The Shoe At The End Of The Road

Where to start on a Friday in July? 

Well, how about the shoe at the end of the road? 

If you turn left out of TigerBlog's driveway and follow his street for about a quarter mile, it reaches a T intersection with something of a main road. Right where the two streets come together has sat a shoe, one single solitary shoe. 

It appears to be a flip-flop. How did one shoe get there? And more importantly, how long will it be there? 

You can't really stop your car on the main road to get it. You possibly could walk from the end of TB's road onto the main one, though there is a bit of a blind corner not far from that spot, so it would be risky.

The big storms of this past week haven't blown the shoe one inch in any direction. TigerBlog is officially fascinated by "The Shoe At The End Of The Road." 

Meanwhile ... 

*

Tosan Evbuomwan made his NBA 2K26 Summer League debut yesterday with the Brooklyn Nets against Oklahoma City. If you're in Las Vegas, you can go the games. If you're not, you can see them on an ESPN network or the NBA Network.

Brooklyn lost the game 90-81, but Evbuomwan did what he always does: fill the stat sheet. In fact, he finished with 13 points, four rebounds, three assists, one steal and one blocked shot in his 24 minutes. Given that it was Game 1 of the summer league, you can't really ask for much more than those numbers. 

Evbuomwan was the 2022 Ivy League Player of the Year and then a first-team All-Ivy League selection a year later, when he led the Tigers to the NCAA Sweet 16. His NBA career started with Detroit and Memphis before he played in 28 games for the Nets a year ago, averaging 9.5 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game. 

Your next chance to see him this summer is Sunday at 8 Eastern against the Washington Wizards. That game will be on ESPN2. 

*

Whenever an athlete is officially added to a Princeton Athletics roster, an email is sent out from the compliance office to all of the various offices that need to have that information. Communications, obviously, is one of them. 

This week saw a flood of emails as members of the Class of 2029 have been steadily added onto rosters. They're all just names in an email now, albeit names with their own backstories on how they have come to this moment in their lives. 

Each email that comes in lists the newcomers name and sport. It gets TB wondering, as he often does, about how these athletes end up in the sport they'll compete in at Princeton. 

He's certainly talked to enough athletes to find out that there is a certain amount of randomness to how. Some of it is location. Some of it is what their parents played. Some of it is what they saw on TV when they were just starting out. 

And is athletic ability transferable? What skills transfer from sport to sport and what skills don't? 

Can somebody do a thesis on this? Hey, maybe one of the names on one of this week's emails will end up doing just that in 2029.

*

The picture that accompanied yesterday's entry is one of TB's favorite Princeton photos ever. If you don't remember, here it is again:

That's Pete Carril and Kit Mueller, from a press conference prior to an NCAA tournament game. If TB had to guess, it would be the 1990 game against Arkansas at the University of Texas. 

TB also wishes he could remember the context of the moment. Oh well.  

Who would have guessed at the time that Mueller would have two kids who would go on to play lacrosse at Princeton (Ellie, Class of 2024, with the women, and Cooper, a rising junior with the men)? 

And to those who reached out yesterday to ask for another Coach Carril quote, there is this one:

Princeton was in an airport getting ready to fly back from one of those December tournaments, one in which the Tigers had, in Carril's words, "given a good account of ourselves." As the team waited at the gate, a fan of the home team came up to him, shook his hand and said "Coach, it was a real honor to have you here and to see how your team plays the game. But you must hear that everywhere you go."

Carril then said this to the man: "I get that everywhere I go — except for Princeton."  

*

The Premier Lacrosse League is back this weekend after last weekend's All-Star Game. This week's stop is in Chicago, with two games tonight and two games tomorrow. 

It's a Princeton-heavy Friday night in the PLL. It starts with Boston (Coulter Mackesy, Alexander Vardaro) against New York (Jake Stevens) at 7, followed by Utah (Ryan Ambler, Beau Pederson, Tom Schreiber) against Philadelphia (Zach Currier, Michael Sowers) at 9:30. That second game is also a matchup of former Princeton head coaches Chris Bates and Bill Tierney.  

*

There are six weeks remaining until the first athletic event of 2025-26, which will be a women's soccer game at home against Rutgers on Friday, Aug. 22. 

Will The Shoe At The End Of The Road still be there?  

In the meantime, have a great summer weekend.  

Happy 95th

Tom McCarthy, one of the top sportscasters in the business, celebrated a birthday a few days ago. 

He's also a new grandfather, by the way. His son Patrick, also a sportscaster, recently became a dad. 

In fact, everybody say hello to Quinley Grace McCarthy:

The names "Tom McCarthy" and "Patrick McCarthy" should be quite familiar to any Princeton fan. Tom is the longtime television play-by-play man for the Philadelphia Phillies, as well as a mainstay on the NFL and college basketball. 

Patrick is behind the mic for the New York Mets. He's also, for some reason, a huge Winnipeg Jets fan, and he actually got TigerBlog to root for the team in the NHL playoffs this past spring. It didn't quite work out well. 

Both father and son can trace their current successes back to Jadwin Gym and Powers Field at Princeton Stadium, where they both spent time on the radio for Princeton football and men's basketball. If you ask either of them, they will tell you that they cherish their time at Princeton. 

When TB spoke to Tom on his birthday, he asked him if he had any idea how many baseball games he's broadcasted in his life, going all the way back to his time with the then-brand new Trenton Thunder. His estimate? 

It would be between five and six thousand. That's a lot of baseball games. And that doesn't count any other broadcasting.

TigerBlog asked him if he still gets excited for gamedays, which of course he does. 

As TB said those words, it reminded him of this quote: 

"The hardest thing in the world to do is to do one thing particularly well for a long period of time at whatever standards you establish. Take the doctor who delivers his first baby. That's a huge thrill. Does he, 30 years later, get the same thrill. Or did Rex Harrison after 1,000 performances of My Fair Lady?" 

That's a pretty good one, no? 

You probably, without much difficulty, guessed whose quote that is.  

Of course. The answer is obviously Pete Carril. It was one of many great quotes that Princeton's former men's basketball coach uttered in his 29 years on the Tiger bench, before he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.  

If you want to hear something really wild, Carril spent 29 years at Princeton — and it's now been 29 years since he left. Wild, right? 

Pete Carril passed away in 2022, shortly after his 92nd birthday. He would have turned 95 today, July 10. 

There has never been anyone else like Pete Carril at Princeton, and there never will be anyone else like him. His personality, his backstory, his humor, his competitiveness, his appearance — they were all unique. 

He wore a pained expression on his face almost all the time, except for when he showed that wide grin that could take over his face. His voice was low and gravelly. He gave it to you straight, no matter who "you" were. When he wanted your attention, he certainly got it. 

His public speaking ability was off the charts. TB once collected the 21 best quotes from Pete Carril. That list didn't include the away-from-the-public ones that he couldn't repeat, the ones that are etched in TB's memory, most of which he has never mentioned publicly.  

Here's one that TB has shared before. After one of the in-season tournaments that Princeton played, a reporter asked Carril his thoughts on one of his players who had made the all-tournament team. Without flinching — almost as it he had it scripted — he simply said "so did the guy he was guarding." 

Pete almost never prepared any remarks. He simply took the microphone and said what was on his mind and what was in his heart. He was intimidating and engaging at the same time, in a way that TigerBlog means as positively as he can. 

If you were in his orbit, you didn't want to let him down. You wanted him to respect your contributions, and you knew it when he did.  

TigerBlog had a front row seat for most of the last seven years Carril spent at Princeton. He was also the last men's basketball sports information director to work with Carril, something that earned TB a lot of free soup on Fridays. 

His style wasn't for everyone, and he recognized that too, which is why he left Princeton after the 1996 season, which ended famously with the Ivy League playoff win over Penn and then NCAA tournament win over UCLA. It's not easy for TB to keep in mind that the number of people at Princeton who knew Carril well has dwindled down to a very small number. 

Ah, but those people cherish that they had the chance know him. TigerBlog certainly does. 

Happy 95th Coach.  

That's The Ticket

Well that's a big fish. 

To be exact, it's a 40-pound yellowtail amberjack. He's the only one in the picture who isn't smiling, as you might have noticed. 

The fisherman would be Matthew Anderson, who definitely is smiling. Matthew and TigerBlog Jr. grew up together, they both spent quite a few years working together as ballboys for Princeton basketball. 

