Getting To Know Hilary Bartlett

Well, Wimbledon is over. 

None of TigerBlog's favorite players — Aryna Sabalenka, Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, Novak Djokovic — reached the final. Oh well. There's always the U.S. Open. 

John McEnroe, by the way, should announce the biggest events in every sport. It would make listening to anything more enjoyable. 

On the men's side, Jannik Sinner won in four sets over Carlos Alacaraz, winning his first Wimbledon title and in doing so disproving TB's theory that he would be racked with guilt over the way he won his Round of 16 match after being down 2-0 in sets only to have his opponent get hurt. 

Also, the end of the men's match saw Alcaraz thank the King of Spain for attending. When the camera found the King, who was behind him? Margie Gengler, the 1973 von Kienbusch Award winner, and her husband, tennis Hall-of-Famer Stan Smith.  

On the women's side, Iga Swiatek defeated Amanda Anisomova 6-0, 6-0 in the final. It was Anisomova who outlasted No. 1 seed Sabalenka in the semifinls, and she clearly had zero left in the tank for the final. It was like a team that had a big upset in the opening round of an NCAA basketball tournament and then couldn't pump the balloon back up two days later in the next round. 

TB wonders if Sabalenka watched the match and if so what she was thinking. For that matter, what did Swiatek think when she saw that she'd be playing Anisomova and not Sabalenka. 

Here are two fun facts about Anisomova: 1) she was born in Freehold, which is about 20 minutes east of Princeton and 2) her sister Maria played at Penn before graduating in 2010.  

Maria went 1-1 in singles matches in her career against Princeton. Hilary Bartlett defeated her 6-4, 6-4 in the No. 2 match in 2009, Bartlett's freshman year. 

Bartlett went on to the be the Ivy League Player of the Year. If you click on her bio on the women's tennis roster from those years, you'll see the following in the "Getting To Know Hilary Bartlett" section: 

Place I’d most like to play tennis: Wherever the NCAA team championship is!
My ultimate doubles partner would be: Marat Safin
Favorite spot on campus; Murray-Dodge Hall
Place I’d most like to visit: Vietnam
Most enjoyable class at Princeton: Freshman Seminar 135 “Good to Be Shifty:
American Swindlers and Imposters”
An adjective often used to describe me: Happy
Favorite activity, other than tennis: Skiing
How do I describe my hometown?: Bustling
If I could have any job, it would be: Something in science or public policy 

TigerBlog reached out to Bartlett yesterday via email to ask her if she'd ever been to Vietnam and if she worked in science of public policy. He wasn't quite expecting a quick reply, but that's what he got. 

As it turns out, Bartlett is married to Kiel Zsitvay, and they are the parents of identical twin boys Arthur and Henry, who are two years and three months old. 

She also had some pretty interesting things to say. For instance, there was this about having played Anisomova's sister: 

I did watch the final and somehow didn’t put two and two together… thank you for alerting me to this - I’m proud to know this fact. 

And this:

I actually made it to Vietnam the summer after my freshman year, and am now Chief Product Officer at Carrot Fertility, a small B2B startup when I joined that’s now a 500+ person company, focused on administering family forming benefits (including egg preservation and IVF) for employers and health plans.  I could argue it’s tangentially science and tangentially public policy! 

TigerBlog couldn't let all this go at that, so he responded and asked if she'd change anything from her "getting to know" list and if she'd also let him know how her Princeton Athletics experience continues to impact her. 

Here is what she said on those subjects:

Other than Kiel, I’d probably say Jannik Sinner is my ultimate doubles partner among current players.

And in terms of how my experience as a Princeton athlete continues to impact my life —my time at Princeton taught me how to strike the right balance between tennis and everything else that life as a student at Princeton has to offer.  Finding success in that juggle as a young person has given me immense confidence as an adult, as I try to manage a new mix of competing priorities across career and motherhood.

That last sentence says a lot. 

"Finding success in that juggle as a young person has given me immense confidence as an adult, as I try to manage a new mix of competing priorities across career and motherhood."

If you're Princeton Athletics, you can't really ask for a better answer.  

The Shoe At The End Of The Road

Where to start on a Friday in July? 

Well, how about the shoe at the end of the road? 

If you turn left out of TigerBlog's driveway and follow his street for about a quarter mile, it reaches a T intersection with something of a main road. Right where the two streets come together has sat a shoe, one single solitary shoe. 

It appears to be a flip-flop. How did one shoe get there? And more importantly, how long will it be there? 

You can't really stop your car on the main road to get it. You possibly could walk from the end of TB's road onto the main one, though there is a bit of a blind corner not far from that spot, so it would be risky.

