Saturday. Princeton is 2-0 after 7-1 and 11-1 wins over Robert Morris last weekend. 

The men's hockey team has a scrimmage Saturday night at 7 at Hobey Baker Rink against Waterloo. The opener for the men is still two weeks away, with home games against Harvard and Dartmouth Nov. 7 and 8.

The complete Princeton schedule for the weekend is HERE.

"200" And "One"

Today's numbers are "200" and "one."

TigerBlog starts with "200."

This past Friday night in New York City, Sabrina King earned her 200th career win as the head coach of the Princeton women's volleyball team when her team defeated Columbia 3-0. There were smiles, and flowers, for the occasion. 

If you'll permit a small diversion for a great Pete Carril story, TigerBlog was talking with former local sportswriting legend Mark Eckel the other day, and the story of when Carril won his 500th game at Princeton came up. 

Eckel was one of the reporters who covered that game, and he asked Carril the logical question: What are some of the biggest wins you've had?

Carril named one or two games and then said "and you have to include the Georgetown game." He was referring, of course, to the 1989 NCAA tournament first round game against the No. 1 Hoyas. 

When Carril said that, Eckel looked at TB, who had to point out the obvious: "Uh, Coach, you didn't win that one."

It just goes to show you what an epically historic game like that Georgetown game can do to the memory, no? It certainly felt like a win. 

Meanwhile, the 200 wins for King make for a nice round number, but her resume was already one of the greatest you'll see in Princeton Athletics history. 

Consider all of the following: 

* she has coached Princeton to five Ivy titles
* she is a three-time Ivy Coach of the Year
* she spent seven years as an assistant coach to the great Glenn Nelson, with two more Ivy titles
* she was a three-time All-Ivy Player
* she was the 1999 Ivy Player of the Year
* she won three Ivy titles as a player

That's pretty good, no? TB can't really think of too many others who have had that kind of success as a player, assistant coach and head coach, all at Princeton.

King is in her 14th season as the Tiger head coach and has had only one non-winning season in her first 13. This year's team finds itself in second place in the Ivy League at 6-2, behind only unbeaten Yale. 

The Tigers began the Ivy season with a loss to Penn and have won six of seven since, with the other loss to the Bulldogs. The automatic bid to the NCAA tournament goes to the winner of the Ivy tournament at season's end, and Princeton is in good shape to be in the four-team field. 

Princeton, by the way, does not have an Ivy match this weekend. Instead, Marquette will be in Dillon Gym Saturday at 1:30, after playing a Big East match at Seton Hall Friday. Marquette is 11-6 overall, 7-1 in its league. 

And congratulations to Sabrina. It's always good to get to one of those big round numbers. 

Meanwhile, there's the "one."

The men's water polo team finished its fall break trip west with a win over California. The 11-9 win was the first for the Tigers over the Golden Bears in program history — hence the number "one."

Roko Pozaric scored four times against Cal. Every goal he scores from here on in, of course, just adds to the career record he set earlier in the week against Pepperdine.

Freshman Tas Palcza had three goals. Kristóf Kovács tied his season-high with 16 saves. 

Princeton went 3-3 on its California swing. Considering that five of those six games came against teams ranked in the top eight of last week's poll, that's not too bad. 

The three losses came to the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 teams in the country (UCLA, USC, Pacific), and those three losses were by two, three and one goals. That's impressive stuff. 

The new poll comes out today, and it'll be interesting to see the shuffling that occurs after Princeton's results last week. 

Getting a shot at those schools again will require Princeton to get through the league playoffs and into the NCAA tournament. After a well-earned weekend off, Princeton will head into a huge November that begins with home matches against LIU and Iona and ends with the Northeast Water Polo Conference tournament in DeNunzio Pool.

Nutmeg

So this guy's name is Nutmeg — and he knows exactly what he's doing. 

That picture was taken in the Newton Marriott Saturday morning, before TigerBlog went to the Princeton-Harvard field hockey showdown. 

Nutmeg has perfected the art of looking unignorably (not sure if that's a word) cute. As his owner relaxed in a chair, Nutmeg flashed his eyes and smiled at anyone who would come by. 

This led to a series of moments like this: 

That, by the way, is Princeton field hockey goalie Robyn Thompson to the left and forward Grace Schulze. 

Thompson left something in a conference room and went back to get it, and TB was standing there as she walked back to the center of the lobby. He didn't say a word but simply pointed to the dog, and the next thing you know, she melted. 

So did everyone else who walked by. It didn't matter who it was. And Nutmeg, as TB said, knew exactly what he was doing. 

This wasn't limited to Princeton field hockey. Not in the Newton Marriott Saturday morning. There were college athletes everywhere. 

The Head of the Charles brought rowing teams from all over the country, including Southern Cal and Florida State. The Middlebury women's soccer and field hockey teams were there to play at Tufts. The Cornell men's tennis team was there. The same with Yale. 

For Princeton field hockey, it was quite the business trip. The Tigers were headed to Harvard for a showdown for first place in the Ivy League, and quite likely the host role for the upcoming Ivy tournament.

Before the game ever started, TB was able to take another picture that would make anyone smile. Here it is:

That's Lydia Bills on the left. She's a sophomore of the field hockey team, originally from Chester, England. That's her mother Jane on the right. Jane and Julian got to Cambridge after taking a flight across the Atlantic. 

Even though Lydia knew they were coming, it was a great moment. Ah, but even with the pictures of Nutmeg and the mother/daughter reunion, the best photo of the day was still to be taken — and it wouldn't come from TigerBlog's phone.

No, this time it came from photographer Brian Foley. TB will share it shortly.

First, there was the game itself. Harvard was 4-0 in the Ivy League. Princeton was 4-0 in the Ivy League. They are a combined 77-1 against the other six league teams since 2017. 

The winner of this game would need only win one of its remaining two Ivy games to gain no worse than a share of the Ivy title and, as TB referenced, to be the host of the league tournament Nov. 8 and 10. 

This year's tournament is the second for Ivy field hockey. Harvard defeated Princeton 2-1 in the final in 2023, getting the game-winner with 34 seconds to play in regulation. 

This time, Harvard scored first, late in the first quarter, on its first good chance of the game. It seemed like that goal might be enough, especially when Ottilie Sykes' goal in the third quarter was disallowed after it was ruled it had touched a Princeton player first. 

Finally, early in the fourth, Princeton broke through, scoring when Beth Yeager set up Ella Cashman perfectly on a penalty corner. For Yeager, that was career point No. 99.

The game went to OT. The last time these two had played a regular season game on Berylson Field, Harvard won in a shootout to take the league title pre-tournament. Once again, the difference between the win and the loss would be razor thin.

Princeton would be on the right side of the razor. Again it was Cashman, again from Yeager, again on a corner. For Cashman, it was a two-goal day for the first time in her career. For Yeager, who never came off the field for the entire 64 minutes, it was her 100th career point. 