Oh, those were the days. When there was a home game during the week, TB would leave Princeton in the afternoon, drive about 30 minutes to pick them up, drive them back to Princeton and then drive them home after the game.  

Matthew went on to play lacrosse at Chestnut Hill College, and he's also helped coach the junior varsity team at his old high school, Pennsbury, whose colors just happen to be orange and black and who gets a lot of use out of an orange "P" as a logo. 

If you're wondering, that fish was caught somewhere off the California coast the other day. For his part, TB can take no credit for helping, as he was 3,000 miles away at the time, though he did give Matthew that "Princeton Lacrosse" pullover. 

TigerBlog has never caught a fish anywhere near that large. He has caught a bunch of small ones, mostly shad in the Delaware River with John McPhee. 

In fact, the first time he caught a shad, he fought it all the way onto the boat and figured it had to weigh at least 40 pounds. Actually, it was two pounds, but hey, fish tails, right? That's the ticket.

And speaking of tickets (how's that for a segue)?

If you've been on goprincetontigers.com in the last two days, you might have noticed that there has been a story about Princeton (the University as a whole, including Athletics) and its new ticketing system. It's called "vivenu," and you can read about it HERE.

This is from the story:

Princeton University and Princeton Athletics have announced a partnership with vivenu, a leading technology provider in global event ticketing, to further modernize and create a simplified ticket purchasing process for Tiger fans and supporters. Through new technological advancements including a fully-refreshed ticketing website and purchase flow at goprincetotigers.com/tickets, streamlined mobile ticket downloads with season ticket passes, and easier venue entry, vivenu will assist Princeton fans in experiencing a more intuitive and efficient process during their customer journey with the Tigers. 

If you have an account on file, you're going to need to follow the steps to create a new one in the new system. It's very easy to do. 

Right now, football season tickets are available. Opening day? That would be Sept. 20, when San Diego will be at Powers Field at Princeton Stadium for the first of five home games, along with Columbia (Oct. 3), Mercer (Oct. 11),  Harvard (Oct. 25) and Yale (Nov. 15).

If you're planning ahead, Princeton is also at Lafayette (Sept. 27), Brown (Oct. 18), Cornell (Nov. 1), Dartmouth (Nov. 8) and Penn (Nov. 15).  

Next up will be men's and women's hockey season tickets, which go on sale July 21. Beyond that will be tickets for men's and women's basketball and wrestling, with men's lacrosse tickets still to come beyond that. 

The new ticketing system makes it easy to transfer tickets from one person to another or to donate tickets to non-profit groups. If you're ticket is saved to your device will automatically update if the start time changes.

There was a time when collecting ticket stubs was something pretty much everyone did, especially for big games and concerts. When TB first started working at Princeton, designing Princeton's tickets was a big thing, with an emphasis on making them look as artistic as possible. 

Those days are gone. Now it's about convenience and the ability to simply download them to your device. 

Princeton's new "vivenu" system does all of that and more. 

 

Thanks Allen

TigerBlog has been watching a great deal of the Wimbledon tennis tournament. 

His favorite player now is Ben Shelton, who plays with an unmistakable joy that makes him impossible to root against, at least for TB. His post-match on-court interviews have been pure gold, like the one the other day about how he needs someone at Goldman Sachs to give his sister Emma an additional week off so she could stay and watch him.

Emma was still there yesterday as her brother rolled into the quarterfinals. His opponent will be the top seed, Jannik Sinner, who advanced despite being down two sets to none and tied 2-2 in the third when his opponent, Grigor Sinner, couldn't continue due to a pectoral injury. Sinner showed great sportsmanship in the moment and in his on-court interview, and it was clearly not the way the No. 1 seed wanted to move on. 

Also, it was over the weekend that Chris Evert said that the women's No. 1 seed, Aryna Sabalenka, plays better when she's "pissed off."

TigerBlog took that as a validation of something he said on the radio during a Princeton men's basketball game many years ago, like 35 or so years ago. He's told you this before, but here goes again: 

Back in the early 1990s, TB was often part of a three-man radio crew with David Brody and Rich Simkus. One night, as halftime came, TigerBlog said that Pete Carril looked "pissed off" as he left the court.

Brody and Simkus then looked at him without speaking, at which TB said "what, you can't say 'pissed off' on the radio?"

At that point, Brody said: "I guess you can, because you just did. Twice." 

If it's good enough for Chris Evert, it's good enough for TigerBlog, no? 

Meanwhile, Wimbledon sits about an hour down the M25 from Henley-on-Thames, which is where the recently concluded regatta for 2025 took place. If you recall, TB yesterday wrote about the representatives of the Princeton heavyweight men's program who had competed there this past week so successfully. 

And thanks to a heads up from loyal reader Allen Scheuch, Class of 1976, TB has learned there is more to be told from Henley. 

Claire Collins, the 2019 von Kienbusch Award winner as the top Princeton female senior athlete, has had quite a post-Princeton career in rowing. She was especially impressive at this year's Henley.

First of all, she is a two-time U.S. Olympian, having finished seventh in the women's fours in Tokyo in 2021 and then fifth in the women's eights in Paris last summer. She also won a bronze medal at the 2022 World Rowing Championships in women's pairs. 

She has also been rowing at Cambridge University and was part of this year's winning crew in the famed Boat Race between Cambridge and Oxford. 

This past week at Henley she rowed in not one but two separate events. 

First, she was with the Cambridge boat that lost to Oxford Brookes in the semifinals of the highly competitive Island Challenge Cup. As TB learned when he was at Henley a few years ago, "Oxford University" and "Oxford Brookes" are not the same institutions. 

Collins also teamed with Wisconsin alum Maddie Wanamaker, a fellow 2024 Olympian, to win the Hambleden Pairs Challenge Cup. The two Americans covered the 2,112 meters in 7:53, winning the final by more than four lengths. 

Rowing in one event at Henley is tough. Rowing in two? The physical drain has to be ridiculous. 

Each day brings another race. If you win, you advance. If you don't, you're done. Collins put in a lot of effort at this year's Henley.  

In addition to Collins, the Princeton women's lightweight boat also rowed in the Island Challenge Cup, getting a first-round bye, winning its second race against Bristol and then falling to Durham. 

There are no separate divisions for lightweights, so the Tigers were racing against the open weight boats of both of the English powerhouses.   

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Forget fireworks.

For TigerBlog, no Fourth of July is complete without a rewatch of one of the greatest movies ever made: "Yankee Doodle Dandy." As a caveat, you probably have to be at least 50 or so — or maybe even 60 or so — to agree with TB. 

If you are, then the mere thought of how James Cagney dances and sings his way through the movie makes you smile. It certainly does for TigerBlog. 

How can you not love this:

Right? Of course. 

That scene is the best in the movie, though there is one song after another that is classic Americana. And so even though today is July 7, TB will stick with "Yankee Doodle Dandy" for today.

* 

GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROADWAY

The movie, from 1942, tells the story of the life of George M. Cohan, who was born on July ... 3rd, in 1878. Cohan was from a vaudeville family who went on to become one of the biggest stars in Broadway history, as well as one of the most patriotic Americans who has ever lived. 

During the course of the movie, Cagney, who won the Academy Award for playing Cohan, sings and dances to that incredibly famous song, one that you've probably heard even if you're younger than 60. 

Yankee Stadium sits not far from Broadway. In addition to being the home of the New York Yankees, it is also the place where New York City FC of Major League Soccer hangs its collective hat. 

This past weekend, NYCFC defeated Toronto 3-1 at Yankee Stadium. The home team was up 2-0 before a goal by Toronto in the 64th minute turned the momentum around. Would this one get away? No, it wouldn't. 

And why? Because in the 74th minute, Kevin O'Toole finished a pretty play to put NYCFC up 3-1, which would be the final.  O'Toole, of course, was a two-time Ivy League men's soccer Player of the Year and the 2022 Roper Trophy winner as the top male athlete at Princeton. 

You can see his goal HERE (at the six minute mark of the video). 

This was a quote from his Princeton head coach Jim Barlow from a feature story that TB wrote about O'Toole after the Tigers clinched the Ivy League title his senior year:

“He’s so easy going and calm. He’s so calm under pressure. He doesn’t get rattled. He embraces the moment, and he never forces anything. It’s clear how much fun he’s having when he plays. He just makes really big plays in really huge moments.” 

