Road Laxing

TigerBlog received five emails yesterday regarding his "Princeton Connections" puzzle from yesterday. 

He can sum them all up this way: "love the idea; puzzle was impossible."

Okay. TB gets it. And he would say that it's more a function of how hard it is to choose the clues that balance making it challenging without being way too hard. 

Here are the answers:

* New Haven (Mich.), Reading (Pa.), Syracuse, Ithaca — hometowns of Princeton Directors of Athletics (John Mack, Gary Walters, Ken Fairman, Mollie Marcoux Samaan).

* Sacramento, College Park, Philadelphia, New York City — cities where Princeton basketball has won an NCAA tournament game.

* Christopher, Martin, Rose, Sierra Moon — first names of Princeton athletes who were better known by nicknames, with Christopher (Kit) Mueller, Rose (Podie) Lynch, Martin (Tiger) Bech, Sierra Moon (Bear) Goldstein. And yes, that's really Bear Goldstein's name. 

* Tyler, Adele, Ryan, Jesse — first names of Princeton athletes who hold their program record for career goals (Tyler Lussi, women's soccer, Adele McCarthy-Beauvais, women's water polo, Ryan Kufner, men's hockey, Jesse Hubbard, men's lacrosse).

TB will definitely try this again and hopefully make it more doable without making it too easy. 

In the meantime, snow. 

What? Yes, snow. TigerBlog said yesterday that the weather for Princeton tomorrow will be sunny with temps around 80. 

Ah, but in Hanover, N.H.? One weather forecast calls for morning snow tomorrow, shifting to rain, with a high of 35. Another forecast has the possibility of up to six inches of snow.

Neither is really ideal, since the Princeton men's lacrosse team will be playing Dartmouth at noon. 

Further south, in New Haven, the women's lacrosse team will be at Yale tomorrow. The forecast all week there was for warmth but rain.  Now it's changed to warmth and sun. That's better. 

Both of these are very big games. 

For the women, Yale had reached as high as fourth in the national polls with its 7-0 start, only to lose at Stanford and then an Ivy-opening 14-11 loss at Brown last Saturday. Princeton is one of the three teams who are unbeaten in the league at 1-0, along with 2-0 Cornell and 1-0 Penn. 

Princeton has won seven straight since an opening day loss to Virginia. The Tiger offense has been rolling, with a 16.88 goals per game average that leads the league and is third in Division I. McKenzie Blake is third in Division I (first in the league) in goals per game with 4.88 per game (that's a lot), and Haven Dora is third in Division I in assists per game with 3.63 (again, that's a lot).

Yale, on the other hand, allows seven goals per game, which is tops in the league and fourth in Division I. TB loves games where you have a highly ranked offense against a highly ranked defense.

The Princeton men in midseason are ranked No. 1 in the RPI, which is the main tool when it comes to NCAA selections. Already Princeton has three top five RPI wins (No. 3 North Carolina, No. 4 Penn State and No. 5 Duke, all on the road), along with another top 10 win (No. 8 Harvard) and another top 20 win (No. 20 Rutgers). 

The Tigers have two losses: No. 2 Maryland and No. 6 Cornell. Princeton's strength-of-schedule is No. 1 in the country as well. 

It's an almost unheard of resume for this part of the season. 

For all of its success, Princeton had no first-team All-Americans in the Inside Lacrosse midseason team released yesterday. There was one second-team pick (Coulter Mackesy) and one third-team pick (Chad Palumbo), with five honorable mention picks (Nate Kabiri, Jackson Green, Michael Bath, Colin Mulshine, Ryan Croddick). 

It's a pretty good testimony about how Princeton has been doing it this year — with depth all over the field. And offensive efficiency, where the Tigers rank fourth in Division I.

Dartmouth, on the other hand, is coming into the game with an RPI of 17 and a 7-1 overall record. Most recently, the Big Green defeated Penn 9-8 in overtime in their Ivy opener last Saturday night at Franklin Field. 

Dartmouth is a young team under a young, second-year head coach (Sean Kirwan) who clearly has the team pointed in the right direction. It's a confident team, something you could tell by 1) watching Dartmouth play Penn and 2) by the fact that the team leads Division I in ground balls per game.

So that's two big Princeton lacrosse games this weekend. And two wildly different weather forecasts.

Enjoy the sun if you're in Princeton. 

And now TB will go and pack all of his rain/snow gear for the trip.