TigerBlog went to the eye doctor yesterday.
He likes his eye doctor, except for when she's putting those eye drops in his eyes, the ones that make his pupils gigantic - and burn like crazy.
By the way, did you hear about the cyclops teacher? Only had one pupil.
Anyway, the trip to the eye doctor was like every other one. A check of his vision, which deteriorates a little bit year-by-year. And then the drops, followed by the torturous part.
It starts with his chin on the little gadget that holds his head in place, so that his eye doctor can check him for glaucoma and some other things that eye doctors look for. And how does she do this? By shining extremely bright lights in his eyes from extraordinarily close distances.
The worst is the one with the sharp blue light on the end of a metal rod, which basically comes up to almost flush on his eyeball before stopping. That's always good for a few yucks.
Then there's the 15 minute wait until his pupils become completely dilated for one last check for something else, during which time TB has to pick out his new glasses. In loyalty to Princeton's official apparel provider, he only goes with the Nike brand glasses, and he gets the same basic frames each time.
Of course, once he's picked out essentially the same thing he's always had, he tries on the other ones, like the big black Buddy Holly framed ones. Then he realizes he'll always have the same glasses and goes with the Nike ones.
His eye doctor is an interesting woman. It seems like every time he's there, she and her husband are getting ready for some majorly wild trip, someplace like the Galapagos Islands or Fiji or something like that. This time they're heading out to Utah to go skiing, because as she said, Utah has the best snow.
Once TB leaves the eye doctor, it takes about three or four hours for his pupils to go back to normal. In the meantime, the light is just blinding.
All in all, it's a fun experience. At least it's only once a year. The drops alone would be nightmarish more than once a year.
So now he doesn't have to go back until at least February 2015. March of 2014 begins tomorrow, and it does so with a huge weekend for Princeton athletics.
How huge?
There are 16 teams that will compete tomorrow. Sixteen? That's insane.
Among the events are the Heps track and field championships (at Dartmouth), the men's Ivy League swimming and diving championships, the individual squash national championships and the ECAC women's hockey playoffs (best of three at Cornell).
There is also early-season men's and women's lacrosse, and of course the season-opening weekend for baseball (in California) and softball (in Florida).
There's also the end of the regular season in men's hockey and two basketball games against Brown, after the teams play Yale tonight, with the men home and the women on the road.
The Yale men desperately need to stay within a game of Harvard before their showdown next Friday in New Haven, and so the Bulldogs must win tonight at Princeton and tomorrow at Penn.
As for the women, they are at Yale and Brown after a wildly successful weekend trip to New England last weekend. The Tigers are now 8-1 in the Ivy League, one game up on Penn (7-2). Harvard is 7-3 and needs a lot of help to get back to the top.
To have 16 teams play on one day is not something that happens too many times. There are some schools that don't even field 16 teams total, let alone 16 that can play all at once.
It's easy to look at the schedule the way it is and forget everything that goes into putting that many teams into competition at the same time. It takes so many different people from all over the athletic department, and actually every office in the department plays an active role in getting these teams to where they need to be.
Hey, there are 14 events today, and that pales in comparison to tomorrow.
It's something unique to the Ivy League, and it's one of the best parts of being at Princeton.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Saturday At 52
TigerBlog is all thawed out, finally.
To say it was cold at Manhattan's Gaelic Park Tuesday night would be something of an understatement. TigerBlog was wearing long underwear, pants, heavy socks, a long-sleeve t-shirt, one fleece, another fleece, his heaviest sweatshirt, his big heavy Princeton Athetics coat, gloves and a hat - and he was still freezing.
TB much prefers 95 degrees with high humidity to nights like Tuesday, when it was in the 20s with a gentle lazy wind blowing. A lazy wind, by the way, is a wind that is too lazy to go around you, so it goes through you.
The occasion was the Princeton-Manhattan men's lacrosse game. It's become something of a necessary evil to play lacrosse games beginning in February, weather notwithstanding, and so the early-season schedule is dotted with dates like "Feb. 25, Princeton at Manhattan" and just hope for tolerable weather.
Tuesday night didn't cooperate in the least.
TB assumes that the players are used to the cold, after practicing in it. And when you're young and moving around playing lacrosse, you probably don't feel it as much as you do when you're more than twice the age of any of the players and you're just standing there watching.
Gaelic Park sits under the subway tracks, and the No. 1 train that comes up Seventh Ave. and ends at 242nd Street and Van Cortlandt Park, a few blocks from the Manhattan campus. Several times during the game, the unmistakable sound of a subway train's brakes could be heard above the normal sounds of lacrosse.
The field itself is an enormous piece of field turf, one that is the home of Manhattan lacrosse, soccer and even softball. Unlike almost any other college lacrosse field that TB can think of, there is no fence directly behind one of the goals, only another 70 yards or so of turf field that is where the softball field is laid out. As a result, it gives the impression that the lacrosse game is being played on a gigantic piece of land.
The park is tucked into the city streets of the Bronx, which is actually where Manhattan College is. If you like cities, it's a nice little place.
It just doesn't happen to have a press box, though, which meant TB couldn't take refuge from the cold. He does recognize that this hardly makes him a sympathetic figure or anything.
He'll be back in the press box Saturday, when Princeton hosts Johns Hopkins at noon in the opening game of a doubleheader on Sherrerd Field at Class of 1952 Stadium, one that concludes with the Princeton-Georgetown women's game.
Princeton-Hopkins is one of TigerBlog's favorite games each year. There was a time that Princeton lost 24 straight games to Hopkins, which meant that there were players who went from being born to graduating as Princeton seniors and never having the Tigers beat the Blue Jays in all that time.
The 0-24 streak was part of a 1-33 run that ended in the 1990 NCAA tournament, Princeton's first. Since then, the Tigers are 16-10 against the Blue Jays, including 3-0 in the NCAA tournament.
Recently it's been something of an odd series, in that the game has had little impact on the remainder of the season. The teams almost always play on the first Saturday of March, so it's not always easy to tell what direction either team is going to go in after they cross paths.
For instance, Princeton beat Hopkins 8-3 at Homewood Field in 2011. Leaving the field that day, TB would never have guessed that Hopkins would end up as the third seed in the NCAA tournament and that Princeton would struggle all year with injuries and tight losses.
Last year Princeton knocked off Hopkins 11-8, on a day when the Blue Jays were ranked third nationally. Big win for the Tigers, right? One that fit perfectly into the selection criteria for NCAA tournament bids, no?
Only Hopkins' 2013 season fell apart in a series of its own tight losses, and by season's end, that was no longer a big win - and neither team made the NCAA tournament.
The visiting team has had overwhelming success in this series as well. In the last 12 games played on one of the team's campuses - not counting the four games at M&T Bank Stadium from 2007-10 - the visiting team is a remarkable 10-2.
This year Princeton is 2-0 and Hopkins is 3-0. It certainly seems like both teams will very much be in the mix for the NCAA tournament and can even think about going deep into May, but hey, there have been other years like that where it didn't pan out.
In the meantime, the game features two high-scoring teams, as well as an opportunity to see two players who will probably end up being among the five finalists for the Tewaaraton Trophy. Hopkins is led by Wells Stanwick, who has 13 assists in three games, while Princeton is led by the amazing Tom Schreiber, who has four goals and six assists in two games and needs one more assist to become the third Princeton player with at least 80 career goal and 80 career assists.
The second game matches two teams with 1-1 records. Princeton opened with a loss at Loyola before beating Rutgers last night on yet another very cold early-season evening. Georgetown defeated Delaware and lost to Towson.
No, it's not going to be a warm sunny spring day for the doubleheader.
Yes, it will still be worth attending.
To say it was cold at Manhattan's Gaelic Park Tuesday night would be something of an understatement. TigerBlog was wearing long underwear, pants, heavy socks, a long-sleeve t-shirt, one fleece, another fleece, his heaviest sweatshirt, his big heavy Princeton Athetics coat, gloves and a hat - and he was still freezing.
TB much prefers 95 degrees with high humidity to nights like Tuesday, when it was in the 20s with a gentle lazy wind blowing. A lazy wind, by the way, is a wind that is too lazy to go around you, so it goes through you.
The occasion was the Princeton-Manhattan men's lacrosse game. It's become something of a necessary evil to play lacrosse games beginning in February, weather notwithstanding, and so the early-season schedule is dotted with dates like "Feb. 25, Princeton at Manhattan" and just hope for tolerable weather.
Tuesday night didn't cooperate in the least.
TB assumes that the players are used to the cold, after practicing in it. And when you're young and moving around playing lacrosse, you probably don't feel it as much as you do when you're more than twice the age of any of the players and you're just standing there watching.
Gaelic Park sits under the subway tracks, and the No. 1 train that comes up Seventh Ave. and ends at 242nd Street and Van Cortlandt Park, a few blocks from the Manhattan campus. Several times during the game, the unmistakable sound of a subway train's brakes could be heard above the normal sounds of lacrosse.
The field itself is an enormous piece of field turf, one that is the home of Manhattan lacrosse, soccer and even softball. Unlike almost any other college lacrosse field that TB can think of, there is no fence directly behind one of the goals, only another 70 yards or so of turf field that is where the softball field is laid out. As a result, it gives the impression that the lacrosse game is being played on a gigantic piece of land.
The park is tucked into the city streets of the Bronx, which is actually where Manhattan College is. If you like cities, it's a nice little place.
It just doesn't happen to have a press box, though, which meant TB couldn't take refuge from the cold. He does recognize that this hardly makes him a sympathetic figure or anything.
He'll be back in the press box Saturday, when Princeton hosts Johns Hopkins at noon in the opening game of a doubleheader on Sherrerd Field at Class of 1952 Stadium, one that concludes with the Princeton-Georgetown women's game.
Princeton-Hopkins is one of TigerBlog's favorite games each year. There was a time that Princeton lost 24 straight games to Hopkins, which meant that there were players who went from being born to graduating as Princeton seniors and never having the Tigers beat the Blue Jays in all that time.