Oh, and Cashman was the one who scored Princeton's goal in the Ivy final last year. 

Next up for Princeton is Maryland Friday and Dartmouth Sunday, both on Bedford Field. A win over Dartmouth would mean that the tournament officially would come to Princeton.

The game Saturday was an intense one, just like every Princeton-Harvard game seems to be. And with that kind of intensity comes great joy, which was captured in the photo that Foley took of Cashman. 

TB told you it was the best one of the day:

Friday Night Football

You know what's not great? 

An accident on the Merritt Parkway and an accident on I-95 in Connecticut. On a Friday. 

The result of that hopefully rare occurrence is that it took TigerBlog more than seven hours to go from Princeton to the Newton Marriott outside Boston Friday. There was about a three-hour stretch in there where he never went more than 30 miles per hour. 

At one point, he pulled off into a rest stop and walked into the building with a couple who had pulled in at the same time. They were on their way to Providence, where their son is a student.

"Are you enjoying your time on I-95 today as much as I am?" TB asked them. 

Turning negatives to positives, TigerBlog did have plenty of time to enjoy the amazing fall foliage along the route. It was definitely beautiful. And hey, people make weekends out of that this time of year in New England. 

Of course, in one way the timing of TB's arrival was perfect. TB settled into Room 424 right at 7 and broke out his roast beef and pastrami sandwich — purchased at Rein's Deli off exit 65 of I-84 in Vernon, Conn.

If you'll permit a short digression, TigerBlog has stopped at Rein's somewhere around a million times. He was first referred there by former Harvard sports information director John Veneziano back in 1996 or so. Ah, the great Johnny V, one of the best people who's ever worked in Ivy League athletics. 

Anyway, sandwich at the ready, TB sat down on the couch in his room, put his feet up on and put on ESPNU about 30 seconds before the kickoff of the Princeton-Brown football game on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.

It was clearly a big moment in the Ivy League season. Princeton had lost its league opener two weeks earlier to Columbia and then fell 34-7 last week at No. 7 Mercer.

Brown, on the other hand, had beaten Harvard 31-28, scoring the last three TDs in the game to rally for the win in the Ivy opener for both of them. 

When was the last time Princeton started a season 0-2 in the league? That would be 2010.

When was the last time Brown started a season 2-0 in the league? That would be 2010 as well. 

That was pretty much the backdrop for the game.

TigerBlog suggested Friday that turnovers would be a big part of the story, and that's how it would play out. Princeton came into the game minus-8 on the year in turnovers. Against Brown, that number was plus-3.

That plus-3, by the way, suggested a Princeton win. And that's how it went: Princeton 29, Brown 17.

Princeton turned Brown over five times in the game, with three interceptions and two fumble recoveries. Making it an ever bigger impact on the game's outcome was that every one of those five turnovers came in Princeton territory. 

The turnovers were the biggest stat of the game in terms of how it affected the score. The craziest stat was the number of plays that were run. 

In all, there were 154 plays from scrimmage between the two teams. For Princeton's first four games, the Tigers and their opponents combined for 128 plays per game. 

Brown ran 93 of those plays (the Princeton record for plays in a game is 104, against Dartmouth in 2013). The first four opponents averaged 52.3 plays per game. 

That was a lot of ask for the defense. To see that many plays and allow only 17 points is extraordinary. Hey, the five turnovers were huge. 

Princeton averaged 6.2 yards per play. Brown averaged 4.8. For the year prior, Princeton was at 3.995 yards per play. 

That's progress. And it came at a good time. 

The win over Brown started the stretch of six Ivy games in six weeks. The past weekend saw the last of the non-league games for any of the league's teams, meaning it's now four Ivy games per week for the next five weekends.

Next up for the Tigers is a game at Harvard this coming Saturday, with kickoff in Cambridge at 3. 

Your current league standings are: 

Dartmouth/Columbia 2-0
Princeton/Brown/Harvard/Cornell 1-1
Penn/Yale 0-2

Puck Drop And Kickoff

Welcome to Crossover Season.

To celebrate, TigerBlog wore a sweatshirt and shorts yesterday. It was that kind of weather, Crossover weather. 

What makes today the official start date for Crossover Season? Well, there are two games tonight that are a dead giveaway: Princeton at Robert Morris in women's hockey and Brown at Princeton in football. 

Yup. Winter sports are here. Fall sports are in full swing. 

The women's hockey regular season that starts tonight will run until Feb. 14-15, when Union and RPI are at Baker Rink. After that will be the ECAC playoffs and hopefully the NCAA tournament.

The end of the regular season four months away. By then, it'll be a different Crossover Season, with "spring" sports about to begin as well. 

Princeton starts out the season ranked 14th in the country in women's hockey. The Tigers lead the all-time series with Robert Morris 4-0, including a two-game sweep to start last season. 

It won't be long before women's hockey is joined by the rest of the winter teams. The men's hockey team will host Waterloo next Saturday, and the men's and women's basketball seasons will start the first week of November. 

For tonight, you have women's hockey and football.

The football game kicks off on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium at 7. If you can't be there, you can see the game on ESPNU and ESPN+.

Princeton comes into the game at 1-3 overall and 0-1 in the Ivy League. There are now six games remaining on the schedule, all of which will be league games. 

Brown is 2-2 and 1-0 in the league after it defeated Harvard in its first Ivy game, rallying from 28-10 down in the second half with the final three TDs of the game to win 31-28. The last of those three touchdowns came on a 27-yard pass from Jake Wilcox to Mark Mahoney with 21 seconds to play. 

Were it not for what happened last week with Dartmouth and Yale, that could have been the biggest comeback of the year in Ivy football. 

Brown is the top team in the Ivy League in passing offense, with 255.5 yards per game through the air. Princeton, at 183.0 passing yards allowed per game, is the top passing defense in the league and the only team in the league allowing fewer than 200 per game. 

Princeton is also the Ivy leader in total sacks. 

Wilcox, by the way, is the only Ivy quarterback so far to throw for more than 1,000 yards, with 1,017, nearly 100 yards more than anyone else. It's not shocking, given who his head coach is.

Brown is coached, as you probably know, by James Perry, himself a former Bears QB. Among the other items on his resume, he is still the No. 2 passer in Ivy history, threw the first touchdown pass in Princeton Stadium history and was Bob Surace's first offensive coordinator at Princeton. 

As such, it'll always be special when Surace and Perry face each other from opposite sidelines. Next weekend will see the first meeting between Surace and another former OC, Andrew Aurich, who is in his first year as the Harvard head coach. 

Tonight's game is the second straight for Princeton against a team nicknamed "Bears," after a 34-7 loss last week at the seventh-ranked Mercer Bears. There were positives in that game, of course — the 117 rushing yards for Ethan Clark, the Ivy Rookie of the Week performance by AJ Pigford among them. 

