Complete Games

Where to start today? 

How about with this: There have been four complete games in the Major Leagues so far in the 2024 season.

There were 38 complete games all of last season, when there were also 11 teams that had ZERO complete games. How is that possible? Analytics. And a change of mindset.

If you're in TigerBlog's age range, you remember when a complete game was almost the norm. A year ago, the Major League lead in complete games was three (Sandy Alcantara, Jordan Lyles). Back in 1975 — a year TB has picked at random — the Major League leader was Catfish Hunter, who threw 30 complete games. There were 39 pitchers who had at least 10 complete games that season.

Want to know how many there were in the 1975 season as a whole? Go ahead. Guess.

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While the subject is baseball, the Princeton baseball team has seven regular season games to play, all on the road, all after yesterday's home finale against Wagner. There is a midweek game next week at Rutgers, and that is sandwiched around a trip to Dartmouth this weekend for three and then a trip to Columbia next weekend for three more.

To keep playing beyond that, Princeton needs to be in the top four of the Ivy standings, which would mean a return to the league tournament. Right now Princeton is 8-7 and in third place, trailing 12-3 Columbia and 10-5 Cornell.

Behind the Tigers sit Yale, Penn and Harvard, all one game back at 7-8. Princeton has the tiebreaker over Penn of the group tied for fourth, achieving that with a 3-2 win in the series opener and then a 3-1 win in the third game last weekend. 

Who was the winning pitcher in those two games? In Game 1 it was Jacob Faulkner. In Game 3, it was Jacob Faulkner. The junior from Venice, Fla., has carried the Tigers this season, and he upped his record to 6-1, with a 3.11 ERA and 37 strikeouts with nine walks in 46 innings.

Are those good numbers?

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In other sports played on diamonds, the Princeton softball team finds itself in first place in the Ivy League at 11-4, ahead of 12-6 Harvard and Yale. While the baseball team is away the next two weekends, the softball team is home for three this weekend against Brown (Saturday at 12:30/2:30 and Sunday at 2:30) and then finish the regular season with three at home against Cornell next weekend.

The Tigers have not yet clinched a spot in the Ivy League tournament, with a three-game lead over 8-7 Dartmouth and Columbia, who are tied for fourth. 

Princeton had a huge sweep of Yale last weekend. Unlike baseball, the Ivy softball race has two teams who have played 18 of their 21 games, while the rest have played 15.

Princeton split its first eight Ivy games. Since then, the Tigers have won seven straight.

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The answer is that in 1975, there were 1,052 complete games. There were also 3,866 games in all that year, which means that one of every 3.67 games was a complete game.

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The Penn Relays return to Franklin Field this weekend for the 128th edition of what Penn's website refers to as "the world's oldest and largest annual track & field carnival."

TigerBlog has been to the Penn Relays, and it is indeed a carnival. If you're going to watch track and field at the Olympics this summer, its worth your time to head to Penn for this weekend's show. 

The event starts today, and you can find all information HERE.

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The College Water Polo Association has its tournament this weekend at Harvard. The winner of the six-team field will get an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. 

Princeton is the top seed after running through the league regular-season unbeaten. The second seed is Michigan, and those two have first-round byes. 

The quarterfinals tomorrow will have third-seeded Harvard take on sixth-seeded St. Francis, and fourth-seeded Brown will play fifth-seeded Bucknell. Princeton's semifinal game will be Saturday at noon, and the final will be Sunday at noon.

Princeton is 21-6 overall, with 13 wins against ranked teams. The Tigers have the CWPA Player of the Year in goalie Lindsey Lucas, and Derek Ellingson was named the league's Coach of the Year for the third time.

Lucas is Princeton's third CWPA Player of the Year, following Ashleigh Johnson and Jovana Sekulic, both of whom are in the running for spots on the U.S. Olympic team for this summer.

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The complete schedule for this weekend's events can be found HERE.

Senior Day With Kit And Sandi

Want to see a picture of 3,229 points scored in basketball at Princeton? 

Here you go ... can you name them? 

That's Kit Mueller (1,546 points) and Sandi Bittler Leland (1,683 points). Kit graduated in 1991 after being a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year. Sandi, Class of 1990, was a three-time first-team All-Ivy League selection, as well as a two-time national Academic All-American and an NCAA post-graduate scholarship winner. 

No other Princeton women's basketball player in program history has all three of those items on her resume.

Kit was second to only Bill Bradley in scoring in men's basketball when he graduated. Now, all these years later, only two players have passed him. Can you name them?

Mueller scored most of his points in the paint. He had any number of low-post moves, including one that was not really a move at all but simply a dribble across the lane while the defender waited for something else, only to find the ball already in the basket. He was a great passer as well, and his 381 assists rank third in program history. Who are 1-2? 

