A Fairly Full Weekend

Let's see.

TigerBlog went to four Princeton athletic events over the weekend. He watched others on the videostream. He followed Twitter to get updates.

He announced. He wrote. He did stats.

It was a fairly full weekend. Of course it was. How could it not be, what with nine different teams who played on campus.

TigerBlog saw four of them live - men's water polo, women's hockey, men's hockey and football. He watched the women's soccer and men's soccer games on videostream. He kept track of Twitter updates for field hockey, sprint football and women's volleyball.

He actually saw a little of the women's hockey game Friday against RIT live. It was 3-0 Tigers - the RIT Tigers - when TB got there and when he left. Then he went to the pool for a little bit of men's water polo. He got back to his office to see the end of the women's hockey comebck on the videostream, including Morgan Sly's pretty overtime goal to win it.

He then had to help out doing stats at men's hockey against Cornell. This is something that TigerBlog has a demonstrated record of doing poorly.

Lacrosse? He can do that all by himself. He doesn't even need a spotter. Hockey is another story.

TB had what would appear to be the easiest job, doing the shot chart. All he had to do was write down the number of the player on each team who took a shot and where on the ice they were. If the shot was a save, he had to underline it twice. A blocked shot was underlined once. A shot that went wide was left alone. A goal was circled.

TigerBlog failed this miserably. First, because he was sitting in the press box at Baker Rink, he was at above and behind one goal. The paper with the chart, of course, had the goals to his left and right, as if he was sitting at center ice.

As a result, he couldn't figure out his left from his right on the chart without turning the paper 90 degrees. And then he couldn't keep straight which side was Cornell and which side was Princeton.

If he kept the paper turned to replicate the ice, then the numbers he wrote down would also be off by 90 degrees.

It was very stressful.

On the other hand, Colton Phinney had a great 40-save performance, with a few "wow" saves, as Princeton won the game 2-1. The Tigers were up 1-0 early, as in 3:14 in, on a goal by Aaron Ave. TigerBlog's shot chart had him shooting it in the other goal, by the way.

The next time either team scored was 56:01 later, when Garrett Skrbich scored into an empty net. Game over, right? Not exactly. Cornell scored with 16 seconds left to keep it interesting, but that would be it.

As for Saturday, he kept checking Twitter for the field hockey score, and Princeton won that one 4-3. By then, Columbia had lost 4-1 to Harvard.

It was the one scenario that would bring Princeton an outright Ivy title and the league's bid to the NCAA tournament. And it worked out perfectly.

Princeton, the Ivy field hockey champ for the 20th time in 21 years, is going to be a tough out come NCAA tournament time.

Then it was time to do PA at football.

The game dragged for nearly 3.5 hours, with 16 TV timeouts and 98 passes. And it wasn't exactly the most artistic game for much of it.

Still, it was exactly what Princeton needed. A win. And so here is where the Tigers are: tied with Yale and Dartmouth - its last two opponents - for second, one game back of Harvard, who play Penn and Yale.

The Tigers need two wins and at least one Harvard loss, but at least they still have a chance. A loss to Penn would have basically ended that hope.

After that, TB watched the second half of men's soccer on the videostream. Princeton was up 3-2 at the half, and that's how it ended.

Dartmouth defeated Columbia, meaning that Princeton and Dartmouth are still tied for first at 4-1-1, with 13 points. Princeton is at Yale (0-5-1); Dartmouth hosts Brown (2-2-2).

Princeton would lose the tiebreaker for the NCAA bid to Dartmouth because of the OT loss on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium earlier this season. But Princeton also is right in the mix for an at-large NCAA bid either way, and a win over Yale means no worse than a share of the Ivy title.

And with that, TB was able to exhale.

These are the kinds of weekends that TB loves. Lots of teams. Lots of games. Lots to do.

This one was a pretty good one. 

At Home In Ithaca

When summer lacrosse tournaments or camp games end in ties, a standard tiebreaking procedure is the dreaded "Braveheart."

What's a Braveheart? It's one-on-one, full-field lacrosse, along with goalies. Each team sends out one player to face-off and then play one-on-one until somebody scores. It usually doesn't last too long, since it's a bit difficult to chase someone the length of a lacrosse field once you've given up a step.

TigerBlog thought this would have been a much cooler way to decide who advanced at the Liberty Hockey Invitational first round games Friday at the Prudential Center in Newark, rather than having a conventional three-round shootout.

UConn and Merrimack opened the tournament with a 2-2 tie, and Princeton and Yale concluded the day with their own 2-2 tie. Because of the tournament format, though, someone had to advance to the final, so there was a shootout.

How about a Braveheart instead? Each team sends out the goalie and one skater. They face off and play until someone scores. How much more fun would that be?

Hey, the NHL should adopt this too.

TigerBlog doesn't know much about hockey. He does know that Princeton has scored three goals this year, and they're all by freshmen. That's a good sign.

The Princeton-Yale game was a good one, the first for head coach Ron Fogarty with the Tigers, against the team that won the NCAA championship two years ago. The incredible thing about the game is that the teams meet again twice more in the regular season, and the next meeting was to be one day short of exactly three months later.

What will happen between then and now? A lot. But still, it was an entertaining day of hockey in Newark, and TB got a chance to see the arena, which he had not before.

At the same time, the Princeton women's hockey team was knocking off Cornell, who has dominated Ivy League women's hockey for the last few years. That game was played in Ithaca.

And this weekend, if it was Princeton-Cornell in Ithaca, Princeton won.

The Tigers and Big Red played in Ithaca in six different sports in a 28-hour stretch beginning with that women's hockey game, and Princeton went 6-0 in those six events. Maybe it's because Ithaca is Mollie Marcoux's hometown?

Anyway, if you're keeping track, Princeton defeated Cornell in women's hockey, field hockey, football, women's volleyball, women's soccer and men's soccer between last Friday and Saturday. It's left some of those teams right in the thick of the Ivy championship hunt.

* Field hockey

Princeton is tied with Columbia at 5-1 in the Ivy League. The Tigers host Penn Saturday, while Columbia is at Harvard.

Should only one win, then it would be outright Ivy League champion and the league's NCAA tournament representative. If they both win, then they share the title, but Columbia would be the league's automatic bid by virtue of its win over Princeton. In other words, Princeton needs to beat Penn and have Harvard beat Columbia to get to the NCAA tournament.

Penn and Harvard are both 3-3 in the league.

Things can get a bit murkier if Princeton and Columbia both lose and Cornell defeats Dartmouth, which would mean a three-way tie for the title. In that case, TigerBlog is pretty sure that there would be a random draw for the Ivy automatic bid, since all three would be 1-1 against each other and have a loss to either Penn or Harvard, who would be tied in the standings. TB has been wrong about these things before.

* Men's soccer

Don't look now - or actually look now - but Princeton is tied for first in the Ivy League men's soccer race. Princeton and Dartmouth are both 3-1-1, for 10 points. Harvard and Penn are both next with eight points.

There are two weeks left in the Ivy season, and Princeton hosts Penn and is at Yale. There is also a game Wednesday at American, a team earning votes in the national poll.

Should Princeton win its last two league games, it would be assured of at least a tie for the championship. Because Princeton's loss is to Dartmouth, Princeton would not get the league's automatic bid in a two-way tie, though TB figures the Tigers would be right in the mix for an at-large NCAA bid.

* Women's soccer

This is the final week of Julie Shackford's 20-year career as the women's soccer coach at Princeton. Her team can still get a share of the Ivy League title but cannot get the league's NCAA tournament bid.

Princeton has 10 points, trailing Harvard (13) and Dartmouth (12). A Tiger win over Penn Saturday, coupled with a Harvard loss to Columbia (eight points) and Dartmouth loss or tie in its game with Cornell (three points) gives Princeton a tie for the league championship. The Tigers cannot win a tiebreaker in either a two-way tie with Harvard or three-way tie with Harvard and Dartmouth, and Princeton cannot have a two-way tie with Dartmouth.

* Women's volleyball

There are two weekends and four matches left for each Ivy League women's volleyball team. Princeton is currently 7-3, trailing only Harvard and Yale, who are both 8-2.

The good news for Princeton is that they play both again, this Friday at home against Harvard and then the following Friday at Yale. Princeton is also home with Dartmouth Saturday.

The bad news? Princeton went 0-3 against those three the first time around. Still, the Tigers have a chance, and that's all they could really ask for at this point.

* Football

Princeton defeated Cornell 38-27 Saturday, going to 3-1 in the Ivy League with three games left, including one this Saturday at home at 3:30 against Penn.

Right now, Harvard is 4-0, followed by Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth all at 3-1. Princeton ends it season at Yale and home with Dartmouth.

Harvard knocked off Dartmouth Saturday in a match of the last two Ivy unbeatens. Harvard has also beaten Princeton.

Obviously, the Crimson finish the season against Yale, at home no less. Yale appears to have the best chance to knock off Harvard, who also has Columbia (0-4) and Penn (1-3) to go.

Princeton needs to win out and have someone beat Harvard. If that happens, then Princeton would be co-champion.

Princeton Hosts Harvard - Times Four

TigerBlog has written about Oscar Pistorius before.

If you don't want to click on the link, TB will give you the gist in one paragraph:

TB couldn't believe it when he saw the news. And he was mad at himself, mad for once again believing in an athlete, holding that athlete up to be more than he was, to be a great international citizen, when all he really is is a murderer who can run fast on fake legs.

That was from Feb. 15, 2013, right after it came out that Pistorius - the South African double-amputee turned Olympic runner - had killed his girlfriend, the beautiful model Reeva Steenkamp.

Now Pistorius sits in the medical wing of a South African prison. His sentence is five years, but it appears that he'll be out in 10 months. And he'll serve his time in the medical wing, with other disabled prisoners.

Less than a year. For murder.