The 0-24 streak was part of a 1-33 run that ended in the 1990 NCAA tournament, Princeton's first. Since then, the Tigers are 16-10 against the Blue Jays, including 3-0 in the NCAA tournament.
Recently it's been something of an odd series, in that the game has had little impact on the remainder of the season. The teams almost always play on the first Saturday of March, so it's not always easy to tell what direction either team is going to go in after they cross paths.
For instance, Princeton beat Hopkins 8-3 at Homewood Field in 2011. Leaving the field that day, TB would never have guessed that Hopkins would end up as the third seed in the NCAA tournament and that Princeton would struggle all year with injuries and tight losses.
Last year Princeton knocked off Hopkins 11-8, on a day when the Blue Jays were ranked third nationally. Big win for the Tigers, right? One that fit perfectly into the selection criteria for NCAA tournament bids, no?
Only Hopkins' 2013 season fell apart in a series of its own tight losses, and by season's end, that was no longer a big win - and neither team made the NCAA tournament.
The visiting team has had overwhelming success in this series as well. In the last 12 games played on one of the team's campuses - not counting the four games at M&T Bank Stadium from 2007-10 - the visiting team is a remarkable 10-2.
This year Princeton is 2-0 and Hopkins is 3-0. It certainly seems like both teams will very much be in the mix for the NCAA tournament and can even think about going deep into May, but hey, there have been other years like that where it didn't pan out.
In the meantime, the game features two high-scoring teams, as well as an opportunity to see two players who will probably end up being among the five finalists for the Tewaaraton Trophy. Hopkins is led by Wells Stanwick, who has 13 assists in three games, while Princeton is led by the amazing Tom Schreiber, who has four goals and six assists in two games and needs one more assist to become the third Princeton player with at least 80 career goal and 80 career assists.
The second game matches two teams with 1-1 records. Princeton opened with a loss at Loyola before beating Rutgers last night on yet another very cold early-season evening. Georgetown defeated Delaware and lost to Towson.
No, it's not going to be a warm sunny spring day for the doubleheader.
Yes, it will still be worth attending.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Randy Neeff, Harvard Class Of 1990
TigerBlog was getting ready to walk out of Jadwin Gym
Saturday night after the men’s basketball game when he ran into Randy Neeff,
Harvard class of 1990, he believes.
She would have been class of 1989 had a bad car accident the
summer after she graduated high school not pushed her back a year, so TB is pretty
sure she was class of 1990.
TB met her after the accident, around when she had healed
to the point of being ready to go to college but unable to do so until the
following fall semester. He and his friend Corey became friends with Randy back
then, and he stayed in contact with her while she attended Harvard. After that,
they drifted apart.
TB remembers a time back in one of those summers when his
friend Frank , who was living in Virginia at the time, invited him and Corey to
a party he was having. TB immediately enlisted his then roommate Ed Mikus Jr.,
and right as they were leaving, Randy called to see what was up.
Told to be ready in 10 minutes, Randy said “why not?” and
was in the car shortly thereafter. It was the kind of spur-of-the-moment
weekend that can be had when you’re young and then be remembered long, long
after the fact.
Randy Neeff was beautiful back then. Her smile was
omnipresent; she laughed easily. She wore wayfarer sunglasses and had long reddish
hair that, much like her face, sparkled in the summer sun. She had a zest for
life that let her drop everything and head to a party four hours away at the
house of someone she never met and coupled that with an intellectual drive that
took her to the nation’s second-best undergraduate college.
TB, Corey and Ed Mikus Jr. have talked about that weekend at
various times through the years, and the conversation has always come around to
wondering whatever happened to Randy Neeff.
Now, all these decades later, she flashes the same smile
from the same beautiful face and laughs just as easily. TigerBlog in seconds was
taken back to Randy as a 19-year-old, even as she looked up at him from her
wheelchair.
Perhaps it was the long-term effect of that original car
accident. Maybe it was that zest that took her mountain climbing and on other
adventures that ultimately led to one nasty fall from a cliff.
Whatever the cause, Randy these days sees the world from her
chair. She struggles to talk and be heard, but she does not struggle to smile
or laugh. She still has her zest, even if her mobility is severely hampered.
She and TB reconnected a few months back, through LinkedIn,
of all things. They’ve gone to dinner, to see “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty,”
talked about old times and new times.
TB didn’t know she was at the basketball game Saturday night
until it ended and she was wheeling her way through the double doors into the
hallway near the ticket office.
She has a live-in caregiver, an affable woman named Katie,
and her family is in the area. She gets out as much as she can, whether it’s to
dinner or the movies or even a Princeton basketball game against her alma
mater.
By the time TB saw her, Harvard had beaten Princeton 59-47
in a game that was close for 35 minutes or so. Princeton was done in by an
unfortunate sequence when it was a one-point game when Hans Brace missed a dunk
and then Harvard came down and knocked down a three-pointer on its next
possession.
Often turning points in games are hard to pick up on as they
happen. This was not one of those times. Had Brace’s dunk gone in, Princeton
would have been up one with about six minutes left, and the crowd would have
raised the noise level considerably.
Instead, Harvard came down and dropped in a three-pointer.
Princeton went from about to go up one to down four. Another minute later it
was a six-point game after a Harvard dunk of its own.
In many ways, this defines the 2014 Ivy League season for
Princeton men’s basketball. Close to breaking through – only to be knocked back
down in a very frustrating manner.
Princeton is now 3-6 in the league, while Harvard is 9-1.
Yale lost to Columbia Sunday to fall to 8-2 in what is a two-team race.
Princeton can make it essentially a one-team race by beating
the Bulldogs Friday night at Jadwin. Yale desperately needs to be within one
game of Harvard when they play the Crimson on March 7, and that means sweeping
Princeton and Penn this weekend.
Or they could get some help, and if any team wants to knock
off Harvard, it’s Columbia, who takes on the Crimson this weekend. Columbia,
you may recall, came within a disputed block/charge in overtime of beating
Harvard the first time around.
As for the Tigers, there is still the goal of winning out
and finishing above .500 in the league. Regardless, the 2014 season will go
down as one of the tougher ones, after the way the 2013 part of the season –
the non-league part – went for Princeton, who gave every indication that it
would be the other team in a two-team race with Harvard come late February.
Randy Neeff, of course, is rooting for the Crimson. TB
doesn’t blame her. It’s her alma mater.
Katie had gone to pull Randy’s specially equipped van to the
DeNunzio Circle, so TB waited with her for a few minutes. At that time, Gary
Walters walked by, so TB introduced him to his old friend.
Gary strained to hear her soft voice talk about how she was
a Harvard grad, how she jokingly apologized for her team’s beating Princeton.
Then it was off to the parking lot and into the van. She
needs a neck brace to stabilize her as she is driven, and she needs her chair
to lock into place on the passenger side, which has no front seat.
She joked to TB earlier that she had been able to renew her
driver’s license and that nobody at the DMV even blinked at the fact that she
was in a chair.
Her body has been beaten down through the years, but her
sense of humor is still intact.
Corey got in on the reunion at P.F. Chang’s for dinner not
that long ago, and as Randy motored her way through the door, he greeted her by
saying “don’t get up,” in a manner that made all three laugh hilariously.
Someone who spent her days saying “why me” wouldn’t laugh at
that. Randy Neeff did.
And she talks about the day when she will get up out of
that chair and walk again and go back to climbing her mountains, even if some
mountains may now seem insurmountable.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Keeping Up
TigerBlog would never watch "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" if he didn't have a good reason.
In TB's opinion, the Kardashian show more than any other captures so many of the ills of contemporary American popular culture - and really American society as a whole.
Let's face it. These are people who are narcissists and who will do anything for fame and fortune. They have no discernible talent, other than having been in the right place at the right time when reality TV kicked into high gear - and very little in the way of shame.
And so they've spent years and years living their lives with cameras pointed at them. In fairness, who wouldn't start to think that they were fascinating if every little piece of one's life were part of a TV show?
Of course you have to hand it to them. They have achieved great fame and fortune, which is America today is what the whole goal seems to be. Find whatever shortcut you can to wealth and notoriety, and it was really the Kardashian family that wrote the playbook of how to do so.
TB hates when he's going through the channels and stumbles upon it for a second before he changes the channel. It makes him feel unclean just to see that much of it.
So if he watched a segment of it Sunday night, there must have been a good reason, right?
There was.
This episode centered around Bruce Jenner's birthday - and his daughter's coming 18th birthday and desire to buy a beach house in Malibu, because, you know, isn't that what 18-year-olds do?
Anyway, there was a time that Bruce Jenner was the studliest of studs, the Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon, the greatest athlete in the world, a genuine American sporting icon. Seriously, after the 1976 Olympics, Jenner was to marketing in this country what Michael Jordan or Peyton Manning would become. That's how huge he was.
Now? He's just part of the trainwreck.
Anyway, his step-daughters wanted to do something nice for his birthday though, and they hit upon the idea of surprising him by inviting his 1976 Olympic decathlon teammates to California for his dinner.
Both of those teammates were named Fred. One of them is Fred Samara, the longtime Princeton men's track and field coach.
And that's how TigerBlog came to watch "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" Sunday.
Actually, he didn't watch the whole thing. He relied on his coworker Kristy McNeil, an avid fan of the show, to let him know when Fred was about to be on.
When TB put it on, he saw the barely recognizable Bruce Jenner dressed in a Princeton Track and Field shirt. And there was a part where Kim Kardashian looks up the 1976 Olympic decathlon team and then calls Fred to invite him the party.
Fred - both Freds, Samara and Dixon, actually - is then shown walking into where the family has gathered. Kim's concern was that Bruce wouldn't recognize the two Freds after all these years, but that's hardly the case.
TB remembers when Fred went out to California for the party/filming. It was awhile ago.