As for Sandi, she was the all-time leading scorer in Princeton women's basketball history from graduation through 2020, when Bella Alarie caught her. Today she remains the all-time leader in three-pointers at Princeton in women's basketball, with 246.

The answers to the two above questions, by the way, are: Ian Hummer and Doug Davis are 2-3 in scoring at Princeton, and Billy Ryan and Spencer Weisz are 1-2 in assists. 

The picture of the Kit and Sandi was taken over the weekend in Princeton. Kit was here for the lacrosse doubleheader, since he has a child on each team — Ellie on the women's team and Cooper on the men's. Sandi? She was here just check out the campus after she and her daughter Emma had spent some time in New York City.

It was Senior Day for the men's and women's teams in lacrosse this past Saturday, and there haven't been too many Senior Days that have ever gone better. TigerBlog wrote all about the men's game, 15-10 win over Penn, this past Monday.

The women's game was the first of the day. For a team that had played almost all of its home games this year in torrential rain, the Princeton women got sunshine in every way Saturday. 

The game against Dartmouth was over almost immediately after it started. By the end of the first quarter, Princeton led 9-0. It was 15-3 at the break, before Dartmouth made it closer in the second half, with a final of 17-10.

Even with that, the second half had a great moment too for Princeton. It came with four minutes to go in the third quarter, when Olivia Koch scored the first goal of her career on her Senior Day.

A Senior Day To Remember!

Olivia Koch scores her first collegiate goal to set off a raucous celebration at '52 pic.twitter.com/5NHDLlpNqG

— Princeton Women's Lax (@princetonwlax) April 20, 2024

The win over Dartmouth improved Princeton to 5-1 in the Ivy League, with a game at Harvard this Saturday in the regular season finale. After that, it'll be the Ivy League tournament, which will definitely be held at Yale, who is now 6-0. Princeton could still get a share of the league championship, with a win over Harvard and a Yale loss to 0-6 Columbia. 

The four teams in the Ivy League tournament will be Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Penn. That drama long ago ended. 

What will the seeds be? Yale is the No. 1. Princeton, with a win over Harvard, would be the No. 2. Penn and Harvard are both 4-2 in the league, and Penn holds the tiebreaker with its win over the Crimson earlier this year. Should Harvard beat Princeton and Penn beat Dartmouth, then there would be a three-way tie for second, and TB is pretty sure it would come down to goal differential between Princeton, Penn and Harvard in their head-to-head games, where Princeton is currently plus-five and Penn is currently plus-six. 

That's what the future holds. In the immediate past, there was a practically perfect Senior Day. 

And in the way past, like in the late 1980s, there was Sandi Bittler's playing days at Princeton. TB isn't sure why out of all the athletes he met back then that he and Sandi have stayed friends all these years, but they have. TB has been to the house in Oregon she shares with her husband Michael and their three kids, and he has seen her when she comes this way.

Oh, and, in addition to being 4-2-4-2-4 today, it's also the birthday of none other than Sandi Bittler Leland. Happy birthday, old friend. 

As always, it was great to spend some time together.

More Ivy Champs

When TigerBlog saw the women's tennis team in Providence two weeks ago, the Tigers were 2-1 in the league with four matches to go.

Actually, it wasn't even two weeks ago. It was 10 days ago. 

Since then? Jamea Jackson's team won all four matches in an eight-day stretch, the final one of which was by a 4-3 score Sunday in Princeton over Harvard. When the dust on the Ivy League season cleared, Princeton was, once again, the outright Ivy champion — for the fifth straight time and 18th overall. In addition, the prize was the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Going back before the trip to Providence, all the way to March 30, Princeton fell to Penn 4-3 in its Ivy opener. Would the team's streak of Ivy titles be in jeopardy? 

Princeton then beat, in order, Columbia and Cornell 4-3 each, Brown 4-2, Yale 4-1 and Dartmouth 4-2 before the Harvard match. None of this was easy; the match Sunday was the most dramatic of all.

A Harvard win would, in all likelihood, have meant an outright championship for the Crimson. Princeton won the doubles point, but Harvard won the first three singles matches, making it 3-1 and obviously meaning that one more singles win would end things right there. 

All three matches still on the court went to a third set. Princeton's Neha Velaga made it 3-2 with a win at No. 1. It was 3-3 when Madeleine Jessup won at No. 4.

So who was it now up to with the Ivy League championship on the line? That would be a freshman, Alice Ferlito, at No. 5, who won her first set 6-1 and lost her second 6-1.

That's a lot of pressure, no? You already know she won, because TB already said Princeton won the match, so instead, before getting into that part of it, there's the question of who Alice Ferlito is. 

