The End Of The Race

TigerBlog starts today again with the New York Knicks and with all of the analysis that suggests that Jalen Brunson s the greatest player in franchise history. 

TB has two thoughts: 1) he isn't and 2) this is where sports commentary is these days. He's surprised he hasn't seen a "Mount Rushmore" of Knicks the last few days. Maybe it's out there and he just missed it.

For everyone who thinks Brunson is the team's best player ever, consider that this is a franchise that has had 25 players inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame (including TigerBlog h'65's classmate Bill Bradley). There were also nine Knicks on the NBA's 75th Anniversary Top 75 team, of whom Willis Reed, Patrick Ewing, Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusschere, Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas were known more for their time with the Knicks than with any other team (Bob McAdoo, Jason Kidd and Carmelo Anthony were the other three).  

Maybe Brunson will end up as the greatest Knick ever, but he's not there yet. Keep in mind, Reed, Frazier and DeBusschere won two NBA titles each in New York. 

Okay, now that he's written about the two Princetonians who've won professional championships this week — McKayla Tyrrell with the Knicks in the NBA and Eric Robinson with the Carolina Hurricanes of the NHL — TigerBlog can finally get around to the final Princeton Athletics event of the 2025-26 season. 

The NCAA track and field championships concluded this past weekend in Oregon, and with that, another athletic year has come and gone. Of course, like most of the rest of 2025-26, the last event was a wildly successful one for Princeton. 

There were by TB's count 17 Princeton athletes who qualified for the finals. Also by TB's count, there were 14 who came back as All-Americans. 

TigerBlog watched quite a bit of the championships, including the men's 5,000 meter final. Remember yesterday when he admitted that he didn't know that Cape Verde was a country? The same is true for Eritrea, which turns out to be the home country of Habtom Samuel, the winner of the race. 

Samuel seemed to be in complete control of the race, even when he somewhere in the middle of the pack. In fact, TB thought he might have watched the race on tape delay, since the broadcast seemed to focus on him the whole way. Princeton was represented in that race by Myles Hogan, who finished in 12th, earning second-team All-American honors.  

Oh, and if you're wondering, Eritrea is in East Africa. It is 46,000 square miles, which makes it smaller than New York State. 

Earlier in the evening Friday, Princeton's Connor McCormick ran a fantastic race in the 1,500, finishing in fourth to become a first-team All-American. The race was won by Oregon's Simon Birnbaum, who sprinted away on the last lap to win in 3:36.05; the next three were separated by only 0.09 seconds. It's amazing the small differences that decide races and places. 

Princeton was represented by seven women, all in field events, all of whom finished as All-Americans. The first five did so Thursday, including four honorable mention winners: Alexandra Kelly and Georgina Scoot in the long jump, Angela McAuslan Kelly in the hammer and Tessa Mudd in the pole vault.

The other All-American was Shea Greene, who came in seventh in the javelin to earn first-team honors. Have you ever tried to throw a javelin? TigerBlog has. He can't imagine having it go 180 inches, let alone the 180 feet that Greene's did.  

Scoot came back to finish seventh in the triple jump Saturday, adding a first-team All-American honor. Layla Giordano went 186-10 to take sixth place in the discus. It's fairly fascinating to TB that a javelin and a discus can go basically the same distance, given that a javelin weighs about half as much as a discus. 

In fact, the winning javelin throw was 200 feet. The winning discus throw was 216 feet. That's reasonably close — and the heavier one went further. 

Alysa Carrigan finished 11th in the high jump with a Princeton record 6-0.5. That was good for second-team All-American. 

And with that, the schedule was suddenly completed, after nearly 700 athletic events with nearly 1,000 Princeton varsity athletes. The next Princeton Athletic event will be Aug. 20, when the women's soccer team opens its season at home against Loyola. 

What will you be doing between now and then? That's a little more than two months. Make sure you enjoy the summer. 

TigerBlog will still be here every day. 

There will always be something Princetonian to write about.