What strikes TB about it most now is that Pistorius is in the medical wing, and not the most worse main area of the prison, because of his disability, the very thing he fought against being labeled with when he wanted to run in the Olympics, or, in other words, he's disabled when it suits him.

And yes, TigerBlog read how Pistorius suffers from depression. Unfortunately, that's not as serious as Steenkamp, who suffers from being dead.

This entire story from the beginning has really affected TigerBlog, probably because of how much he allowed himself to admire Pistorius during the last Olympics. Never again. TigerBlog will never again look at a professional athlete with that kind of admiration.

TigerBlog has not yet watched a pitch of the World Series. He has watched very little NFL football this year. He watched almost none of the NBA and NHL regular seasons or playoffs last year.

He did watch a lot of the World Cup, and clearly those guys aren't saints either. So why that event? Maybe it's the fact that the players aren't being paid additionally for competing, that they're doing it for love of the game and because of the great respect the event has earned?

It wasn't until today that TigerBlog wondered if part of the reason he watches so little of the major sports leagues now is because of Pistorius? Maybe TB just reached his breaking point?

Anyway, no segue today. Let's just get to the four Princeton-Harvard matchups Saturday, going in chronological order:

* Field Hockey at noon

Unlike most years, this current Ivy League field hockey race is actually just that, a race. Princeton, winner of 19 of the last 20 Ivy titles in the sport, is in a dogfight with five teams.

The Tigers, who lost earlier this year to Columbia, are one of four teams at 3-1, along with the Lions, Cornell (whom Princeton plays next week) and Dartmouth (whom Princeton has already beaten). Harvard is 2-2 and still hoping to get back into the hunt, though a loss to Princeton would pretty much end that hope. Harvard did deal Cornell its first league loss of the year a week ago.

Princeton, after playing Harvard Saturday, will host Connecticut Sunday at 1 in a matchup of the last two NCAA champions.

* Football at 1

There are three 2-0 teams in the Ivy League, and two of them play here Saturday at 1. The last two times these teams played, the results were wild - a 29-point fourth-quarter rally for a 39-34 Princeton win two years ago and a 51-48 three OT win for Princeton last year. The winning points in both came from Quinn Epperly to Roman Wilson.

Couple all that with the nearly perfect weather forecast, and TigerBlog is hoping to see a huge crowd in the stands Saturday.

Princeton, Harvard and Dartmouth are all 2-0. Yale is 1-1, with a loss to Dartmouth. Penn is also 1-1, and the Quakers play the Bulldogs Saturday in what amounts to an elimination game. If one assumes that Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth and Yale are the main contenders, then the schedule is a great one, since only one head-to-head game among that group has been played to date.

As a little added bonus, Harvard is 26-1 against all other opponents and 0-2 against Princeton in its last 29 games.

* Women's soccer at 4

The Ivy League women's soccer picture will be much clearer come Saturday night.

Harvard is currently 3-0-1 in the league for 10 points. Princeton and Columbia are 2-1-1, with seven points. Dartmouth is hanging around at 1-0-3, which adds up to six points. In addition to Princeton-Harvard, Columbia hosts Dartmouth Saturday.

There could be a three-way tie for first with wins by Princeton and Columbia should both win. On the other hand, a Harvard win and Dartmouth-Columbia tie would mean that the Crimson would be five points ahead of the Lions and six points ahead of the Tigers and Big Green. Dartmouth is rooting for a Princeton win to go along with its own win, which would mean Harvard and Princeton with 10 points and Dartmouth with nine.

Dartmouth takes on Harvard next weekend.

* Men's soccer at 7

As is the case on the women's side, Harvard is the lone Ivy unbeaten on the women's side, at 2-0-1. Also like the women, the Princeton men would tie Harvard with a win, though unlike the women, that wouldn't guarantee first place.

Dartmouth and Penn are both 2-1. Columbia and Brown join Princeton at 1-1-1. In other words, one week behind the women's race, the men's side is a bit more crowded.

The bottom line for Princeton is that a win would be huge, not that anyone needs TigerBlog to tell them that.

Harvard opened the year at 0-3 and then won eight straight before tying Brown last week.

And there you have it. Princeton vs. Harvard, four times, on Princeton's campus, on a perfect fall Saturday.

Of course, just how perfect remains to be seen, depending on the results.

Better Today Than Saturday

The outside temperature gauge on TigerBlog's dashboard as he pulled into Lot 21 read 53 degrees. As he got out of his car, the first thing he had to get was his umbrella.

That's the kind of morning it is around here.

As he started the short walk into the building, TigerBlog had one thought: Better today than Saturday.

When his colleague Craig Sachson walked in, the first thing he said was this: Better today than Saturday.

In between, TigerBlog talked to one person, Ryan Yurko, whose exact title is either "Assistant Director of Athletics For Finance and Administration" or "guy who has something to do with money." And what did Yurko say?

Right. Better today than Saturday.

The unanimous thinking in Jadwin this morning seems to be that it's worth it to have a rainy Wednesday in exchange for Saturday's forecast, which is this: Sunny, high 67, zero percent chance of rain.

And that makes today not that big a deal.

What's going on Saturday? A lot.

Princeton is home against Harvard in four different events, beginning at noon in field hockey and continuing with football at 1, women's soccer at 4 and men's soccer at 7. Admission to three of those four is free.

All four are huge games in their Ivy League races. Each one will have a direct impact on who wins the championship in each sport, even with several weeks to go for each.

But hey, that's not for right now.

For now, TigerBlog wants to talk about Yurko.

One of TB's favorite words to describe people is "amiable," as in "having or displaying a friendly and pleasant manner." If anyone fits that description, it's Yurko.  

He's a Midwesterner, transplanted here to the East, and he's pretty much what you'd expect from someone from Indiana, which is interesting, because as TigerBlog writes these words, his iTunes is playing the music from "Hoosiers."

That's actually true.

Yurko came up with an idea that TigerBlog thought wasn't too bad. Play the last two Harvard football games on the website in advance of Saturday's game, sort of like ESPN does before a big game. Of course if they were Ivy League Digital Network games (as opposed to ESPN3; TB can't remember), they'd already be archived.

But it wasn't a bad idea.

From there, Yurko went down the path of suggesting a regular feature of old games, and the first one he mentioned was the 1989 NCAA men's basketball game against Georgetown, which he had never seen. TigerBlog suggested that if Yurko did watch the game, he'd come away shocked by how in control of the game the Tigers were and how much it got away at the end.

After that, TigerBlog took Yurko through Ivy League men's basketball of the 1990s, which was a glorious time for the Princeton-Penn rivalry. 

Princeton won in 1989 and played Georgetown, losing 50-49 in the classic 16 vs. 1 game. Princeton also won the next three years, making the class of 1992 the only one in Ivy men's basketball history (since freshmen became eligible in the 1970s) to win four league titles in four years. 

Princeton also lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament all four of those years, by a total of 15 points. The losses were by one to Georgetown, four to Arkansas, two to Villanova and eight to Syracuse.

TigerBlog is still bothered by the Villanova loss in the Carrier Dome. It's one of his five worst losses for Princeton Athletics that he has experienced, maybe even second, behind the loss to Michigan State in 1998 in the second round.

Penn then went 42-0 between 1993 and 1995, with an NCAA win over Nebraska in 1994 at the Nassau Coliseum. Then Penn beat Princeton in the first game of the 1996 Ivy season before the Tigers won 12 straight and the Quakers stumbled against Yale and Dartmouth. Penn beat Princeton on the final day of the regular season to force a playoff, and Princeton then won that historic game, the one at Lehigh on the night Pete Carril quite casually mentioned that he was retiring.

Then it was the win over UCLA. And then two more Ivy titles, as well as a 27-2 record and Top 10 ranking in 1998.

What's fascinating about it to TigerBlog is that there are fewer and fewer people who work here who were here for those days. 
There's a real value to what Gary Walters always called "institutional memory," and it's one of TigerBlog's best things. Writing here every day helps to maintain that. 

TB was a history major at Penn, and he's always loved the historical side of Princeton Athletics. It's how he came across the fact that Princeton Athletics turns 150 next month - spoiler alert - there will be a lot more on this subject in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, TB also tried to get across to Yurko how much he would have loved to have seen what Jadwin Gym was like for some of those games, back before the Princeton Offense was copied and dispersed throughout the entire basketball world and before every game was on TV someplace.

It's sort of like Palmer Stadium in the older days. TB has seen pictures of it. He wonders what it would have been like.

And TigerBlog could probably have talked for 10 hours about those 10 years of Ivy basketball, from 1989-1998. They were really special times in Princeton history, and TB had a front row seat for all of it.
Yurko probably would have listened. That's what amiable people from Indiana do.

One Time

It has to be so unfair to be a fan of the Baltimore Orioles.

Here your team emerges from nearly 20 years of chronically bad baseball. Finally, your team gets out of the shadows of the Yankees and Red Sox, who have won eight World Series between them in the last 18 years, and makes it to the American League Championship Series.

Surely this is an underdog team well worth rooting for, no? So what happens to your team? It finds waiting for it the Kansas City Royals, who are an even bigger underdog Cinderella type, and suddenly every neutral fan is against you.

It's hard to root against the Royals, who have an even bigger record of futility during the last 20, or even nearly 30, years than the Orioles.

Beginning in 1975, the Royals finished first or second 10 straight times and won the 1985 World Series, the only one in franchise history. Since then, though, the bottom basically fell out of a team that had little money and little fan interest.

By 1992, the Royals were in the their third straight year of finishing sixth in the AL West, and attendance dipped below 2,000,000. At no point since has it made it back, including this year.

Kansas City is playing in its first postseason since 1985 - and making the most of it. First there was a thrilling comeback win over Oakland in the wild card game, followed by sweeps over the Angels and Orioles that have put the Royals back in the World Series.