She came to Princeton from Barcelona, where she graduated from the Emilio Sanchez Academy. You can read all about how she came to play the sport and be at Princeton in this very nice story HERE. If you don't want to read it all, you can have this quote from her coach at ESA, Alvaro Pino:

“For Alice earning a position on the team, having that responsibility on the team, helps a lot in maturity, and she is a player who likes to make her team proud."

And did she ever make them proud in the third set. With an Ivy title in the balance, Ferlito won that last set 6-4. The result was this picture:

Ah, nothing like good jubo, right? 

For Princeton, that's the ninth Ivy title jubo picture of the year and 10th league title jubo picture overall. Your conference champs to date:

Men's cross country, men's indoor track and field, women's basketball, men's basketball, women's swimming and diving, men's squash, men's fencing, women's fencing, men's water polo and now women's tennis.

There are other teams with a shot at Ivy titles this spring as Princeton chases 10, which is always a good milestone for an academic year. Princeton, by the way, has reached double figures in Ivy titles in an academic year 28 times. Harvard has done it 11. Nobody else has ever done it. 

Princeton did not win the Ivy League championship in men's or women's golf this weekend. The Yale men won, beating Princeton by an excruciating three strokes, while the women's champ was Dartmouth, who won for the first time ever.

Princeton did have the league's medalist as the individual champion on the women's side. That title belonged to Victoria Liu, who won for the second time in her career, making her the fourth Princeton woman to do so. 

The others? Julia Alison (1999, 2001), Avery Kiser (2002, 2003, 2004) and Susannah Aboff (2008, 2009).

Liu entered the final day tied at plus-two with Dartmouth's Sophie Thai and then shot an even-par 72, while Thai finished the day four-over.  Liu, who you may recall played in an LPGA event last summer,  will now advance to the NCAA Regionals.

A Wire-To-Wire Team Effort

There were two mantras for the Princeton men's lacrosse team as it readied for its game Saturday afternoon against Penn.

First: "Not on our field." A Penn win would mean an Ivy League championship for the Quakers, and there was nobody at all on Princeton's team who wanted to see that celebrated all over Sherrerd Field.

The second: "Play hard." Whatever you did, do it full speed. Whatever problem came up, just play through it with everything you had.

Because of the latter, you saw plays like when Chad Palumbo dove fully extended to prevent a ball from reaching the midline. Or like when John Dunphey managed to stop another loose ball just before it got to the sideline and then had the presence of mind to reestablish himself in the field before he touched after his momentum took his out of a bounds. 

Or there was Andrew McMeekin, who ripped two more goals after face-off wins but who also spent the day keeping loose balls alive for teammates like Liam Fairback and Marquez White to snag off the wings on those face-offs. As a result, he won 16 of 27 face-offs while picking up a ground ball on only half of them.

These were just a few examples. Wherever you looked, a Princeton player was going 100 percent, especially shortstick defensive midfielders Fairback, White, Michael Kelly and Cooper Mueller, who between them had six of Princeton's eight caused turnovers.

And so yes, the lingering image from the game will be the stunning end-to-end run and backhanded shot for a score by Princeton goalie Michael Gianforcaro in the fourth quarter. It was a hustle play to be sure, but it was more than anything just an incredible individual effort — not to mention the first goal by a Tiger goalie since Alex Hewit in 2008.

That goal aside, this was not a day for individual efforts. This was a wire-to-wire team win.

Because of the latter mantra, the former also came through. The final was 15-10 Princeton in a game the Tigers never trailed and led for the final 42 minutes, and there would be no Ivy title celebration for the Quakers afterwards.

The game, which packed nearly 3,000 into the Sherrerd Field stands, was a huge one for Princeton, and not just because of the Ivy League race. It came seven days after a crushing loss at Brown, one that revitalized the Bears' season and threatened to derail Princeton's. 

For one week, the tempo, tone and intensity of practice amped up. This wasn't going to be as much about matchups, offensive sets or even the clearing game. Those mattered, but not as much as effort. 

It was the last thing Princeton heard as it left its team room prior to the game. It's something the team gave all game.

Brown had been 1-9 overall and 0-3 in the Ivy League before the game against Princeton. A win by the Tigers would have clinched an Ivy League tournament spot. Instead, Brown went up 6-0 and never trailed, even after it was tied twice.

Princeton suddenly was in all kinds of trouble in the league tournament race, and with two teams who had already clinched their spots and were thinking league title left on the schedule. With the win against Penn achieved, that leaves a game at Yale this coming Saturday at noon.

Harvard was eliminated with its loss to Cornell, who clinched the third of the four ILT spots. Brown stayed alive by beating already eliminated Dartmouth 14-11. 