*

YOU'RE A GRAND OLD FLAG

The patriotism theme is all over the movie, beginning with when Cohan is summoned to the White House to meet with FDR and running all the way through to the very end, when Cohan — having shared his life story with the President in flashbacks — leaves the White House, dancing down the stairs and out into the street, where a military parade is passing by while everyone sings "Over There." 

Cohan, who wrote the song, is asked if he knows the words, to which he responds: "Yes, I believe I do," which are the final words of the movie. 

Beth Yeager, a rising senior on the Princeton field hockey team and a three-time first-team All-American, played two games this weekend for the USA national team against New Zealand. The Americans won Saturday 3-0 and then again yesterday 3-0, and Yeager scored two of the three goals in the game yesterday. 

Both of her goals came on drag flicks on penalty corners. If you've been following Princeton field hockey at all, you've seen that before from Yeager. 

Both of her goals can be seen HERE.

*

YANKEE DOODLE BOY

The scene that TB shared above shows jockey Johnny Jones as he heads to England for the big race. It's the show-stopper. 

If you haven't watched the clip yet, check out how Cagney dances. He studied Cohan's actual dancing and imitated it, twice suffering from an ankle sprain during filming. 

The big races this weekend in England were at the Henley Royal Regatta, an event TB has attended in the past. If you've never been, it's definitely worth a trip. 

Princeton's heavyweight rowing program produced two winners this weekend. Tristan Wenger, a rising sophomore, was part of the winning team in the Visitors' Challenge Cup with the powerhouse Leander Club and Tideway Scullers School. 

Incoming freshman Joe Wellington was in the winning boat in the Fawley Cup with the Windsor Boys' School.

Princeton also had a runner-up boat in the Silver Goblets doubles, with Theo Bell and Marcus Chute. 

All of those Princetonians, by the way, are British, so they probably weren't too upset with the fact that Johnny Jones lost his big race.  

 

"Red Panda We Love You"

TigerBlog remembers way back in the day when there was a student slam-dunk contest at halftime of a men's basketball game in Jadwin Gym.

He doesn't remember names. He just remembers an unbelievable series of dunks from three students, some or all of whom were on the track and field team at the time. Now that was a halftime show. 

Oh, and there was the guy in 1996 who participated in a halftime contest at Jadwin. When TB wrote his top 40 events in Jadwin history on the building's 40th anniversary in 2009, he ranked this one sixth. Here's what he wrote about it:

A fan, Dave Ulrich of Mount Laurel, N.J., comes out of the stands to participate in a halftime contest during the Princeton-Dartmouth women's basketball game. The contestant has three opportunities to shoot from halfcourt, once each from the where the midcourt line and sidelines meet and once from center court. If he can make two of the three shots, he will win a car. To this point, only one contestant has made even one shot, which earned $100. On this night, this particular contestant makes the first shot and then makes the second, winning the car (a Saturn). Unaware that he has already won the car, he thinks he must make the third one as well — which he then does. The highlight is played nationally and is the “Play of the Day” on ESPN's SportsCenter. 

TB wonders if Dave is still driving around in his Saturn.

Since then, TB would say his favorite halftime show at Jadwin has been "Drums of Thunder," the percussion group of fourth graders from Montclair who pretty much blow the roof off of the building each time they play. 

Then there is Red Panda. She's the woman who balances the plates and bowls on her head and feet while riding a unicycle. How in the world do you do that the first time? 

Anyway, she's long been a Jadwin favorite, and a favorite all over the country. She was doing her act at halftime of the Indiana-Minnesota WNBA game Tuesday night when she fell and had to be taken to the hospital with what apparently was a wrist injury. 

Caitlin Clark even sent her a message after the game: "Red Panda, we love you."

Everyone does. 

By the way, TB was trying to find a photo of Red Panda from her act and as such did a search. And what came up? Lots of actual red pandas. Cute.  

*

Here's a fun headline: "Entire Men's Hockey Team Named To ECAC All-Academic Team."

That's right. Princeton went 27 for 27, with every single player's having achieved at least a 3.0 cumulative GPA or 3.0 for the last three semesters. 

That's a lot of smart guys in one locker room. You can read more about it HERE.

*

The Premier Lacrosse League will hold its annual all-star weekend in Kansas City, beginning tomorrow with the skills competition and women's game and then continuing Saturday with the East vs. West men's game. 

Princeton will have one starter on both sides of the men's game. Not shockingly, Michael Sowers and Tom Schreiber are once again all-stars.

In fact, Schreiber has been an all-star 11 times now between Major League Lacrosse and the PLL. Sowers is now a PLL all-star for the fourth time. They've both been all-stars on the pro level every year they've been healthy. 

You can watch the all-star game Saturday at 1 on ESPN and ESPN+.

*

Speaking of men's lacrosse, TigerBlog found a picture of Coulter Mackesy, a rookie on the Boston Cannons, after a game last weekend in San Diego. Mackesy is posing with three of his former Tiger teammates: Jim Williams, Jameson Moore and Jackson Kane. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Princeton Men's Lacrosse (@princetonlax)

 

Hey, it's always good to have a little fun.
 

*

This is the Fourth of July weekend, of course. Ah, but lingering the not-so-distant future? 

Well, the first athletic event of the 2025-26 season is lingering a mere seven weeks away, as it'll be the women's soccer team against Rutgers on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium on Aug. 22. The team released its schedule for the season, which you can see HERE.

Seven weeks. That's not that far away. 

Still, have a safe and fun Fourth of July.  

More Hoops

And for the second straight day, TigerBlog starts off with something of a correction. 

Before he gets to that, he'll share a story from the 1980s, when he was still covering high schools at the Trenton Times. 

There had been a call into the paper asking for a correction to be issued regarding one of the local teams, the reason long since lost to history. TB's then-colleague Harry Chaykun said this: "How about just writing 'The Times regrets the coverage.'"

That still makes TB laugh, 40 years later. Ah, Harry. TB definitely learned a great deal about the newspaper business — and the effective use of sarcasm — from Harry. 

Today's correction — and TigerBlog does not regret the coverage — comes from Jason Merims, a loyal reader. When TB said yesterday that he'd come up with five instances where an NBA team had Ivy Leaguers as teammates, Jason came back with one more. 

And how could TB have missed this one? 

It was on the 1976-77 New York Knicks, where Jim McMillian of Columbia was a teammate of TB's classmate Bill Bradley.  

Those Knicks missed the playoffs, going 40-42 in the regular season. That would be Bradley's last season in the NBA. A year later he was elected as a United States Senator from New Jersey for the first of three times.

McMillian's sophomore year at Columbia was the 1967-68 season, which was also the first for Pete Carril at Princeton. The Lions and Tigers tied for the regular season championship, setting up a playoff game at St. John's for the NCAA tournament bid. 

Columbia won that game 92-74 as McMillian poured in 37 points. 

Here was a quote from Carril after the game from the Daily Princetonian:

"Nobody helped out on defense at all—they let the guards drive right by us." And how did the writer attribute the quote? Did it say "Carril said?" Did it say "Carril responded?" 

No. It said "Carril grimaced." Who can't close their eyes and see Carril's face at that? 

That was the only time between 1963 and 1988 when the Ivy League representative in the NCAA tournament was someone other than Princeton or Penn. 

McMillian, for his part, went on to be part of the great 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers team, which won 33 straight games and then ultimately the NBA title by beating the Knicks (and Bradley) in five games in the finals. The Knicks returned the favor a year later, winning their second title in four years (a streak that is now two titles in 55 years).

So a thank you goes to Jason for pointing out the missed teammates. 

Another thank you goes TB's longtime friend and local sportswriter Rich Fisher, who emailed yesterday with another basketball note. 

If you knew Carril, you knew "grimaced" was perfect. If you know Fish, then you know he would write this: 

"Well this hoop item may or may not interest you as a little Blog Blurb, but I'm sending just in case. 

 Fred Falchi has gotten the head coaching job at Pennington, and he's bringing back his former player Richmond Aririguzoh as a volunteer assistant his first year. He said Richmond is finishing up his masters' degree so this may be a one-year deal but I'm letting you know. If you don't use it, I'll throw myself off a cliff ... but it will be a very low cliff, so I'll live."

Yeah, that had to be Fish. 

Falchi was the longtime coach at Trenton Catholic, which used to be McCorristin and then before that St. Anthony's.

