NCAA Championships

The Princeton women's basketball team went wheels up to Indiana at 10:15 yesterday morning.

When you find yourself in the First Four of the NCAA tournament, you have almost no time to get ready. Draw to tipoff is three days. Throw in the travel, and it's not quite like having a full week to watch film and have a complete scouting report in place. 

For Princeton, tomorrow is Game Day against Iowa State at Notre Dame, with a 7 pm start time. The winner of the game between the two 11 seeds comes back to face Michigan Friday at 11:30 (the one in the morning).

Yes, this will be a grind for whichever team wins tomorrow. 

The basketball tournaments, as exciting as they figure to be, are not the only NCAA championship events this month. For instance, the NCAA track and  field championships were held this past weekend in Virginia. 

The magic number for the Princeton men was 10, as in three tenth place finishes. 

The distance medley relay team of Collin Boler, Xavier Donaldson, Sam Rodma and Connor McCormick were 10th in a time of 9:27.25, finishing directly behind Wake Forest and Wisconsin and ahead of Washington and Georgetown. Virginia won the event in 9:15.12, a meet record.

Princeton also had two individual 10th place finishes, with Greg Foster in the long jump and Harrison Witt in the mile. Foster is now a two-time indoor All-American, as is Witt, who also earned the honor with the 2022 DMR. 

There was a familiar name on the men's side who won an NCAA title. That would be Princeton alum Simen Guttormsen, who won the pole vault competing for Duke. As you know, his brother Sondre won two indoor and one outdoor NCAA titles in the same event, and both of then competed in the Olympic Games last summer for Norway. 

As for the women, Princeton's Mena Scatchard had herself quite a run in the mile. 

Scatchard, who set the Ivy League record in the event earlier this season and was a double winner at Indoor Heps in the mile and 3,000 meters, found herself in 10th place at the NCAA meet entering the final lap. There were, by the way, 10 runners in the event.

And yet, 200 meters later, there she was, nipping Northern Arizona's Congdon for second by one-hundredth of a second, 4:32.87 to 4:32.88. The winner was Oregon's Wilma Nielsen, who won by a half-second. As she approached the line, Nielsen looked over her shoulder briefly and either 1) realized that she had it won or 2) was running out of gas. 

Were in the latter, Scatchard would have caught her in another few steps. 

Scatchard became Princeton's highest finisher ever at the NCAA indoor championships, bettering the third place finish of Cack Ferrell in the 3,000 in 2005. 

In addition to basketball, the NCAA women's swimming and diving championships begin tomorrow at Washington State in Spokane. 

The Princeton women had three swimmers who qualified in individual events, all of whom are sophomores: Eleanor Sun in the 400 IM, 200 IM and 200 butterfly; Heidi Smithwick will be in the 200 fly as well, while Dakota Tucker will swim in the 400 IM alongside Sun.

Diver Charlotte Martinkus qualified in the three-meter event. 

The men will be in the same pool only one week later. Princeton will be well-represented there as well. 

There will also be championships on the line at the NCAA wrestling event, which comes to the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia Thursday through Saturday. Princeton is sending five wrestlers:

Ivy champs Marc-Anthony McGowan (125/13 seed) and Luke Stout(197/11), as well as Eligh Rivera (141/26), Ty Whalen (149/15) and Kole Mulhauser (184/29). The weight-by-weight brackets are HERE.

The NCAA fencing championships, which is a co-ed event, is also on the schedule for this weekend, at Penn State. Here is how it works: 

The event will be held March 20-23 at Penn State. The men will compete on the first two days with the women competing the second two days. Each weapon will have 24 fencers with each fencer competing in a five-touch bout with each of the other fencers in that weapon, and each victory counting as one point toward the team total. The top four fencers in each weapon will advance on the second day of their competition to the individual championships, in which a 15-touch semifinal and a 15-touch final will determine the NCAA individual champion. The team title, which is combined between men and women, will be determined through the accumulation of wins during pool bouts. 

Princeton has qualified 10 fencers: 

Ronald Anglade, Sr., men's saber, third NCAA championships, placed 17th in 2022 and fifth in 2023
Alec Brooke, So., men's épée, second NCAA championships, placed 14th in 2024
Allen Chen, Fr., men's foil, first NCAA championships
Emese Domonkos, Fr., women's saber, first NCAA championships
Hadley Husisian, So., women's épée, second NCAA championships, placed third in 2023
Chin-Yi Kong, Fr., women's foil, first NCAA championships
Nicholas Lawson, Sr., second NCAA championships, placed second in 2022
Alexandra Lee, So., women's saber, second NCAA championships, placed seventh in 2024
Brandon Lee, Jr., men's foil, second NCAA championships, placed seventh in 2023
Leehi Machulsky, Fr., women's épée, first NCAA championships