Entering the final weekend of the regular season, a Princeton win over Yale would give the Tigers the fourth spot in the field and possibly a seed as high as No. 2. If Yale wins, it would clinch at least a share of the championship (so would Cornell, and the host role, with a win over Dartmouth). 

On the other hand, a Princeton loss and a Brown win over Harvard eliminates the Tigers and puts Brown in the ILT. It would be an amazing accomplishment for Brown, one that the Tigers hope not to see.

For Princeton, there was no going back in time to the fourth quarter that got away in Providence. The only way was forward, and Princeton slammed ahead with its best, most complete performance of the season.

Now it needs another one in New Haven, or it will be forced to get some help from Harvard (that game starts at 3:30).

The formula for success isn't tricky. 

Play hard. For 60 minutes. 

This past Saturday on Sherrerd Field, it was a beautiful sight to see. 

Someone In The Crowd

TigerBlog saw "La La Land" for the first time the other night. Is it really possible that Ryan Gosling never played the piano before that movie?

TB always thought Gosling would be the right person to play Hobey Baker if a movie about the great Princeton athlete from the Class of 1914 would ever be made. Either way, "La La Land" is amazing. Watch it if you haven't already. Watch it again if you have.

As for this weekend ...

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The last time the Penn Quakers played a men's lacrosse game on Sherrerd Field, there were 41 goals scored, the last of which came from the Tigers' Chris Brown in overtime, ending a 21-20 epic.

It was the only game Princeton has ever played in its long, long history in which both teams reach at least 20 goals. The Quakers will be back tomorrow (face-off at 5) for the first time since that game, which was pretty much universally considered the best college lacrosse game of 2022. 

Now, since that game, the teams have played twice, both last year. There was the regular-season game at Penn, won by the Quakers 9-8 in overtime, and then an Ivy League tournament semifinal game, won by Princeton, also 9-8. 

That's a total of 34 goals in two games last year after 41 in one game two years ago. The 2022 game was the highest-scoring game in program history; the two games last year are the only two Princeton men's lacrosse games in the last 55 the team has played where neither team has reached double figures.

Talk about different outcomes. 

If TigerBlog had to guess, he'd say the game tomorrow will be somewhere in the middle. It's a huge game for both teams, as Penn would clinch at least a share of the Ivy title with a win and Princeton is still chasing down an Ivy tournament spot.

Princeton has to make sure it's playing the Penn game tomorrow and not last week's Brown game, a frustrating 13-12 loss to the Bears. It's hard to turn the page from such games, but there's no time to dwell on losses, or, for that matter, wins at this time of year. 

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The men's game is the second game of a Sherrerd Field doubleheader, which starts at noon with the women's game against Dartmouth. The current Ivy League standings have Yale at 5-0, Princeton at 4-1 and Harvard and Penn at 3-2, followed by 2-3 Cornell and Brown, 1-4 Dartmouth and 0-5 Columbia.

The league tournament will almost surely be held in New Haven, as Yale needs to win only one of its final two games, either tomorrow against Cornell or next week against Columbia. Princeton has won four straight in the league since an 11-9 loss to Yale in its opener.

Yale and Princeton have clinched their ILT spots. Penn (who plays Brown) and Harvard (who plays Columbia) would also do so with a win tomorrow.

Princeton is at Harvard next week in a game that will have a big impact on seedings. 

Princeton lost 16-12 to Maryland Wednesday night in a game in which the Terps outscored the Tigers 7-0 in the third quarter. Take that away, and well, you can't, but you get the point.

McKenzie Blake, by the way, has 47 goals and 47 draw controls. With three more of each, she would join Elizabeth George as the only players in program history with at least 50 of each in a season. 

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Princeton is at Yale for three softball games this weekend. The Tigers head to New Haven one game back of the Bulldogs in the loss column, as Yale is 12-3 and Princeton is 8-4.

The Ivy League tournament for softball will also be at the home of the top seed. It's too early to think about clinching spots with so many games to play, but first place is on the line in these three.

The baseball team is home for three against Penn this weekend, with two tomorrow starting at 11:30 and then a single game Sunday at noon. 

Talk about a tight race? The top and bottom of the league are separated by six games. Princeton is in a three-way tie for third with Penn and Yale at 6-6, with Columbia at 9-3, Cornell at 8-4, Dartmouth and Harvard at 5-7 and Brown at 3-9.

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As TB wrote yesterday, the Ivy League tennis championships will be decided this weekend. Princeton's women are home against Dartmouth tomorrow and Harvard Sunday in a match that could decide the title.

There will also be Ivy titles won at the league's golf championships this weekend.

The full schedule for the weekend is HERE.

On The Bus

TigerBlog is writing today about the last weekend of the Ivy League tennis season. 