And there he was on TV Sunday night.
It went as well as it could have for Samara, with the Princeton Track and Field t-shirt and with a fairly respectable treatment by the narcissists, the ones who could have been condescending without too much effort.
When TB spoke to Samara yesterday, he was pleased with the way it went. And TB could tell he wasn't the first person to ask him about it.
If Samara was uncomfortable with the whole thing, he'll be much more in his element this weekend, when Princeton competes in the Ivy League Heptagonal championships at Dartmouth.
From his bio:
As head coach, Samara has guided the Tigers to 35 Ivy League titles, 17 indoor, 14 outdoor and four in cross country. Since 2000 alone, Samara had guided the Tigers to 12 Ivy League track & field titles, winning eight in indoor track and field and four in outdoor. His team posted an Ivy League triple crown in 2010-11 as Princeton became just the 10th program in NCAA history to sweep all six titles (men and women) in a single academic year and did it again in 2011-12.
As for indoor Heps, the men's winner has been either Princeton or Cornell every year since 1994 except for one year, 1997, when Penn won the title. Princeton won in 2010, 2011 and 2012 before Cornell regained the championship last year.
Samara looks like he could still be a decathlete all these years later. His workouts are a standard part of daily life in Jadwin Gym, and he doesn't have an ounce of fat on him.
Yeah, he's way more athlete/coach than reality TV star.
His cameo appearance Sunday was more than enough for him. And for TigerBlog, who will watch again when another Princeton coach is on.
In TB's opinion, the Kardashian show more than any other captures so many of the ills of contemporary American popular culture - and really American society as a whole.
Let's face it. These are people who are narcissists and who will do anything for fame and fortune. They have no discernible talent, other than having been in the right place at the right time when reality TV kicked into high gear - and very little in the way of shame.
And so they've spent years and years living their lives with cameras pointed at them. In fairness, who wouldn't start to think that they were fascinating if every little piece of one's life were part of a TV show?
Of course you have to hand it to them. They have achieved great fame and fortune, which is America today is what the whole goal seems to be. Find whatever shortcut you can to wealth and notoriety, and it was really the Kardashian family that wrote the playbook of how to do so.
TB hates when he's going through the channels and stumbles upon it for a second before he changes the channel. It makes him feel unclean just to see that much of it.
So if he watched a segment of it Sunday night, there must have been a good reason, right?
There was.
This episode centered around Bruce Jenner's birthday - and his daughter's coming 18th birthday and desire to buy a beach house in Malibu, because, you know, isn't that what 18-year-olds do?
Anyway, there was a time that Bruce Jenner was the studliest of studs, the Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon, the greatest athlete in the world, a genuine American sporting icon. Seriously, after the 1976 Olympics, Jenner was to marketing in this country what Michael Jordan or Peyton Manning would become. That's how huge he was.
Now? He's just part of the trainwreck.
Anyway, his step-daughters wanted to do something nice for his birthday though, and they hit upon the idea of surprising him by inviting his 1976 Olympic decathlon teammates to California for his dinner.
Both of those teammates were named Fred. One of them is Fred Samara, the longtime Princeton men's track and field coach.
And that's how TigerBlog came to watch "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" Sunday.
Actually, he didn't watch the whole thing. He relied on his coworker Kristy McNeil, an avid fan of the show, to let him know when Fred was about to be on.
When TB put it on, he saw the barely recognizable Bruce Jenner dressed in a Princeton Track and Field shirt. And there was a part where Kim Kardashian looks up the 1976 Olympic decathlon team and then calls Fred to invite him the party.
Fred - both Freds, Samara and Dixon, actually - is then shown walking into where the family has gathered. Kim's concern was that Bruce wouldn't recognize the two Freds after all these years, but that's hardly the case.
TB remembers when Fred went out to California for the party/filming. It was awhile ago.
And there he was on TV Sunday night.
It went as well as it could have for Samara, with the Princeton Track and Field t-shirt and with a fairly respectable treatment by the narcissists, the ones who could have been condescending without too much effort.
When TB spoke to Samara yesterday, he was pleased with the way it went. And TB could tell he wasn't the first person to ask him about it.
If Samara was uncomfortable with the whole thing, he'll be much more in his element this weekend, when Princeton competes in the Ivy League Heptagonal championships at Dartmouth.
From his bio:
As head coach, Samara has guided the Tigers to 35 Ivy League titles, 17 indoor, 14 outdoor and four in cross country. Since 2000 alone, Samara had guided the Tigers to 12 Ivy League track & field titles, winning eight in indoor track and field and four in outdoor. His team posted an Ivy League triple crown in 2010-11 as Princeton became just the 10th program in NCAA history to sweep all six titles (men and women) in a single academic year and did it again in 2011-12.
As for indoor Heps, the men's winner has been either Princeton or Cornell every year since 1994 except for one year, 1997, when Penn won the title. Princeton won in 2010, 2011 and 2012 before Cornell regained the championship last year.
Samara looks like he could still be a decathlete all these years later. His workouts are a standard part of daily life in Jadwin Gym, and he doesn't have an ounce of fat on him.
Yeah, he's way more athlete/coach than reality TV star.
His cameo appearance Sunday was more than enough for him. And for TigerBlog, who will watch again when another Princeton coach is on.
Monday, February 24, 2014
156-0
You know who had a bad weekend? The U.S. Olympic men's hockey team.
You know who had a good weekend? The Princeton women's basketball team.
Both teams played Friday and Saturday, and they had vastly different experiences.
The Princeton women's basketball team outscored the U.S. men's hockey team 156-0 in their two games this weekend. Okay, so it's not really fair to offer up comparative scores from basketball and hockey, so maybe it's better to say that the difference was the fact that the Princeton women got the points when they needed them, while the Americans didn't.
Oh, and they also got some help where they might not have expected it, in a way that speaks volumes about how sports can work.
Let's start with the Olympic hockey team.
A few hours before the Princeton women started their weekend, the U.S. men were confident and ready heading into a semifinal game against Canada. And then it all fell apart.
Canada defeated the U.S. 1-0 Friday to advance the gold medal game, which meant an extra day off. The Canadians, on a roll, thumped Sweden yesterday 3-0.
The loss Friday dropped the U.S. into the bronze medal game. For TigerBlog's money, there is no worse place to be and no game that has more pressure on it than the bronze medal game.
A day earlier, the gold is in your sights. This is immediately followed by the very real possibility that you could be going home with no medal at all.
And that's what happened to Team USA. One day after playing a very, very emotional game, the U.S. had to come right back against Finland, playing with the added problem of having to win to medal. Instead, it was all Finland, who won 5-0.
Tough loss one day? Hard to dial it back up the next.
Then there was the weekend for the Princeton women.
Back on Friday, Princeton, Harvard and Penn all had one Ivy League loss in women's basketball, while Dartmouth was winless. The matchups for the weekend were Princeton at Dartmouth and Penn at Harvard Friday and Princeton at Harvard and Penn at Dartmouth Saturday.
Clearly, there was going to be some sorting out of the league race this weekend.
If you're Princeton, you weren't really sure which team to root for in the Penn-Harvard matchup. If Princeton was going to beat Harvard Saturday, then it would be better for Harvard to beat Penn. If Princeton was going to lose to Harvard, then it would be better for Penn to beat Harvard.
Why? Because Princeton plays Penn in the final game of the regular season, March 11 at Jadwin. If Princeton had a second loss, then it would need Penn to have one loss, not Harvard.
Anyway, that was the background to the weekend.
So what happened? Princeton pasted Dartmouth by 41 Friday night. And Penn pulled away from Harvard to win 63-50.
At the midway point of the weekend, Penn was in the position of rooting for Harvard to beat Princeton, which would leave both with two losses. Surely Penn would cruise in Hanover against the 0-9 Big Green, right?
Well, let's see what happened next. Princeton had a back-and-forth game against Harvard, one that the Tigers sealed 69-64 with some clutch foul shooting, especially by Michelle Miller, who was 6 for 6 for the Tigers, who went 20 for 24 as a team. Princeton won despite a 1 for 13 shooting night from Blake Dietrick, the reigning Ivy Player of the Week and probably the frontrunner for Ivy Player of the Year, especially if Princeton wins.
With the win over Harvard in the bank, TigerBlog checked on the Dartmouth-Penn game - and found that it was 26-17 Green at the half. Surely Penn would come back, right?
Well, the Quakers did. But Dartmouth gutted it out, taking it 53-50, after Penn had taken the lead at 50-49 late in the second half. It was a shocking result on some levels, but on others it was understandable.
Huge Friday win? Just like with a tough loss, it can be tough to dial it back up 24 hours later.
It's what happened to Harvard after its win at Jadwin earlier this year was followed by a 29-point loss at Penn the next night. And it's what happened to the Quakers this weekend, after its emotional win over the Crimson Friday.
So now what?
Princeton is 8-1, with games remaining at Yale and Brown this weekend and then home with Columbia, Cornell and then Penn.
The Quakers are 7-2, hoping for a Princeton slip-up but knowing that they cannot afford one of their own and that they at the very least need to come to Jadwin within one game of the Tigers and then take their chances at two straight wins, one to force a play-off and then it the play-off itself.
Harvard now is 7-3, with no more games against the teams in front. Mathematically the Crimson are still there, but they need a lot of help from the rest of the league.
Princeton got the sweep it needed and the help from Dartmouth that it never expected to get. All in all, it was a pretty good weekend.
John Thompson, when he was Princeton's coach, used to say the goal was to be in first place at the end of each weekend. Princeton finds itself there now in women's basketball.
Sole possession of first, actually. It makes it somewhat sweeter, though there is a still a long way to go.
You know who had a good weekend? The Princeton women's basketball team.
Both teams played Friday and Saturday, and they had vastly different experiences.