The big storms of this past week haven't blown the shoe one inch in any direction. TigerBlog is officially fascinated by "The Shoe At The End Of The Road." 

Meanwhile ... 

*

Tosan Evbuomwan made his NBA 2K26 Summer League debut yesterday with the Brooklyn Nets against Oklahoma City. If you're in Las Vegas, you can go the games. If you're not, you can see them on an ESPN network or the NBA Network.

Brooklyn lost the game 90-81, but Evbuomwan did what he always does: fill the stat sheet. In fact, he finished with 13 points, four rebounds, three assists, one steal and one blocked shot in his 24 minutes. Given that it was Game 1 of the summer league, you can't really ask for much more than those numbers. 

Evbuomwan was the 2022 Ivy League Player of the Year and then a first-team All-Ivy League selection a year later, when he led the Tigers to the NCAA Sweet 16. His NBA career started with Detroit and Memphis before he played in 28 games for the Nets a year ago, averaging 9.5 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game. 

Your next chance to see him this summer is Sunday at 8 Eastern against the Washington Wizards. That game will be on ESPN2. 

*

Whenever an athlete is officially added to a Princeton Athletics roster, an email is sent out from the compliance office to all of the various offices that need to have that information. Communications, obviously, is one of them. 

This week saw a flood of emails as members of the Class of 2029 have been steadily added onto rosters. They're all just names in an email now, albeit names with their own backstories on how they have come to this moment in their lives. 

Each email that comes in lists the newcomers name and sport. It gets TB wondering, as he often does, about how these athletes end up in the sport they'll compete in at Princeton. 

He's certainly talked to enough athletes to find out that there is a certain amount of randomness to how. Some of it is location. Some of it is what their parents played. Some of it is what they saw on TV when they were just starting out. 

And is athletic ability transferable? What skills transfer from sport to sport and what skills don't? 

Can somebody do a thesis on this? Hey, maybe one of the names on one of this week's emails will end up doing just that in 2029.

*

The picture that accompanied yesterday's entry is one of TB's favorite Princeton photos ever. If you don't remember, here it is again:

That's Pete Carril and Kit Mueller, from a press conference prior to an NCAA tournament game. If TB had to guess, it would be the 1990 game against Arkansas at the University of Texas. 

TB also wishes he could remember the context of the moment. Oh well.  

Who would have guessed at the time that Mueller would have two kids who would go on to play lacrosse at Princeton (Ellie, Class of 2024, with the women, and Cooper, a rising junior with the men)? 

And to those who reached out yesterday to ask for another Coach Carril quote, there is this one:

Princeton was in an airport getting ready to fly back from one of those December tournaments, one in which the Tigers had, in Carril's words, "given a good account of ourselves." As the team waited at the gate, a fan of the home team came up to him, shook his hand and said "Coach, it was a real honor to have you here and to see how your team plays the game. But you must hear that everywhere you go."

Carril then said this to the man: "I get that everywhere I go — except for Princeton."  

*

The Premier Lacrosse League is back this weekend after last weekend's All-Star Game. This week's stop is in Chicago, with two games tonight and two games tomorrow. 

It's a Princeton-heavy Friday night in the PLL. It starts with Boston (Coulter Mackesy, Alexander Vardaro) against New York (Jake Stevens) at 7, followed by Utah (Ryan Ambler, Beau Pederson, Tom Schreiber) against Philadelphia (Zach Currier, Michael Sowers) at 9:30. That second game is also a matchup of former Princeton head coaches Chris Bates and Bill Tierney.  

*

There are six weeks remaining until the first athletic event of 2025-26, which will be a women's soccer game at home against Rutgers on Friday, Aug. 22. 

Will The Shoe At The End Of The Road still be there?  

In the meantime, have a great summer weekend.  

Happy 95th

Tom McCarthy, one of the top sportscasters in the business, celebrated a birthday a few days ago. 

He's also a new grandfather, by the way. His son Patrick, also a sportscaster, recently became a dad. 

In fact, everybody say hello to Quinley Grace McCarthy:

The names "Tom McCarthy" and "Patrick McCarthy" should be quite familiar to any Princeton fan. Tom is the longtime television play-by-play man for the Philadelphia Phillies, as well as a mainstay on the NFL and college basketball. 

Patrick is behind the mic for the New York Mets. He's also, for some reason, a huge Winnipeg Jets fan, and he actually got TigerBlog to root for the team in the NHL playoffs this past spring. It didn't quite work out well. 

Both father and son can trace their current successes back to Jadwin Gym and Powers Field at Princeton Stadium, where they both spent time on the radio for Princeton football and men's basketball. If you ask either of them, they will tell you that they cherish their time at Princeton. 