It may take him a little while to get there, though. To wit:

The bus driver for the men's lacrosse team's trip to Brown last weekend was an amiable sort named Andy.

At one point, the name "Kaitlyn" was mentioned, and Andy's ears perked up.

"Chen?" he said. 

That's the one.

"I drove them a few times," he said. "You could tell she's the real deal."

She certainly is. Chen, the three-time Most Outstanding Player at the Ivy League women's basketball tournament, has the stats, wins and accolades to prove it. As Andy can attest, she also carries herself like a champion.

This past week, Chen added two more impressive items to her resume. First, she was named a second-team College Sports Communicator Academic All-American, becoming the fourth Princeton women's basketball player to be honored on the national level (Sandi Bittler twice, Michelle Miller twice and Lauren Edwards once were the others).

Also this week, Chen was, not surprisingly, named a first-team All-Metropolitan Basketball Writers' Association selection. Her teammates Ellie Mitchell (second-team) and Madison St. Rose (honorable mention) were also honored.

Who were the other players on first-team?

You had Abbey Hsu from Columbia, as well as players from St. John's, Stony Brook and ... Sacred Heart. The Sacred Heart contribution would be Ny'Ceara Pryor, who was honored for the second straight year. Pryor has finished her first two seasons at SHU with 1,222 points, 462 rebounds and 297 assists. 

Are those good numbers? TB will always take a chance to pump up Sacred Heart, being his son's alma mater and all.

Meanwhile, back on the bus, in addition to driving Princeton women's basketball and men's lacrosse, Andy also mentioned having driven the women's soccer team and the men's hockey team. Bus rides are a huge part of the Princeton athletic experience for the athletes, and each team travels with its own culture, traditions and procedures. 

TB has been on the bus with a few teams, most notably field hockey and men's lacrosse. He can attest to just how different those rides are, and he knows that all teams have their own uniqueness.

This past Saturday, the men's lacrosse bus wasn't the only one to arrive in Providence. The women's tennis team stayed in the same hotel as the Tigers, and the women's lacrosse team stayed across the street.

TigerBlog was in Room 616 at the Providence Courtyard Marriott. From his window, he could see all the buses lined up one behind the other. 

The first person TB saw when he came downstairs after checking in was women's tennis coach Jamea Jackson. If you've never met Jamea, she, like Kaitlyn Chen, is clearly the real deal. 

She's always smiling, and she appreciates any time anyone comes to watch her team compete. She has a way of making you feel like you're part of the women's tennis family, even if you just stopped in for a bit.

Jackson introduced TB to her assistant coaches, Nathan Thompson and Richard Sipala. Again, it was like an extended family reunion.

TB asked them about their bus ride. The men's lacrosse team travels on two buses, one for offense and one for defense. Even with the two buses, some of the players have to double up. 

The women's tennis team? One bus. Eight players. 

Princeton, of course, wasn't the only school who had sent teams on the road this past weekend. Princeton's hotel also included Syracuse track and field and a whole bunch of people in Drexel shirts. 

The women's tennis team had two matches this past weekend, first defeating Brown 4-2 Saturday and then taking down Yale 4-1 Sunday. Right now, Princeton is 4-1 in the Ivy League, with a 4-3 loss to Penn in its opener.

Harvard is 5-0, and Penn is 3-2. Harvard is at Penn Saturday and Princeton Sunday at 1. The Tigers play Dartmouth at 1 Saturday at home as well.

This is the final weekend of the Ivy League tennis season. The men's side is crowded at the top, with Princeton, Harvard and Columbia all at 4-1 heading into this final weekend.

Columbia is at Yale and Brown. Princeton is at Dartmouth and Harvard. 

There's a lot on the line this weekend in Ivy tennis. For the Princeton men, it means getting on the bus before getting on the courts. 

Hopefully the ride home after will be a celebratory one.

100 Percent Chance Of Women's Lacrosse

There's a 100 percent chance of a home game for the Princeton women's lacrosse team tonight. 

There's a 53 percent chance of showers at 7 pm, which is when tonight's game begins. That would make it among the best weather forecasts for the Tigers to play at home this season. 

Hey, it's only supposed to be light rain, even a gentle, soft spring rain. That'll be quite different than the pouring, biblical rains with temps in the 40s that Princeton has endured most of its home season.

A little rain isn't going to deter these Tigers. 

Princeton's opponent tonight is Maryland, whose current RPI is No. 5. This will be Princeton's seventh game against a team currently in the top 20 of the RPI, including five of the current top 10.

That's a team that has been tested. 

Princeton is 8-4 overall, with an RPI of 13 of its own. The Tigers have already clinched a spot in the Ivy League tournament and seem to be in good shape for a return to the NCAA tournament. 