The Princeton women's basketball team outscored the U.S. men's hockey team 156-0 in their two games this weekend. Okay, so it's not really fair to offer up comparative scores from basketball and hockey, so maybe it's better to say that the difference was the fact that the Princeton women got the points when they needed them, while the Americans didn't.
Oh, and they also got some help where they might not have expected it, in a way that speaks volumes about how sports can work.
Let's start with the Olympic hockey team.
A few hours before the Princeton women started their weekend, the U.S. men were confident and ready heading into a semifinal game against Canada. And then it all fell apart.
Canada defeated the U.S. 1-0 Friday to advance the gold medal game, which meant an extra day off. The Canadians, on a roll, thumped Sweden yesterday 3-0.
The loss Friday dropped the U.S. into the bronze medal game. For TigerBlog's money, there is no worse place to be and no game that has more pressure on it than the bronze medal game.
A day earlier, the gold is in your sights. This is immediately followed by the very real possibility that you could be going home with no medal at all.
And that's what happened to Team USA. One day after playing a very, very emotional game, the U.S. had to come right back against Finland, playing with the added problem of having to win to medal. Instead, it was all Finland, who won 5-0.
Tough loss one day? Hard to dial it back up the next.
Then there was the weekend for the Princeton women.
Back on Friday, Princeton, Harvard and Penn all had one Ivy League loss in women's basketball, while Dartmouth was winless. The matchups for the weekend were Princeton at Dartmouth and Penn at Harvard Friday and Princeton at Harvard and Penn at Dartmouth Saturday.
Clearly, there was going to be some sorting out of the league race this weekend.
If you're Princeton, you weren't really sure which team to root for in the Penn-Harvard matchup. If Princeton was going to beat Harvard Saturday, then it would be better for Harvard to beat Penn. If Princeton was going to lose to Harvard, then it would be better for Penn to beat Harvard.
Why? Because Princeton plays Penn in the final game of the regular season, March 11 at Jadwin. If Princeton had a second loss, then it would need Penn to have one loss, not Harvard.
Anyway, that was the background to the weekend.
So what happened? Princeton pasted Dartmouth by 41 Friday night. And Penn pulled away from Harvard to win 63-50.
At the midway point of the weekend, Penn was in the position of rooting for Harvard to beat Princeton, which would leave both with two losses. Surely Penn would cruise in Hanover against the 0-9 Big Green, right?
Well, let's see what happened next. Princeton had a back-and-forth game against Harvard, one that the Tigers sealed 69-64 with some clutch foul shooting, especially by Michelle Miller, who was 6 for 6 for the Tigers, who went 20 for 24 as a team. Princeton won despite a 1 for 13 shooting night from Blake Dietrick, the reigning Ivy Player of the Week and probably the frontrunner for Ivy Player of the Year, especially if Princeton wins.
With the win over Harvard in the bank, TigerBlog checked on the Dartmouth-Penn game - and found that it was 26-17 Green at the half. Surely Penn would come back, right?
Well, the Quakers did. But Dartmouth gutted it out, taking it 53-50, after Penn had taken the lead at 50-49 late in the second half. It was a shocking result on some levels, but on others it was understandable.
Huge Friday win? Just like with a tough loss, it can be tough to dial it back up 24 hours later.
It's what happened to Harvard after its win at Jadwin earlier this year was followed by a 29-point loss at Penn the next night. And it's what happened to the Quakers this weekend, after its emotional win over the Crimson Friday.
So now what?
Princeton is 8-1, with games remaining at Yale and Brown this weekend and then home with Columbia, Cornell and then Penn.
The Quakers are 7-2, hoping for a Princeton slip-up but knowing that they cannot afford one of their own and that they at the very least need to come to Jadwin within one game of the Tigers and then take their chances at two straight wins, one to force a play-off and then it the play-off itself.
Harvard now is 7-3, with no more games against the teams in front. Mathematically the Crimson are still there, but they need a lot of help from the rest of the league.
Princeton got the sweep it needed and the help from Dartmouth that it never expected to get. All in all, it was a pretty good weekend.
John Thompson, when he was Princeton's coach, used to say the goal was to be in first place at the end of each weekend. Princeton finds itself there now in women's basketball.
Sole possession of first, actually. It makes it somewhat sweeter, though there is a still a long way to go.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Busy Weekend?
Cara Morey, assistant women's hockey coach and wife of sprint football head coach/eternal optimist Sean Morey, wore a bright red sweatshirt and bright red hat to yesterday's monthly department meeting.
They were emblazoned with the word "CANADA" on them.
Given Morey's sport and nationality, it was obvious that she was rooting for the Canadians in the Olympic women's hockey gold medal game, which would be facing off shortly before the end of the meeting.
By now you probably know what happened. Canada won the game and the gold medal 3-2 in overtime, handing the U.S. a brutal setback after the Americans had led 2-0 late in the third period.
Canada broke through to make it a 2-1 game with three minutes left, tied it with just over a minute left after pulling the goalie and then won it in OT. The U.S. team almost wrapped it up when it was 2-1, when a shot at the empty Canadian net trickled gently into the post, about an inch or two away from sealing it. The Canadians then came down and tied it instead.
The U.S. and Canada were destined to be in the gold medal game in women's hockey, just like they were four years ago and just like they will be four more years from now, TB assumes. Because of that, coming home with another silver medal stings a bit, especially after having come so close to finally winning the gold.
It's pretty hard for TigerBlog to work up any kind of animosity for Canada, even more so these days, after he recently saw "Argo" for the first time.
The Olympics foster a great many things, including over-the-top amounts of jingoism. As TB said before the men's hockey quarterfinal game, he knows plenty of Americans he doesn't like but not a single person in the Czech Republic that he doesn't like.
Besides, the American women's team was dotted with players from Harvard and Cornell, which always brings TB back to one of his favorite questions. Do you root for the rest of the league when they get to championship competition beyond the Ivy League?
TB usually roots for Ivy Leaguers in pro sports. The Olympics are sort of an extension of that, but this wasn't one underdog Ivy League-type who made it big.
Add it all up, and TB was mostly rooting for a good game in the women's final, and he got it. He's definitely rooting for the U.S. team in the men's game today though.
If you want to root against current Harvard athletes, then you can come to Jadwin Gym tomorrow night at see the Princeton-Harvard men's basketball game, tip-off for which is at 8.
The Tigers are 2-5 in the Ivy League, so there will be no title this year. There is still a chance, though, to greatly impact who does win the title.
Harvard is 7-1 and tied for first place with Yale, and both teams still need to make the trip to Princeton and Penn. It might not be the kind of big game that Princeton envisioned when it was 11-2 prior to the start of the league season, but it will still be a big game nonetheless.
It's hardly the only Princeton event this weekend, though.
How many events are there? How about 34 between tonight and Sunday. And some of them are huge, such as the Ivy League women's swimming and diving championships and the women's basketball game at Harvard. And the Howe Cup women's squash championships, also to be held in Jadwin.
If you don't feel like leaving the Princeton campus tomorrow, you can be pretty busy. Men's lacrosse opens at 11 a.m. against Hofstra. The men's basketball game wraps it up.
In between is wrestling against Penn (1), men's hockey against Cornell (7) and the squash all day.
It's only going to get busier as the winter/spring overlap gets into full swing for the next few weeks. Of course, this weekend is busy enough.
The lacrosse game will be the first home outdoor event since Nov. 16, when there was home football and men's soccer.
The weather has been brutal all winter, and it's supposed to go back to being brutal next week. But there is a bit of a window this weekend, just in time for Princeton-Hofstra, which will be played apparently on a day that will be sunny with temperatures in the high 40s or low 50s, which will seem like August after what's been going on around here.
Either way, it's a big sign that spring is on the way.
Maybe today's rain and warm temps can melt a lot of the snow, or at least allow some of the grass to peak through in spots. It's enough with seeing snow as far as the eye can see.
They were emblazoned with the word "CANADA" on them.
Given Morey's sport and nationality, it was obvious that she was rooting for the Canadians in the Olympic women's hockey gold medal game, which would be facing off shortly before the end of the meeting.
By now you probably know what happened. Canada won the game and the gold medal 3-2 in overtime, handing the U.S. a brutal setback after the Americans had led 2-0 late in the third period.
Canada broke through to make it a 2-1 game with three minutes left, tied it with just over a minute left after pulling the goalie and then won it in OT. The U.S. team almost wrapped it up when it was 2-1, when a shot at the empty Canadian net trickled gently into the post, about an inch or two away from sealing it. The Canadians then came down and tied it instead.
The U.S. and Canada were destined to be in the gold medal game in women's hockey, just like they were four years ago and just like they will be four more years from now, TB assumes. Because of that, coming home with another silver medal stings a bit, especially after having come so close to finally winning the gold.
It's pretty hard for TigerBlog to work up any kind of animosity for Canada, even more so these days, after he recently saw "Argo" for the first time.
The Olympics foster a great many things, including over-the-top amounts of jingoism. As TB said before the men's hockey quarterfinal game, he knows plenty of Americans he doesn't like but not a single person in the Czech Republic that he doesn't like.
Besides, the American women's team was dotted with players from Harvard and Cornell, which always brings TB back to one of his favorite questions. Do you root for the rest of the league when they get to championship competition beyond the Ivy League?
TB usually roots for Ivy Leaguers in pro sports. The Olympics are sort of an extension of that, but this wasn't one underdog Ivy League-type who made it big.
Add it all up, and TB was mostly rooting for a good game in the women's final, and he got it. He's definitely rooting for the U.S. team in the men's game today though.
If you want to root against current Harvard athletes, then you can come to Jadwin Gym tomorrow night at see the Princeton-Harvard men's basketball game, tip-off for which is at 8.
The Tigers are 2-5 in the Ivy League, so there will be no title this year. There is still a chance, though, to greatly impact who does win the title.
Harvard is 7-1 and tied for first place with Yale, and both teams still need to make the trip to Princeton and Penn. It might not be the kind of big game that Princeton envisioned when it was 11-2 prior to the start of the league season, but it will still be a big game nonetheless.