What Princeton needs to do is dial back the turnovers, with 12 in four games. Doing so would presumably help the time of possession, which is currently at 25:35 per game, and help keep the defense off the field. 

Each week is its own opportunity in football. The one that Princeton has tonight is a big one, with a chance to take the lessons of the first four weeks and move forward.

Powers Field at Princeton Stadium looks beautiful under the lights. It'll be a perfect night in Princeton for football. 

Be there. Tune in. Whichever works for you. 

It should be a great night of football.

Big Game In Cambridge

Here's a stat that is somewhat impressive: Since the start of the 2017 season, the Princeton and Harvard field hockey teams are a combined 77-1 against the rest of the Ivy League. 

Even in the heyday of the Princeton-Penn men's basketball rivalry, they never dominated the other league teams to that extent. TigerBlog hasn't done the research, though he's willing to guess that there has never been another example of two teams in the league who have won 77 of 78 against everyone else at any stretch.

And if it did happen? Then at worst, the current Princeton-Harvard run is only one game off of that.

With that sort of league preeminence, it's not surprising to learn each Princeton-Harvard game is a big one. The next one in the series comes up Saturday in Cambridge, where the teams square off for a noon start. 

Princeton comes into the game at 4-0 in the league. Harvard comes into the game at 4-0 in the league. Princeton has outscored its four Ivy opponents 10-2. Harvard has outscored its four Ivy opponents 19-5.

What's at stake? 

The winner of the game will hold the tiebreaker for the top seed and the host role in the Ivy League tournament, which takes place Nov. 8-10. It would also be assured of at least a share of the league title with one win in it last two games and an outright league title with two wins. 

The last time neither Princeton nor Harvard had at least a share of the Ivy title? How about 1993?

Princeton is 8-4 overall, with losses to No. 1 Northwestern, No. 2 North Carolina, No. 11 Syracuse and No. 15 Penn State (those are RPI rankings). Of those four losses, Princeton had the lead against Northwestern and Penn State and was tied in the second half with both UNC and Syracuse. 

Harvard is 10-2, with losses to UMass and Northwestern. In fact, both Princeton and Harvard lost to Northwestern by a 3-2 score. The Wildcats have allowed a total of seven goals in 13 games, with four of those against the Tigers and Crimson and three in the other 11 combined. 

Princeton is led, of course, by U.S. Olympian Beth Yeager, who leads the Ivy League in goals, assists and points. Yeager reminds TB of another Princeton athlete from a different sport, one who like Yeager is all over the field.

Yeager is technically a midfielder, mostly because there is no position called "everywhere." Does that remind you of anyone else? How about Zach Currier, the men's lacrosse player?

They have much in common. They are both tireless. They can both be found on the offensive or defensive end of the field. They can both do anything their team needs them to do. They both make everyone else on the field with them better. 

And, they are both tenacious, pesky players. If they're on your team, you love them. If they're on your opponent's team, you hate them — but have to grudgingly admit your respect for them.

Princeton is not a one-woman show, of course.

Sophomore Ottilie Sykes is the current Ivy Defensive Player of the Week, after being the league Co-Rookie of the Year last year. There are six freshmen who play regularly. Ella Cashman makes her impact felt for pretty much all 60 minutes. Talia Schenck and Grace Schulze continue to create scoring opportunities.

Gracie McGowan is more than just a social media expert; she's also one of the Ivy League's best defenders. Goalie Robyn Thompson continues to move up the program career lists in wins and shutouts. 

Harvard's roster is also stocked from top to bottom. The game should be a great one. 

The Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament goes to the winner of the Ivy tournament. A year ago, which was the first year of the ILT, Harvard defeated Princeton 4-0 in the regular season and then 2-1 in the Ivy final on a goal with 34 seconds to play. 

Will this be the first meeting between the teams this season? Will they meet again in the Ivy final next month? 

The game Saturday will be the first chance for these two to make their statement for 2024.

Roko's Record

TigerBlog has been to Pepperdine's campus, back in 1987.

It sits overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Malibu. Pretty much anything that is described with those words has to be amazingly scenic.

As he thinks about it, TB wonders how many college campuses he's visited in his life. Back in 1987 he had barely started out in the sportswriting business and was still writing about high school sports, so the number of campuses at the time was pretty small. 

All these years, and all these campuses later, Pepperdine still stands out. How does anyone get any schoolwork done there? It's way too nice there to want to sit in a library. 

The Princeton men's water polo team was on campus yesterday afternoon for a matchup with the Waves, ranked seventh this week.

TB watched the game on ESPN+. Not surprisingly, the broadcast started with a wide angle shot of the surrounding area that led to a close up of the outdoor pool. Why wouldn't it?

The big story was the chance to take down a Top 10 California team. That the Tigers accomplished, leading the whole way and winning xx-xx.

The subplot was the chase for the all-time goals scored record for Princeton men's water polo. Tiger senior Roko Pozaric came into the game with 252, only two behind the 254 John Stover scored before graduating 19 years ago.

Pozaric tied the record in the second quarter and then broke it in the third. By game's end, he had three goals and three assists, leaving him with a career total of 255 goals, the most ever by a Princeton men's water polo player. 

Water polo is not an easy game to play. You're constantly treading water, and pretty much anything goes in terms of contact. 

Forget the contact, actually. Just go find a pool, jump in, palm a ball and tread water for 20 seconds or so before trying to throw it into a goal. 

Just make sure there's a lifeguard there. 

Then there's the goalie position. You're also treading water, only you're expected to basically vault yourself out of the pool to reach a ball traveling at a high rate of speed and keep it out of a relatively large cage. 

Pozaric's record-breaking goal came on a five-meter shot with 4:14 left in the third quarter. The native of Croatia, who'd never been the United States until the day he arrived at Princeton, thumped it into the right side and then raised his fist. 

It didn't look like much of a celebration. Did he not know he had just set the record? Or was there still work to be done in the game? 

🚨ROKO FOR THE RECORD🚨

The Tigers have a new all-time leading goal scorer! pic.twitter.com/aMVLFdTlKI

— Princeton Water Polo (@Pwaterpolo) October 15, 2024

Pepperdine didn't go quietly, cutting it from 12-8 to 12-11 with 17 seconds to play. TB, not being a water polo expert, wondered if there was some sort of "put them on the foul line and hope they miss" strategy for the end game.

Nope. The Waves tried to create a steal, but there was no steal to be had. Princeton was able to hold on. 

The win over the No. 7 team in the country was preceded by a 10-8 loss to No. 2 UCLA and a 19-10 win over unranked Westcliff. 

What's left on this trip? 

The Tigers are at No. 3 Southern Cal today and then No. 4 Friday, followed by the final game on this challenging Fall Break trip, at No. 8 Cal Sunday before the flight home.