This is a team in every sense as well. Grace Tauckus is fifth in Division I in free position goals per game, making her the only Princeton player to rank in the top 20 nationally in any statistical category.

The top 100, though, is dotted with Princeton players. McKenzie Blake ranks 77th in Division I in points per game. Haven Dora ranks 31st in assists per game. Amelia Hughes in 29th in saves per game. The list goes on like that.

As a team, Princeton ranks 14th nationally in scoring offense and 16th in shooting percentage. Perhaps the best number is 12.33, which is the number of times per game Princeton turns the ball over, a figure that ranks ninth in Division I.

Blake leads Princeton with 43 goals on the year. There are six other players in double figures in goals, and two — Tauckus and Jami MacDonald — who have better than 20 (Dora is one away from joining that group). There are four players in double figures in goals and assists (Tauckus, MacDonald, Dora and Kari Buonanno).

By the way, Blake has 43 goals and 43 draw controls. Should she get seven  more of each, she'd join Elizabeth George as the only player in program history to have a season of at least 50 of each.

When you have a team that has the kind of scoring balance that Princeton does, it makes you harder to defend. It's not like you can simply lock off Blake and take your chances. 

Dora, for her part, has had a huge breakout sophomore year. After six points a year ago as a freshman with three goals and three assists, Dora now has 43 points on 19 goals and 23 assists through 12 games this year. 

While Princeton ranks 14th in scoring offense, Maryland brings the nation's No. 11 scoring defense to the game, as the Terps allow 8.6 goals per game. Emily Sterling, the Maryland goalie and the two-time Big Ten Goalie of the Year, is No. 3 in the country with a .527 save percentage.

The Terps are 11-4 overall but 2-3 in their last five, beginning with a 13-9 loss to Penn on March 27. Princeton beat Penn 14-9 in the Quakers' next game after their Maryland game. Princeton comes into the game tonight after putting up 23 goals Saturday against Brown.

By the way, the forecast for the game at Brown was for sunshine, though a bit windy. And what happened during the women's game? It rained, of course, even though there was a zero percent chance of rain according to the weather.

After tonight, Princeton has two regular season games to go, this Saturday at home against Dartmouth (noon start, Princeton-Penn men follow at 5) and then April 27 at Harvard. Princeton is 4-1 in the league, behind Yale, who is 5-0, including defeating Princeton 11-9 on March 2 in the Ivy opener for both.

Yale, who along with Princeton is the only other team to have clinched its ILT spot, has games remaining against Cornell and Columbia; one win in those two means that the tournament will be at Yale. Harvard and Penn are a game back of Princeton at 3-2 in the league.

The Cure For A Bad Mood

TigerBlog walked outside yesterday morning, and the spring weather was already perfect. 

Then he stopped off in a store, where he was the second one on line at the checkout. The cashier said to the man in front of him "have a nice day," to which the man responded "you have a better one."

How nice was that? That comment lifted TB's morning spirits even higher. 

And then? He was driving into Princeton when he came to the point where 206 heads to the left at Nassau Street. The lane to go straight onto Nassau Street was blocked by a broken down van with a tow truck already there, so everyone in that lane had to move over into the other one. 

It was all going smoothly until TB pulled over and heard honking. When he looked in his rearview mirror, he saw a driver who was gesturing wildly at him. 

It didn't cause TB any road rage. More like "road confusion." Where did she want him to go? Wasn't it obvious what was going on? 

Anyway, that did take his spirits down a few levels. Leave it to Joe Dubuque to bring them back up.

The head coach of wrestling at Princeton came into TB's office to introduce his new head assistant coach, Cody Brewer. As Dubuque introduced Brewer, he asked TB when the next entry with him in it would be, suggesting that nothing drives blog traffic quite like a mention of Dubuque.

TB assured him that it would be today, and so here he is. 

Dubuque is a definite, 100 percent can't miss cure for someone's flipping you off on Nassau Street. That's for sure. 

As for Brewer, TigerBlog didn't know anything about him, other than he certainly looks the part of a wrestling coach, and, presumably, a pretty good wrestler before that. As it turns out, he is all of that.

Brewer coached at Virginia Tech and Northwestern before this, and as an undergrad he was the 2015 NCAA champion at 133 pounds. He came into the event as the 13 seed and then won five straight matches, including taking down the top seed 15-3 in the semifinals and the third seed 11-8 in the final. 

The third seed, by the way, was named Cory Clark and he was from Iowa. Two years later, in 2017, Clark won an NCAA title of his own.

TB hopes he enjoyed his few years as making a claim to being the best "Clark" from Iowa until Caitlin came along. Are the two Clarks related? TB can't find anything to suggest they are, but they did grow up 14 miles apart from each other. 