It's hardly the only Princeton event this weekend, though.
How many events are there? How about 34 between tonight and Sunday. And some of them are huge, such as the Ivy League women's swimming and diving championships and the women's basketball game at Harvard. And the Howe Cup women's squash championships, also to be held in Jadwin.
If you don't feel like leaving the Princeton campus tomorrow, you can be pretty busy. Men's lacrosse opens at 11 a.m. against Hofstra. The men's basketball game wraps it up.
In between is wrestling against Penn (1), men's hockey against Cornell (7) and the squash all day.
It's only going to get busier as the winter/spring overlap gets into full swing for the next few weeks. Of course, this weekend is busy enough.
The lacrosse game will be the first home outdoor event since Nov. 16, when there was home football and men's soccer.
The weather has been brutal all winter, and it's supposed to go back to being brutal next week. But there is a bit of a window this weekend, just in time for Princeton-Hofstra, which will be played apparently on a day that will be sunny with temperatures in the high 40s or low 50s, which will seem like August after what's been going on around here.
Either way, it's a big sign that spring is on the way.
Maybe today's rain and warm temps can melt a lot of the snow, or at least allow some of the grass to peak through in spots. It's enough with seeing snow as far as the eye can see.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
The Mt. Rushmore Of Women's Basketball Weekends
TigerBlog DVRd the movie "North By Northwest" the other day. He'll get around to watching it at some point.
So what that he's seen it a bunch of times? It's a classic, Hitchcock at his best, Cary Grant at his best, Eva Marie Saint not quite at her "On the Waterfront" best but pretty close.
If you've never seen it, it's worth the investment. Grant plays an apparently soft advertising man who unwittingly gets into the middle of a big espionage situation, falling in love with Eva Marie Saint along the way - even as he doesn't even wrinkle his suit while running through a corn field to get away from a crop duster.
The movie also has one of the great gaffes of all-time, as a young extra in one scene covers his ears before a gun is fired. Being that this is a Hitchcock movie, TB has always assumed that he did that on purpose.
The most famous scene in the movie takes place on Mt. Rushmore, a place that TB has never been but thinks would be cool to see.
Mt. Rushmore has been in the news in recent weeks in a mind-numbing way that is worse to TigerBlog than fingers or a chalkboard. Somehow, sports talk has become dominated by Mt. Rushmore, as in "who would be on the Mt. Rushmore of all-time NBA basketball players" or "who is on the Mt. Rushmore of all-time Yankees."
On and on this has gone, as if somehow there is one correct answer. As someone who just counted down his top 25 Princeton men's lacrosse players of the last 25 years, TigerBlog is okay with recognizing the best of the best and making the case for one player over another.
At the same time, it's enough with this "Mt. Rushmore" stuff. First of all, TB made it clear that it was his opinion and anyone else could have another one, as opposed to the whole "Mt. Rushmore" discussion, which has led to ridiculous conversations about how one person is so obviously right and the next person is so obviously an idiot.
And then there's the real problem. Can someone come up with something original?
Anyway, that's TB's take on the whole Mt. Rushmore situation.
Before he lets it go, though, he will say this: This weekend would be on the Mt. Rushmore of Ivy League women's basketball weekends. And don't even try to disagree with that.
Unless you want to. What does TB care?
The recent history of Ivy League women's basketball has been one of having a dominant team, which, by the way, for the last four years has been Princeton.
It's been since 2008 that the Ivy League women's basketball champ didn't win the league by at least two games. In fact, in the last 20 years, the Ivy women's basketball winner has won by at least two games 15 times - and by at least four games seven times.
This year, through the midway point, the race is way closer than it traditionally is.
It's a three-team race between Princeton, Penn and Harvard, who just happen to meet up with each other in Cambridge this weekend. Hence the Mt. Rushmore thing.
Harvard is 7-1 in the league, while Princeton and Penn are both 6-1. All three play each other once more this season, with two of those three meetings this weekend at Harvard, where the Crimson host the Quakers tomorrow and the Tigers Saturday.
The three are 1-1 against each other and 16-0 against the rest of the league to this point. Harvard had one close call with a 58-57 win over Yale. Penn has a seven-point win over Columbia.
Other than that, the other 14 games the teams have played against the rest of the league have all been in double figures.
Not that when they played each other it was any closer. Princeton lost to Harvard by 10. Princeton beat Penn by 31. Penn beat Harvard by 29.
It's possible that the three could be headed to 12-2 and three-way tie for the title, which would result in a random draw for the bye in the playoff. Or its possible that one will sweep the other two.
Given the way the rest of the results have gone, it's not a wise plan for either of the three to count on getting much help from the other five. It could happen of course, but it's not something to rely on.
And that means the games this weekend are incredibly huge.
Each of the three can make a case that its loss was an aberration. Princeton was coming off a three-week exam break, returned against Harvard, dug a huge first-half hole and almost came all the way back. Harvard lost to Penn the day after beating Princeton, in what was an understandable emotional letdown. Penn got hammered by Princeton but hasn't lost a league game since.
And now they have a huge weekend together.
Would you rather play Harvard Friday or Saturday? Penn gets the Crimson off the bat and then has to make the drive to Hanover to take on Dartmouth, who is 0-8 in the league. Princeton has to play in Hanover first, with an eye on the scoreboard and the game the next night.
Would you rather be Harvard, having to play the two big games back-to-back but knowing that 1) you're at home and 2) if you sweep then all you have to do is win out and you're in?
It's a fascinating weekend in Ivy women's baskeball, which historically doesn't usually get to this time of year with too many fascinating weekends.
So what that he's seen it a bunch of times? It's a classic, Hitchcock at his best, Cary Grant at his best, Eva Marie Saint not quite at her "On the Waterfront" best but pretty close.
If you've never seen it, it's worth the investment. Grant plays an apparently soft advertising man who unwittingly gets into the middle of a big espionage situation, falling in love with Eva Marie Saint along the way - even as he doesn't even wrinkle his suit while running through a corn field to get away from a crop duster.
The movie also has one of the great gaffes of all-time, as a young extra in one scene covers his ears before a gun is fired. Being that this is a Hitchcock movie, TB has always assumed that he did that on purpose.
The most famous scene in the movie takes place on Mt. Rushmore, a place that TB has never been but thinks would be cool to see.
Mt. Rushmore has been in the news in recent weeks in a mind-numbing way that is worse to TigerBlog than fingers or a chalkboard. Somehow, sports talk has become dominated by Mt. Rushmore, as in "who would be on the Mt. Rushmore of all-time NBA basketball players" or "who is on the Mt. Rushmore of all-time Yankees."
On and on this has gone, as if somehow there is one correct answer. As someone who just counted down his top 25 Princeton men's lacrosse players of the last 25 years, TigerBlog is okay with recognizing the best of the best and making the case for one player over another.
At the same time, it's enough with this "Mt. Rushmore" stuff. First of all, TB made it clear that it was his opinion and anyone else could have another one, as opposed to the whole "Mt. Rushmore" discussion, which has led to ridiculous conversations about how one person is so obviously right and the next person is so obviously an idiot.
And then there's the real problem. Can someone come up with something original?
Anyway, that's TB's take on the whole Mt. Rushmore situation.
Before he lets it go, though, he will say this: This weekend would be on the Mt. Rushmore of Ivy League women's basketball weekends. And don't even try to disagree with that.
Unless you want to. What does TB care?
The recent history of Ivy League women's basketball has been one of having a dominant team, which, by the way, for the last four years has been Princeton.
It's been since 2008 that the Ivy League women's basketball champ didn't win the league by at least two games. In fact, in the last 20 years, the Ivy women's basketball winner has won by at least two games 15 times - and by at least four games seven times.
This year, through the midway point, the race is way closer than it traditionally is.
It's a three-team race between Princeton, Penn and Harvard, who just happen to meet up with each other in Cambridge this weekend. Hence the Mt. Rushmore thing.
Harvard is 7-1 in the league, while Princeton and Penn are both 6-1. All three play each other once more this season, with two of those three meetings this weekend at Harvard, where the Crimson host the Quakers tomorrow and the Tigers Saturday.
The three are 1-1 against each other and 16-0 against the rest of the league to this point. Harvard had one close call with a 58-57 win over Yale. Penn has a seven-point win over Columbia.
Other than that, the other 14 games the teams have played against the rest of the league have all been in double figures.
Not that when they played each other it was any closer. Princeton lost to Harvard by 10. Princeton beat Penn by 31. Penn beat Harvard by 29.
It's possible that the three could be headed to 12-2 and three-way tie for the title, which would result in a random draw for the bye in the playoff. Or its possible that one will sweep the other two.
Given the way the rest of the results have gone, it's not a wise plan for either of the three to count on getting much help from the other five. It could happen of course, but it's not something to rely on.
And that means the games this weekend are incredibly huge.
Each of the three can make a case that its loss was an aberration. Princeton was coming off a three-week exam break, returned against Harvard, dug a huge first-half hole and almost came all the way back. Harvard lost to Penn the day after beating Princeton, in what was an understandable emotional letdown. Penn got hammered by Princeton but hasn't lost a league game since.
And now they have a huge weekend together.
Would you rather play Harvard Friday or Saturday? Penn gets the Crimson off the bat and then has to make the drive to Hanover to take on Dartmouth, who is 0-8 in the league. Princeton has to play in Hanover first, with an eye on the scoreboard and the game the next night.
Would you rather be Harvard, having to play the two big games back-to-back but knowing that 1) you're at home and 2) if you sweep then all you have to do is win out and you're in?
It's a fascinating weekend in Ivy women's baskeball, which historically doesn't usually get to this time of year with too many fascinating weekends.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Time Flies
Little Mason Sachson went for his first haircut yesterday.
A bit shy of his second birthday, Mason is the son of Princeton Assistant Director of Athletics Craig Sachson, who had the unenviable task of taking him for his first stint in the barber's chair.