And they're 8-0 in the postseason. How nuts is that?

It's even nuttier when you consider that four of those eight wins are by one run and four of those wins were in extra innings. Of the other four games, two were decided by one run. The last two wins against the Orioles were 2-1 and 2-1.

By the way, here's a list of all Kansas City Royals players TigerBlog could have named before the playoffs began - .........

That's supposed to mean he couldn't have named any.

One thing these Royals have done is make it clear that these days, nothing is more overrated than starting pitching. Kansas City has won basically every game because of three bullpen guys whom TB had never heard of but who are completely lights out. Take yesterday. It was 2-1 in the sixth - and 2-1 when it ended.

The ability to win close games in the postseason is what defines greatness. Of Princeton's nine NCAA lacrosse championships between the men's and women's teams, five were won in overtime.

TigerBlog has been struck by the number of close games that Princeton teams have been playing this fall. Or at least he thought he was.

The numbers don't always back up what is originally suspected, so he figured he'd look.

He researched the football, two soccer and field hockey teams. He wasn't sure what to do with women's volleyball, since no game can be a one-point win but a match can be won 3-2.

Here's what he found:

* the men's soccer team has played 11 games, of which eight have been decided by either one goal or ended in a tie
* the women's soccer team has played 11 games, of which six have been decided by either one goal ended in a tie
* the football team has played four games, of which one has been decided by one point
* the field hockey team has played 12 games, of which six have been decided by one goal - and three have gone to overtime
* the women's volleyball team has played 15 matches, of which six ended 3-2, though it's not quite the same thing as one one-point game

Either way, add that up, and between the five sports, you have 53 games, of which 27 - or one more than half - have been either ties or one-point, one-goal or one-game margins.

If you factor out volleyball, then you have 38 games and 21 one-point margins. That's a lot, no?

TigerBlog didn't add this up, but the men's soccer team has probably played more than 80 percent of its season so far with the score either tied or one team up by one. That puts a ton of pressure on each possession, even in soccer, which has more possessions than any other sport, TB would guess.

Is this an anomaly?  A year ago, Princeton played 17 men's soccer games, and 13 of them were one-goal or tie games. The women had eight in 17 games. The field hockey team had eight in 19 games. The football team had two in 10 games.

That's 31 of 63, or 49 percent, as opposed to 55 percent this year.

What does all this mean? Maybe it's just the nature of soccer and field hockey to play close games.

Maybe it's means nothing.

Or maybe it means that if you come watch a Princeton game, it's likely to go down to the wire. And other than football, it's free.

Yeah, let's go with that. 

Beating The B1G

TigerBlog drove over the Route 1 bridge from Pennsylvania into New Jersey yesterday.

To his left he saw the iconic "Trenton Makes, The World Takes" letters on the adjacent bridge, which he has always called "the Trenton Makes Bridge" but which is actually called the Lower Trenton Bridge and which when built in 1806 was the first bridge across the Delaware River.

At least that's what Wikipedia says.

To his right off the bridge was Arm & Hammer Park, formerly Waterfront Park, the home of the Trenton Thunder. It's actually a pretty nice view of Trenton - a city that TB has lived and worked in - from that bridge.

The billboard on the far end of the bridge is part of a great marketing campaign by the state university. It says "Big Time Academics. Big 10 Athletics." Or maybe "Big Ten."

That's the perfect message for Rutgers University. As TigerBlog has said often, of any school that changed conferences in the last five years, none can say with a straight face that it did so with academics in mind more than Rutgers.

The move from the Atlantic 10 to the Big East that RU made a long time ago was for athletics. The one to the Big Ten was for two things: 1) $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ (as in the football TV revenue that the Big Ten generates) and 2) academics. At least academics was part of the equation.

The Big Ten is essentially a league of giant state land-grant universities, with whom RU fits in nicely. The Big East had some strong academic schools (like Georgetown), but it is not made up of ajor state universities, like Rutgers.

And since geography no longer matters, here is Rutgers in the Big Ten.

TigerBlog is no way condones gambling in any way on any sporting event and preaches to his children and their friends how gambling can be addictive and life-altering in so many bad ways. Still, he does know what a point spread is, and he's pretty sure that the odds were long against this sentence being true, even thought it is: In its first Big Ten football game against Michigan, Rutgers won but did not cover the spread.

When TigerBlog spoke at NYU last week, he was asked about the Power Five conferences and how there is talk that they will only play games against each other. TB doesn't think this will ever happen, and he's pretty sure it will never happen in any sport other than football, if it ever does in that sport.

Besides, TB said, Princeton teams regularly compete well with Rutgers, with is now a Big Ten team. Princeton beat Rutgers in men's baskeball, men's lacrosse, women's lacrosse, women's tennis and softball and in women's basketball the year before that.

Last night, the Princeton men's soccer team defeated Rutgers 5-2 on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. The game came three days after Princeton lost a tough 2-1 decision to Dartmouth in overtime in its Ivy opener, and TB can't help but think that the Tigers were happy to get back at it so quickly and had a little anger in their step after Saturday.

The field hockey team lost to Columbia this past weekend, for the first time ever, and then came back and went to overtime with Syracuse two days later.

TigerBlog couldn't help but think back to women's lacrosse season, when the Tigers lost to Brown in their opener - maybe for the first time, TB can't remember - came back in their next game and beat Virginia and then ran the league table, winning the Ivy title and getting to Round 2 of the NCAA tournament.

Will the two losses for men's soccer and field hockey, followed by the strong follow up performances against Rutgers and Syracuse, have the same effect on the men's soccer and field hockey teams?

Well, there's a long way to go for both. The men's soccer team is home Saturday as part of a doubleheader with the women against Brown, with the men and 4 and the women at 7. The field hockey team is home Friday night against Delaware and then a week from tonight against Maryland before taking on Brown next Saturday in its Ivy return.

Of course, the soccer team looked pretty sharp last night. 

RU scored first, early in the game, but Princeton exploded to lead 3-1 at the half and then add two more in the second half. Thomas Sanner had three goals, and Cameron Porter had two goals and an assist.

The last time Princeton reached at least five goals in a game was 2011, in a 7-3 win over Seton Hall. The last time a Princeton player had three goals in a game was 2009, when Antoine Hoppenot did it.

Rutgers is hardly a bad team. The Scarlet Knights have a long established men's soccer tradition, and they won their first Big Ten game earlier this season. They are currently 1-2-1 in their league, which puts them in the thick of the race.

So it was a pretty good night for the Tigers, and a pretty solid win.

Against a team from the Big Ten, no less.

TigerBlog remembers Rutgers when it was in the Eastern 8 - and when Rutgers Stadium didn't have a corporate name (High Point Solutions Stadium) but did have wooden stands.

The eight teams in the Eastern 8 back in the 1970s were Villanova, Duquesne, Penn State, West Virginia, George Washington, Massachusetts, Pittsburgh, and Rutgers. The league eventually grew to become the Atlantic 10.

Of those eight teams, they are now stretched across five leagues. Villanova is in the Big East. Duquesne, GW and UMass are in the A10. Pitt is in the ACC. West Virginia is in the Big 12. Penn State long ago went to the Big Ten.

And now RU is there as well. It's a very nice fit for the school, and its fans - of whom TB knows many - couldn't be more excited.

As for TB, he's happy for them.

And for the fact that in the last week, Rutgers beat Michigan in football, but couldn't beat Princeton in men's soccer.

Boycotting At Bedford

There's a really disturbing point that can be taken from this awful little stretch that the NFL is currently experiencing, and it's really not about child abuse, domestic abuse or even that a recent study showed that one in three former players can expect to suffer from dementia.

Nope.

It's that for the most part, nobody really cares about any of that. They just want to watch football. NFL football, for that matter. They can't get enough of it.

Want proof? Just a few days after a video surfaced that showed Ray Rice's devastating knockout of his then-fiance and now-wife in an Atlantic City hotel elevator, the Ravens-Steelers game drew CBS' highest Thursday night rating in forever.

The NFL is in a freefall. Do you really think that Rice is the only one who has hit a woman in the last few weeks? No, he's the only one caught on video.

Do you think that Peterson is the only one who is hitting a child because he himself was hit - "whooped" - when he was a kid?

How many NFL players right now are exhaling because there was no video or no indictment or damning text messages of when they committed their offense?

And that doesn't even take into account the "Gladiator" factor, that this is essentially watching participants who could be killing themselves by playing this sport. Maybe not right there and then, but eventually.

And nobody cares. They just keep watching. In huge numbers. Not just that, but look how many people wore Ray Rice jerseys and Adrian Peterson jerseys this week.

What would it take for people to stop watching?

Oh, and do you really think Roger Goodell is in trouble for his job? Not right now he's not. You know when he'll be in trouble? When the owners lose their first dollar because of something directly relatable to him.

That's when.

Until then, he's the one who prints the money for the owners, and that's all they care about.

TigerBlog used to love the NFL, used to count down the weeks til opening kickoff. Now? Not so much.

He used to watch a lot of Major League Baseball too, and hasn't watched nine innings all year. But that's more of a lacrosse-baseball thing now. He's not getting to be appalled by baseball.

But football? NFL football especially? It's getting harder and harder for TigerBlog. Through two weeks of this season he's watched next to none of the NFL.

Are there more like him? Hardly.

TB bailed on Sunday's games. Instead, he headed to Bedford Field to watch Princeton field hockey against Bucknell in the home opener.

Call it Boycotting at Bedford.

The game was a pretty even one, and Bucknell scored in the 7-on-7 overtime for the only goal of the day in a 1-0 win. The loss dropped Princeton to 0-4, but all four games have been against top teams, including three in the top eight nationally.

Princeton is two years removed from the NCAA championship and one year removed from the NCAA quarterfinals. The Tigers have graduated, among others, Katie and Julia Reinprecht, Michelle Cesan and Kat Sharkey in the last two years. That's a lot to overcome.