Princeton is ranked 11th this week, behind two Eastern teams: No. 6 Fordham and No. 10 Harvard. There are huge games to be played as October rolls into November, with the end goal a return trip to the NCAA tournament, where Princeton reached the semifinals last year. 

There are five remaining regular season games, beginning with two at DeNunzio Pool against LIU and Iona on Saturday, Nov. 2. After that, there is a trip to play at MIT, Harvard and Brown the following weekend, all building to the Northeast Water Polo Conference tournament in DeNunzio Nov. 22-24.

Remembering Digger

TigerBlog received an email yesterday morning from one of the biggest Princeton Athletics fans there is, Glenn Morris of the Class of 1972. 

Of course, he's never "Glenn." He's always "Merc."

He is Princetonian through and through. He's a landscape architect who, among other connections to the University, has given Reunions tours to showcase the campus trees. 

He came to Princeton in 1968, when it was all men. He graduated in a co-ed class. It was quite a time to be a Tiger.

In his case, though, he's never stopped. He was in Macon, Ga., this past Saturday to see the Princeton-Mercer football game, and he sent TB this photo:

In case you're wondering, going left to right, you have: Fritz Cammerzell, William Underwood, Bob Wright and Merc. William Underwood is the president of Mercer University, while the other three are all in the Class of 1972. 

The game in Macon didn't go the Tigers' way, though as you can see — to quote what Merc wrote to TB — "President Underwood was most gracious as was the Mercer community ... the many Tiger fans could not be more pleased with our courteous reception."

President Underwood, by the way, has no Princeton connection. A graduate of Oklahoma Baptist and then the University of Illinois Law School, he has been the Mercer president since 2005.

It was a day of football and friendship, all under a perfectly blue sky in a nearly filled stadium. It was a day of competition, of improvement, of coaching and of learning. 

It was the kind of day that was tailor made for someone who, sadly, wasn't there. He would have loved it, except the outcome; the only people who would have loved it more were those who would give anything to have even one more day, one more Princeton football game, with him.

TB certainly is in that group.

This past Saturday, the day of the Princeton-Mercer game, was the third anniversary of the day that Steve DiGregorio died, after a battle, a ferocious battle, against pancreatic cancer. There haven't been too many days of the more than 1,000 that have gone by since where TB hasn't thought of Digger, one of the best people he's ever met and one of the best friends he'll ever have in this lifetime. 

In many ways, it hasn't really completely sunk in that he's gone, at least not in an emotional way. Maybe TB never really thought about how often he spoke to Digger, or how much they had in common, or how many funny stories they had to share. 

TB tries to go over to the cemetery where Digger is buried and visit the gravesite as often as possible. When he does, he finds himself staring intently at the ground, trying to wrap his arms around the unfairness of it all.

Digger left behind a wife (Nadia) and three sons (Zack, Derek and Aaron), and it's unlikely that you ever met a better husband or father.

His legion of friends was vast, from his days with Princeton Football as an assistant coach and later just a huge fan, to his time at Nutley High School as its award-winning football coach, to the people he met at Muhlenberg as a football player there, and to any stop he ever made in his lifetime.

TB wrote this about him shortly after he died: 

He was someone whom TB looked at more than once and thought "if you could be more like he is, you'd be a better person."

Those are the truest words TB has ever written, he's pretty sure. 

There's a tendency to lionize people after they're gone, whether in the "retroactive sanctification" way that Marvin Bressler always cited when he spoke about how a player would suddenly become indispensable to Pete Carril after four years of nothing but criticism, or in the way that people rarely want to say anything bad about someone after they've passed away. 

In Digger's case, there really isn't any way to lionize him. That's just the kind of person he was. 

Digger would have come away from the game at Mercer happy to have had the chance to compete against the No. 7 team in the country and yet with a full list of areas that need work. He wouldn't sugar-coat it for his players, but they would know it wasn't personal, that their coach had only their best interest in mind, as athletes, students and people. 

As such, they would run through a wall for him. If you think that's lionizing, well, then you could have asked any player he ever coached who was there three years ago at his funeral. You didn't even have to ask them. You could just see by the tears they shed. 

The last thing Digger ever said to TigerBlog was this: "I love you buddy." The last thing TB ever said to him was "I love you too."

He wouldn't just a word of that. He'd simply add that he misses his friend deeply — and he's not the only one who does so. 

College Football Saturday

You want to know how much college football was on TV Saturday? 

The answer is: A lot.

TigerBlog watched a bunch of it. He started at noon with Wisconsin-Rutgers and Washington-Iowa; both times the team he was rooting for lost. He ended well into the evening with Ohio State-Oregon and Penn State-USC.

By the way, it's hard to remember all the teams that make up the geographical craziness that is the Big Ten these days. It's pretty wild to realize that all four of those games were in the B1G.

TB is pretty sure that he heard one of the announcers on one of the games mention the stat about teams in the league who have traveled more than two time zones, in either direction. Those teams are something like 2-11 now. 

There was more to the Saturday menu than just the Big Ten, of course. TB watched at least a little of a bunch of other games, including Vanderbilt-Kentucky, Missouri-UMass, South Carolina-Alabama and a bunch of others. 

Not all of the games he saw were Power 4 conference games. He checked in on Sacred Heart-Howard (the Bison won), for instance.

Of course, he kept an eye on the early Ivy League games. He saw Yale get out to a huge lead on Dartmouth and then went back later to see the final score, only to find that it was 37-37 and headed to overtime. 

Dartmouth would come all the way back and win it, 44-43. If you're a Princeton fan, you couldn't help but think of the 2012 Princeton-Harvard game, when the Tigers zoomed back from 34-10 down with 12 minutes to go to win 39-34 in regulation on a Quinn Epperly TD pass to Roman Wilson from 38 yards out with 13 seconds to go.

Here's what TB wrote after that one:

Really, it was something like from a sports movie, where the underdogs need the late touchdown and the ball seems to hang in the air forever - and nobody can really believe what happened. 

The main event for TB Saturday was Princeton's game at Mercer. One thing TB noticed about all the different games he saw was that there is a distinctive character and atmosphere at each stadium, and Mercer's Five Star Stadium seemed to fit right into that thinking. 

It did look like a great place for a game on a beautiful day in Georgia. There seemed like all kinds of different vantage points for fans to watch, from a grassy area to the stands to what appeared to be a guest box. 

The ESPN+ announcers were good and fair. They were prepared, and they didn't get unreasonably excited for moments that didn't warrant it. What more can you ask? 

As for the game, Mercer is the No. 7 team in the FCS. Princeton was coming off a loss to Columbia in its Ivy opener and was looking for some answers prior to the stretch of six league games in six weeks. Plus, the game was in Macon.

The final was Mercer 34, Princeton 7, and yet there were quite a few bright spots for the Tigers. If you watched the game, then you had to be impressed with:

* the Princeton defense, who held Mercer to only two field goals in the first three quarters; the Bears did score TDs on a punt return and a fumble return, but the Princeton D was tough all day. 