When TB spoke to Tom on his birthday, he asked him if he had any idea how many baseball games he's broadcasted in his life, going all the way back to his time with the then-brand new Trenton Thunder. His estimate? 

It would be between five and six thousand. That's a lot of baseball games. And that doesn't count any other broadcasting.

TigerBlog asked him if he still gets excited for gamedays, which of course he does. 

As TB said those words, it reminded him of this quote: 

"The hardest thing in the world to do is to do one thing particularly well for a long period of time at whatever standards you establish. Take the doctor who delivers his first baby. That's a huge thrill. Does he, 30 years later, get the same thrill. Or did Rex Harrison after 1,000 performances of My Fair Lady?" 

That's a pretty good one, no? 

You probably, without much difficulty, guessed whose quote that is.  

Of course. The answer is obviously Pete Carril. It was one of many great quotes that Princeton's former men's basketball coach uttered in his 29 years on the Tiger bench, before he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.  

If you want to hear something really wild, Carril spent 29 years at Princeton — and it's now been 29 years since he left. Wild, right? 

Pete Carril passed away in 2022, shortly after his 92nd birthday. He would have turned 95 today, July 10. 

There has never been anyone else like Pete Carril at Princeton, and there never will be anyone else like him. His personality, his backstory, his humor, his competitiveness, his appearance — they were all unique. 

He wore a pained expression on his face almost all the time, except for when he showed that wide grin that could take over his face. His voice was low and gravelly. He gave it to you straight, no matter who "you" were. When he wanted your attention, he certainly got it. 

His public speaking ability was off the charts. TB once collected the 21 best quotes from Pete Carril. That list didn't include the away-from-the-public ones that he couldn't repeat, the ones that are etched in TB's memory, most of which he has never mentioned publicly.  

Here's one that TB has shared before. After one of the in-season tournaments that Princeton played, a reporter asked Carril his thoughts on one of his players who had made the all-tournament team. Without flinching — almost as it he had it scripted — he simply said "so did the guy he was guarding." 

Pete almost never prepared any remarks. He simply took the microphone and said what was on his mind and what was in his heart. He was intimidating and engaging at the same time, in a way that TigerBlog means as positively as he can. 

If you were in his orbit, you didn't want to let him down. You wanted him to respect your contributions, and you knew it when he did.  

TigerBlog had a front row seat for most of the last seven years Carril spent at Princeton. He was also the last men's basketball sports information director to work with Carril, something that earned TB a lot of free soup on Fridays. 

His style wasn't for everyone, and he recognized that too, which is why he left Princeton after the 1996 season, which ended famously with the Ivy League playoff win over Penn and then NCAA tournament win over UCLA. It's not easy for TB to keep in mind that the number of people at Princeton who knew Carril well has dwindled down to a very small number. 

Ah, but those people cherish that they had the chance know him. TigerBlog certainly does. 

Happy 95th Coach.  

That's The Ticket

Well that's a big fish. 

To be exact, it's a 40-pound yellowtail amberjack. He's the only one in the picture who isn't smiling, as you might have noticed. 

The fisherman would be Matthew Anderson, who definitely is smiling. Matthew and TigerBlog Jr. grew up together, they both spent quite a few years working together as ballboys for Princeton basketball. 

Oh, those were the days. When there was a home game during the week, TB would leave Princeton in the afternoon, drive about 30 minutes to pick them up, drive them back to Princeton and then drive them home after the game.  

Matthew went on to play lacrosse at Chestnut Hill College, and he's also helped coach the junior varsity team at his old high school, Pennsbury, whose colors just happen to be orange and black and who gets a lot of use out of an orange "P" as a logo. 

If you're wondering, that fish was caught somewhere off the California coast the other day. For his part, TB can take no credit for helping, as he was 3,000 miles away at the time, though he did give Matthew that "Princeton Lacrosse" pullover. 

TigerBlog has never caught a fish anywhere near that large. He has caught a bunch of small ones, mostly shad in the Delaware River with John McPhee. 

In fact, the first time he caught a shad, he fought it all the way onto the boat and figured it had to weigh at least 40 pounds. Actually, it was two pounds, but hey, fish tails, right? That's the ticket.

And speaking of tickets (how's that for a segue)?

If you've been on goprincetontigers.com in the last two days, you might have noticed that there has been a story about Princeton (the University as a whole, including Athletics) and its new ticketing system. It's called "vivenu," and you can read about it HERE.