Aririguzoh played for Falchi during the final years at Trenton Catholic, which has since closed. Aririguzoh also played at Princeton, where he was a two-time All-Ivy selection, including a first-team selection as a senior in 2019-20.

If you look in the Princeton men's basketball record book, you'll see Aririguzoh's name under the field goal percentage section. His career number of .636 ranks second all-time at Princeton (who is first?), and he holds the No. 2 and No. 9 best single-season numbers. 

Who is first on the single-season list? 

The career record is held by Howard Levy (.647). The single-season record is held by Alan Williams (.703).  

July Hoops

Hey, it's July 1.

What else is there to talk about other than basketball, right? 

Oh, there is one thing. TigerBlog wrote yesterday that Princeton has led the Ivy League in the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup standings every year except for five since it began in 1994. As it turns out, that's actually all but three times. 

And with that, now the conversation can turn to basketball. There are, in fact, four Princeton Basketball-related updates. 

The first is a story by Elliott Carr on goprincetontigers.com about recent alum Blake Peters and his "Journey to Jadwin." You can read it HERE.

When it comes to the basketball career Peters had, there will always be two highlights for anyone who has been paying attention. The first came when he was a freshman at Evanston High School outside of Chicago. 

It came in a January game against Maine South. His team was down two with 2.6 seconds to go. Peters rebounded a Maine South missed free throw and proceeded to toss in the game-winner from about 80 feet away, with one hand, no less. 

The shot earned him the top play of the day on SportsCenter and a trip to the ESPY Awards. 

Then there was the more recent one, the one that came in a Princeton uniform. This was in the 2023 NCAA tournament, when Peters made 10 three-pointers in wins over Arizona and Missouri, helping Princeton to the Sweet 16. 

Read the story. Watch the video of his high school shot. Remember his postgame interview on CBS after the Tigers beat Missouri in the NCAA tournament. 

Next up? A current Tiger, Jackson Hicke, a rising junior. 

Now that it's July, it's accurate to say that later this month Hicke will be competing at the World University Games in Germany in 3X3. It'll be an all-Ivy League team, as Hicke will be joined by Avery Brown (Columbia), Chandler Piggé (Harvard) and Nick Townsend (Yale).

Then there is Parker Hill, another recent graduate. Hill just signed to play professionally in Switzerland with a team called Hellios, who plays in the highest level of Swiss pro women's basketball. 

Hill will be the sixth women's basketball alum to be playing professionally this year, joining Blake Dietrick '15 (3XBA), Carlie Littlefield '21 (3XBA), Abby Meyers '22 (Maccabi Bnot Ashdod), Grace Stone '23 (Perry Lakes Hawks) and Kaitlyn Chen '24 (Golden State Valkyries). 

It's the last one that TB would like to talk about now. 

Here's a highlight from the Valkyries' 84-57 win over Seattle Sunday night:

Chen vision -> @TemiFagbenle -> team vibes high. @ampm | Assist of the Game pic.twitter.com/SxXEwFLN3U

— Golden State Valkyries (@valkyries) June 30, 2025

That was an Ivy-to-Ivy assist, from Chen to Harvard alum Temi Fagbenle (who also was a teammate of Abby Meyers' with the London Lions team that won the European championship a year ago). Elliott (he of the Blake Peters story) had asked TB last week if he knew of any Ivy League teammates in the NBA, what with Princeton alum Tosan Evbuomwan as a returnee for the Brooklyn Nets and former Michigan and Yale player Danny Wolf's having been drafted by the Nets. 

It's possible that there are more, but TB found five of those examples. The first was in 1949-50, when the Boston Celtics had Yale's Tony Lavelli and Dartmouth's Ed Leede (the Big Green arena is named for him). 

There was also Matt Maloney and Ira Bowman on the 2000-01 Atlanta Hawks. The other three all involved Princetonians: 

* Butch van Breda Kolff and Bud Palmer were teammates for three years on the Knicks in the 40s 
* Brian Taylor and Penn’s Tony Price were teammates on the 1980-81 Clippers
* Geoff Petrie and Penn's Dave Wohl were on the 1972-73 Trailblazers

As for Chen, she's off to a really good start in Golden State, who is also off to a good start in its first season. 

More than the points and the rebounds and the assists, you can see the absolute joy that Chen plays with, in that highlight or in any other.  

It's the same look you saw when she was playing at Princeton, and when she won an NCAA title at UConn as a grad student last season. 

And that's your Princeton Basketball update for July 1. 

Now go enjoy your summer day.  

No. 32

TigerBlog's former colleague Stacy Bunting begins her tenure as the Director of Athletics at Bates College this week. 

Bates, if you didn't know, is the Bobcats. The college is located in Lewiston, Maine — where it gets relatively cold in the winter. 

It's around a 45-minute drive north from Bates to the campus of Colby College, which is in Waterville. The Director of Athletics there is Amanda DeMartino, who came to Colby from the College of New Jersey. 

It's the Mercer County to Maine NESCAC AD pipeline.

The NESCAC is the New England Small College Athletic Conference. It is the one of the two dominant conferences in Division III athletics, along with the University Athletic Association, at least if you go by the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup. 

In fact, when TigerBlog went through the final standings for 2024-25, and it was sort of like trying to figure out who won Heps cross country. The No. 1 team in Division III was Emory of the UAA, which also had No. 4 (Washington U.), No. 8 (Chicago), No. 9 (NYU) and No. 16 (Carnegie Mellon).  

The NESCAC countered with No. 3 (Tufts), No. 5 (Middlebury), No. 7 (Amherst), No. 11 (Williams) and No. 19 (Wesleyan). That's 10 of the top 19 teams in Division III, all from those two conferences. Of the other nine, they represent seven different conferences. 

If you're scoring it like cross country, with the top five finishers, then the UAA has 38 to the 45 of the NESCAC. If you add in the sixth for both conferences, though, then you have No. 33 Colby and No. 41 Case Western Reserve, which makes the score NESCAC 78, UAA 79.

Bates, by the way, was 48th in Division III and eighth in the NESCAC. That is one competitive league that Bunting is walking into this week.

If you're wondering who won Division II, that would be Grand Valley State. The top 10 in DII represented nine different conferences. 

Division I? The winner was Texas, who edged out USC and Stanford. Only 4.25 points separated those three. 

The top 33 teams in Division I feature 32 from either the Big Ten, the ACC, the Big 12 and the SEC. The other one is from the Ivy League.

Any guesses? Well duh, it's obviously Princeton. Why else would TB mention it, right? 

The Directors' Cup uses a points system based on NCAA tournament qualification and success. There's nothing else that factors into it. There are no bonus points for being from a Power Conference or for being from a different conference. 

You either make the NCAA tournament or you don't. You either advance or you don't. 

The Cup standings award points in 19 sports for Division I. There are five sports that are included for every team in Division I: baseball, men's basketball, women's basketball, women's volleyball and women's soccer. After that, the top scoring 14 sports per school are counted, so not every school uses the exact same sports. 

The Directors' Cup dates to 1993-94, when Princeton finished 34th. Since then, Princeton's average finish has been 37.1. 

The Tigers have finished as the top Ivy program all but five times. Princeton has also been in the top 50 26 times, including each of the last 15 (other than the Covid years). 

The 2024-25 athletic year saw Princeton win a record 17 Ivy League championships, as well as two other non-Ivy titles. Yes, it was quite a year. 

A new one will be starting soon. How will it go for the Tigers? How will it go for the Bobcats?  

And good luck to Stacey as she starts her new job. You're in a tough league. Moving up in the Directors' Cup will be one big challenge. 

Staying warm will be another. 

It Would Have Been Funny

Something happened to TigerBlog the other day that made him think "this would be a funny way to start a new entry this week."

And now he can't remember what it was. 

It did remind him of this old Pete Carril quote: 

“One of the signs of dementia is that you can remember things from a long time ago but you can't remember what you just did. I read an article about this. I can remember the starting lineup for the old Minneapolis Laker teams. I went to a reunion in Reading of the 1961 team. I think Gary [Walters] was a sub on that team as a sophomore. We made it to the Eastern finals that year. Anyway, I could remember where each of them sat in the classroom. I thought to myself 'dementia; that's what I have.' And then I couldn't remember I read the story, so I thought I was okay, right?” 

Ah yes. There's a Carril quote for everything. 

TB can remember exactly where he was when Carril said that to him, even though it was 18 years ago. He just can't remember what it was that was so funny the other day. 