* freshman linebacker AJ Pigford, who had four tackles, three for loss, and a fumble recovery. This was after he had two tackles for the first three games. Pigford was fast and decisive, and he did all this less than an hour from his hometown of Snellville, Ga.

* Another AJ, this time AJ Barber, had three catches for 51 yards, including a 41-yard reception. He continues to be a threat on every play.

* Chase Christopher had 11 tackles and was all over the field. 

More than anyone else, though, there was sophomore running back Ethan Clark, who came into the game with 12 career carries for 37 yards, with a long of seven, for his career. Mercer, for its part, was the No. 1 rushing defense team in the FCS, allowing just 29.2 yards per game.

Clark then carried 21 times for 117 yards and his first career TD. These yards were not easy at all, considering who the opponent was. 

With the non-league portion of the season over, Princeton will host Brown Friday night at 7. After that will be Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, Yale and Penn. 

There is a very long way to go in this season. Princeton has plenty of time to play itself into contention next month. 

The trip to Mercer didn't produce a win. It did produce a great college football experience, though.

If you want to devote an entire Saturday to watching, you can see the country is filled with them. 

Off To Georgia

It's a little more than four hours drive from Spartanburg, S.C., to Macon, Ga.

If TigerBlog had to guess, he thinks that Mike Cross will be making that ride this weekend — or have a pretty good reason why he isn't. 

Cross is the commissioner of the Southern Conference, whose offices are located in Spartanburg. If his name is familiar, it's because he spent 10 years as a high-level administrator for Princeton Athletics. 

As people have come and gone here through the years, TigerBlog has liked to think that they viewed their time at Princeton as more than a stepping stone to the next position and that they look back on when they worked here with great fondness. It's a certainty that Cross, one of TB's favorite people he's ever worked with, does just that. 

Ah, but now his loyalties will be tested as Princeton heads to Macon to take on one of the SoCon's teams, Mercer. Kickoff from Five Star Stadium (that's the name of the facility, not it's Michelin rating) is at 3:30, and the game can be seen on ESPN+.

Last week it was the Tigers and the Lions. This week, it's the Tigers and the Bears. Insert "oh my" where you see fit.

This isn't just any team, by the way. Mercer is currently 5-0 and ranked seventh in the FCS, with wins over two other Top 25 teams (Wofford and Chattanooga). There was also a win over Bethune-Cookman by the rarely seen score of 31-2.

This will be the first meeting ever between Princeton and Mercer. It'll also be, for whatever it's worth, the first of two straight games against teams nicknamed "Bears," as Princeton will host Brown a week from today. 

The Mercer Bears are a year removed from their first-ever FCS postseason berth. In fact, Mercer took down Gardner-Webb 17-7 in the first round before falling 41-0 to eventual champ South Dakota State. If 41-0 seems bad, "bear" in mind that South Dakota State won its semifinal game over Albany 59-0.

Mercer football dates back to 1892, though it has taken some huge breaks in fielding a team. It didn't have one at all between 1941 and 2013, and though it's been 132 years since the first Mercer team took the field, this is only the 51st season in program history. 

As TB looked into the team's history, he enjoyed the story of two members of the Georgia Hall of Fame who played at the school in the 1920s, brothers named Smith. Their nicknames? There was Crook Smith and Phoney Smith.  

Has Princeton ever had any Crooks or Phoneys? No way.

Mercer did not play last week. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It depends how you look at it. The team had a week off after playing five straight, but the momentum of the 5-0 start may have waned. 

The numbers the team has put up are impressive. Mercer leads the FCS in three statistical team categories: team completion percentage, rushing defense and passing efficiency defense. Not shockingly, a team that leads the country in the last two of those allows only eight points per game, which actually ranks second. 

Another Mercer Smith — current quarterback D.J. Smith — has completed 73 of 95 passes, which is just below 80 percent. He's thrown for 981 yards and eight touchdowns and rushed for three more touchdowns, but he's also thrown five interceptions.

It's a challenge, to be sure. 

Princeton ranks second in the Ivy League in passing defense and in sacks. Going against a quarterback like Smith, that's a pretty good place to start. Pressuring him and keeping his completion percentage in this stratosphere would be very helpful. 

Offensively, Princeton gained nearly 200 yards on the ground in the win over Howard but only a little more than 50 per game in the losses to Lehigh and Columbia. Princeton has also struggled with time of possession, at 25:10 per game. 

Mercer does not let teams move the ball on the ground. If Princeton can, the dynamic of the game changes immediately.

This is the final non-league game before a run of six straight Ivy games for the Tigers. It's also a chance to get on a plane and fly to take on a Top 10 opponent. 

Yes, it'll be a big challenge — but it's also an exciting one.

Goals And More Goals

TigerBlog is a regular Wordle player.

It was, by the way, former women's basketball assistant coach Milena Flores who first introduced him to the game a few years back. Since then, TB is pretty sure he's played every single day.

You know what causes him a lot of stress? His current Wordle streak. He entered today having gotten 197 straight puzzles correct. Can he get to 200? 300? 365? 

Somewhere former men's basketball coach Bill Carmody is shaking his head, mumbling about "The Whammy." 

It took TB all six tries yesterday. He is part of a group of five who play the game every day, all using a different starting word that changes each time and is chosen by whoever had the lowest score the day before. TB's longtime friend and colleague Dan Day is one of the people on the group, and he selected "noble" as the word to start yesterday, in honor of Princeton's latest Nobel Prize winner, John Hopfield.

As it turned out, the Wordle word was "Mommy." That's a rough one, with three of the same letter. TB was really sweating it out as he came home with "foggy" and "woozy" before getting "mommy." 

Ironically, the one member of the group who failed is, herself, a mommy of two named Tanya. TB couldn't help but scold her for that, especially since she chose "kooky" as her last try. 

Today's starting word for the group, by the way, is "pixel."

*

In more important news about games, the men's water polo team will be heading to California for fall break, beginning with a game Sunday at UCLA, who defeated Princeton 17-16 in overtime earlier this year.

The Bruins are currently the No. 1 ranked team in the country. By the time this trip ends, Princeton will have also played No. 2 USC, No. 4 Pepperdine, No. 5 Pacific and No. 6 Cal. 

How's that for a challenge? It's quite likely that no Princeton team has ever had to go through a gauntlet quite like that one.

The Tigers, for their part, are currently ranked ninth. 

Something else that is likely by the end of the trip is that there will be a new leader in career goals scored at Princeton for men's water polo. Right now, the leader is John Stover, who scored 254 before graduating in 2005. 

Current senior Roko Pozaric is in second place, with 247 in his career, obviously seven away from tying Stover. 

*

When TB saw that Stover had scored 254 goals, it got him wondering if anyone has ever scored more goals in any sport at Princeton. His guess was that if anyone did, it would have had to come in women's water polo, since it's unlikely that any other sport that has goals scored would come close to 254.