On the other hand, Princeton field hockey has won 19 of the last 20 Ivy League championships, and a case can be made that it is year after year the most successful single program in Ivy athletics. The one year it didn't win the Ivy League, it lost on a penalty corner after time had expired - corners are played out if the whistle blows before the clock gets to all zeroes - on the final day of the season.

Bedford Field is now completed. It has perfect artificial turf. It has bleachers that face the access road and make the facility look pristine, especially at night. It's a great place to watch a game.

As an aside, when TigerBlog first got there, assistant coach Mike Palister went to the scorer's table and asked if anyone had hand sanitizer. That's a silly question - TigerBlog is never without it.

TigerBlog watches a lot of field hockey these days, especially the high school junior varsity variety. He saw a game yesterday that ended up 0-0 without a shot taken by either team, largely because it was played on a field where the grass needed to be cut much tighter than it had been.

Field hockey on turf, on the college level, is a different game. It's fast-paced. The ball rockets off of sticks. It's non-stop. It has quick restarts. There is no offsides.

Yes, Princeton would lose this one, but it was still a well-played, entertaining game.

Up next is Dartmouth Saturday. Two years ago, Dartmouth was the only team in the league to score a goal against Princeton, and that came in a 4-1 Princeton win.

This is the first Ivy event of the year for Princeton, and the start of the chase for the 20th title in 21 years.

It's worth going to see. There is no admission charge. The venue is great. The game is exciting.

A few hundred will be there.

Millions and millions will watch college football that day and then even more will watch the NFL the next day.

It's just how it is. Football is king. TigerBlog doesn't really understand why that is, though. 

And he wonders if it will always be that way.

Off And Running

TigerBlog stopped at the bank machine this past Saturday morning.

When he got there, a man about 10 years or so older than TB was just finishing his transaction and getting back into his car. As it was a nice day, he had the top down on his convertible.

TigerBlog has never owned a convertible. In fact, he can't remember ever being in one, other than when he was really, really little and FatherBlog had one.

As the man got back into his car to drive away, he cranked his music to a very high level. TB found this odd, as the man was probably in his 60s, as opposed to his teens or 20s.

And then there was the song itself. It took TB a second to get it, but then he figured it out. It was "Silhouettes On The Shade," a song TB recognized from Saturday night oldies of long ago. He couldn't remember who sang it and never would have come up with The Rays.

"Silhouettes On The Shade" is a doo-wop song from 1957. It was redone many times, including by the Four Seasons, Frankie Lymon, Herman's Hermits and the Crests.

At least that's what it says on Wikipedia.

Anyway, the man from the bank machine was dressed for golf, and TB assumed that's where he was going next. Was this the music he listened to to get him pumped to play? Maybe.

Perhaps that was his standard Saturday morning pre-tee psych music.

One of the most common sites before any athletic event is that of the competitors with headphones on, listening to whatever it is that gets them ready to go. TigerBlog, were he about to play in the Super Bowl or - even bigger - the Major League Lacrosse championship game - would listen to "Born To Run," of course.

Anytime television cameras go into the locker room or shows an athlete not yet in uniform out on the field or court or walking off a bus, there they are, the headphone. Hey, you can go into a Princeton locker room before a game and see the same thing.

Oh, and this is completely unrelated to anything, but TigerBlog has been in the writing business for more than 30 years and has never gotten a definitive answer to the question of whether or not it should be "lockerroom" or "locker room."

There are other avenues for inspiration.

Mollie Marcoux turned to one such avenue yesterday as she led her first department-wide staff meeting.

Before she ever spoke, there was Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks in "Miracle." It was the scene in the lockerroom (or is it locker room?) before the U.S. played the Soviet Union.

Go ahead. Watch it. Click right HERE and do it. And try not to get moved by it.

Watch whatever you need. Listen to whatever gets you going.

Tonight is opening night, for Princeton Athletics 2014-15.

It's actually late for opening night. Pretty much every school everywhere has already played.

Princeton has one home game today. The women's soccer team opens Julie Shackford's final season as head coach with a game against Rutgers at 7.

Admission is free. As in no charge. So be there. 

Rutgers comes into the game having already played three times - and won all three. It's a tough task for a team in its opener to play a team playing its fourth game.

The field hockey team is at Duke, who is 2-0. The men's soccer team is at FDU, who is 0-2.

The women's volleyball team is actually the first team to play, as it goes at 12:30 today against Charlotte at Temple's tournament.

There is a difference between being in shape and being in game shape. The challenge for tonight isn't just the opponents themselves but the transition to competing in games that matter.

However it goes, tonight is the start of a new year. By the time June rolls around, Princeton will have had more than 600 other athletic contests. Will there be a national champion for the 44th straight year?

What teams will surprise? Which teams will win as they are expected to do? What will be the biggest story of the year?

It starts tonight.

Opening day.

Tramps like us? Baby, we were born to run. 

The Cynic Vs. The Optimist

Though TigerBlog has been known to be a tad cynical at times, he's trying to embrace a more optimistic side these days.

It's not always easy.

Today he offers a mix of the cynical and the optimistic, courtesy of the world of sports.

Let's start out with the cynical side.

There was this little tidbit, about the thoughts of some of the current players on a team that is considering signing Richie Incognito, the former Miami Dolphins offensive lineman who was at the center of the Jonathan Martin bullying situation a year ago:
Both quarterback Josh McCown and defensive tackle Gerald McCoy said Monday that there wouldn't be a problem in the locker room if Incognito is signed.
"I don't care. As long as he can help us win, that's all I'm concerned about. If there's a problem, then we'll deal with it accordingly," McCoy said. "But as long as he's doing what he's supposed to be doing in the building, then I'm not concerned about anything else."

So what does that mean? That they could care less about the bullying, only about the blocking. Cynical.

Then there was Jerry Jones, one of the big egomaniacs on this planet. The owner of the Cowboys was talking about Josh Brent and how he hoped how Brent spent some of the off-season helped him in terms of discipline.

And what did Brent do this off-season? He went to jail. 

Perhaps you remember Brent from the story in 2012 when he was driving drunk and killed teammate and friend Jerry Brown. And what did Jones say about the matter?

As only outspoken owner Jerry Jones could put it, he hopes Josh Brent can be a better football player when he returns to the Dallas Cowboys because of the time spent in jail for the drunken-driving death of teammate Jerry Brown.
"When you on Monday are given a roll of toilet paper and it's got to last you until next Monday, that's a lesson of discipline," Jones said Tuesday in an interview with 105.3 The Fan. "That's a lesson of life. That's what happened to Josh. "When you have someone next door to you that grabs your plate of food and you weigh 340 pounds but you don't mess with him -- he just looks at you, because you know that guy doesn't care if you live or die -- that's a life experience. I think there's a chance that Josh Brent may come out here and have a perspective that none of us have seen before, especially from Josh."

Was that not enough? It gets way, way worse:
"He's had that [life-changing] experience," Jones said. "He deserved that, and some people think he deserved more, but the point is he has been through some eye-opening days. We could really benefit from that as a football team.
"In a totally and completely different way -- and I'm going to make sure everybody understands it is a completely different way, if you understand what I'm saying, Chad Hennings joined the Dallas Cowboys and he had actually flown in Desert Storm single-pilot jets. Had actually had a crash in single-pilot jets. Chad Hennings had developed a discipline and developed a work ethic that made him a man among boys, and he was a major contributor technically [and] physically but, boy, was he a contributor being an example of work ethic and an appreciation for the job you've got.
"It's a shame that all athletes to some degree can't have some of these life experiences and really have an appreciation for what a great opportunity it is to play in the National Football League. But Josh has had that, I think."

What the? So he compares killing someone in a drunk-driving accident with flying jets in combat for the military, essentially saying that the two provide the same kind of "life experiences." And it's a shame that all athletes can't have these "life experiences?"

Is he insane? Seriously? Is there something actually wrong with him?

Cynical.

Then there is the case of USC defensive back Josh Shaw, who suffered two serious ankle injuries from jumping from a second-story hotel balcony to save his seven-year-old nephew from drowning in a pool. For one day, he was hailed as a great hero, and a great USC hero at that, after he acted in the "Trojan Way."

And now? Well, it turns out that it might not exactly be true.

In fairness to Shaw, nothing has been established yet. But hey, why would it turn out to be true? Why wouldn't it be just another charade, designed to make someone feel good about people, only to have it yanked away at the end?

TigerBlog hopes that it turns out that the first story is true. It's just that he'll believe it when he sees it.

Cynical. Very cynical.

And then there was the report about Michael Sam, the first openly-gay player in the NFL, and his shower habits in the lockerroom. Great. Just what this story needed.

Cynical.

On the other hand ...

There is the story of Louis Marx Jr. from the Princeton Class of 1953, who has endowed foreign travel for the men's and women's tennis teams. Every four years (it's an NCAA rule that these trips can be no more frequent than every fourth year), Princeton's men's and women's teams can make a foreign trip courtesy of Marx.

The men's team went to South Africa in June. The women's team is currently finishing its trip to Sweden, Denmark and Spain.

The gift from Marx has enabled nearly a quarter-century's worth of Princeton tennis players to make an international trip. TigerBlog has been on two - both with men's lacrosse - and he can attest first-hand what a great experience it is for the athletes. It's something they will never forget, and it's a huge part of their Princeton athletic careers.

Optimistic. Very much so.

Then there is the preseason national field hockey poll. Princeton is ranked seventh.

A year ago, Princeton reached the NCAA quarterfinals. Two years ago, Princeton won it all, for the first NCAA field hockey title in program history.

This year, Princeton finds itself seventh - as it chases its 20th Ivy League title in 21 years. The Tigers trail Maryland, North Carolina, UConn, Duke, Syracuse and Virginia. That's five ACC teams and the defending champ (UConn).