That quote comes from THIS STORY that TB wrote about Carril in 2007.  

Anyway, whatever it was the other day, it was funny. 

You can laugh now. 

*

If you're in the Eastern time zone, you'll have to stay up late to see Princeton alums in the pros on TV.

The Golden State Valkyries of the WNBA take on the Chicago Sky tonight at 10 Eastern in a game that can be seen on ION. The Valkyries are an expansion team, but they're off to a reasonable start, with a record of 7-7 to date. 

The Valkyries are in a three-way tie, along with Indiana and Las Vegas, for sixth place in the league. They're also one-half game ahead of Washington, who is coached by Princeton alum Sydney Johnson.

Speaking of Princeton alums, Kaitlyn Chen is a rookie on Golden State. Chen, a three-time Most Outstanding Player at the Ivy League tournament who then went on to win the NCAA title at UConn last year as a grad student, made her WNBA debut earlier this week with five points in 20 minutes of gametime. 

*

This week's edition of the Premier Lacrosse League comes from San Diego, where there will be two games tonight and two more tomorrow. All four of those games feature at least one former Princeton Tiger.

Game 1 features the California Redwoods (with Princeton alum Sam English) against the Denver Outlaws at 9 Eastern, followed at 11:30 with the Utah Archers and the New York Atlas. That second game has all kinds of Princeton connections, with Jake Stevens on the Atlas and Beau Pederson, Tom Schreiber and Ryan Ambler all on the Archers, who are coached by former Tiger head coach Chris Bates. 

The other team in the league that's loaded with Princetonians is the Philadelphia Waterdogs, who have Michael Sowers and Zach Currier, not to mention head coach Bill Tierney. The Waterdogs will play California at 6 Eastern tomorrow, with the Boston Cannons (with Coulter Mackesy and Alexander Vardaro) and Carolina Chaos at 8:30.  

Sowers leads the league in assists with 15 and is second in points with 20. Mackesy did not have a goal in his first game but has back-to-back three-goal games since. 

In all, Princeton's alums have combined for 27 goals and 23 assists through the first four weeks of the season.  

*

Princeton fencing was well represented at the Pan American Championships in Brazil. 

From the story on goprincetontigers.com:

The women's épée event saw Princeton fencers take home three medals, with incoming freshman Ruien (Angel) Xiao finishing second, rising junior Hadley Husisian taking third, and Kasia Nixon '21 also taking third as three of the four semifinalists were Princetonians. Argentine Isabel Di Tella defeated American Husisian 15-8 in one semi while Xiao, fencing for Canada, getting a touch past U.S. fencer Nixon 15-14. Di Tella was a touch in front of Xiao 13-12 in the final. Tristan Szapary '24 defeated Venezuelan fencer Ruben Limardo Gascon 15-7 to win the men's épée title, and Maia Chamberlain '22 defeated Mexico's Natalia Botello 15-12 to win the women's saber title. Rising junior Alexandra Lee finished 14th in the women's saber competition.  

The team competitions will be held today and tomorrow.  

License Plates

TigerBlog was driving along yesterday when he noticed that the license plate on the car in front of him ended with "YAV."

Ah, Yav. 

To TigerBlog, "YAV" will always be Harvey Yavener, the longtime local sportswriter who has been one of the most influential people in TB's life. Yav lived into his 90s before passing away two years ago.

If you were ever interviewed by Yav, you remember it. If you ever were in a press conference with Yav, you remember it as well. 

He had a way of making an impression.  

TB will have to reach out to his longtime friend over at the Big Green Alert blog, Bruce Wood, who has to have any number of Yav stories to tell.  

The license plate that ended with "YAV" was one of four that TB has seen in the last few days that conjured up Princeton Athletic memories. Seriously. He's not making this up. 

The first one he saw was "UVA96." 

TigerBlog wanted to follow that car to see if it was a former Virginia men's lacrosse player. Or even fan. 

It it was, then that person would have said "grrrrrr" to TigerBlog. After all, Princeton defeated Virginia in overtime in the NCAA final in both 1994 and 1996. 

Those UVa teams had some of the best players who have ever played, including Michael Watson and Doug Knight, teammates on attack who are both in the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame. Watson, in fact, was the Most Outstanding Player of the 1996 Final Four. 

Those two teamed with Tim Whiteley to form one of the greatest attack units ever — only to be foiled on Memorial Day with OT goals from Princeton's Kevin Lowe and Jesse Hubbard (both Hall of Famers themselves).

Then there was the license plate that ended in "149." What immediately came to mind? 

That would be "Princeton 14, Dartmouth 9."

Obviously TigerBlog is referring to the 2018 football game on Powers Field between a pair of 7-0 teams. It was an epic defensive struggle, one that started with two long scoring drives on each team's first possession and then turned into one where every yard the rest of the way was a struggle. 

Dartmouth's only points after its first drive came on a safety. Princeton's only points after its first drive came on a fourth-quarter touchdown run from John Lovett. 

Princeton went 10-0 that year. Dartmouth went 9-1. That game remains the best Ivy League football game TigerBlog has ever seen. 

This is from the Daily Princetonian:

Princeton came back into the ball game Saturday to nose out a fighting Dartmouth team, 14 to 9. It was as fine an exhibition of cool headedness, determination and fight as has been shown by any Tiger team in recent years.  

If that doesn't sound like writing from 2018, that's because it was from 1940. Did you know that Princeton rallied past Dartmouth in the fourth quarter for a 14-9 win that season too? 

In that game, Dartmouth kicked a field goal from the Tiger 8-yard line to go up 9-7 with a little more than five minutes left, only to have Princeton's David Allerdice bring his team down the field with his passing, including the winning TD pass with two minutes left. 

Then there was one other license plate, though this one wasn't quite like the others. This one was simply "GO TGRS."

When he saw that one, TB was positive that some major Princeton fan was in front of him. Who was it? Would he recognize the driver?

He even sped up to pass the car and see who was driving. Would he figure it out? Or would he get pulled over, because by the time he pulled up next to the car, he was going around 80.

Well, neither possibility actually played out. 

Instead, there was a man behind the wheel who turned to face TB, presumably to see who it was who was chasing him. And there he was, with his gray hair sticking out under his hat.

And what about that hat? Did it say "Princeton Basketball?" Or "Princeton Soccer." Or "Princeton Anything." 

Nope. It said ...  

... Auburn. 

What a letdown that was.  

Those Are The Rules

INSIDE LACROSSE STORY ON PROPOSED WOMEN'S RULES CHANGES 

The NCAA women's lacrosse rules committee seemingly recognized two realities in the sport:

1) the athletes are faster and stronger and shoot harder than they ever have before, and 
2) the games themselves were taking way too long to play

It's a tough position for a committee. You don't want to overhaul everything that has helped your sport grow, while at the same time you have to do something to move the pace of the game along. 

Women's lacrosse games in recent years have regularly run to nearly two hours and 30 minutes, or even longer. And why? 

The main culprit, ironically enough, has been the increased athleticism, which has led to greater goal-scoring numbers. It's made the game way more exciting, of course, though it needed some major fine-tuning. 

What does extra scoring bring? Yes, it results in many more draws at midfield. And that's been the No. 1 source of the extra time. 

It starts with the need to do a stick check after each goal. You've seen this if you've been watching. 

The player who scores has to immediately drop her stick, or, as it has evolved, slams her stick down as hard as possible in triumph. Then the officials have to confirm it's a legal stick, and only then do the teams head to midfield for the draw. 

This rule, by the way, came from overtime of an NCAA championship game a few years ago, when the goal was scored and all of the sticks flew in the air in celebration. The team that lost wanted to challenge the stick that scored the game-winner — though nobody could figure out which one it was. 

This week, the NCAA women's lacrosse rules committee announced that, among other proposals, the need to do a stick check should be eliminated. Also, teams would have 30 seconds to line up at midfield to be ready for the next draw or possession would be automatically given to the other team. 

There are other proposals as well, but that one is the one that should do the most to speed things up. This is from committee chair Amy Foster.

“At the Division I level in particular, there was concern about games consistently extending well beyond two hours. For media purposes, that window is important, but it is also important for just the enjoyment of the game. Changes in the penalty structure and penalty and game administration could positively impact both.” 

Foster, by the way, is a Senior Deputy Athletic Director at Cornell. It seems that both the men's and women's rules committee chairs are from the Ivy League. How about that? 