Its a very stressful moment, taking a boy for his first haircut. There's no way he's going to be happy, not sitting in a chair, smock on, stranger taking scissors to his hair.
By all accounts, Mason had a typical reaction. His father reported that they made it through okay, even if it wasn't a lot of yucks.
TigerBlog remembers taking his own son to his first haircut like it was yesterday. He had the same experience, unpleasant, but ultimately successful.
It wasn't yesterday, though. Yesterday was Mason's turn. And even if it seemed like TigerBlog Jr. was Mason's age not that long ago, on the actual yesterday, when Mason was getting his first haircut, TBJ was taking his road test for his driver's license.
TigerBlog can report that his son was nervous on the way to the test, antsy waiting for the inspector to finish with the young man who went just before him and ultimately fine once he zipped through the parallel parking.
From first hair cut to driver's license. Time flies. It did for TBJ. It will for Mason too.
Parenting is partly about observing milestones and doing what you can to make sure that they're ready for whatever it is they've just achieved. It goes back all the way to the beginning, when they first roll over, and life becomes a series of steps towards independence - crawling, walking, talking, first day of school, first time on a bicycle, playing sports, going to high school, driving, college, adulthood.
Some are easier to handle than others. The driving one is downright frightening.
As for Mason's dad, he is the sport contact for 12 of Princeton's 38 varsity teams, which makes him one of the busier people in the world of athletic communications. In fact, TB can't imagine there are too many people - if any - who cover more teams in the world of Division I.
Craig is in his second tour of duty with Princeton Athletic Communications. His first was as an intern back in the 1990s, and then, after two years at Cornell, he's been back at Princeton since. Like TB, Sachson's background originally was in newspapers, the same newspaper as TB, for that matter.
When TB thinks back at the way it's evolved around here in his tenure, by far the No. 1 thing has been the advent of the webpage. That alone changed the whole show in so many ways.
For starters, it was the beginning - a dramatic beginning - of the shift from an emphasis on media relations to becoming Princeton's own media outlet. Back when TB started, there was really no way to get directly to the people who wanted the information other than to go through the media, which didn't really help Princeton fans who didn't live in the local area.
In other words, other than perhaps a team newsletter or a very small recruiting guide, there was no way to consistently get information out to, say, a Princeton swimming alum who lived in Texas. All of that changed overnight with goprincetontigers.com.
Before the webpage, very little was done for the teams whose games weren't covered by newspapers, which meant most of the teams. It wasn't that nobody cared about them; it's just that there was little that could be done other than write a short postgame release, fax it out to newspapers and hope they ran a sentence at least.
The web changed all of that. Suddenly there was a limitless opportunity to send out information. This led to the second biggest development in TB's tenure.
When Craig first started, he was an intern who couldn't stay for more than two years if he wanted. Shortly after the launch of goprincetontigers.com (and not related to it, more related to changes in University policy), the internships were eliminated in favor of full-time jobs.
Instead of having a different sport contact every two years, every sport now had someone who was going to be around for awhile. With that came institutional memory and familiarity, and with that came way better coverage. And, with the webpage, the supply could finally meet demand.
It's no wonder that the coaches of Craig's 12 sports - and of all the sports that used to be so underreported - love how things are now.
Those two things - a webpage and experienced people to put information on it - did more to connect the athletic department and its fans all over the world than anything TB could have imagined back on his first day here.
Craig's 12 sports are football, men's and women's squash, wrestling, men's and women's volleyball, all four crews and men's and women's swimming and diving.
Back in the day, this would have meant a lot of work with one sport and hardly any with 11 others. Now? Just look at the webpage, where there is a ton of information about all of those teams, with stories, video and everything else.
It's a big weekend for Sachson's teams. The women's swimming and diving team chases another Ivy League championship. Wrestling tries to close out its best Ivy season in decades. Women's squash plays in the Howe Cup national championship tournament.
In the modern era of athletic communications, this keeps him as busy as a football game. And that's a very good thing, for so many reasons.
A bit shy of his second birthday, Mason is the son of Princeton Assistant Director of Athletics Craig Sachson, who had the unenviable task of taking him for his first stint in the barber's chair.
Its a very stressful moment, taking a boy for his first haircut. There's no way he's going to be happy, not sitting in a chair, smock on, stranger taking scissors to his hair.
By all accounts, Mason had a typical reaction. His father reported that they made it through okay, even if it wasn't a lot of yucks.
TigerBlog remembers taking his own son to his first haircut like it was yesterday. He had the same experience, unpleasant, but ultimately successful.
It wasn't yesterday, though. Yesterday was Mason's turn. And even if it seemed like TigerBlog Jr. was Mason's age not that long ago, on the actual yesterday, when Mason was getting his first haircut, TBJ was taking his road test for his driver's license.
TigerBlog can report that his son was nervous on the way to the test, antsy waiting for the inspector to finish with the young man who went just before him and ultimately fine once he zipped through the parallel parking.
From first hair cut to driver's license. Time flies. It did for TBJ. It will for Mason too.
Parenting is partly about observing milestones and doing what you can to make sure that they're ready for whatever it is they've just achieved. It goes back all the way to the beginning, when they first roll over, and life becomes a series of steps towards independence - crawling, walking, talking, first day of school, first time on a bicycle, playing sports, going to high school, driving, college, adulthood.
Some are easier to handle than others. The driving one is downright frightening.
As for Mason's dad, he is the sport contact for 12 of Princeton's 38 varsity teams, which makes him one of the busier people in the world of athletic communications. In fact, TB can't imagine there are too many people - if any - who cover more teams in the world of Division I.
Craig is in his second tour of duty with Princeton Athletic Communications. His first was as an intern back in the 1990s, and then, after two years at Cornell, he's been back at Princeton since. Like TB, Sachson's background originally was in newspapers, the same newspaper as TB, for that matter.
When TB thinks back at the way it's evolved around here in his tenure, by far the No. 1 thing has been the advent of the webpage. That alone changed the whole show in so many ways.
For starters, it was the beginning - a dramatic beginning - of the shift from an emphasis on media relations to becoming Princeton's own media outlet. Back when TB started, there was really no way to get directly to the people who wanted the information other than to go through the media, which didn't really help Princeton fans who didn't live in the local area.
In other words, other than perhaps a team newsletter or a very small recruiting guide, there was no way to consistently get information out to, say, a Princeton swimming alum who lived in Texas. All of that changed overnight with goprincetontigers.com.
Before the webpage, very little was done for the teams whose games weren't covered by newspapers, which meant most of the teams. It wasn't that nobody cared about them; it's just that there was little that could be done other than write a short postgame release, fax it out to newspapers and hope they ran a sentence at least.
The web changed all of that. Suddenly there was a limitless opportunity to send out information. This led to the second biggest development in TB's tenure.
When Craig first started, he was an intern who couldn't stay for more than two years if he wanted. Shortly after the launch of goprincetontigers.com (and not related to it, more related to changes in University policy), the internships were eliminated in favor of full-time jobs.
Instead of having a different sport contact every two years, every sport now had someone who was going to be around for awhile. With that came institutional memory and familiarity, and with that came way better coverage. And, with the webpage, the supply could finally meet demand.
It's no wonder that the coaches of Craig's 12 sports - and of all the sports that used to be so underreported - love how things are now.
Those two things - a webpage and experienced people to put information on it - did more to connect the athletic department and its fans all over the world than anything TB could have imagined back on his first day here.
Craig's 12 sports are football, men's and women's squash, wrestling, men's and women's volleyball, all four crews and men's and women's swimming and diving.
Back in the day, this would have meant a lot of work with one sport and hardly any with 11 others. Now? Just look at the webpage, where there is a ton of information about all of those teams, with stories, video and everything else.
It's a big weekend for Sachson's teams. The women's swimming and diving team chases another Ivy League championship. Wrestling tries to close out its best Ivy season in decades. Women's squash plays in the Howe Cup national championship tournament.
In the modern era of athletic communications, this keeps him as busy as a football game. And that's a very good thing, for so many reasons.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Comeback Kids
TigerBlog is in the market for a new cereal.
For essentially his entire life, he's gone with Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies. Actually, way back when, he went with their more sugary counterparts, Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Krispies, something that he chalks up to youth and inexperience.
TB can't imagine how many Flakes and Krispies he's eaten in his life. He imagines that they're in the millions.
For some reason, he woke up a few weeks ago, looked at the Rice Krispies and decided he needed something new. He was still fine with the Corn Flakes, something that was equally as confusing as turning his back on a cereal that had carried him through breakfasts for five decades.
Breakfast has done a pretty good job of marketing itself. While lunch has mostly had catchy jingles about lunch meat and bologna and dinner has been all over the map with everything from frozen pizza to meat loaf, breakfast has kept its promotional efforts simple.
Ask anyone about breakfast, and they'll say it's the most important meal of the day. Even when everyone knows it isn't. TigerBlog ranks them 1) dinner, 2) lunch, 3) breakfast.
TigerBlog loves bacon and eggs, especially on a nice bagel, but he almost never has anything for breakfast other than cereal. And now he was staring at his Rice Krispies and thinking he needed a change.
After Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies, the cereals that TB has had the most are Multigrain Cheerios and Golden Grahams. He went with a box of each to replace the Rice Krispies, and then he decided to branch out.
Ah, but where to go? He tried Crispix, which is a rice/corn cereal. It was okay, but nothing special. He tried Life, which he remembered having as a kid, but that was like eating cardboard.
Then he stumbled on one that seemed okay. Cinnamon Chex. Hey, it was pretty good. He's on his second box of it now, and it looks promising.
If you go to the cereal aisle in the supermarket, you're flooded with all kinds of options. Too many of them are way too sugary, even if that's part of their appeal. TB could eat Cocoa Puffs all day, except for the fact that there are 12 grams of sugar per serving, as opposed to 1.82 grams in Corn Flakes. The Cinnamon Chex have eight grams, which isn't great but is still way better than Cocoa Puffs, even if the fact that Cocoa Puffs can make the milk chocolaty is still pretty cool.