This is from the story:

Princeton University and Princeton Athletics have announced a partnership with vivenu, a leading technology provider in global event ticketing, to further modernize and create a simplified ticket purchasing process for Tiger fans and supporters. Through new technological advancements including a fully-refreshed ticketing website and purchase flow at goprincetotigers.com/tickets, streamlined mobile ticket downloads with season ticket passes, and easier venue entry, vivenu will assist Princeton fans in experiencing a more intuitive and efficient process during their customer journey with the Tigers. 

If you have an account on file, you're going to need to follow the steps to create a new one in the new system. It's very easy to do. 

Right now, football season tickets are available. Opening day? That would be Sept. 20, when San Diego will be at Powers Field at Princeton Stadium for the first of five home games, along with Columbia (Oct. 3), Mercer (Oct. 11),  Harvard (Oct. 25) and Yale (Nov. 15).

If you're planning ahead, Princeton is also at Lafayette (Sept. 27), Brown (Oct. 18), Cornell (Nov. 1), Dartmouth (Nov. 8) and Penn (Nov. 15).  

Next up will be men's and women's hockey season tickets, which go on sale July 21. Beyond that will be tickets for men's and women's basketball and wrestling, with men's lacrosse tickets still to come beyond that. 

The new ticketing system makes it easy to transfer tickets from one person to another or to donate tickets to non-profit groups. If you're ticket is saved to your device will automatically update if the start time changes.

There was a time when collecting ticket stubs was something pretty much everyone did, especially for big games and concerts. When TB first started working at Princeton, designing Princeton's tickets was a big thing, with an emphasis on making them look as artistic as possible. 

Those days are gone. Now it's about convenience and the ability to simply download them to your device. 

Princeton's new "vivenu" system does all of that and more. 

 

Thanks Allen

TigerBlog has been watching a great deal of the Wimbledon tennis tournament. 

His favorite player now is Ben Shelton, who plays with an unmistakable joy that makes him impossible to root against, at least for TB. His post-match on-court interviews have been pure gold, like the one the other day about how he needs someone at Goldman Sachs to give his sister Emma an additional week off so she could stay and watch him.

Emma was still there yesterday as her brother rolled into the quarterfinals. His opponent will be the top seed, Jannik Sinner, who advanced despite being down two sets to none and tied 2-2 in the third when his opponent, Grigor Sinner, couldn't continue due to a pectoral injury. Sinner showed great sportsmanship in the moment and in his on-court interview, and it was clearly not the way the No. 1 seed wanted to move on. 

Also, it was over the weekend that Chris Evert said that the women's No. 1 seed, Aryna Sabalenka, plays better when she's "pissed off."

TigerBlog took that as a validation of something he said on the radio during a Princeton men's basketball game many years ago, like 35 or so years ago. He's told you this before, but here goes again: 

Back in the early 1990s, TB was often part of a three-man radio crew with David Brody and Rich Simkus. One night, as halftime came, TigerBlog said that Pete Carril looked "pissed off" as he left the court.

Brody and Simkus then looked at him without speaking, at which TB said "what, you can't say 'pissed off' on the radio?"

At that point, Brody said: "I guess you can, because you just did. Twice." 

If it's good enough for Chris Evert, it's good enough for TigerBlog, no? 

Meanwhile, Wimbledon sits about an hour down the M25 from Henley-on-Thames, which is where the recently concluded regatta for 2025 took place. If you recall, TB yesterday wrote about the representatives of the Princeton heavyweight men's program who had competed there this past week so successfully. 

And thanks to a heads up from loyal reader Allen Scheuch, Class of 1976, TB has learned there is more to be told from Henley. 

Claire Collins, the 2019 von Kienbusch Award winner as the top Princeton female senior athlete, has had quite a post-Princeton career in rowing. She was especially impressive at this year's Henley.

First of all, she is a two-time U.S. Olympian, having finished seventh in the women's fours in Tokyo in 2021 and then fifth in the women's eights in Paris last summer. She also won a bronze medal at the 2022 World Rowing Championships in women's pairs. 

She has also been rowing at Cambridge University and was part of this year's winning crew in the famed Boat Race between Cambridge and Oxford. 

This past week at Henley she rowed in not one but two separate events. 

First, she was with the Cambridge boat that lost to Oxford Brookes in the semifinals of the highly competitive Island Challenge Cup. As TB learned when he was at Henley a few years ago, "Oxford University" and "Oxford Brookes" are not the same institutions. 

Collins also teamed with Wisconsin alum Maddie Wanamaker, a fellow 2024 Olympian, to win the Hambleden Pairs Challenge Cup. The two Americans covered the 2,112 meters in 7:53, winning the final by more than four lengths. 

Rowing in one event at Henley is tough. Rowing in two? The physical drain has to be ridiculous. 