With TB's mood now much back on the positive side, he saw an envelope on his desk, one of those inter-University envelopes that he used to get all the time and now gets once a year or so. These are the envelopes that are sealed with the red piece of string that winds around the two red circles, and the front has different spaces to cross out the last person who had it and add the next address. 

This envelope came to Jadwin Gym from Firestone Library. Before that, it was at the East Asian Library, 693 Alexander, 226 Alexander and originally at Firestone Library. Presumably, TigerBlog will cross out his name and send it off to someone else, even though he hasn't had to send something through the University mail system in years. 

What was in the envelope? 

It was a book entitled "The Princeton University Trivia Book." TB's mood, which Dubuque had rescued, was now even better.

What could be better than a Princeton University trivia book for TB, whose title includes the word "historian?" How about being in the acknowledgements as one of the book's selected sources, from TB's own "I Can Do Anything, Stories From The First 50 Years Of Women's Athletics At Princeton."

The trivia book was compiled by Helene Van Rossum and TB's longtime friend and University archivist  Daniel J. Linke. 

If you're interested, you can order it HERE. It'll be available on Amazon starting next month.

The book is divided into eight sections: History, Student Life, Princeton Culture, Learning and Teaching, People, Extracurricular, Around Campus and Fun Facts. 

Trust TigerBlog on this. You'll absolutely love it. 

 

Eight For Morrisroe

Today's entry is one of those where TigerBlog went to look something up, got distracted and then almost forgot what it was he was trying to find.

The Princeton women's lacrosse team defeated Brown 23-10 in Providence Saturday, on a day when freshman Meg Morrisroe tied the school record for goals in a game with eight. When TB went to the women's lacrosse record book, he saw that Morrisroe is now the third Princeton women's lacrosse player to reach eight goals in a game.

The first was Kathy Mahoney, who did so in 1981, also against Brown. The second was Catherine McCarthy, who had eight against Yale in 1989.

He figured he'd go to the Daily Princetonian archives to see what he could find out about both of the other record holders. When he went to the Monday edition after Mahoney's big game, he didn't find anything about those eight goals, but he did see a picture of Princeton's baseball shortstop at the time, Henry Milligan.

If you don't know who Henry Milligan is, he won 10 letters at Princeton between football, wrestling and baseball. None of those, though, was the sport in which he'd become most famous.

That would be boxing, where he was an excellent light heavyweight, despite weighing only 185 pounds or so. He reached the semifinals of the 1984 Olympic Trials at 201 pounds before he lost to, well, can you name who beat him? 

The person who beat him then lost to a different Henry, this one named Tillman, in the Olympic Trial final. Henry Tillman then won the Olympic gold medal.

Give up? It was an 18-year-old Mike Tyson.

Milligan fought as a professional and even had a cruiserweight title fight. He was also an engineer. 

Meanwhile, the story about Mahoney was actually in the Tuesday "Prince" that week. Mahoney broke the record held by none other than Emily Goodfellow, one of the very few people who can say "I won more letters at Princeton than Henry Milligan," as she won 12. Goodfellow scored seven against Radcliffe in 1974 to set the record, and Jody McNeil equaled that with seven against Hofstra in 1978.

That 1981 game against Brown, by the way, also had another Princeton player who scored seven, Wiz Lippincott. 

The 1989 game was a 17-3 romp over Yale. This is how McCarthy was described in the student paper after her first goal: 

"McCarthy, who plays like Ming the Merciless and shoots like Larry Bird, was just getting warmed up."

TigerBlog has no idea who Ming is. He doesn't sound like a fun guy though.

Meanwhile, back in the present, TigerBlog was watching the women's lacrosse game against Brown on ESPN+ before he headed over to the men's game. The first quarter ended at 9-6 Princeton and took 45 minutes to play. 

Princeton's defense tightened up. Princeton's offense kept going.

Morrisroe's eight goals came after she had scored six goals on 16 shots for the season to date. Against the Bears she went off for eight goals on 10 shots. 

If you didn't notice, Morrisroe's goal total was the most in the last 35 years. Think about all of the great players Princeton has had since then who never got there. 

It was an impressive win for Princeton, especially considering the quick turnaround from its loss at Loyola Wednesday night. The Tigers then had to come back from Baltimore and head up to Providence Friday for a noon game Saturday — against the No. 25 team in the country. 

Princeton sprinted away from the Bears, and when it was over, Princeton had run all the way into the Ivy League tournament, clinching a spot in the four-team field.  

With two weeks to go in the regular season, Princeton has three games to go. There is this coming Wednesday at home against Maryland, and then the league season concludes with Saturday's noon game against Dartmouth, also on Sherrerd Field, and then a trip to Harvard April 27. 