It's easy to take for granted the overwhelming success of Princeton field hockey, or any Princeton team for that matter. Every now and then it's worth taking a step back and seeing the schools that Princeton competes against year after year, and with such stunning results.

Optimistic.

Then there's Corey Okubo. He'll be a freshman at Princeton this year - just as soon as he returns from the Junior Pan-Pacific Games in Hawaii.

Okubo most recently finished 10th in the 400 IM and 12th in the 200 fly at the U.S. Senior National Championships and from winning 200 fly at the Junior National Championships. Again, it's easy to take for granted that national-caliber athletes like Okubo choose Princeton to compete in college, knowing full well that they do so with an eye on a top education and a top athletic experience.

And they've been doing this for decades and decades.

Optimistic.

Lastly, there is Cosmo Iacavazzi, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and one of the great football players Princeton has ever had. It's been 50 years since he led the Tigers to a perfect season in 1964.

There he was yesterday, talking to this Princeton team after one of its first practices before a season in which the team is the preseason favorite to win the Ivy League title, which it did a year ago as well.

It's about more than wins at Princeton, though. It's about the loyalty and lifelong relationships that are formed as Princeton athletes, and that is on display clearly when someone like Iacavazzi comes back to talk to the current players.

Optimistic.

And the moral of all of this?

You're better off reading goprincetontigers.com than espn.com.

Going Camping

There are six words that Miss TigerBlog says that make her father cringe: "Do you want to play Monopoly?"

There are any number of combinations of six words that a 14-year-old girl can say to her dad that are way, way, way worse than those six, of course. Those would make TigerBlog do way more than simply cringe.

It's not that playing board games with MTB isn't fun. It's not that TB doesn't want to hang around with her, even if, as is the case with the average early-teenage girl, she treats everything her father says as the absolute dumbest thing anyone in the history of the world has ever said and is 10 times more likely to roll her eyes at her dad than she is to smile at him.

That likelihood goes way up, by the way, when one of her friends is around. There's some equation that can actually calculate that, TB assumes. Or probably at least an app. "My father is so embarrassing" or something like that. It has to be out there.

Oh, and speaking of phones, have you ever spent time around a group of early-teen girls? They all have phones, and they all are always on them. At all times. If TB is driving MTB and her friends someplace, he will glance at them every now and then and see that everyone of them is on a phone.

What makes this sort of frustrating to TB is that he can't always get MTB to respond to his text messages or answer the phone when he calls. It's not like she can use the excuse of "I wasn't on my phone," since they're all on them all the time.

Despite the standard teenage girl stuff, MTB is a great kid. She's funny. She's smart. She's hard-working. She's personable. She's tall. She has a lot of friends. She plays multiple sports (field hockey, lacrosse, basketball, track and field) and one musical instrument (the cello).

Her friend Sonali's dad is an engineering professor at TigerBlog's alma mater, and MTB has gone with her friend and her friend's dad to a bunch of seminars, classes and workshops designed to introduce kids to engineering. MTB is on the record as saying she wants to study engineering there when it comes time for college, prompting TB to explain to her that Princeton has a good engineering school too.

At her best MTB has perfect comedic timing, and she also has the perfect foil in her brother. If TB had to equate them with a famous comedy duo, he'd go with Bugs and Daffy.

So it's not that he doesn't want to hang out with her. It's that playing Monopoly, TigerBlog has decided, is horrifically boring.

TigerBlog played Monopoly as a kid and then didn't play at all for decades until for some reason MTB became engrossed with the game. If TB looked on her phone, then he'd find next to the "my father is embarrassing" app another app, the Monopoly one, which enables her to play on her phone.

On a funny note, there's also a dice roller app that MTB uses because her game box no longer has its own dice in it.

There are all kinds of problems with playing Monopoly.

First, everyone seems to play by different rules. Then there's the issue of game strategy, which TB has never figured out. Buy up every property? Pass on some to build monopolies? What if you never get any?

Mostly, the problem is that the game can last forever, even long after it becomes apparent that one player is going to roll over the other.

Anyway, TB always feels like he's letting his daughter down if he says no to Monopoly. He needs to get her into a different game, maybe a good card game. Or chess and checkers. Something that doesn't take hours and hours.

Actually, TigerBlog thinks there are societal parallels to Monopoly. It used to be a fun, family-oriented game, TB supposes, and the fact that it took a long time to play was its charm. These days, everyone is too impatient and too focused on other things - like phones - to put that kind of time into something as low-tech as a board game.

TigerBlog is wrestling with this one. He doesn't want to contribute to the decline of American society, but he also doesn't want to get dragged into playing Monopoly all the time.

He doesn't have to worry about it tonight. He told MTB that he would practice field hockey with her this evening.

MTB has been playing all summer for her club team, called Mystx. She has school tryouts coming up, and she will also be heading to two camps, the first of which starts tomorrow here at Princeton.

Even by the standards of the overscheduled world of today's youth, MTB had a busy week last week. It began Thursday when she played field hockey and lacrosse and continued with more field hockey Friday and then more lacrosse over the weekend.

MTB has one bag that she uses for both sports, and she is constantly taking field hockey sticks out and putting lacrosse sticks in. TB often wonders if it's easy to keep track of the rules and subtleties of each sport, especially as she bounces back and forth between them so much.

MTB loves going to camp here, as TigerBlog Jr. used to as well.

TigerBlog thinks it's great for kids to stay in the dorms here and be exposed to a basic sample of what to expect from living at a college, even at young ages.

Princeton University hosts 64 sessions of summer camps across 18 sports, bringing a few thousand kids to this campus each summer. Each week in prime camp season there are any number of different sports represented, and TB can hear boys basketball going on behind him while he looks out across the track as another group is doing something.

In a little while, other groups will emerge to walk to lunch.

The camp life here is great. There are some day camps, but most are overnight.  The kids get to sleep in the dorms. Eat in the dining halls. Play their sport all day and night. Eat pizza. Meet other kids from around the country and in some cases the world.

It's a great experience for the kids involved. It's why the programs are so successful.

Some, like the younger group of boys playing basketball, are introductory. Others, for the high school kids, are competitive.

Either way, they're a huge part of the campus fabric in the summer.

There are way worse things for kids to be doing with their time.

Finally

If you're wondering where the Dillon Gym ping-pong tournament stands, it's down to the final two.

And Jim Barlow isn't one of them.

Barlow, TigerBlog's pick to win it all, fell in the semifinals to his assistant coach, Steve Totten. It takes a lot of courage to beat the boss, by the way.

Since TigerBlog picked Barlow to win the tournament, he's heard from several other people who said that they agreed with that pick, even though none of them had ever seen Barlow play the game. It just seemed to a bunch of people to be right up Barlow's alley.

And in fairness, he came close. The Totten-Barlow match apparently was the best one of the tournament so far, as Totten came from behind in Game 3 to pull it out.

Looking ahead, Totten now faces a tall challenge in the final.

Tall, as in Mike Pallister, the assistant field hockey coach. Pallister stands about 6-7, which makes TB wonder if being that big is an advantage or disadvantage in ping pong.

TigerBlog has seen Pallister drive a field hockey ball, and he does so with a ton of power. Pallister is from Australia, where he played field hockey at the highest levels.

In Australia, there are basically the same number of male players and female players, at least according to Wikipedia, which wouldn't lie about a thing like that.

In the United States the sports is played almost exclusively by female players. Probably 99% of the field hockey players in this country are female.

TigerBlog wonders why that is.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that it is played at the same time of year as football, which has probably the same kind of participation ratio as field hockey, only reversed.

There is a U.S. men's national field hockey team, which has qualified for the Olympics twice - in 1932 and 1996 - both times because it received an automatic bid as the host nation.

The women's national team is establishing itself as a much more significant player on the international stage, something that shouldn't be surprising, given the much larger pool of players available on the female side.

Princeton continues to be a huge part of the women's national team.

Princeton had four players involved with the U.S. Olympic team in 2012 - Kathleen Sharkey, Michelle Cesan and the Reinprecht sisters, Julia and Katie.

The Reinprechts and Sharkey recently played together in Scotland with the U.S. team at the Champions Challenge in Scotland. Next up for them is the World Cup, which begins May 31 in the Hague.

There are 18 players on the U.S. team, and three of them are Princetonians. That's a pretty good ratio.

The four Princeton players who have been part of the national team program were the cornerstones of the Tigers' 2012 NCAA championship team. That championship was a defining moment for the Princeton program, as it ended an 11-year run by the ACC for the national title.

There obviously is no NCAA men's field hockey competition, as there simpley aren't enough players to make it happen.

Maybe it's just the evolution of sports in this country, as opposed to the rest of the world. The men just don't play it here. TigerBlog never has.

In this country, it's a sport for women, and some of the best women's players have also played for Princeton.

As for men who coach in this country, they often tend to be international players, like Pallister. TB wonders what men's club field hockey looks like in Australia or on the highest levels in the world. He figures it's pretty fast-paced and athletic.

And so it will be the Australian against the assistant men's soccer coach in the Dillon ping-pong final. That figures to be fast-paced and athletic as well.

For TigerBlog, it's just another wrong prediction.

Winterizing

TigerBlog Jr. had a lacrosse event Sunday at Lehigh.

As the wind ripped down the mountains and across the fields, TigerBlog added layer after layer, until he had on a longsleeve t shirt, a longsleeve dri-fit, two fleeces and two sweatshirts, as well as gloves and a hat.

At one point, TB asked the assembled parents - with whom he's watched lacrosse for a long, long time - what percentage of the thousands of hours they'd been together featured weather that could be described as "pleasant."

Since these tournaments occur in the summer and late fall, the answer is "almost none." It's either says like Sunday was, or sweltering summer weekends.

This in turn led to a discussion of which was preferable, the oppressively hot or the "lazy wind." You know, the wind that goes smashing through everyone because it's too lazy to go around you.