Each day brings another race. If you win, you advance. If you don't, you're done. Collins put in a lot of effort at this year's Henley.  

In addition to Collins, the Princeton women's lightweight boat also rowed in the Island Challenge Cup, getting a first-round bye, winning its second race against Bristol and then falling to Durham. 

There are no separate divisions for lightweights, so the Tigers were racing against the open weight boats of both of the English powerhouses.   

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Forget fireworks.

For TigerBlog, no Fourth of July is complete without a rewatch of one of the greatest movies ever made: "Yankee Doodle Dandy." As a caveat, you probably have to be at least 50 or so — or maybe even 60 or so — to agree with TB. 

If you are, then the mere thought of how James Cagney dances and sings his way through the movie makes you smile. It certainly does for TigerBlog. 

How can you not love this:

Right? Of course. 

That scene is the best in the movie, though there is one song after another that is classic Americana. And so even though today is July 7, TB will stick with "Yankee Doodle Dandy" for today.

* 

GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROADWAY

The movie, from 1942, tells the story of the life of George M. Cohan, who was born on July ... 3rd, in 1878. Cohan was from a vaudeville family who went on to become one of the biggest stars in Broadway history, as well as one of the most patriotic Americans who has ever lived. 

During the course of the movie, Cagney, who won the Academy Award for playing Cohan, sings and dances to that incredibly famous song, one that you've probably heard even if you're younger than 60. 

Yankee Stadium sits not far from Broadway. In addition to being the home of the New York Yankees, it is also the place where New York City FC of Major League Soccer hangs its collective hat. 

This past weekend, NYCFC defeated Toronto 3-1 at Yankee Stadium. The home team was up 2-0 before a goal by Toronto in the 64th minute turned the momentum around. Would this one get away? No, it wouldn't. 

And why? Because in the 74th minute, Kevin O'Toole finished a pretty play to put NYCFC up 3-1, which would be the final.  O'Toole, of course, was a two-time Ivy League men's soccer Player of the Year and the 2022 Roper Trophy winner as the top male athlete at Princeton. 

You can see his goal HERE (at the six minute mark of the video). 

This was a quote from his Princeton head coach Jim Barlow from a feature story that TB wrote about O'Toole after the Tigers clinched the Ivy League title his senior year:

“He’s so easy going and calm. He’s so calm under pressure. He doesn’t get rattled. He embraces the moment, and he never forces anything. It’s clear how much fun he’s having when he plays. He just makes really big plays in really huge moments.” 

*

YOU'RE A GRAND OLD FLAG

The patriotism theme is all over the movie, beginning with when Cohan is summoned to the White House to meet with FDR and running all the way through to the very end, when Cohan — having shared his life story with the President in flashbacks — leaves the White House, dancing down the stairs and out into the street, where a military parade is passing by while everyone sings "Over There." 

Cohan, who wrote the song, is asked if he knows the words, to which he responds: "Yes, I believe I do," which are the final words of the movie. 

Beth Yeager, a rising senior on the Princeton field hockey team and a three-time first-team All-American, played two games this weekend for the USA national team against New Zealand. The Americans won Saturday 3-0 and then again yesterday 3-0, and Yeager scored two of the three goals in the game yesterday. 

Both of her goals came on drag flicks on penalty corners. If you've been following Princeton field hockey at all, you've seen that before from Yeager. 

Both of her goals can be seen HERE.

*

YANKEE DOODLE BOY

The scene that TB shared above shows jockey Johnny Jones as he heads to England for the big race. It's the show-stopper. 

If you haven't watched the clip yet, check out how Cagney dances. He studied Cohan's actual dancing and imitated it, twice suffering from an ankle sprain during filming. 

The big races this weekend in England were at the Henley Royal Regatta, an event TB has attended in the past. If you've never been, it's definitely worth a trip. 

Princeton's heavyweight rowing program produced two winners this weekend. Tristan Wenger, a rising sophomore, was part of the winning team in the Visitors' Challenge Cup with the powerhouse Leander Club and Tideway Scullers School. 

Incoming freshman Joe Wellington was in the winning boat in the Fawley Cup with the Windsor Boys' School.

Princeton also had a runner-up boat in the Silver Goblets doubles, with Theo Bell and Marcus Chute. 

All of those Princetonians, by the way, are British, so they probably weren't too upset with the fact that Johnny Jones lost his big race.  

 

"Red Panda We Love You"

TigerBlog remembers way back in the day when there was a student slam-dunk contest at halftime of a men's basketball game in Jadwin Gym.

He doesn't remember names. He just remembers an unbelievable series of dunks from three students, some or all of whom were on the track and field team at the time. Now that was a halftime show. 

