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). 

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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. 

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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? 

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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.