The record is lacrosse, for instance, is 209, by Kyla Sears. The men's record is 163, by Jesse Hubbard, though Coulter Mackesy is only 40 away from tying that as he starts his senior year (and he had 55 two years ago and 40 last year).

Soccer, ice hockey and field hockey would get nowhere near 200. As TB looked, the highest total for any of those sports is 121, the number scored by Kelly O'Dell, who graduated in 1984, in women's hockey. That is, by the way, one more goal than the second place person. Any guesses who that is?

So that only left women's water polo. And guess what? TB should have been able to guess.

The answer is Adele McCarthy-Beauvais, who scored an astonishing 325 in her career before earning a share of the 2003 von Kienbusch Award. TB has played in pickup basketball games with McCarthy-Beauvais and can vouch for the fact that she is an incredible all-around athlete. 

There are actually three other women's water polo players who have more than Stover's 254 — Elyse Colgan (272), Katelyn Rigler (265) and Cassie Nichols (255).  

*

Speaking of goals scored, the field hockey career record is 107, held by Kat Sharkey. Her husband, men's lacrosse great Tom Schreiber, scored 106.

Think she's ever pointed that out to him?

Schreiber, by the way, also had 94 assists, to 31 for Sharkey. 

*

The men's soccer team will on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium Saturday at 4 against Cornell. Princeton is 2-0-0 in the league, with wins over Harvard and Brown. 

Cornell is 1-1-0, with a win over Dartmouth and a loss to Yale. Cornell is also ranked No. 18 in the most recent RPI, behind only No. 15 Penn in the league. 

Princeton is the next-highest ranked Ivy team at No. 38. Big game Saturday? Yes, it is.

Cornell, by the way, is the highest-scoring team in the league. Princeton has allowed the third fewest goals. 

Admission is free. 

 

*

The field hockey team is home this weekend, with a game at 4 tomorrow against Brown and then at 1 Sunday against Delaware. Princeton has played 10 games this year, only two of which have been at home. 

Harvard and Dartmouth come to Dillon Gym for women's volleyball this weekend.

The complete schedule for all events can be found HERE.

The Preseason Poll

Before TigerBlog gets into today's main subject, he offers a reminder that this evening at 6 the women's soccer team hosts Penn on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. 

Princeton and Columbia are tied for first at 2-0-0 in the league. As TB has written, each Ivy women's soccer team is in a stretch where it played this past Saturday, will play a game tonight and then will play again Sunday. 

The Ivy League women's soccer tournament (and field hockey tournament, for that matter) will be held on the second weekend of November. By that time, the college basketball season will have begun, and that brings TB to today's main topic of interest.

The Ivy League released the results of its preseason men's basketball poll. Princeton was the No. 1 selection, getting 15 of the 16 first-place votes to finish with 127 points. Yale was next with 108, though the other first-place vote went not to the Bulldogs but to Brown, who was third with 92 points. 

From there, it went Cornell (67), Columbia (58), Harvard (55), Penn (51) and Dartmouth (18).

Princeton has won three straight Ivy League championships and four of the last seven, by the way. The 2023 Tigers reached the NCAA tournament Sweet 16, as you know.

So what does the preseason poll mean as far as the final standings?

TigerBlog figured he'd look back at the preseason polls and the way the teams finished in the years since the first Ivy tournament, back in 2017. It turns out that the preseason poll is a pretty good predictor of where the teams will finish.

In fact, there's never been an Ivy men's basketball tournament that didn't include at least three of the top four teams in the preseason poll. There have been seven Ivy tournament fields that have been sit (only six were played, as the 2020 tournament was postponed by the pandemic). 

Of the 28 teams in those seven tournaments, all but three were selected in the top four of the preseason poll. That's pretty accurate prognosticating.

Princeton returns two first-team All-Ivy League selections with Caden Pierce and Xavian Lee. When was the last time Princeton returned two first-team All-Ivy picks? TB will give you a few paragraphs to think about it. 

As for the 2024-25 season, Princeton's opening tip will be Monday, Nov. 4, when Iona comes to Jadwin Gym. Just in case you're wondering, Nov. 4 is less than four weeks away. 

Pierce and Lee are working their way up into elite territory on the Princeton career lists. Both are juniors, and both will go past 1,000 career points if they simply match their numbers from last year. 

Beyond that, if you only double their point totals for two years, then you'd have Pierce with 1,486 and Lee with 1,294 — and that doesn't factor in any improvement moving forward. Lee more than tripled his point total from freshman to sophomore year, and Pierce nearly doubled his.

The answer to the All-Ivy question, by the way, is 2005, when Judson Wallace and Will Venable returned after being first-team All-Ivy a year before. When was the last time Princeton had two players who were first-team All-Ivy who returned and then were both named first-team All-Ivy again? You get a few more paragraphs for that one.

Pierce, of course, is a great rebounder. Through two years, he has exactly 500 of them. Only one Princeton men's player has ever reached 1,000 rebounds, and that's Bill Bradley, who finished with 1,008. 

Can Pierce break that record, the same way Ellie Mitchell broke the 50 year old women's record a year ago?  If Lee equals his assist total from last year for his last two seasons, he'd finish fifth all-time at Princeton.

The two are hardly the only weapons Princeton has. Blake Peters is back for his senior year; if he equals last year's three-pointers made total, he'll end up sixth all-time at Princeton. Dalen Davis averaged 10.2 points per game for the final 10 games of last year, with 21 points in 22 minutes in the Ivy tournament against Brown. Deven Austin, who showed what his potential is as a freshman two years ago, is back after rehabbing an injury last year. 

That's a great core for a team picked to win a championship. As always, Jadwin will be a fun place to be this winter.

Lastly, the answer to the second question is Steve Goodrich and Sydney Johnson, who were both first-team picks in 1996 and then again in 1997.

Fan Of The Week

Each weekend, hundreds of athletes across eight Ivy League schools compete across all kinds of fall sports.

And, in the beginning of the new week, the Ivy League recognizes athletes from each sport in a variety of ways. 

This week, for instance, Princeton has had the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week in women's soccer and field hockey. Neither was a huge surprise.

Pietra Tordin was the women's soccer honoree after she scored three second-half goals to turn a 2-0 lead into a 5-0 lead on the way to an 8-0 win over a Brown team that had not lost in 29 straight Ivy League games. The three goals moved Tordin, a junior, into 12th place all-time at Princeton in goals scored. 

The big Princeton win came on the same field where Brown had beaten Princeton 6-1 two years earlier. That's 15 goals in two games between the teams on the new Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium.

Also, remember that this week is the week where all eight Ivy schools have a midweek league game. For Princeton, that will bring Penn to Myslik Field tomorrow night at 6.

The current Ivy standings have Princeton and Columbia at 2-0-0, Yale at 1-0-1, Brown and Cornell at 1-1-0 (both with a loss to Princeton), Penn at 0-1-1 and Harvard and Dartmouth at 0-2-0.