Oh, and there was the guy in 1996 who participated in a halftime contest at Jadwin. When TB wrote his top 40 events in Jadwin history on the building's 40th anniversary in 2009, he ranked this one sixth. Here's what he wrote about it:

A fan, Dave Ulrich of Mount Laurel, N.J., comes out of the stands to participate in a halftime contest during the Princeton-Dartmouth women's basketball game. The contestant has three opportunities to shoot from halfcourt, once each from the where the midcourt line and sidelines meet and once from center court. If he can make two of the three shots, he will win a car. To this point, only one contestant has made even one shot, which earned $100. On this night, this particular contestant makes the first shot and then makes the second, winning the car (a Saturn). Unaware that he has already won the car, he thinks he must make the third one as well — which he then does. The highlight is played nationally and is the “Play of the Day” on ESPN's SportsCenter. 

TB wonders if Dave is still driving around in his Saturn.

Since then, TB would say his favorite halftime show at Jadwin has been "Drums of Thunder," the percussion group of fourth graders from Montclair who pretty much blow the roof off of the building each time they play. 

Then there is Red Panda. She's the woman who balances the plates and bowls on her head and feet while riding a unicycle. How in the world do you do that the first time? 

Anyway, she's long been a Jadwin favorite, and a favorite all over the country. She was doing her act at halftime of the Indiana-Minnesota WNBA game Tuesday night when she fell and had to be taken to the hospital with what apparently was a wrist injury. 

Caitlin Clark even sent her a message after the game: "Red Panda, we love you."

Everyone does. 

By the way, TB was trying to find a photo of Red Panda from her act and as such did a search. And what came up? Lots of actual red pandas. Cute.  

*

Here's a fun headline: "Entire Men's Hockey Team Named To ECAC All-Academic Team."

That's right. Princeton went 27 for 27, with every single player's having achieved at least a 3.0 cumulative GPA or 3.0 for the last three semesters. 

That's a lot of smart guys in one locker room. You can read more about it HERE.

*

The Premier Lacrosse League will hold its annual all-star weekend in Kansas City, beginning tomorrow with the skills competition and women's game and then continuing Saturday with the East vs. West men's game. 

Princeton will have one starter on both sides of the men's game. Not shockingly, Michael Sowers and Tom Schreiber are once again all-stars.

In fact, Schreiber has been an all-star 11 times now between Major League Lacrosse and the PLL. Sowers is now a PLL all-star for the fourth time. They've both been all-stars on the pro level every year they've been healthy. 

You can watch the all-star game Saturday at 1 on ESPN and ESPN+.

*

Speaking of men's lacrosse, TigerBlog found a picture of Coulter Mackesy, a rookie on the Boston Cannons, after a game last weekend in San Diego. Mackesy is posing with three of his former Tiger teammates: Jim Williams, Jameson Moore and Jackson Kane. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Princeton Men's Lacrosse (@princetonlax)

 

Hey, it's always good to have a little fun.
 

*

This is the Fourth of July weekend, of course. Ah, but lingering the not-so-distant future? 

Well, the first athletic event of the 2025-26 season is lingering a mere seven weeks away, as it'll be the women's soccer team against Rutgers on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium on Aug. 22. The team released its schedule for the season, which you can see HERE.

Seven weeks. That's not that far away. 

Still, have a safe and fun Fourth of July.  

More Hoops

And for the second straight day, TigerBlog starts off with something of a correction. 

Before he gets to that, he'll share a story from the 1980s, when he was still covering high schools at the Trenton Times. 

There had been a call into the paper asking for a correction to be issued regarding one of the local teams, the reason long since lost to history. TB's then-colleague Harry Chaykun said this: "How about just writing 'The Times regrets the coverage.'"

That still makes TB laugh, 40 years later. Ah, Harry. TB definitely learned a great deal about the newspaper business — and the effective use of sarcasm — from Harry. 

Today's correction — and TigerBlog does not regret the coverage — comes from Jason Merims, a loyal reader. When TB said yesterday that he'd come up with five instances where an NBA team had Ivy Leaguers as teammates, Jason came back with one more. 

And how could TB have missed this one? 

It was on the 1976-77 New York Knicks, where Jim McMillian of Columbia was a teammate of TB's classmate Bill Bradley.  

Those Knicks missed the playoffs, going 40-42 in the regular season. That would be Bradley's last season in the NBA. A year later he was elected as a United States Senator from New Jersey for the first of three times.

McMillian's sophomore year at Columbia was the 1967-68 season, which was also the first for Pete Carril at Princeton. The Lions and Tigers tied for the regular season championship, setting up a playoff game at St. John's for the NCAA tournament bid. 