Almost universally, the answer was the heat.

TigerBlog was in full agreement. He's never been a cold weather person. He doesn't understand what the attraction is.

Even if you like to ski, how does the fact that it's freezing in January in Princeton help you do that? You still have to find someplace to go that has snow and a mountain.

TigerBlog walked outside this morning and found something that he never likes to see - snow. Okay, it was hardly a blizzard, just a few wet flakes.

But it's a nasty sign, one that says that winter is creeping up around here and the last of the days where it is sunny and in the 60s are probably gone until the spring.

Actually, this weekend looks like a pretty good one, with Saturday's high around here supposed to be 57.

The winter season, if not actual winter, arrived a few weeks ago with the start of hockey season, and both basketball teams opened their seasons Sunday.

Fall, though, is still around, at least for a little while longer.

Princeton has nine "fall" sports, not including tennis and golf, which also have fall events but whose championship season is the spring.

Of the nine fall sports, women's soccer and sprint football have completed their seasons. Men's soccer has one game left, this Saturday at home against Yale. Women's volleyball has two matches left, against Yale and Brown at home this weekend.

Both cross country teams will be at the NCAA regionals Friday at Lehigh. The NCAA championships will be Saturday the 23rd in Terre Haute, Ind.

The men's water polo team will compete at the Eastern championships at Brown Nov. 22-24, with a spot in the NCAA Final Four on the line.

The NCAA field hockey tournament begins this weekend, and Princeton, the Ivy League champion for the 19th time in 20 years, plays Penn State at Maryland Saturday in the opening round. Penn State defeated Princeton 4-3 earlier this year on Bedford Field.

For the winner of that game there is in all probability Maryland, who will play the winner of the play-in game between Quinnipiac and American.

Princeton and Maryland have combined to win the last three NCAA titles, including Princeton's win last year.

Lastly, there is the football team.

Princeton is 7-1 overall, 5-0 in the Ivy League, and hosting Yale Saturday in a fairly big game. At stake? A win would bring at least a share of the Ivy title and a bonfire. A loss would mean no bonfire and a tougher road to an Ivy title.

Princeton's final game is at Dartmouth, a team that is currently 3-2 in the league, the same as Yale and Penn. Harvard is 4-1.

Dartmouth and Yale currently rank 1-2 in the league in scoring defense. Princeton has been putting up big numbers all year in the league, and in fact the 38 the Tigers scored against Penn were the fewest they have scored in a league game this year.

Dartmouth has allowed 80 points in five league games. Yale has allowed 100.

And with that, the fall season will be over. It'll be all winter teams after that.

On the one hand, that means the coming of the cold, which TB can't stand.

On the other hand, it means the next outdoor event for Princeton will be three months away.

Feb. 22. Men's lacrosse against Hofstra. Women's lacrosse against Loyola.


That's looking on the bright side.

Perfectly Done

Miss TigerBlog and TigerBlog Jr. have played on more than their share of sports teams in their young lives.

For TigerBlog's money - and in the current culture, there's been a lot of it - youth and high school sports are about the best avenue for co-curricular development that kids can have.

They teach all sorts of lessons that are unlearnable in other avenues. Teamwork. Self-discipline. Commitment. Physical and mental fitness.

They keep kids out of trouble. They build character and self-esteem. They bring joy. They create memories that last forever.

They get kids off couches, away from computers and video games and cell phones and texting and isolation. They force kids to form actual human relationships.

They push kids. They teach the kind of lessons about success and failure that are invaluable. They show that if kids want to achieve, they have to work at it, and then work harder at it.

MTB and TBJ have experienced all of these things for years, and the benefits they get from them are enormous.

They've also been fortunate to play on many more good teams than bad ones, though there have been some that have been awful.

Until last week, neither had been part of a team that had a perfect season. Then Miss TigerBlog's middle school field hockey team put the cap on its own perfect run, finishing up 11-0 with a 2-0 win over its big rival in the season finale.

TB lost track somewhere along the line, but he thinks that MTB's team outscored its opponents by a combined 35-1. He's positive the team allowed one goal for the year, and in 11 games, there were maybe six or seven shots total by the opponents.

They were definitely fun to watch. Successful teams usually are. TB was one of several loyal fans throughout the season, and among the others was the grandfather of one of the players who in the beginning of the season was a novice on the sport's more complex rules and by the end was explaining them to the others.

What made this team most special was that it was truly a team effort.

There wasn't one big goal scorer - in fact, maybe 15 or so girls had at least one goal on the year. They shared the ball remarkably well for a middle school team, using a series of passes to move the ball up the field when necessary, rather than having one kid whack it.

Middle school field hockey is played on natural grass fields, usually bumpy ones. It's a far cry from the pristine artificial turf of college field hockey, and it makes it harder for the ball to travel a long distance.

It also makes it riskier to play the ball backwards and reverse it to the other side to bring it forward, something that makes the college game so fast. The tendency in middle school is to have too many players close to the ball, because it's not going to travel that far, but MTB's team did an outstanding job of keeping the field spread and moving the ball, even on the grass.

One thing TB has loved about field hockey on that level is that it's impossible to have one player simply take the ball down the field and shoot it, like it is in basketball or lacrosse or, while not exactly the same thing, football.

In field hockey, one player can only advance it so far before it has to be shared. In other words, it forces kids to learn to play as a team. The way that MTB's middle school team did it, though, exceeded what could be expected from a group that age.

The college game is so lighting fast compared to what happens on grass fields. The game today is so much more athletic than when TB used to watch Princeton play on Gulick Field, the grass field that sat above Lourie-Love Field and was the old home for Princeton field hockey before Class of 1952 Stadium was built.

Princeton finished the home portion of its schedule this past weekend with wins over Cornell and Rider.

In fact, the only game remaining on the regular season schedule is the one Saturday at Penn, and it's sort of a big one.

Princeton is 6-0 in the Ivy League, while Penn - with a loss to Columbia - is 5-1. Princeton has clinched at least a share of the league title, which means 19 Ivy League field hockey championships in the last 20 years.

That won't be much of a consolation prize for the Tigers should they lose to Penn Saturday (the game starts at noon).

A Penn win would mean a co-championships. A Princeton win would mean an outright championship.

The automatic bid to the NCAA tournament is the prize that the winner of the game gets. Should Penn win, the Quakers would have won the head-to-head matchup even if they're co-champs. If Princeton wins, it's an outright title, a perfect one at that.

Princeton of course is the defending NCAA field hockey champion, a title won last year by defeating Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina in the final three rounds of the NCAA tournament. A repeat would be difficult, but the game Saturday itself is first and foremost right now.

Even a year ago, when Princeton won it all, the Tigers weren't perfect on the year. They were only 21-1.

Perfect seasons in general rarely happen. There can be no bad days, no slip ups.

MTB's team did it, going 11-0. Even for middle school field hockey, being perfect isn't easy.

Princeton vs. Cornell x 9

By far the most creative trick-or-treaters of the night were the last two.

At first, it appeared that there was only one, a teenage boy, dressed as a hunter. As TigerBlog answered the door, the kid said that there had been a report of zombies in the area.

Just as TB began to process that, the second kid jumped out from behind the bushes, dressed as a zombie. It was a tad startling, TB will admit.

The first kid then "attacked" the second kid, presumably saving TB's house from the zombie menace. TB was so impressed he had them take extra candy.

Performance trick or treating with a zombie theme. Good stuff.

Most of the trick-or-treaters were little kids, dressed in all kinds of wholesome costumes. Of course, maybe they just appeared wholesome; after all, when Miss TigerBlog was still Little Miss TigerBlog, the most popular costume was "Hannah Montana."

If you care, which you probably don't, TB didn't have a single piece of candy.

And that's that for Halloween 2013.

Now it's time to shift attention from orange and black to Orange and Black vs. Big Red.

The last time TigerBlog saw a Princeton-Cornell game, it was the semifinals of the Ivy League men's lacrosse tournament, when Mike McDonald scored seven goals, Kip Orban ripped one of the most unstoppable shots ever and Princeton won 14-13 in overtime in one of the best games TB has ever seen.

He doubts the Princeton-Cornell rivalry will match that night back in May this weekend, but it certainly won't be lacking in opportunities.

You think Princeton played Harvard a lot last weekend, when they got together five times? Princeton and Cornell meet in nine sports in the next 35 or so hours.

Eight sports:

men's hockey (tonight in Ithaca)
women's hockey (tonight at 7 at Baker Rink)
men's and women's cross country (tomorrow at 11 and noon at West Windsor Fields as part of the Ivy League Heptagonal championships)
field hockey (tomorrow at noon on Bedford Field)
football (tomorrow at 1 on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium)
men's soccer (tomorrow at 4 on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium)
women's volleyball (tomorrow at 5 at Dillon Gym)
women's soccer (tomorrow at 7 on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium)

Yup. Nine sports competing against Cornell in two days.

TigerBlog would put Princeton-Cornell men's lacrosse up there with any rivalry in any Ivy League sport right now, maybe even at the top. In general, though, Princeton-Cornell isn't quite what Princeton-Penn or Princeton-Harvard-Yale are to most Princeton fans.

Still, all league rivalries are big, and this weekend features some huge events between the Tigers and Big Red. And TB cannot imagine there are too many other instances of two colleges meeting in nine sports in two days.

The rain that soaked TigerBlog on the way from the parking lot to the building has stopped, and the sun is supposed to shine all weekend on the greater Princeton metropolitan area.

Of the nine events, five directly impact the Ivy League championship race - the two cross country races, men's soccer, field hockey and football.

Princeton is 3-0 in the league in football after last weekend's riveting 51-48 three OT win over Harvard. Princeton and Penn are the only unbeatens in the league right now.

A year ago, Princeton was also 3-0 after a win over Harvard and then lost three of the last four, starting in Ithaca.