Meanwhile, Beth Yeager was the field hockey honoree. Princeton scored four goals in two games this weekend — and Yeager had two goals and two assists, with a goal and two assists in a 3-1 win over Cornell Friday and then the lone Tiger goal in a 2-1 loss to Syracuse Sunday. 

And where does Yeager, also a junior, rank in career goals at Princeton? How about 12th? She's also 12th in points too. 

There's a certain balance there between the two. 

The field hockey standings have Princeton and Harvard at 3-0, followed by 2-1 Brown and then four 1-2 teams (Penn, Cornell, Columbia, Yale) and 0-3 Dartmouth. 

Princeton has played 10 games to date but only two have been at home. The Tigers have six regular season games left, of which five will be at home, beginning Friday at 4 against Brown and then Sunday at 1 against Delaware. 

The Princeton-Harvard game will be in Cambridge a week from Saturday. 

So that covers Players of the Week and such. Ah, but what about a Fan of the Week? 

For that, TigerBlog nominates this man:

Who is this? That would be Mike McGowan. And who is that? 

His daughter Gracie is TigerBlog's boss a senior on the field hockey team. TB said the first part because Gracie does most of the social media posting for field hockey and men's lacrosse. TB's role is to make graphics and clip videos. Gracie then takes what TB sends her and turns it into the majority of the content you'll see on the social media feeds for the two teams.

Here's an average conversation between the two:

TB: Hi Gracie. Here is the graphic.
GM: That's perfect.
TB: Thank you.
GM: But can you change the photo and make the font a little smaller and use a different background?
TB: What happened to perfect? 

Gracie came to Princeton from Lake Forest, Ill. This past weekend, Mike drove from the family home there to see the games at Cornell and Syracuse. 

It's 720 miles from Lake Forest to Ithaca. It's 55 miles from Ithaca to Syracuse. It's only 710 miles from Syracuse to Lake Forest.

During the games he attends, by the way, Mike keeps a running commentary for the international parents who cannot make it to see their own daughters play. Princeton's field hockey team has 24 players, 12 Americans and 12 foreign. It's a big-time service he provides.

When Princeton's game against Syracuse ended Sunday, it was around 1:45 or so. By the time the postgame tailgate ended, it was probably around 3. 

Mike then hopped in his car and drove home. He said he was only going to stop once. 

Since it's an 11-hour drive, he wouldn't get home until after 2 am. 

When TB woke up yesterday, he texted Gracie to ask her if her dad had gotten home okay. Turns out he did. 

That's a lot of dedication to watch your daughter play. On the other hand, Gracie McGowan is a senior. Is it worth all that time and effort. It is, 100 percent. TB would have done the same, and he knows a lot of other parents who would as well. 

That's Fan of the Week worthy, no?

An 8-0 Win For 100

Well, if you're going to play three Ivy League women's soccer games in nine days, you might as well start out with pretty much the most perfect script you could have imagined.

Such was the case for Princeton Saturday. 

The Tigers, like all eight Ivy women's soccer teams, began a portion of the schedule that figures to do a great deal to start to sort out the championship contenders and the teams that will make runs for the four league tournament spots. Each team was to play Saturday and then turn it around quickly for games Wednesday and Sunday. 

It's a challenge, to be sure. There's travel. There's game-planning for three different opponents. There are serious swings in the standings that by definition will have to happen.

Prior to this stretch, each team had played one league game. By this coming Sunday night, half the league schedule will have been played. 

Princeton began that gauntlet by hosting Brown Saturday. There were subplots beyond the obvious, including the fact that Princeton head coach Sean Driscoll had 99 wins at Princeton before the game.

Oh, and there was also this little fact: Brown had not lost an Ivy League game since 2018, which was 29 games ago for the Bears. 

So what happened? 

Well, TigerBlog checked the score for the first time at the half and saw it was 1-0 Tigers. Then he didn't go back to the score until he saw this graphic postgame:

FINAL | Princeton 8, Brown 0

That. That was a lot of goals.

Tigers drop the four-time defending Ivy champs 8-0!

We're 2-0 in the @IvyLeague! pic.twitter.com/WJrL7NdO2z

— Princeton WSoccer (@PrincetonWSoc) October 5, 2024

TB had to do a double-take. Was it really 8-0? 

It was. 

So that was, all at once, all of the following:

* Driscoll's 100th win
* the end of the Brown unbeaten streak
* Princeton's first over Brown since 2017
* the most goals scored in an Ivy game by Princeton since an 8-1 win over Penn in 1985
* the largest margin of victory in an Ivy game for Princeton since a 10-0 win over Columbia in 1985
* the largest margin of victory in any game since a 9-0 win over Lehigh in 1999

Those are crazy numbers.

How'd it go from 1-0 to 8-0 in 45 minutes? It was a somewhat normal first half, with only a goal from Lili Bryant 30 minutes in. Okay, there are 1-0 soccer games at the half all the time. 

It took less than a minute of the second half to get it to 2-0, as Heather MacNab cashed in on a penalty kick. Then it was Pietra Tordin's turn to get involved — times three. 

Tordin, who won bronze with the U.S. at the Women's U20 World Cup in Colombia recently, scored the next three, in a span of 15 minutes. Suddenly it was 5-0. 

Princeton wasn't finished, though. Isabella Garces made it 6-0 with 13 minutes left, and then the last two came from Grace Rossner and Ally Murphy a little more than a minute apart. 

The win improved Princeton to 7-3 overall and 2-0 in the league. Next up is Penn Wednesday night at 6 at home, followed by a trip to Yale Sunday. 

As for Driscoll, getting to 100 wins as a Princeton soccer coach is impressive stuff, and it puts him in with elite company in Tiger history. In fact, men's soccer at Princeton dates to 1906, and the women have had a varsity team since 1980.

In all that time, how many coaches have reached 100 wins? 

For the women, only Julie Shackford had done so before Driscoll. Shackford, now the head coach at William & Mary, won 203 with the Tigers.

For the men, Jimmy Reed won 136 games in 29 seasons from 1938-66. The all-time leader in wins at Princeton by a soccer coach is the current men's coach, Jim Barlow, who won his 215th Saturday night at Brown 2-1 to go to 2-0 in the league.

Like pretty much every good coach, Driscoll won't take credit for his achievement. He'll share it all with his assistants and players and all the others who have helped his program move to this point.

Also, if TB knows anything about good coaches, he also won't have time for milestones. Not during a season. Not during a week like this in a season. 

There are still two more games to go. Princeton is now one of two teams in the league to be 2-0-0, along with Columbia. 

The Lions are still down the road for the Tigers though. First, though, it's Penn Wednesday and Yale Sunday. 

What happened Saturday will be a memory come kickoff time.