Columbia won that game 92-74 as McMillian poured in 37 points. 

Here was a quote from Carril after the game from the Daily Princetonian:

"Nobody helped out on defense at all—they let the guards drive right by us." And how did the writer attribute the quote? Did it say "Carril said?" Did it say "Carril responded?" 

No. It said "Carril grimaced." Who can't close their eyes and see Carril's face at that? 

That was the only time between 1963 and 1988 when the Ivy League representative in the NCAA tournament was someone other than Princeton or Penn. 

McMillian, for his part, went on to be part of the great 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers team, which won 33 straight games and then ultimately the NBA title by beating the Knicks (and Bradley) in five games in the finals. The Knicks returned the favor a year later, winning their second title in four years (a streak that is now two titles in 55 years).

So a thank you goes to Jason for pointing out the missed teammates. 

Another thank you goes TB's longtime friend and local sportswriter Rich Fisher, who emailed yesterday with another basketball note. 

If you knew Carril, you knew "grimaced" was perfect. If you know Fish, then you know he would write this: 

"Well this hoop item may or may not interest you as a little Blog Blurb, but I'm sending just in case. 

 Fred Falchi has gotten the head coaching job at Pennington, and he's bringing back his former player Richmond Aririguzoh as a volunteer assistant his first year. He said Richmond is finishing up his masters' degree so this may be a one-year deal but I'm letting you know. If you don't use it, I'll throw myself off a cliff ... but it will be a very low cliff, so I'll live."

Yeah, that had to be Fish. 

Falchi was the longtime coach at Trenton Catholic, which used to be McCorristin and then before that St. Anthony's.

Aririguzoh played for Falchi during the final years at Trenton Catholic, which has since closed. Aririguzoh also played at Princeton, where he was a two-time All-Ivy selection, including a first-team selection as a senior in 2019-20.

If you look in the Princeton men's basketball record book, you'll see Aririguzoh's name under the field goal percentage section. His career number of .636 ranks second all-time at Princeton (who is first?), and he holds the No. 2 and No. 9 best single-season numbers. 

Who is first on the single-season list? 

The career record is held by Howard Levy (.647). The single-season record is held by Alan Williams (.703).  

July Hoops

Hey, it's July 1.

What else is there to talk about other than basketball, right? 

Oh, there is one thing. TigerBlog wrote yesterday that Princeton has led the Ivy League in the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup standings every year except for five since it began in 1994. As it turns out, that's actually all but three times. 

And with that, now the conversation can turn to basketball. There are, in fact, four Princeton Basketball-related updates. 

The first is a story by Elliott Carr on goprincetontigers.com about recent alum Blake Peters and his "Journey to Jadwin." You can read it HERE.

When it comes to the basketball career Peters had, there will always be two highlights for anyone who has been paying attention. The first came when he was a freshman at Evanston High School outside of Chicago. 

It came in a January game against Maine South. His team was down two with 2.6 seconds to go. Peters rebounded a Maine South missed free throw and proceeded to toss in the game-winner from about 80 feet away, with one hand, no less. 

The shot earned him the top play of the day on SportsCenter and a trip to the ESPY Awards. 

Then there was the more recent one, the one that came in a Princeton uniform. This was in the 2023 NCAA tournament, when Peters made 10 three-pointers in wins over Arizona and Missouri, helping Princeton to the Sweet 16. 

Read the story. Watch the video of his high school shot. Remember his postgame interview on CBS after the Tigers beat Missouri in the NCAA tournament. 

Next up? A current Tiger, Jackson Hicke, a rising junior. 

Now that it's July, it's accurate to say that later this month Hicke will be competing at the World University Games in Germany in 3X3. It'll be an all-Ivy League team, as Hicke will be joined by Avery Brown (Columbia), Chandler Piggé (Harvard) and Nick Townsend (Yale).

Then there is Parker Hill, another recent graduate. Hill just signed to play professionally in Switzerland with a team called Hellios, who plays in the highest level of Swiss pro women's basketball. 

Hill will be the sixth women's basketball alum to be playing professionally this year, joining Blake Dietrick '15 (3XBA), Carlie Littlefield '21 (3XBA), Abby Meyers '22 (Maccabi Bnot Ashdod), Grace Stone '23 (Perry Lakes Hawks) and Kaitlyn Chen '24 (Golden State Valkyries). 

It's the last one that TB would like to talk about now. 

