Where Do They Come From?

Every time TigerBlog fills out a nomination form for Academic All-American, he immediately thinks back to some that, who else, Pete Carril once said. 

When asked by a reporter to comment on the fact that one of his players had been named Academic All-American with a 3.8 grade point average, Carril, without hesitating, said this:

"He'd be better off with a 3.6 and more work on his jump shot."

That's as funny today as it was back when Carril first said it. 

That's one of a handful of Carril stories that TB has told before but has never mentioned the player's name. The same is true of this one:

Reporter: Your player made the all-tournament team.
Carril: So did the guy he was guarding.

TigerBlog literally chuckled as he typed that. 

Of the 100 funniest quotes that's heard from Princeton coaches through the years, TigerBlog would have to say that maybe 75 or so came from either Carril or his successor, Bill Carmody. 

Remember the time when a UConn women's basketball player was allowed to break the school scoring record despite having ruptured her Achilles the game before? It happened in 1998, when Villanova allowed Connecticut to win the opening tip and pass the ball to an unguarded Nykesha Sales, who then made an uncontested layup to break the program career points record. 

UConn then allowed Villanova to score, making it 2-2. The game then proceeded from there. 

When Carmody was asked about it prior to Princeton's next game, he responded: "Al Kaline had 399 career home runs. What's the big deal?"

The basket gave Sales 2,178 career points. Today? She currently sits in seventh place at UConn in career scoring among women.

Where was TB going with this? He has no idea.

Oh yeah. Academic All-American.

The official Academic All-American program is run by the College Sports Communicators, formerly CoSIDA, for the College Sports Information Directors of America. Today is the deadline for what CSC refers to "At-Large," which is all of the sports that don't have their own specific honor. After this, the only remaining Academic All-American category will be track and field. 

Each school can nominate up to six men and six women for the At-Large category. Princeton chose its six, and the nomination process went from there.

TigerBlog was responsible for filling out two nominations, for players from his teams. The first one was field hockey player Ella Cashman. The second was men's lacrosse player Tucker Wade. Both have finished their sophomore seasons.

Perhaps you know these names. 

Both were first-team All-Ivy League selections. Wade was honorable mention All-American. Cashman was first-team All-Region. 

Cashman, a defender, scored both goals in Princeton's 2-1 win over Harvard last season in a game that decided the Ivy champion. The first goal came when the Tigers were down in the fourth quarter; the second came in OT. 

Wade finished the season with 27 goals and eight assists. He became the first Princeton sophomore middie to be first-team All-Ivy League since Tom Schreiber in 2012. That's the kind of elite company that you want your name included with, obviously. 

Yes, both are dominant players. They also have nearly perfect GPAs. 

TB is only using them as an example, since he just submitted their nominations. There are stories like this across all of Princeton's teams. 

Great athlete. Great student. In a world where those two terms are becoming rarer and rarer for the same person, it's something that still matters — and should.

As TigerBlog has said on many occasions, even after all these years, he still marvels at the athletes who compete for Princeton. Where do they come from? 

How can they be so good as athletes and then equally as amazing as students? As funny as what Carril said about the jump shot was, the whole point is that at Princeton you can be both. 

It's a foundation of the whole athletic department, and it always will be.

The nominations for At-Large, or any other one of the CSC categories, is a clear reminder of that.

TigerBlog wouldn't want it any other way.