Tigers And Lions

In keeping with the "Wild Kingdom" theme for the latter part of this week, TigerBlog did a bit of research on the difference between the largest of the big cats: Tigers and Lions.

As it turns out, Lions are much more sociable than Tigers. On the other hand, Tigers are bigger and longer. 

Lions, as you probably know, travel in packs called a "pride." Some "prides" can have as many 30 lions who travel and hunt together, with often only one of those lions a male. 

Tigers are more solitary. Tigers hunt alone.

The story TB read had some interesting facts, and some relatively unnecessary ones — such as how to tell the difference between the two. That's pretty obvious, no?

The last part of the story asked the question of who would win in a fight between the two. As it turns out, they don't really overlap too often, with the majority of wild Tigers in India and wild lions in Africa. 

There was, though, one famous dust-up between the two species, back in 1914 at the Bronx Zoo. On that occasion, a tiger wandered over to the lion cage and, well, it was pretty much all tiger from there. 

Will there be a repeat of that outcome tomorrow, at a location about four miles away from where the 1914 fight occurred? Or will it the revenge of the Lions? 

This time, it'll be at Wien Stadium, and not the Bronx Zoo, where the Tigers and Lions meet up. This time, it's in football, as Princeton is at Columbia at noon tomorrow.

The game is the Ivy League opener for both. While traveling in their separate circles the first two weeks, both teams have a win and a loss.

The Tigers started out with a loss to Lehigh and then followed that with a win over Howard. Columbia won its first game, defeating Lafayette, and then lost last week to Georgetown.

What do the stats say through two weeks? TB's first thought is that there hasn't been enough Ivy football yet to draw any serious conclusions. 

Then again, there is always something to take away. 

Consider, for instance, that Columbia is the top rushing team in the league at this point, with 185.5 yards per game on the ground. If you look at the Lions' two games, they had 204 rushing yards against Lafayette in the win but still had 167 last week in the Georgetown loss. 

Princeton went from minus-7 rushing yards against Lehigh to 195 against Howard. Also through two games, Columbia is No. 2 in the league in rushing defense (87.5 per game).

When it comes to rushing stats in the early season, here's an interesting one: Columbia has two of the top four rushers in the league with Joey Giorgi (second) and Malcolm Terry II (fourth), and yet the two of them combined do not have the same number of yards as the league leader, Penn's Malachi Hosley (153.5-137.5).

Hmmm. Is there anything else interesting statistically after two weeks? 

Oh, here's one. It's one of TB's favorites every year. 

Princeton leads the league in the number of fourth-down conversion attempts with nine. The next two teams are Harvard and Brown, with five each. TB is (almost) always a fan of going for it on fourth down. 

This will be the 93rd meeting between the two, and Princeton holds a 75-16-1 lead in the series, which dates to 1874. Princeton has won 11 of the last 12 meetings, including a 10-7 win a year ago on a rainy night in Princeton.

This is the only Ivy game in the first four weeks for these two teams. Princeton will be going from playing a team for the first time (Howard last week) to the 93rd time (Columbia this week) and then back to the first time next week (at Mercer). Columbia will play Wagner next week.

Getting off to a winning start in the Ivy League is huge. Factor in that the team that comes away with a win will have two weeks to get ready for the league sprint of six games in six weeks, while the other team will have to wait two weeks to try to turn the page on a league loss. 

It's the Tigers and the Lions on this week's Wild Kingdom Game of the Week.

Oh, and TB was right. "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" was on Sunday nights on NBC after football, followed by "The Wonderful World Of Disney."

Wild Kingdom

Another day, another picture of a reptile.

Welcome to TigerBlog's Wild Kingdom. If, by the way, you're in TB's age, then you know 1) there used to be a show called "Wild Kingdom" and 2) who was the sponsor of that show. 

Anyway, this guy was sent to TB by his friend Todd, who also said that such a turtle can live to be 35 years old and never go more than a few hundred yards from where they hatched. TB then suggested that Todd put the turtle in the car, drive him to the other side of the neighborhood and give him a crazy adventure that most turtles never get to experience. 

That's how they do it at TB's Wild Kingdom.

It was Todd, by the way, who pointed out that the snake who slithered by yesterday was a "garter" snake, and not a "garden" snake. TB is glad that after all these years, he finally has that cleared up.

Segueing from reptiles to mammals, it'll be the Tigers and Bears this weekend in soccer. 

The women's game will be on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium, with kickoff at 1. The men's game will be in Providence, with kickoff at 6.

Both teams will head into their big weekend games with the momentum of having won their Ivy League openers last weekend and then shutting out a non-league opponent in midweek. 

In the case of the men, that meant a 2-0 win over Harvard was followed by a 1-0 win over a previously unbeaten Monmouth team. For the women, it meant back-to-back 3-0 wins, first at Cornell and then at home against Lafayette. 

The Princeton men are No. 60 in the RPI rankings, while Brown is No. 99. In all five Ivy teams are in the Top 100, led by Cornell at 26 and then Penn at 30, Yale at 49, Princeton at 60, Dartmouth at 71 and then Brown at 99.

Who is No. 1, by the way? That would be Pitt, followed by Marshall, Stanford, Hofstra and Providence. That's RPI, not any coaches' rankings, and that's not the five TB would have guessed.

On the women's side, you have a top five of ... wait, let TB think about it. He'd guess North Carolina, Stanford, Florida State, UCLA and Texas A&M. Now let him look ... 

... and he got one correct. The top five is North Carolina, Michigan State, Arkansas, Wake Forest and Mississippi State. 

Princeton is the top rated Ivy school at No. 58. There are five, with Yale at 64, Brown at 73, Harvard at 78 and Dartmouth at 91.

If you add that together, you come away with 10 of the 16 Ivy League soccer teams ranked in the RPI top 100. That's impressive.

It also means that no Ivy game is a gimme and no Ivy team is a pushover. It makes each game its own challenge.

Mathematically what it means is that, on both sides, at least one team currently ranked in the top 100 will not be making it into the Ivy tournament, since only the top four make it. In fact, TB will go as far as to say that he'd guess that come Ivy tournament time, there will be at least one team among the eight in the two tournaments that is not currently in the top 100.

Princeton's men are now the No. 3 scoring defense team in the league. Brown's men are the No. 2 scoring offense team. That means nothing when that game starts. 

Princeton's women are the top scoring defense in the league, having allowed just five goals. Brown is second, having allowed eight. Princeton has scored 14 goals for the year, with six having come in the last two games after scoring eight in the first seven. 

Again, none of that matters in Ivy soccer. It's a league of great balance and depth. Every game is big.  

Oh, and it was "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom." Extra credit if you remember that Marlon Perkins was the host. 

TB thinks it aired after NFL football on Sundays when he was a kid. He could be wrong about that. 

And tomorrow on TB's Wild Kingdom, it'll be a special Big Cats edition, with a look at Saturday's Tigers-Lions football game.