Here's a highlight from the Valkyries' 84-57 win over Seattle Sunday night:

Chen vision -> @TemiFagbenle -> team vibes high. @ampm | Assist of the Game pic.twitter.com/SxXEwFLN3U

— Golden State Valkyries (@valkyries) June 30, 2025

That was an Ivy-to-Ivy assist, from Chen to Harvard alum Temi Fagbenle (who also was a teammate of Abby Meyers' with the London Lions team that won the European championship a year ago). Elliott (he of the Blake Peters story) had asked TB last week if he knew of any Ivy League teammates in the NBA, what with Princeton alum Tosan Evbuomwan as a returnee for the Brooklyn Nets and former Michigan and Yale player Danny Wolf's having been drafted by the Nets. 

It's possible that there are more, but TB found five of those examples. The first was in 1949-50, when the Boston Celtics had Yale's Tony Lavelli and Dartmouth's Ed Leede (the Big Green arena is named for him). 

There was also Matt Maloney and Ira Bowman on the 2000-01 Atlanta Hawks. The other three all involved Princetonians: 

* Butch van Breda Kolff and Bud Palmer were teammates for three years on the Knicks in the 40s 
* Brian Taylor and Penn’s Tony Price were teammates on the 1980-81 Clippers
* Geoff Petrie and Penn's Dave Wohl were on the 1972-73 Trailblazers

As for Chen, she's off to a really good start in Golden State, who is also off to a good start in its first season. 

More than the points and the rebounds and the assists, you can see the absolute joy that Chen plays with, in that highlight or in any other.  

It's the same look you saw when she was playing at Princeton, and when she won an NCAA title at UConn as a grad student last season. 

And that's your Princeton Basketball update for July 1. 

Now go enjoy your summer day.  

No. 32

TigerBlog's former colleague Stacy Bunting begins her tenure as the Director of Athletics at Bates College this week. 

Bates, if you didn't know, is the Bobcats. The college is located in Lewiston, Maine — where it gets relatively cold in the winter. 

It's around a 45-minute drive north from Bates to the campus of Colby College, which is in Waterville. The Director of Athletics there is Amanda DeMartino, who came to Colby from the College of New Jersey. 

It's the Mercer County to Maine NESCAC AD pipeline.

The NESCAC is the New England Small College Athletic Conference. It is the one of the two dominant conferences in Division III athletics, along with the University Athletic Association, at least if you go by the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup. 

In fact, when TigerBlog went through the final standings for 2024-25, and it was sort of like trying to figure out who won Heps cross country. The No. 1 team in Division III was Emory of the UAA, which also had No. 4 (Washington U.), No. 8 (Chicago), No. 9 (NYU) and No. 16 (Carnegie Mellon).  

The NESCAC countered with No. 3 (Tufts), No. 5 (Middlebury), No. 7 (Amherst), No. 11 (Williams) and No. 19 (Wesleyan). That's 10 of the top 19 teams in Division III, all from those two conferences. Of the other nine, they represent seven different conferences. 

If you're scoring it like cross country, with the top five finishers, then the UAA has 38 to the 45 of the NESCAC. If you add in the sixth for both conferences, though, then you have No. 33 Colby and No. 41 Case Western Reserve, which makes the score NESCAC 78, UAA 79.

Bates, by the way, was 48th in Division III and eighth in the NESCAC. That is one competitive league that Bunting is walking into this week.

If you're wondering who won Division II, that would be Grand Valley State. The top 10 in DII represented nine different conferences. 

Division I? The winner was Texas, who edged out USC and Stanford. Only 4.25 points separated those three. 

The top 33 teams in Division I feature 32 from either the Big Ten, the ACC, the Big 12 and the SEC. The other one is from the Ivy League.

Any guesses? Well duh, it's obviously Princeton. Why else would TB mention it, right? 

The Directors' Cup uses a points system based on NCAA tournament qualification and success. There's nothing else that factors into it. There are no bonus points for being from a Power Conference or for being from a different conference. 

You either make the NCAA tournament or you don't. You either advance or you don't. 

The Cup standings award points in 19 sports for Division I. There are five sports that are included for every team in Division I: baseball, men's basketball, women's basketball, women's volleyball and women's soccer. After that, the top scoring 14 sports per school are counted, so not every school uses the exact same sports. 

The Directors' Cup dates to 1993-94, when Princeton finished 34th. Since then, Princeton's average finish has been 37.1. 

The Tigers have finished as the top Ivy program all but five times. Princeton has also been in the top 50 26 times, including each of the last 15 (other than the Covid years). 

The 2024-25 athletic year saw Princeton win a record 17 Ivy League championships, as well as two other non-Ivy titles. Yes, it was quite a year. 

A new one will be starting soon. How will it go for the Tigers? How will it go for the Bobcats?  

And good luck to Stacey as she starts her new job. You're in a tough league. Moving up in the Directors' Cup will be one big challenge. 

Staying warm will be another.