The Busy Weekend

The Ivy League championship meet in women's swimming and diving at DeNunzio Pool runs through Saturday night, when the league title will be awarded.

Princeton is the defending champion, having won for the 25th time last year. The only time this century that the winner of this meet wasn't Princeton or Harvard was in 2017, when Yale won. 

If you're in Princeton this weekend, it's a fun event. 

If you're looking to get out of town, and if Scott Bradley asks you if you want to go with the baseball team on its season-opening trip this weekend, just say "yes."

Why? Because the Tigers open with a three-game series at Miami. You have someplace better to be in late February? 

Bradley enters his 27th season as the head coach of the Tigers. Only Bill Clarke has won more game as Tiger baseball coach — and, to quote Pete Carril once, or at least something Carril might have said — "they named the field after that guy."

Actually, TigerBlog is pretty sure Carril did say that. Carril was a huge fan of Princeton baseball, and he loved to sit at Clarke Field in, what he definitely said, was the "spring of the year."

Bradley is more than a baseball coach. He's a huge Princeton Athletics fan. He's an educator. He's a great citizen. 

His team has worked with New Jersey Special Olympics though the years, and Bradley commemorated that on his highly entertaining X feed over the weekend:

Through the years with Special Olympics! Today will be fun as we train with Special Olympics, NJ! 💪🏻⚾️ pic.twitter.com/aTkYjlfTTG

— Coach (@CoachBradley9) February 16, 2025

The baseball team doesn't play at Clarke Field until its Ivy League opener against Dartmouth on March 22. In addition to heading to Miami, Bradley's team will also be making trips to Wake Forest (where it will also play Maryland), William & Mary, VCU, Liberty and Villanova.

Closer to home this weekend, the Princeton men's basketball team will take on Harvard tomorrow night at 7 and Dartmouth Saturday night at 8. The Princeton-Dartmouth men's game will be preceded by the Princeton-Columbia women's game at 5:30.

The current men's basketball standings show a wild ride for the final three Ivy League tournament spots, after Yale clinched its spot this past weekend. 

With nine games down and five to be played, you have Yale at 9-0, followed by Dartmouth at 6-3, Princeton and Cornell at 5-4 and Harvard and Brown at 4-5. 

TB quoted Pete Carril before. Now he'd like to offer the words of another former Princeton men's basketball coach, John Thompson III. Or at least paraphrase.

Back when JT3 was coaching the Tigers and there was no Ivy tournament, he used to say that the goal was to get through each weekend in the league still in first place. Fast-forwarding, you want to get through each weekend still in the top four, which is where Princeton finds itself. 

The women's ice hockey team lost 4-3 to RPI Saturday in its regular season finale. The Tigers scored first on Emerson O'Leary's goal, with assists to Mackenzie Alexander and Issy Wunder (100th career point), but RPI came back to go up 4-1.

The good news? There's a quick turnaround for a rematch between the teams. 

This will also be at Hobey Baker Rink, tomorrow at 3, in the first-round of the ECAC Playoffs. Keep in mind, the first round is again one game, before the best of three quarterfinals.

There's more hockey at Baker Rink than one women's game. The men are home tomorrow night at 7 against Brown and then Saturday against Yale, also at 7. Princeton finds itself in a fairly packed group of teams who are hoping to open their ECAC playoffs at home, and each team has four regular season games to go, which means 12 points are still on the line. 

For Princeton, the end of the regular season means the trip to St. Lawrence and Clarkson next weekend. The Tigers are currently seven points back of Brown for the final home ice position.

The full weekend schedule can be found HERE.