Rice Krispies, by the way, have 3.5 grams of sugar per serving.
A year ago, none of this would have mattered much to TB. Now, he's coming up on the anniversary of being somewhat diet-obsessed, one that has 1) ruined his ability to eat most of the things he loves and 2) had some really positive effects on his weight and overall healthy. It's the trade-off.
TB has hit something of a plateau in weight-loss, which is fine. He still weighs himself every morning though, and he's amazed that his weight can vary plus or minus a pound or two or even more from day to day.
TB was on the middle school wrestling team in eighth grade, but back then, he needed to gain weight, not lose weight, as he was about a 90-pounder wrestling at 98 pounds. It made him, he assumes, a rarity in the sport.
Even though TB wasn't a very successful wrestler and he never wrestled again after eighth grade, he doesn't have to be a genius in the sport to figure out that what Chris Ayres is doing with the Princeton wrestling program is extraordinary.
To say that Princeton wrestling has struggled in the last 20 years is a major understatement. Ayres, now in his eighth season as head coach, has never wavered from his belief that Princeton could be a significant player in Ivy League and Eastern wrestling, and it's starting to come true.
Lately, it's been in highly dramatic fashion.
Princeton rallied to defeat Columbia 18-16 after trailing 16-7 with three matches left last weekend. That followed a rally to defeat Boston University 23-20 after trailing 20-3.
In fact, Princeton is 11-2 overall, winner of six straight, and at 3-1 in the Ivy League assured of at least a tie for second place, behind national power Cornell. The Tigers host Rider Friday and then Penn Saturday afternoon.
At 3-1 in the league with one match left, Princeton is assured of its second winning league record since 1987. Princeton is in double figures in wins and will couple that with fewer than five losses, a combination the program last managed in 1981.
Princeton has had some success through the last decade individually, but it's been awhile since the team has had this much depth and success. It starts with the entire coaching staff, a group with successful backgrounds who have built the program from the ground up.
Ayres, especially, has an enthusiasm and optimism that is infectious. Even during the toughest times during his rebuilding project, Ayres has always been convinced that better days were ahead. It's been obvious in any conversation or interaction with him; he just oozes with positivity.
And now it's all starting to pay off.
Catching Cornell in Ivy League wrestling will never be easy. TB's sense is that Chris Ayres believes it's possible.
In the meantime, one of the best stories in Princeton Athletics is unfolding in Dillon Gym.
Princeton has a great history in wrestling, going back decades. The present is going pretty well also.
Princeton's wrestling revival hasn't been limited to just those two big comebacks.
For essentially his entire life, he's gone with Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies. Actually, way back when, he went with their more sugary counterparts, Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Krispies, something that he chalks up to youth and inexperience.
TB can't imagine how many Flakes and Krispies he's eaten in his life. He imagines that they're in the millions.
For some reason, he woke up a few weeks ago, looked at the Rice Krispies and decided he needed something new. He was still fine with the Corn Flakes, something that was equally as confusing as turning his back on a cereal that had carried him through breakfasts for five decades.
Breakfast has done a pretty good job of marketing itself. While lunch has mostly had catchy jingles about lunch meat and bologna and dinner has been all over the map with everything from frozen pizza to meat loaf, breakfast has kept its promotional efforts simple.
Ask anyone about breakfast, and they'll say it's the most important meal of the day. Even when everyone knows it isn't. TigerBlog ranks them 1) dinner, 2) lunch, 3) breakfast.
TigerBlog loves bacon and eggs, especially on a nice bagel, but he almost never has anything for breakfast other than cereal. And now he was staring at his Rice Krispies and thinking he needed a change.
After Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies, the cereals that TB has had the most are Multigrain Cheerios and Golden Grahams. He went with a box of each to replace the Rice Krispies, and then he decided to branch out.
Ah, but where to go? He tried Crispix, which is a rice/corn cereal. It was okay, but nothing special. He tried Life, which he remembered having as a kid, but that was like eating cardboard.
Then he stumbled on one that seemed okay. Cinnamon Chex. Hey, it was pretty good. He's on his second box of it now, and it looks promising.
If you go to the cereal aisle in the supermarket, you're flooded with all kinds of options. Too many of them are way too sugary, even if that's part of their appeal. TB could eat Cocoa Puffs all day, except for the fact that there are 12 grams of sugar per serving, as opposed to 1.82 grams in Corn Flakes. The Cinnamon Chex have eight grams, which isn't great but is still way better than Cocoa Puffs, even if the fact that Cocoa Puffs can make the milk chocolaty is still pretty cool.
Rice Krispies, by the way, have 3.5 grams of sugar per serving.
A year ago, none of this would have mattered much to TB. Now, he's coming up on the anniversary of being somewhat diet-obsessed, one that has 1) ruined his ability to eat most of the things he loves and 2) had some really positive effects on his weight and overall healthy. It's the trade-off.
TB has hit something of a plateau in weight-loss, which is fine. He still weighs himself every morning though, and he's amazed that his weight can vary plus or minus a pound or two or even more from day to day.
TB was on the middle school wrestling team in eighth grade, but back then, he needed to gain weight, not lose weight, as he was about a 90-pounder wrestling at 98 pounds. It made him, he assumes, a rarity in the sport.
Even though TB wasn't a very successful wrestler and he never wrestled again after eighth grade, he doesn't have to be a genius in the sport to figure out that what Chris Ayres is doing with the Princeton wrestling program is extraordinary.
To say that Princeton wrestling has struggled in the last 20 years is a major understatement. Ayres, now in his eighth season as head coach, has never wavered from his belief that Princeton could be a significant player in Ivy League and Eastern wrestling, and it's starting to come true.
Lately, it's been in highly dramatic fashion.
Princeton rallied to defeat Columbia 18-16 after trailing 16-7 with three matches left last weekend. That followed a rally to defeat Boston University 23-20 after trailing 20-3.
In fact, Princeton is 11-2 overall, winner of six straight, and at 3-1 in the Ivy League assured of at least a tie for second place, behind national power Cornell. The Tigers host Rider Friday and then Penn Saturday afternoon.
At 3-1 in the league with one match left, Princeton is assured of its second winning league record since 1987. Princeton is in double figures in wins and will couple that with fewer than five losses, a combination the program last managed in 1981.
Princeton has had some success through the last decade individually, but it's been awhile since the team has had this much depth and success. It starts with the entire coaching staff, a group with successful backgrounds who have built the program from the ground up.
Ayres, especially, has an enthusiasm and optimism that is infectious. Even during the toughest times during his rebuilding project, Ayres has always been convinced that better days were ahead. It's been obvious in any conversation or interaction with him; he just oozes with positivity.
And now it's all starting to pay off.
Catching Cornell in Ivy League wrestling will never be easy. TB's sense is that Chris Ayres believes it's possible.
In the meantime, one of the best stories in Princeton Athletics is unfolding in Dillon Gym.
Princeton has a great history in wrestling, going back decades. The present is going pretty well also.
Princeton's wrestling revival hasn't been limited to just those two big comebacks.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Shades of 88
If, like TigerBlog, you're in your 50s - or maybe even a little younger - then you have to chuckle when anyone tries to equate the U.S.-Russia Olympic hockey game from Saturday with what happened back in 1980.
Just to make it crystal clear, those two events are not in the same universe.
The U.S. win over the Russians in a shootout Saturday was a very exciting sporting event. What happened in 1980 was the single greatest sporting event that has ever been played or ever will be played, and the sporting aspect was only half of the story.
The United States defeated the Soviet Union - not Russia, the Soviet Union - in the 1980 Olympic hockey tournament 4-3 and then finished off the gold medal with a win over Finland. The tournament was different then, so the U.S.-USSR game was not a semifinal game.
It was the all-time underdog story, a bunch of American college players - amateurs - who defeated the mighty Soviet hockey machine. It was riveting, captivating stuff.
Then consider that it came a time when American pride around the world had been weakened, especially by the ongoing hostage crisis in Iran. And then here came a bunch of kids, our kids, and they went out and knocked off the most powerful, dominating athletic team in the world.
And that team was none other than the Evil Empire itself? It was a win for the American way of life. It was a win that reinforced the ideal that the United States could do anything. It made Americans feel good again. It lifted up the national spirit all by itself.
It was riveting sport. It was riveting politics. No sporting event can ever match what happened.
The game Saturday was a really good one. It had all the elements - close game, great individual performances, some controversy, an unlikely hero at the end.
That hero was T.J. Oshie, and if you're like TigerBlog, you never heard of him until the game. All Oshie did was make four of his six penalty shots during the shootout, including two that came when misses would have ended the game.
Oh, and while everyone else was calling Oshie an American hero, he actually came out with about the greatest quote of all time. "The American heroes are wearing camo," he said. "That's not me."
For all that, TB doesn't understand why there is the need for a shootout. Why not play overtime until someone scores. Going 4-on-4 in OT sort of guarantees that someone will score sooner rather than in the fourth extra period.
TB doesn't like the shootout. He hates penalty kicks in soccer. Hopefully the World Cup won't come down to them.
Meanwhile, back at the controversy, Russia appeared to take a 3-2 lead late in the regulation, but a video review showed that the net was off its moorings and the goal was disallowed. Of course, it was only an inch or so or less off its moorings, and it didn't appear to impact the goal at all.
And this was in Russia. And Russian President Vladimir Putin was in attendance. Now that's a gutsy ref.
As time goes on, replay becomes more and more ingrained in sports. If you've been paying attention to TB's position on the issue, you know he's very much anti-video, or at least the way it's being used now.
The intent is a good one. Get the calls right.