This was a non-change year for the men's committee but obviously a change year for the women. This proposal, and the others, really seem to be a move in the right direction. 

From here, by the way, the next step is to have the recommendations of the committee go to the NCAA's Playing Rules Oversight Panel for its approval. 

While the subject today is women's lacrosse, TigerBlog would like to congratulate Princeton's coaches for being selected as the IWLCA Mid-Atlantic Region Coaching Staff of the Year. As you hopefully recall, Princeton won the Ivy League championship and reached the NCAA quarterfinals before falling to eventual champion North Carolina. 

Princeton is led by head coach Jen Cook and her staff featuring Maggie Brown, Molly Dougherty, Kerrin Maurer and Ali Robinson.   

This is from the story on goprincetontigers.com:

Princeton's .800 winning percentage was No. 1 in the Ivy League and No. 5 nationally, and the Tigers were among the nation's cleanest teams in terms of possession with a national rank of No. 5 in clearing percentage (.939) and No. 3 in turnovers-per-game (11.1). No team in Ivy League history had a more prolific offensive season than the 2025 Tigers who scored an Ivy record 308 goals, led by a second-team All-American attacker in McKenzie Blake, who broke a 41-year old Ivy League record with 89 goals herself. She was one of three IWCLA All-America selections for Princeton this season, the first such honors during Cook and staff's tenure. Improvement has been the hallmark of this group as they have increased their win total each year, including a +5 improvement in victories this year from last.
Included this year was an 11-game winning streak, Princeton's longest in 21 years and eight wins against teams ranked in the Top-25.

Congrats to the Tiger coaches.

And to the NCAA women's lacrosse rules committee, who seemed to get it right with these proposed changes. 

Welcome Back Coach Kessel

COURTNEY KESSEL NAMED HEAD COACH OF PRINCETON WOMEN'S HOCKEY 

TigerBlog was hoping for a Game 3 in the Men's College World Series.

And a Game 7 in the NHL Finals. 

Oh well. He ended up with neither. There was a Game 7 in the NBA Finals, which didn't exactly have a lot of drama in the fourth quarter. The best part of that game? 

Kristin Chenoweth's version of the national anthem. 

KRISTIN CHENOWETH SINGS THE NATIONAL ANTHEM 🤩

PERFECT WAY TO TIP OFF GAME 7 ON ABC! pic.twitter.com/BVUEcNmD8L

— NBA (@NBA) June 23, 2025

 Who couldn't have liked that? Okay, maybe TB is a bit biased because Chenoweth was the original Glinda in "Wicked." 

Still, she crushed the anthem Sunday night in Oklahoma City, which is close to where she grew up. Who knew she was such a big Thunder fan? 

By the way, if you could go to either 1) the MCWS, 2) Game 7 of the NBA Finals or 3) the deciding game of the Stanley Cup finals, which would you choose? 

TB would go with the baseball. 

And all of that brings him to, without a segue, the hiring of the new head coach of the Princeton women's hockey team. 

Courtney Kessel was introduced yesterday as the new head coach of the Tiger women's hockey program. She comes to Princeton from the same league where former head coach Cara Morey left to join, the Professional Women's Hockey League, where Kessel had been the head coach of the Boston Fleet.

Kessel has been at Princeton before, serving as an assistant coach under Morey from 2019 until she joined the Fleet in 2023. She was at Princeton for the 2019-20 season, which saw the Tigers go 26-6-1 and win the ECAC championship.

That victory came in overtime at Cornell, then ranked No. 1 in the country. The game-winner came from Mariah Koepple that night.

Koepple is a player in the PWHL. Here is what she had to say about the Tigers' new head coach:

“Courtney is the perfect fit for Princeton and the women in the program. I am so excited to see what she can bring to this team to elevate it even higher. My time at Princeton when Courtney was there was unmatched, and I am so thrilled with her selection as the new head coach. She allows her players to excel in all aspects of their lives which is something so special to see. Courtney brings a level of compete and skill that will really propel this program forward. ‘PWIH’ is in great hands and I just know there are many championships in the near future. PWIH FOREVER!”

That tells you a great deal, doesn't it. 

Kessel is herself a former great player, one who had international experience with the Canadian women's team and who was a two-time first-team All-Hockey East selection and a second-team All-American at New Hampshire. 

She's also part of an incredibly athletic family. Her husband is Blake Kessel, who was also a player at New Hampshire and then a long time pro. 

Blake's brother Phil won three Stanley Cups (two with Pittsburgh, one with Vegas) and played in an NHL-record 1,064 consecutive games. Their sister Amanda has won three Olympic ice hockey medals with the United States.

Oh, and Phil Kessel Sr.? He played football with Washington in the NFL and Calgary in the CFL.

And now she is back at Princeton. 

TigerBlog didn't know her well during her first go-round here, but he did know her well enough to see the same qualities that Koepple did. She is a very warm, welcoming person, and her positivity is obvious from the first time you speak with her. 

It'll be 100 degrees in Princeton most of this week, which doesn't exactly scream hockey season. On the other hand, Kessel is only four months or so away from puck drop on her first season as the Tiger head coach .

TB wishes her the best of luck, obviously. 

There have only been five other head coaches in the 45-year varsity history of the program. Kessel will be the sixth. 

TB hopes it'll be a long time until there is a seventh. 

Welcome back, Coach Kessel.  

Dog Surfing

Well, it's officially summer. 

And what does that mean? You know. It's dog-surfing season. 

Dog-surfing? 

TigerBlog watched the end of Game 1 of the Men's College World Series best-of-three championship series between LSU and Coastal Carolina Saturday night. It was a riveting Game 1, in which LSU scored one run in the first and then won 1-0 behind a complete-game, 130-pitch three-hitter from Kade Anderson. 

Shockingly, it seemed like his mother was nervous, excited and ultimately thrilled — at least that was TB's take from the endless times the broadcast cut to her in the stands.  

A game like that is next to impossible these days in the Major Leagues, by the way. LSU, by the way, won the second game 5-3 yesterday to take the national championship. 

Anyway, when the game ended, TB flipped through the channels for a second and then saw what will undoubtedly replace baseball and every other sport as America's Pastime. Yup. It's dog surfing.

This couldn't be real, right? Dogs on surfboards? This had to be AI, or a dream or something. 

Nope. It's legit. And it's riveting. 

Surf's up, pup. 

There are different categories based on the size of the dog and whether or not it's a tandem, which could mean either two dogs or one dog and one human. 

This is great stuff. TB watched for five minutes and already was annoyed at the judges for putting Rosie second in the mid-size dog category. Rosie should have won easily. 

Also, the TV feed had a Go Pro that was on the front of the surfboard. Did the dogs look happy? They certainly looked wet. One looked a bit concerned. Another looked annoyed — Why are the humans harshing my mellow? 

It all made him want to write about dogs in today's entry. Maybe he could write about the Waterdogs of the Premier Lacrosse League, but that would have been too easy. 

You know what else would have been easy? Going through the current issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Get it? PAW.

While going through the PAW online, TB did come across THIS story about women's basketball alum Abby Meyers and her recent season of playing in Israel. There are no dogs in the story, though it does mention yaks.  

Were there any great moments of dogs in Princeton Athletic history?

How about foxes? They're sort of like dogs. Princeton Foxes include Stephanie Fox (softball ’93), Kevin Fox (football ’77), Finn Fox (men's lacrosse rising sophomore) and J.R. Fox (men's basketball ’39).

There have been cats, that's for sure. For starters, there's the whole "Tigers" thing, right?  

Then there have been cats such as Kat Sharkey (field hockey ’13), Cat Caro (field hockey ’17), Kat Holmes (fencing ’17), to name a few. Former men's lacrosse player Cathal Roberts' nickname was "Big Cat."

There have been bears too: Bear Lockshin, Bear Altemus, Bear Goldstein, all of whom were men's lacrosse players.  

Rabbits? Well, there was women's basketball player McKenna Haire. And men's soccer player Antoine Hoppenot.  

Some others that popped into TB's mind: current men's lacrosse player Cody Lam and former women's soccer player Catherine Byrd.  

There haven't been any alpaca, though there was an All-American football player in the 1920s named Al Packer. Just kidding. TB is pretty sure nobody named Al Packer ever played anything at Princeton. He just thinks alpaca are cute. 

They are, right? 

So dogs? 

Ryan Boyle had a dog named Gus when he played lacrosse at Princeton. TB remembers seeing Boyle and Gus walk away together after more than one game. 