The Ivy standings right now have Yale at 5-0, followed by Princeton at 4-1 and then Harvard and Penn at 3-2. Yale finishes with Cornell and Columbia, and Princeton can only get a share of the title if the Bulldogs lose at least one of those. Should Yale win one more game, it would definitely host the league tournament.

Princeton, though, is playing as well as it has all season. The game Saturday in Providence was another big step forward.

A Lot Of Athletes

A guy goes in for his physical, and he asks the doctor if she saw the eclipse. The doctor said she missed it, and the guy says the next total solar eclipse will be in 2079, when he'll be nearly 120 years old.

"Will you be around for it?" the doctor asks.

"Depends how good a doctor you are," the guy says. 

That was an actual conversation from TigerBlog's physical Tuesday, by the way.

*

There will be 15 Princeton teams who compete this weekend. Don't believe TB? See for yourself HERE.

Two of those teams will be the men's and women's track and field teams, who will host the Larry Ellis Invitational.

Larry Ellis, if you don't know, was the first Black head coach ever in the Ivy League. Hired in 1970 to coach the men's track and field team, he would serve in that position for 22 years. Before he coached at Princeton, he was the head coach at Jamaica High School in Queens, where he coached Bob Beamon (look him up if you don't already know), and before that he served in the Korean War.

Ellis, who was also an Olympic coach, was part of one of the most insightful moments TB has ever experienced. TB was walking down the Jadwin balcony when he saw Ellis and one of his athletes outside of his office, and TB heard the athlete ask the coach what he needed to do to be able to get to a certain time in his event.

And what did Ellis answer? With all the wisdom of the world, he said simply "run faster."

As anyone who ever met him could confirm, he was an extraordinarily kind man. He was a real gentleman, to quote a coach Ellis brought to Princeton in 1977 — Fred Samara.

Larry Ellis passed away in 1998. The Larry Ellis Invitational originated one year later.

* 

Of all the athletes who will be on this campus this weekend, one who bears watching is Dartmouth softball freshman pitcher Jensin Hall, who has been the Ivy Pitcher of the Week three of the last four weeks. Hall earned her most recent honor this past week after striking out 17 Brown Bears in a Big Green win.

The Ivy softball race is a good one, with Columbia currently on top at 7-2, followed by Yale at 9-3 and then Princeton and Dartmouth at 5-4 and Harvard at 6-6. The path to the NCAA tournament goes through the Ivy tournament, in which the top four teams will play.

Princeton and Dartmouth will play twice tomorrow, starting at 12:30, and then once more Sunday, at 12:30.

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Here's something TigerBlog didn't realize about Karlie Samuelson when he wrote about her and the London Lions yesterday: She's Devin Cannady's sister-in-law.

Cannady, one of the great scorers in Princeton men's basketball history and an NBA player himself, is married to Katie Lou Samuelson, Karlie's sister who is two years younger and herself a professional basketball player. 

By the way, if you haven't seen the shot that Holly Winterburn hit to give London the win in the game the other day, look it up — and then imagine this had happened in an NBA playoff game or an NCAA championship game.

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TigerBlog's longtime friend Matt Ciciarelli is a former Princeton baseball contact for the Office of Athletic Communications, but he hasn't been to Clarke Field in quite some time. He said he might come by for the Monmouth game, but it was moved up a day to Tuesday, which made it tougher for him.

What was the draw? The son of a friend of his plays for Monmouth. Turns out his name is Trey Porter, and it turns out that Ciciarelli missed out on something incredible by not being at the game.

First of all, Porter made his first start of the season Second of all, he made this catch:

Hey @SportsCenter we have a home run saving catch for you from freshman Trey Porter in today’s @MUHawksBaseball game at Princeton.

Watch the rest of the game here: https://t.co/N3rPRsHZF7#sctop10 #FlyHawks pic.twitter.com/Pz0DJI8WnC

— Monmouth Hawks (@MonmouthHawks) April 9, 2024

It doesn't get much better than that, does it? Apparently it does: It was only the No. 3 Play of the Day on SportsCenter.

As for the Ivy baseball standings, they also have Columbia on top, at 8-1. Behind the Lions, only four games separate second from eighth and only three games separate second from seventh. The race for the tournament spots will be intense.

Princeton currently sits tied for third with Penn at 5-4, one game behind Cornell and one game ahead of Yale. Princeton has three this weekend at home against Harvard (doubleheader tomorrow at 11:30, single game Sunday at noon) and then three with home against Penn followed by three-game trips to Yale and Columbia

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There is a lacrosse doubleheader in Providence tomorrow, with the women's game at noon and the men's game at 3:30. By the end of the night, one or both (or neither) of the Princeton teams could have clinched an Ivy tournament spot.