So what is different this year? Cornell still has Jeff Mathews, who recently passed Tiger offensive coordinator James Perry as the league's all-time passing yardage leader. Mathews has had great games in his career against Princeton, throwing for 998 in three games, one of which was in a driving snowstorm, ironically enough, not in Ithaca but rather Princeton two years ago,

But this isn't the same Princeton team. A year ago, Princeton was coming off back to back 1-9s and just figuring out how to be competitive. This year, Princeton is better both physically and mentally and probably more able to handle the week after the huge win and before the big game at Penn next week.

Tomorrow will tell, of course.

Conventional wisdom is that it's going to be a high-scoring game, as Princeton's offense has been rolling and Mathews can usually be counted on to put up big numbers himself. Add in perfect weather conditions and that's certainly possible.

Either way, it's a huge moment for the Tigers. At the very least, a win would improve the Tigers to 6-1 overall and guarantee the first winning record for the program since its 2006 Ivy League championship. Hey, when you were 1-9 and 1-9 two and three years ago, that's not something to take for granted.

Of course, that's not what the Tigers are thinking. They're thinking big.

One Saturday at a time. The test this weekend is big. Big Red actually.

In football and eight other sports.

Trick Or Treat

When TigerBlog walked out of his doctor's office this past March determined to make a huge overhaul in his diet, today was the day he dreaded.

It's been more than seven months now since TB had an M&M. Not a single one. If you're keeping score, that makes this the longest he's gone in his entire life without one, since whatever day it was when he had his first M&M and thought either "hmmm, this is good" or "one down, 999,999 to go."

In fact, TB hasn't had much of anything sweet since that day at the doctor, when he told him that it was in his best interest to modify his intake.

And so it's been bananas. Lots and lots of bananas. And apples. And cantaloupes. And those really big crunchy red grapes.

And baked potatoes for starch. And fish. And chicken. And spinach salad.

What has this taken the place of for TB? Well, let's just say that for his last Italian takeout he got a veggie wrap instead of chicken parmagiana.

He's had almost no pasta in the last seven months, as opposed to almost daily before that.

What he's really gotten rid of, though, is junk.

Cake? Cookies? Brownies? All gone.

TB has had two pieces of cake in seven months and not a single cookie of any kind. And no brownies.

And no candy. Not one piece. Not an M&M. Not a Kit Kat. Not a Three Musketeers. Nothing.

All of which brings him to today, Halloween, the day when candy rules the world. And TB is scared.

If he's ever going to fall off the candy wagon, it'll be today. And if he does, will he be able to stop himself? Or will all the good he's achieved in the last seven months vanish in a sea of candy wrappers?

TigerBlog has always been a huge fan of Halloween. He still is, even if he's going to try his best not to give in to the temptation.

He was in the supermarket and the Rite Aid next to it last night, and he saw people stocking up on candy, presumably to give away to the trick-or-treaters.

A year ago, TB would have been all in. This year? Hopefully the grapes and bananas will be the difference maker.

If it's Halloween, then it means that tomorrow is November already.

It seems like 10 minutes ago that the fall sports season began, and yet they're actually in the stretch run now. In fact, the first league titles of the 2013-14 season will be awarded this weekend, when at least two and as many as five will be decided.

The Ivy League Heptagonal cross country championships will be held Saturday morning at the West Windsor Fields, and both races feature loaded fields. Princeton is ranked nationally in both men's and women's cross country, though that alone doesn't make the Tigers the favorite in either race.

In fact there are three ranked teams on each side. For the men, it's Columbia, Princeton and Harvard. For the women it's Dartmouth, Princeton and Cornell.

In other words, the races figure to be great.

Princeton's field hockey game against Cornell starts at noon Saturday, and a win would mean at least a tie for the 19th Ivy field hockey title in the last 20 years for Princeton.

Right now, Princeton is 5-0 in the league, followed by Penn at 4-1 and Cornell at 3-2. Should Princeton win and Penn lose to 1-4 Brown, then Princeton would the outright title and automatic NCAA tournament bid.

On the other hand, wins by Princeton and Penn would set up a game next Saturday at Penn between the Tigers and Quakers with the automatic NCAA bid to the winner. Cornell is mathematically alive, though a Penn win over Brown would eliminate the Big Red, even should they defeat Princeton.

The women's soccer automatic bid and outright championship would go to Harvard with a win over Dartmouth. A tie would clinch at least a share of the title but would also wrap up the league's automatic NCAA bid.

Princeton may not be headed to a second straight league title, but a win over Cornell Saturday will clinch a winning season for the Tigers.

Yale is running away with the women's volleyball race and could clinch the outright title this weekend, with two more still to play after that. Regardless, a Yale championship seems inevitable.

That would leave men's soccer, where the race is still completely wide open, where six teams are still alive, including Princeton.

Oh, and football, where Princeton and Penn are both unbeaten. That race too won't be decided for awhile.

It certainly won't be won or lost this weekend. Unlike as many as five other championships.

First, though, it's Halloween.

Hopefully all the kids will have fun, get stocked up and be safe.

As for TB, he'll try to go without the candy and still try to enjoy the day.

After all, it's the one day each year when everyone embraces the two best colors there are.

The Fireworks Are Hailing Over Little Eden Tonight

One of TigerBlog's favorite Bruce Springsteen songs - which makes it one of his favorite songs by any artist - is the song "4th of July, Asbury Park."

The first word of the song is "Sandy," the name of the girl that the singer is hoping to spend his Fourth of July with on the Asbury Park boardwalk. It doesn't get much more Springsteen than that.

When TB hears the song, it takes him right to that boardwalk. Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie? If you've been to the boardwalk in Asbury Park, you know immediately that the most famous line in the song refers to the fortune teller who operated out of a little white shack with an eyeball painted on the side.

The Sandy in the song is a Jersey Shore girl, one who is listening to the singer tell her how he's tired of "hanging in those dusty arcades, banging them pleasure machines; chasing the factory girls underneath the boardwalk."

Sandy, he tells her, "the Aurora is rising behind us. The pier lights our carnival life on the water." Love me tonight, he says, "and I promise I'll love you forever."

The song is from 1973, from the album "The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle." TigerBlog was a kid then, growing up not far from Asbury Park.

Even now, 40 years later and 1,000-plus times having heard it, TigerBlog is whisked immediately to the Jersey Shore when he hears it, taken back to a place with heart and character and toughness and color, a place with its unique sights, sounds, smells. 

It's not a pristine place by any stretch, but it has something that those beaches don't. It has its own feel, and either you love it or you hate it, and if you're in the first group, there's no place quite like it; if you're in the second, then you're missing the whole point of the place.

A storm named, ironically enough, Sandy, came through here one year ago tonight and destroyed much of that same Jersey Shore. Asbury Park was hit hard by Sandy, though not nearly as hard as so many other areas a little further south, most notably Seaside Heights, and to the north, most notably the Rockaway beaches of Queens.

There are areas that still have not recovered, houses that will never be rebuilt, businesses that will never reopen.

A bit more inland, here in Princeton, the rain never hit that overwhelmingly, but the wind knocked out power, in some places for a month.

TigerBlog was relatively safe during the storm, though the only place he could find that had power was his office, where he slept for one night and where he went to charge his phone and laptop, which were his only sources of information and entertainment.

Work? Princeton was closed for three days, Monday through Wednesday. Shockingly, it reopened Thursday; most schools wouldn't be back until the following week.

The 2012 Ivy League Heptagonal cross country championships were held at Princeton's West Windsor Fields the weekend before the storm hit, with competition on a perfect autumn Saturday, when talk of the coming storm was just starting to dominate every conversation.

The 2011 Heps? Also at West Windsor Fields. This time, the story wasn't about the weather that was coming but the weather had already arrived, as the most significant snow fall of that entire winter came actually in the fall. It looks pretty now in the pictures from that day, but it made running at Heps treacherous - and destroyed the home weekend scheduled with Cornell.

This weekend's schedule is similar to what it was going to be two years ago, with football, field hockey, women's soccer, men's soccer and women's volleyball all hosting Cornell Saturday.

The day starts with the Heps cross country championships, which this year will be an incredible event, with multiple nationally ranked teams in both races.

It even includes women's hockey against Colgate, rather than Cornell.

In other words, Saturday is one of those ridiculously busy days around here, the kind that really make working in Ivy League athletics challenging and rewarding.

The weather forecast is for absolutely completely perfect conditions, sunny and the mid-60s. It may rain Friday, but it'll clear out long before the games start Saturday. Maybe the cross country course will be a bit muddy, but doesn't that make it better?

There is no forecast for a repeat of 2011's blizzard of 2012's superstorm.

The first made for some cool pictures.

The second is still being felt not far from here.

Princeton vs. Harvard x 5

TigerBlog has always tried to get his kids - and other people's kids - to understand how to avoid trouble.

His basic rule is this: If they have to stop and ask themselves if what they're thinking about doing is a good idea, it isn't. When in doubt, don't do it.

He's recently added this corollary: the busier teenage kids are, the less likely they are to get in trouble. It can be sports, music, other extra-curricular activities, schoolwork - every hour they spend doing those things is one hour less that they can be bored and open to bad decisions.

Beyond that, when teenage kids do get in trouble, it usually seems to include one or more of these five things: hanging out with the wrong people, being out after midnight, drugs/alcohol, sex and/or gambling.

The last one isn't something that gets the attention of the others, but it can be just as devastating.

And it's everywhere, especially in the NFL, with its point spreads, over-unders, Super Bowl polls and everything else.

Gambling can become as addicting as drugs, and TB had a friend in college who fell into the pattern of losing and then trying to make it back on the next game, only to dig the hole deeper until it became a huge problem.