Then there is Watson. He's a Princeton Bulldog, belonging to the family of former women's lacrosse player Shea Smith. 

Ah, Watson. If anyone can relate to you, it's TigerBlog. You know, the whole shifting allegiances from one Ivy League school to another. 

In his case, it was his alma mater to Princeton. In your case, it was your distant cousin the mascot in New Haven to Princeton. Watson was a frequent visitor to Princeton games as well. 

There are probably way more animal references that TB might have seen had he spent more time on it. Has there been a letterwinner named "Lyons?" An All-American named "Deer."

There have to be some Tigers who were nicknamed "Moose" or "Horse" or something like that. This requires more research.  

In the meantime, there's this from the Beach Boys:

Little surfer
Little dog
Wagging through the morning fog.
Do you love me, do you surfer dog? 

Ah, yes. America's Pastime. Dog surfing.

It's here to stay.  

TigerBlog h'65

Imagine, for a moment, that you're being led around the Princeton campus, making one seemingly random turn after another, with no obvious clear destination.

You've been told that your end point is something important. What could it be? 

A lecture? An exhibit? A tour of a new building? What? 

If you're TigerBlog, you don't usually do well in situations like this. He wants answers. He doesn't want to have to guess. Even worse, he doesn't want to have to keep asking what's next.

His escort on this sojourn was his friend Pattie Friend, whose husband Lloyd was in the Class of 1965 (that's a foreshadow, by the way). For her part, she was playing it up in a big way, pretending to be lost, saying "is it left or right" and then "oh yeah, this way."

She could probably tell that she was starting to annoy TigerBlog. How could she not? 

He asked only one question: "Is this going to be fun?" She just smiled. 

Eventually, the long and winding road led to the football stadium. There, in one of the tunnels near the top of the stadium stood a man in a pair of khaki shorts and an orange collared shirt that said "Princeton Golf" on it. 

TB, though, immediately thought of a different sport. The man was, after all, Cosmo Iacavazzi, one of the greatest athletes Princeton has ever known and the captain of the 1964 undefeated football team. 

Did this tell the story, though? No, it didn't — not even when Cosmo first extended his hand for a firm handshake. 

This all left TB more confused than ever. 

Little did he know that one of the greatest honors of his life was about to come his way. 

"On behalf of our class," Cosmo said, "it's my privilege to let you know that you have been chosen to be an honorary member of the Class of 1965."

Was this on the level? Was this some sort of joke? 

"This is for real," Cosmo said. 

Once he realized that this was on the up and up, TB couldn't stop smiling. An honorary member of the Class of 1965? 

That's the class that featured Cosmo, as well as another fairly well-regarded athlete — Bill Bradley. And men like Johnny O'Brien, who grew up at the Milton Hershey School before playing football at Princeton and then returning to the school as its headmaster after a successful business career. There's a limitless amount of respect for that trajectory.

The Class of 1965 has certainly left its mark on this University. Its roster is a series of alums who have lived by the University motto: "In the nation's service and service of all humanity," and they have incredible contributions in the areas of government, the military, business, medicine, law, athletics and so many others. 

And now TB is an honorary member. That's something that overwhelms him.

When you go to work at Princeton in your 30s, you're not thinking that one day you might be honored by any class, let alone one as legendary as the Class of 1965. You're just thinking about what needs to be done that day, that season, what game might be coming up. 

TB has had that same attitude in the 31 years he's been doing this. It's why he continues to write here everyday, because every day brings with it something special to be shared, with another challenge to be creative. 

It's why he also still gets that same feeling of excitement for gamedays. It's why he sits here now ready for the start of the 2025-26 athletic year, and why he is already looking forward to the opening weekend of field hockey in early September, even if it's still June. 

Of course, there is one fair question to be asked: Why did the Class of 1965 choose TigerBlog for this honor? 

Cosmo said it was in recognition and appreciation of all of the years that TB has been chronicling the athletic achievements — and the athletes — of the Class of 1965 and all the other Princeton classes. That was something that made TB's heart flutter and resulted in an ear-to-ear grin. 

TB hasn't done this for the recognition. He's done it because it's always been something he's passionate about and something that has challenged him. 

In all of his time at Princeton, he's never once applied for another job anywhere else, in athletics or anything else. This is what he's wanted to do, and this is where he's wanted to do it. 

And that's why, come Monday, there will be another entry here. 

But it'll come from someone who has been changed a bit by his meeting with Cosmo. 

Honorary? Yes. 

Honored? More than you know. 

Thank you to everyone in the Class of 1965 who supported this. 

TB is proud to be your newest classmate. 

Charlie's Story, PLL Update, Fantinelli In England

Charlie Levy is a pretty athletic looking young man. 

When TigerBlog first met him and learned that he attends the University of Colorado, his first thought was that he perhaps was a football player. He certainly looks the part. 

As it turns out, no, Levy doesn't play for Coach Prime in Boulder. 

He is, though, spending his summer in Princeton.  In fact, he's working for the football and men's basketball teams.

If you read the story on goprincetontigers.com about former men's basketball player Jerome Desrosiers and his current standings as one of the top 3X3 players in the world, you can thank Charlie Levy. It's his story. 

Didn't read it? You can right HERE.

Levy, by the way, is the nephew of former Princeton men's basketball Howard Levy. 

As for Desrosiers, in three years he has become the No. 1 ranked Canadian 3X3 player and 50th ranked player worldwide. He's part of a growing number of Princeton alums who excel at this version of the game, which is positionless and requires every player to be able to dribble, pass, shoot and defend.

Does that sound familiar? That's been the cornerstone of Princeton men's basketball for decades. 

Make sure you read Charlie's story. It's an excellent first effort, certainly better than the first story TB ever wrote (which was about a high school football game between Academy of the New Church and Pennington a long, long, long time ago). 

*

The Premier Lacrosse League holds its third weekend of games this weekend at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. 

This past weekend in Philadelphia, Princeton alum Zach Currier became the first pro outdoor player ever to reach 200 career points and 300 career groundballs. Put another way, had TB started out with "only one player in pro outdoor lacrosse history has ever had at least 200 career points and at least 300 career groundballs" and asked you to guess who it was, the only possible guess would have been Currier. 

Also in PLL Princeton alum news, Coulter Mackesy of the Boston Cannons had one assist in his first pro game and then put up three goals in his second, including two rockets from the outside. Mackesy, of course, is Princeton's career leader in goals with 167. 

And then there is Michael Sowers, who currently leads the PLL with 17 points on three goals and 14 assists. A year ago, only seven players in the league had at least 14 assists — for the entire season. No other player this season has more than six assists. 

*

Coastal Carolina advanced to the championship round of the Men's College World Series with an 11-3 win over Louisville yesterday. The Chanticleers have now won 56 games, including their last 26. 

Yes, that's 26 straight wins for a college baseball team. 

When TB saw the coach for Coastal Carolina was Kevin Schnall, he knew that the name was familiar. How did he know of Schnall? It was driving TB a bit nuts. 

Then he called his old friend Mark Eckel, a longtime local sportswriter, who reminded TB that Schnall is from right here in Mercer County. In fact, he went to Notre Dame High School, about 10 miles or so from Princeton's campus, where he played baseball and also was a quarterback in football.

His father Steve was an assistant coach on Bill Parcells' first two New York Giants teams.  

Kevin Schnall is in his first year as the head coach at Coastal. His 56 wins are the most ever by a first-year Division I head coach. 

Can he get two more? 

*

Princeton's Riccardo Fantinelli has been the Ivy League men's golf Player of the Year each of the last two years. 

He's currently in England, where he is competing in the British Amateur championships — and doing very well at that. 

Fantinelli, who will be a senior this coming year, made it through the qualifying rounds, which were 36 holes of stroke play, to reach the knockout match play Round of 64. He won his first match 3 and 1 over Giovanni Binaghi, advancing to today's Round of 32 against Canadian Isaiah Ibit. 

That match went off at 9:09 local time, or 4:09 Eastern time this morning. 

Ibit, by the way, recently finished his freshman year at Kent State, where he was a first-team All-MAC selection and the MAC Rookie of the Year.  

Okay, Smart Guys

So here is a story about consumerism that TigerBlog is sure is relatable for most. 

TigerBlog needed a new shower curtain, and he found himself across the street from a TJ Maxx while doing a different errand. Perfect, he thought. He'd just run in after the first errand. Two birds with one stone, as it were.

