An Extraordinary Afternoon In Jadwin

So that was quite a men's basketball game at Jadwin Gym Saturday afternoon. 

There was a triple-double (Xaivian Lee, again ... who else?) and another player who got so hot with his shooting that he almost set off the building's smoke detectors (Blake Peters) as Princeton defeated Penn 95-71. With that, Princeton is back in the Ivy League tournament.

And yet, TigerBlog doesn't start today in Jadwin. Instead, he begins in Penn's home gym. 

If you're a Princeton fan who has ever walked around the concourse at the Palestra since it was remodeled a few decades ago, you probably didn't enjoy the stroll past the section on the rivalry between the Tigers and Penn. 

Why? The pictures were great. The mere fact that it existed at all showed the respect for how important the history between the teams has been. 

Oh, but there was the matter of that little scoreboard. You know it. The one that was tracking the all-time series record. 

It seemed so out of reach, didn't it? At one point, Penn had a 25-game lead, at 122-97, after a Penn win at Princeton in 2009. That was 16 years ago. 

Here is a little more background on the statistical history of Princeton-Penn men's basketball:

* Penn built a 23-game lead by 1938 and then matched that several times between then and 1956
* From 1963-69, Princeton won 12 of 13, getting within seven games. Penn then won four straight, pushing the lead back to double figures, where it would stay until 2020
* The last time it was tied was in 1905.

Yes, that last one is correct. It was 1905, at 3-3. 

Nobody who has ever been a part of Princeton basketball has had the impact that current Tiger head coach Mitch Henderson has. As a player, he lost his first four to the Quakers but then won his final five. 

And as the head coach? It's unbelievable. It's 22-4, to be exact. He's had four games against Penn go to overtime as a head coach, and he's 4-0 in those games. He was also 2-0 in OT against Penn as a player. 

The win Saturday finally, finally saw Princeton catch up to Penn in the all-time series, which now stands 126-126. The fact that Princeton has come from 25 games back in 16 years to even things up is one of the most extraordinary things that TB has seen in all his years here.

That really was the subplot Saturday. 

The main storyline was that Princeton earned its spot into the Ivy Madness field and will play Yale at Brown Saturday morning at 11, followed by Cornell and Dartmouth. The winners meet Sunday at noon for the league's automatic NCAA bid. 

And then there was what Lee and Peters did. 

It was Senior Day, and, had things gone poorly, it could have been Blake's last game as a Tiger. He started the game with 193 three-pointers, leaving him seven away from becoming the seventh player in program history to reach 200.

With the way he was shooting, he could have reached 300 had the game gone a little longer. Instead, he finished 7 for 12 from three-point range and 6 for 9 in the second half — and the most shocking thing while watching the game was that he ever missed at all. He finished the day with 25 points.

And Lee? He had the first triple-double in Princeton men's basketball history back in December against St. Joe's. After that game, TB wrote this:

It really was inevitable that he'd get one at some point of his career. In fact, if you had to guess, do you think he'll have one for his career or he'll get at least one more? TB would go with the latter.

Seems like he was spot on with his prediction, after a 23-point, 12-assist, 10-rebound performance from Lee. All of these years and no other Princeton player has done it once, and now Lee has done it twice. 

Of course, as TB said, the biggest thing to come out of Princeton's win was the fact that the season continues. 

And as every Princeton fan has seen, you never can tell what the Tigers might do at this time of year.