The problem is that the calls that most need to be corrected are often judgement calls, and the prevailing attitude towards video to date has been to avoid reviewing judgement calls, essentially to protect the officials, TB supposes. The problem is that all it does is open the refs up to criticism when they make one call and video clearly shows they were wrong.
Because judgement calls are often non-reviewable, what's left is a search for microscopic evidence that one foot came down out of bounds or the ball tipped off someone's fingernail before going out of bounds. These calls almost never impact a game.
If college basketball is going to stop games in the first half of a 12-10 game to see if the shot clock should be reset, it might as well allow refs to review the calls that really matter. For that matter, if the natural flow of a game can be destroyed like it was in the final minute of Pitt-Syracuse - now that was a great game - when the refs took about two minutes to figure out if the clock should have 49 seconds or 48 seconds on it, then why not give them the ability to check to see what really happened on a play?
The Harvard-Columbia men's basketball game Friday night had a controversial call near the end of the first overtime, when a charge was called on a potential game-winner for the Lions with 2.6 seconds left. Harvard won in the second overtime.
TigerBlog isn't suggesting that the call should have gone one way or the other, but if you're going to have all these ridiculous replay delays, can you at least give the refs the opportunity to confirm their calls at key moments - or if necessary change them?
No, you couldn't do this for an entire game. But in the last two minutes of a game that is within, say, two possessions? Or in overtime? Why not?
As far as the Ivy race goes, that call is huge. Don't you want the officials to have every chance to get it correct?
And no game comes down to a single call. And Columbia had plenty of chances to win the game other than that. But there's no doubt that if that's a block and not a charge, then Columbia's chances of winning the game would have been close to 100%.
Princeton defeated Brown Friday and lost to Yale Saturday in a thriller, 66-65 in overtime. This game had its own moment of controversy on a travel/no-travel call on what became Yale's game-winner with 4.4 seconds left in OT.
If you believe it was a block and a walk, then everything is even, as far as the Ivy race is concerned.
When it all settled for the weekend, Harvard and Yale were even in the league standings at 7-1 each. Brown is next, with three league losses, which makes it seem at least like a two-team race.
It's a big two weeks for Yale now, with four straight road games, this weekend at Cornell and Columbia (Sunday, not Saturday, for TV) and then at Princeton and Penn the following week. That leads the Bulldogs into their next home game, March 7, against Harvard.
As for the Crimson, they head to the road this weekend, going to Penn Friday and Princeton Saturday. Then it's come with Cornell and Columbia.
And Princeton?
The Tigers are 2-5 with their most unlucky team since 1988, John Thompson's senior year. That year, Princeton lost consecutive league games in midseason to Harvard, Yale and Brown, by scores of 52-51, 61-60 and 68-67.
Then, on the final day of the season, Princeton blew out Cornell, who had already clinched the league championship, by a score of 79-58.
The current Tigers are 2-5 in the league. Their losses are by one, one, three, six and nine. Two of the losses are in overtime, including the nine-point one. A bounce here or there, and the Tigers could be 6-1 or 5-2 and right in the thick of it.
Unfortunately, Princeton hasn't gotten those bounces. And so there will be no championship contention this year.
There is still plenty of time left to the year though. Princeton can get back over .500 in the league, can impact the outcome of the race with its games against Harvard and Yale at home.
The first of those is Saturday night, when the Crimson come to Jadwin Gym. The Crimson desperately need the win to keep pace; Princeton desperately wants to play well on its home court against the defending champion.
This comes after Friday's game against Dartmouth, who beat Princeton by nine in Hanover earlier this month. In other words, it's a big weekend for the Tigers.
What does it matter?
Well, look back to 1988. Princeton made a big statement in that game against Cornell. Did the momentum carry over?
Ask yourself who won the next four Ivy League men's basketball championships. Don't feel like looking it up?
It was Princeton, Princeton, Princeton, Princeton.
Just to make it crystal clear, those two events are not in the same universe.
The U.S. win over the Russians in a shootout Saturday was a very exciting sporting event. What happened in 1980 was the single greatest sporting event that has ever been played or ever will be played, and the sporting aspect was only half of the story.
The United States defeated the Soviet Union - not Russia, the Soviet Union - in the 1980 Olympic hockey tournament 4-3 and then finished off the gold medal with a win over Finland. The tournament was different then, so the U.S.-USSR game was not a semifinal game.
It was the all-time underdog story, a bunch of American college players - amateurs - who defeated the mighty Soviet hockey machine. It was riveting, captivating stuff.
Then consider that it came a time when American pride around the world had been weakened, especially by the ongoing hostage crisis in Iran. And then here came a bunch of kids, our kids, and they went out and knocked off the most powerful, dominating athletic team in the world.
And that team was none other than the Evil Empire itself? It was a win for the American way of life. It was a win that reinforced the ideal that the United States could do anything. It made Americans feel good again. It lifted up the national spirit all by itself.
It was riveting sport. It was riveting politics. No sporting event can ever match what happened.
The game Saturday was a really good one. It had all the elements - close game, great individual performances, some controversy, an unlikely hero at the end.
That hero was T.J. Oshie, and if you're like TigerBlog, you never heard of him until the game. All Oshie did was make four of his six penalty shots during the shootout, including two that came when misses would have ended the game.
Oh, and while everyone else was calling Oshie an American hero, he actually came out with about the greatest quote of all time. "The American heroes are wearing camo," he said. "That's not me."
For all that, TB doesn't understand why there is the need for a shootout. Why not play overtime until someone scores. Going 4-on-4 in OT sort of guarantees that someone will score sooner rather than in the fourth extra period.
TB doesn't like the shootout. He hates penalty kicks in soccer. Hopefully the World Cup won't come down to them.
Meanwhile, back at the controversy, Russia appeared to take a 3-2 lead late in the regulation, but a video review showed that the net was off its moorings and the goal was disallowed. Of course, it was only an inch or so or less off its moorings, and it didn't appear to impact the goal at all.
And this was in Russia. And Russian President Vladimir Putin was in attendance. Now that's a gutsy ref.
As time goes on, replay becomes more and more ingrained in sports. If you've been paying attention to TB's position on the issue, you know he's very much anti-video, or at least the way it's being used now.
The intent is a good one. Get the calls right.
The problem is that the calls that most need to be corrected are often judgement calls, and the prevailing attitude towards video to date has been to avoid reviewing judgement calls, essentially to protect the officials, TB supposes. The problem is that all it does is open the refs up to criticism when they make one call and video clearly shows they were wrong.
Because judgement calls are often non-reviewable, what's left is a search for microscopic evidence that one foot came down out of bounds or the ball tipped off someone's fingernail before going out of bounds. These calls almost never impact a game.
If college basketball is going to stop games in the first half of a 12-10 game to see if the shot clock should be reset, it might as well allow refs to review the calls that really matter. For that matter, if the natural flow of a game can be destroyed like it was in the final minute of Pitt-Syracuse - now that was a great game - when the refs took about two minutes to figure out if the clock should have 49 seconds or 48 seconds on it, then why not give them the ability to check to see what really happened on a play?
The Harvard-Columbia men's basketball game Friday night had a controversial call near the end of the first overtime, when a charge was called on a potential game-winner for the Lions with 2.6 seconds left. Harvard won in the second overtime.
TigerBlog isn't suggesting that the call should have gone one way or the other, but if you're going to have all these ridiculous replay delays, can you at least give the refs the opportunity to confirm their calls at key moments - or if necessary change them?
No, you couldn't do this for an entire game. But in the last two minutes of a game that is within, say, two possessions? Or in overtime? Why not?
As far as the Ivy race goes, that call is huge. Don't you want the officials to have every chance to get it correct?
And no game comes down to a single call. And Columbia had plenty of chances to win the game other than that. But there's no doubt that if that's a block and not a charge, then Columbia's chances of winning the game would have been close to 100%.
Princeton defeated Brown Friday and lost to Yale Saturday in a thriller, 66-65 in overtime. This game had its own moment of controversy on a travel/no-travel call on what became Yale's game-winner with 4.4 seconds left in OT.
If you believe it was a block and a walk, then everything is even, as far as the Ivy race is concerned.
When it all settled for the weekend, Harvard and Yale were even in the league standings at 7-1 each. Brown is next, with three league losses, which makes it seem at least like a two-team race.
It's a big two weeks for Yale now, with four straight road games, this weekend at Cornell and Columbia (Sunday, not Saturday, for TV) and then at Princeton and Penn the following week. That leads the Bulldogs into their next home game, March 7, against Harvard.
As for the Crimson, they head to the road this weekend, going to Penn Friday and Princeton Saturday. Then it's come with Cornell and Columbia.
And Princeton?
The Tigers are 2-5 with their most unlucky team since 1988, John Thompson's senior year. That year, Princeton lost consecutive league games in midseason to Harvard, Yale and Brown, by scores of 52-51, 61-60 and 68-67.
Then, on the final day of the season, Princeton blew out Cornell, who had already clinched the league championship, by a score of 79-58.
The current Tigers are 2-5 in the league. Their losses are by one, one, three, six and nine. Two of the losses are in overtime, including the nine-point one. A bounce here or there, and the Tigers could be 6-1 or 5-2 and right in the thick of it.
Unfortunately, Princeton hasn't gotten those bounces. And so there will be no championship contention this year.
There is still plenty of time left to the year though. Princeton can get back over .500 in the league, can impact the outcome of the race with its games against Harvard and Yale at home.
The first of those is Saturday night, when the Crimson come to Jadwin Gym. The Crimson desperately need the win to keep pace; Princeton desperately wants to play well on its home court against the defending champion.
This comes after Friday's game against Dartmouth, who beat Princeton by nine in Hanover earlier this month. In other words, it's a big weekend for the Tigers.
What does it matter?
Well, look back to 1988. Princeton made a big statement in that game against Cornell. Did the momentum carry over?
Ask yourself who won the next four Ivy League men's basketball championships. Don't feel like looking it up?
It was Princeton, Princeton, Princeton, Princeton.
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