Ah, but here's where the consumerism comes in. How many items did TB end up buying in TJ Maxx? 

If you guessed "seven," you are correct. Isn't that how it works?  

Anyway, instead of having one item, he now had seven — including two new bath towels. When the woman at the checkout line asked if he'd like a bag, he said sure. That's when she said it would be an additional 10 cents.

Ten cents for a bag? That's not exactly a cost deterrent. Feeling generous, TB told her to add an additional dollar to his bill and then to give the next 10 people a free bag. 

She gave him a quizzical look. 

*

The College Sports Communicators At-Large Academic All-District honors were announced yesterday. 

The At-Large division is for all sports that don't have their own sport-specific category. You'll probably know these names, since they're also some of Princeton's best athletes. 

Here are Princeton's All-District selections:

Men

William Huang, golf, senior, economics
A PING All-Region selection for the second year in a row, William Huang was named honorable mention All-Ivy this season to record his fourth career All-Ivy selection -- just the 13th golfer in Ivy history to earn four career All-Ivy honors.

Nicholas Lawson, fencing, senior, physics
Lawson was an All-American at the NCAA Championships this season, finishing ninth in épée. He earned first-team All-Ivy honors after going 9-2 at the league meet, and he was also the team's Academic All-Ivy selection.

Brandon Lee, fencing, junior, computer science
Lee won All-American honors, finishing third at the NCAA Championships this year. He was the NCAA regional foil champion and a first-team all-region honoree.  

Gavin Molloy, water polo, senior, Public and International Affairs
Molloy was part of the Princeton squad that won its fourth straight Northeast Water Polo Conference title. The senior captain was named a All-NWPC honorable mention, NWPC All-tournament honorable mention and was part of the ACWPC All-Academic team.

Charlie Palmer, golf, sophomore, economics
A second-team All-Ivy selection this season, Palmer was also named PING All-Region to build off a 2024 year where he was named Ivy League Rookie of the Year.

Tucker Wade, lacrosse, sophomore, economics
Wade was Princeton's first sophomore midfielder to earn first-team All-Ivy League honors in 13 years, as well as an honorable mention All-American. His five goals in the NCAA opening round win over Towson were one off the program record for an NCAA game. 

Women's

Rachael Carver, water polo, senior, Public and International Affairs
Carver was second-team all-conference who graduates as the program all-time leader in career assists (260). She started every game for the Tigers, leading the team with 60 assists along with 44 goals, 26 steals and 25 drawn ejections as the team made the CWPA Championship game. 

Ella Cashman, field hockey, sophomore, molecular biology
A first-team All-Ivy League defender, Cashman also scored six goals to help Princeton to a 7-0 run through the Ivy League to win the championship and reach the NCAA quarterfinals. Cashman, a first-team All-Region selection as well, scored both goals, including the game-winner in OT, in Princeton's win over Harvard that decided the league title. She was also an NFHCA All-Academic selection. 

Sara Covin, open rowing, senior, psychology
Covin coxed the first varsity to Ivy League gold, taking down previously unbeaten Yale in the Grand Final. She earned first-team All-Ivy honors. 

Hadley Husisian, fencing, sophomore, English
Husisian was an All-American honoree in 2025, finishing third at the NCAAs. She was also the NCAA regional épée champion, a first-team all-region honoree, and a first-team All-Ivy honoree, going 14-4 at the Ivy meet.

Victoria Liu, golf, senior, computer science
A first-team All-Ivy honoree in 2025, Liu finished her Princeton career as a three-time first-team All-Ivy selection. She recorded one victory this season, winning her home tournament at the Princeton Invitational for the third time.

Issy Wunder, hockey, junior, psychology
Wunder had a career year in which she was named a top-10 finalist for the Patty Kazmaier award, the Ivy League Player of the Year, First-Team All-Ivy, All-ECAC First Team, ECAC Forward of the Year, finalist for ECAC Player of the Year and Academic All-Ivy. Wunder was third in Division I in goals per game (0.81) and fourth in points per game (1.56).  She racked up 50 total points on. 26 goals and 24 assists to help lead the Tigers to the ECAC Quarterfinals.  

*  

Of those 12, there are 10 who have been selected to advance to the national ballot: Huang, Lawson, Lee, Palmer and Wade for the men and Carver, Cashman, Covin, Husisian and Wunder for the women. 

The national honorees will be announced in July. 

It's not easy to be that strong athletically and academically at Princeton. Did you check out the majors as well? Those are some challenging academic loads. 

It's what Princeton athletes sign up for when they come here. 

Congrats to those on the list. They are amazingly impressive.  

All-Americans Aplenty

If you happened to be watching the end of the Arkansas-Murray State game at the Men's College World Series yesterday, then you saw something incredible. 

If you weren't, well, then you missed one of the most electric moments you could ever hope to see in the world of sports. 

Arkansas' Gage Wood, pitching in an elimination game, threw a no-hitter and struck out 19 Racers in a 3-0 win. It was just the third no-hitter in MCWS history, after Jim Ehrler of Texas in 1950 and Jim Wixson of Oklahoma State in 1960.

It's not just that he threw the no-hitter, and it's not just that he did so in the elimination game. 

Wood is projected to be a pretty high pick in the coming Major League draft, a likely second-round pick and possibly a first-rounder. Despite that, he has not had a great year, making only nine starts with an ERA over five. 

And yet he was untouchable yesterday. His 19 strikeouts were a single-game record for the MCWS, and the only thing between him and a perfect game was a hit batter in the eighth, after he'd retired the first 21 Racers he'd faced. 

As for the ninth, there was a bit of controversy when Wood seemed to hit the leadoff batter, only to have the replay show that the hitter moved into the ball. In college, that becomes a strike, and in this case, it was Strike 3. 

The next two batters? They had no chance. Strikeout. Strikeout. It was just pure dominance. You couldn't help but be wildly impressed. 

Serious question, no hyperbole. Given the stakes:

Gage Wood throwing a 19-strikeout no-hitter, in a game where his team's season was on the line, has to be one of the greatest pitching performances -regardless of level - in baseball history, right?pic.twitter.com/58Dkpz5p5n

— Aaron Torres (@Aaron_Torres) June 16, 2025

The answer, Aaron, is a resounding "Yes." 

The MCWS is the last remaining college event of the 2024-25 academic year. The second-to-last was the NCAA track and field championships. 

 The women's championship went to Georgia for the first time. The men? There was a tie between Texas A&M and USC. Should there be a tiebreaker, or are you okay with co-champs in this situation? 

Maybe whoever had the most individual champs? In that case, it would have gone to Texas A&M, who had two to USC's zero. 

And remember last week, when TB mentioned that Cal discus thrower Mykolas Alekna was a lock, as he was the Olympic silver medalist a year ago in Paris and whose qualifying throw was five meters past anyone else? It turns out he also currently in the World Record holder.

How'd he do? He came in second to 2024 Jamaica Olympian Ralford Mullings of Oklahoma, who won by more than two meters. 

As for Princeton, the Tigers had themselves an All-American time in Eugene. 

Princeton sent eight athletes to compete in individual events after the East Regional qualifying. All eight of those Tigers earned either first- or second-team All-American honors. 

There were two who earned first-team (by virtue of finishing in the top eight of their event), and those two were Greg Foster in the long jump and Sam Rodman in the 800. The other six all finished between ninth and 16th, becoming second-team All-Americans.

That list is: Shea Greene (javelin), Casey Helm (discus), Joe Licata (shot put), Mena Scatchard (1500), Georgina Scott (long jump; also was an honorable mention honoree in the triple jump) and Harrison Witt (1500).

The highest finisher was Rodman, who finished in fourth place, exactly one second behind Sam Whitmarsh, one of Texas A&M's individual winners. Rodman became Princeton's highest finisher in the 800 since Ed Burrowes, who was the runner-up in the event in ... 1940. That's even longer than the gap from the last MCWS no-hitter. 

Rodman finished his career as a three-time first-team All-American, with the honor in the 2022 distance medley relay indoors and the 800 outdoors in 2022.

As for Foster, he finished seventh to become an All-American for the first time in his three trips to the championships. 

And with that, another athletic year has come to an end at Princeton. This one was special, with its record 17 Ivy League championships and countless great moments. 

Someone who writes a blog every day should probably review all of that at some point this summer, no?