Few things pose a bigger threat to the integrity of athletics than gambling, and point-shaving scandals have been hugely devastating. That's part of the reason that the NCAA is so adamant about getting its anti-gambling messages out there.

And if you work at an NCAA school, you can't miss the message. Gambling - any gambling on any sport that the NCAA sponsors - is not permitted. In any form. No matter how small.

The OAC has an NCAA basketball pool each year, but for no money. Even if it was for a $5 or something like that, it would be a very big deal, and people's jobs could be lost over it.

TB and his co-workers are constantly making wager-like comments but never, ever would actually include money as part of the deal.

Wager-like comments?

Like yesterday, for instance, when this was the question:

"If you get two points for a win and one for a tie, who would win Saturday, Princeton or Harvard?"

It's a huge Saturday in Cambridge, as Princeton takes on Harvard - five times.

It starts at noon with field hockey and continues at 1 with football, 4 with men's soccer and women's hockey and 7 with women's soccer.

It's the weekend following midterms, which means that Princeton's teams will be either 1) tired or 2) chomping at the bit.

Princeton is currently in first place or tied for first place in the league in field hockey, football and men's soccer. Harvard is currently in first place or tied for first in football and women's soccer and is very much in the thick of it in men's soccer.

In other words, these games will be huge.

In men's soccer, for instance, Princeton is 2-0-1, tied with Penn and Yale. Harvard is 2-1-0, which leaves the Crimson right there as the league race is at the halfway point.

Of the eight men's soccer teams in the Ivy League, only three are currently over .500 overall.

In women's soccer, all eight schools are at least .500 and seven are over .500. Princeton has had some awful luck in its league games, and the Tigers season shows how hard it is to go 7-0-0, which is what they did a year ago.

Only five teams have ever gone 7-0-0 in Ivy women's soccer. Harvard is currently 4-0-0 and the only Ivy team that has a chance for a perfect league record and is 8-0-1 in its last nine games. Don't think Princeton wants to ruin all that?

The reverse is true in field hockey, where Princeton is alone in first at 4-0 and Harvard is 1-3, tied for sixth. Women's hockey season is just starting out.

And then there's football.

Princeton is 2-0 in the league. So is Harvard. So is Penn, for that matter. Princeton has looked great this year. Harvard is very strong. Penn is the defending champion.

And of course Harvard remembers what happened last year, when Princeton came from 34-10 down with 12 minutes to go to beat the Crimson 39-34.

At the time it seemed miraculous. Now? The idea that Princeton can score 29 points in 12 minutes hardly seems shocking.

The fall/winter overlap is starting, but even with that, the only home events this weekend are in men's water polo. The men's hockey team is close to home, playing at the Prudential Center in Newark in the Liberty Hockey Invitational today at 4 and tomorrow at 7.

The big games are in Cambridge this weekend though.

Princeton vs. Harvard, times five.

Moo's Friends

The World Series begins tonight. TigerBlog will make two predictions.

First - he'll go with the Cardinals in seven games. He has no idea why, other than the Cardinals seem to always win the games they need to win.

Second - TigerBlog will watch very little of it.

There was a time when the World Series was a big deal to TB.

One of his first sports-watching memories is of the 1969 World Series, which the Mets famously won against the heavily favored Orioles. That Series, by the way, ended on Oct. 16, as opposed to this one, which is starting on Oct. 23.

Also, of the five games in 1969, none lasted more than 2:33, and that was a 10-inning game. The other four went 2:13, 2:14, 2:20 and 2:23.

Contrast this with four-hour games that are regularly played now. Game 1 of the recent ALCS between the Tigers and Red Sox, for instance, took 3:56, featured nine total pitchers - and ended 1-0.

TB had this great World Series history book back when he was a kid that traced every World Series, beginning with the first one, back in 1903, between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Americans, the forerunner to the Red Sox. There was no World Series in 1904, and there has been one every year since except for 1994, when a strike cancelled it in a year that the Montreal Expos might have won.

For a long time TB was a pretty good authority on the history of the World Series, because of that book. And other books he read, back when kids read books about sports, something he thinks doesn't happen as much these days.

Anyway, TB hasn't watched one pitch of the baseball postseason this year, though he probably will watch at least a few innings of the World Series at some point.

He's not 100% sure why he hasn't watched the baseball playoffs.

Maybe it's because the games are interminable. Maybe it's because he views baseball completely destroyed by the PED scandals.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's only fun for him if he's rooting against the Yankees? Can that be the reason?

He knows the reason he didn't watch the Real Sports feature on the field hockey team and its relationship with Carmella Loschiavo, a seven-year old with Down's Syndrome suffering from pediatric brain tumors that are currently in remission. The field hockey team and Carmella - known as "Moo" - were paired through the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation.

TB didn't see it because he doesn't have HBO. He has Showtime, because that's where "Homeland" is.

Still, he'd like to have seen the feature. Princeton, the defending NCAA champion, has embraced Moo in a way that creates such a special situation, where completely healthy, in their physical prime college athletes, give their time - and affection - to a little girl who hasn't been anywhere near as lucky as they have been.

Beyond winning the NCAA championship or the Ivy League title, this is one of the best parts of college athletics.

To healthy little kids who play youth sports, the college athletes they come to see might as well be Peyton Manning or LeBron James. For a sick little girl who has suffered her whole life, it's an even bigger deal.

Princeton field hockey is at Harvard this weekend. The Tigers are the only unbeaten team in the league, with games remaining against the Crimson (1-3) and then Cornell (2-2) and Penn (3-1).

In a weird scheduling quirk, Princeton hasn't been home in a long time, since Oct. 4 to be exact. That game, a win over Columbia, is Princeton's lone home game in a 36-day stretch, one that ends with games Nov. 2 against Cornell and Nov. 3 against Rider.

Should Princeton win the league, it'll be back in the NCAA tournament, where it won five games last year to win the program's first NCAA championship.

Princeton was one of the favorites to win it last year. This year, the Tigers would have to make a run as an underdog if it gets into the NCAA tournament.

To Moo, the Tigers are already big winners.

Next time you read a story about all of the negatives of college athletics, remember what Princeton field hockey is doing for a seven year old girl. One who really, really needs them.

And then think about how many other teams around the country are doing the same.

College athletics? They can be a beautiful thing.

Mrs. Guacamole

TigerBlog was at Miss TigerBlog Back To School Night last night.

It was standard middle school stuff, going through her schedule, with abbreviated 12-minute periods to meet each teacher, hear what they'll be doing for the school year, that sort of thing.

The highlight of the night was clearly when MTB's science teacher, Mrs. Giacomelli, said that when her name is entered on an iPhone, it autocorrects to "guacamole." She pointed out that this was ironic, as she doesn't like guacamole.

TigerBlog does. He's a big fan of the avocado.

Anyway, TB had to scramble to get there on time, because he was doing freshman men's lacrosse head shots and bios. TB always likes meeting the freshmen for the first time, putting faces to the names he's heard so much about through the recruiting process.

The bio process always goes basically the same way, with the same basic questions. How many letters in lacrosse? Other sports? Team championships? Individual honors? Stats? Club team? Academic honors? Community service?

What's your date of birth? Parents names. Alma maters. Were they athletes? Siblings?

Then, at the end, TB always says the same thing: "Anything else you'd want to include? Jumped out of an airplane? Climbed a mountain? Caught a 400-pound fish? Sang with the church choir in China?"

And after all the years of doing this, finally, yesterday, someone answered yes to one of those. Freshman men's lacrosse player Jack O'Brien jumped out of a plane this summer while in Cape Cod.

And then there was another first, when freshman Sam Gravitte, asked about what his mother does, responded that she was a Tony Award-winner, for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, for her performance in "Jerome Robbins' Broadway." Sam? He played Jean Valjean in a high school production of "Les Miserables."

Then there was the part when TB realized that these freshman were born for the most part after he'd already started working here. That means as they've gone from babies to Princeton lacrosse players, TB has been right here.

When TB first started covering college sports, he wasn't that much older than the people he was writing about. Eventually, the dates of birth were after he'd graduated high school, after he'd graduated college. And now? They're covering his entire tenure at Princeton.

This, by the way, ends the week of nostalgia, the one that included TigerBlog Jr.'s driving Monday and TB's realization yesterday that it's been 30 years of doing this. 

Just as he has for every September since these freshmen were born, TB is looking forward to a pretty big athletic weekend involving Princeton teams.

Fall weekends are not quite like winter or spring ones, simply because there aren't as many teams. And those weekends are nothing compared to the crossovers between seasons.

Still, it's a busy one for Princeton Athletics, with 18 events on the schedule between today and Sunday.

The football team is at Georgetown, where it will be homecoming for the Hoyas. Georgetown football isn't quite like Georgetown basketball, but the Tigers and Hoyas had a pretty entertaining game last year. This time around, it'd be great for Princeton to be 1-1 heading into the Ivy League opener next Saturday against Columbia.

The field hockey team hosts Yale tonight at 7, and the official Bedford Field dedication will be held at halftime. Don't look for the namesake to be there though; Paul Bedford was in the Class of 1897.

The sprint football team is back after having to forfeit last weekend. The Tigers play at Post, and the team came within one scramble off of a fumble in overtime of winning that game.

There are three soccer games at Roberts Stadium this weekend, as the men host Florida International (7) and Florida Gulf Coast (4) tonight and Sunday and the women play Yale tomorrow (4). The Princeton-FGCU soccer game is on ESPNU Sunday.

Florida-Gulf Coast is, of course, the team that came from nowhere to the Sweet 16 in men's basketball last year. The soccer program was also an NCAA tournament team last year.

The women's volleyball team hosts Penn tonight in its Ivy opener.

There's nothing else on campus this weekend - unless you count the men's lacrosse alumni game tomorrow at 1:45.

TB loves the busy home weekends, when there are a ton of events, sandwiched around home football.

This weekend isn't quite on that level, but it's still a good one.