TigerBlog is not here to defend Donald Sterling.
Far from it. The guy is a freak.
By now you know what Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, had to say on the subject of race relations. The recording has been everywhere, and it's gotten him banned from the NBA for life in a move in which new NBA commissioner Adam Silver screamed "there's a new sheriff in town."
Silver handled the situation perfectly, flawlessly. His waited until he had the facts, and then he acted swiftly and decisively. It was great leadership.
TigerBlog doesn't have an issue with how Sterling's been treated. Not in the least.
He sees it as an interesting societal commentary though.
So again, everyone repeat this: TB is not defending Donald Sterling.
And he's not 100% sure he understands who is who in this drama. Is the woman who recorded his girlfriend? And what's up with the wife, who is vowing to keep control of the franchise?
What's interesting is that a man with a long record of racially divisive actions as it relates to housing Southern California was ultimately done in by words, words that he said in private.
Are you no longer able to speak privately? Is there no such thing anymore?
If ever there has been an easy villain, it's Sterling. His an old white billionaire who clearly has a screw or two loose.
TigerBlog wonders how many of the people who jumped all over Sterling did so in a "look at how offended I am by this; doesn't this make me enlightened" way would want all of their private conversations to suddenly become public, to have everything that they've said that they thought they thought no one would ever hear be everywhere.
Is it possible that Donald Sterling is the only NBA owner or pro sports owner who ever privately said anything that would destroy his/her career? TB can't believe that's the case.
How can it be, with primarily white billionaires who employ primarily black multimillionaires. TB can't begin to image what these billionaires have said in private.
Sterling of course had to go. He had to go a long time ago, with his mismanagement of the franchise and his obvious disregard for fair housing practices. What's truly stunning is that he was supposed to receive an award from the NAACP, right?
And in every case like this, TB worries about penalizing people for their words, rather than their actions. Who decides when the line has been crossed? Who is in charge of saying "okay, that's a bit offensive but that's over the top offensive, so you're okay and you're not."
So what does this have to do with Princeton Athletics?
As always, whenever a story like this breaks, TB looks at it from his perspective in Jadwin Gym and wonders what would be the worst case scenario for Princeton and especially its coaches and athletes.
First of all, TigerBlog always tells the teams he speaks to that they have to think that everything they tweet or put on FaceBook or write someplace or so in public will be read by all of the following people: their coaches, their teammates, their opponents, refs, friends, parents, the admissions director at the graduate school of their choice, the person interviewing them for their dream job - all of them.
And they have to understand that putting the wrong thing out there in that situation can have a big impact on their futures, even if they don't intend it to be offensive.
Even beyond that, he tells them that it used to be that to get in trouble for saying something stupid, you had to have someone to say it to and that person had to be in a position to reproduce it for a mass audience. Now you can do it all by yourself with your phone, tablet, laptop or anything else.
But next year, he's going to add something for them to consider, and that is the fact that there is no more privacy.
Never, ever assume that what you say isn't being recorded. Or that you're on video.
It's hard for Donald Sterling to deny he said these things, even if he didn't know he was being recorded. And once they're out there, they're out there.
It's a scary thought. Your privacy continues to disappear.
TigerBlog has always said that he hopes that the day never comes when a Princeton coach or athlete is caught up in the middle of one of these "gotcha" moments.
As technology advances and privacy dwindles, he gets less and less confident that that day will never arrive.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Princeton's Newest
There is a chance that the President of the United States will read this.
Why wouldn't he? His niece is mentioned in it.
Better he should read about how his niece - her name is Leslie Robinson - is coming to Princeton to play basketball as one of the members of the Class of 2018 than he should read the one from last Friday, when TigerBlog gave some of the worst predictions in the history of predicting when he came up with his NCAA men's lacrosse tournament thoughts.
Let's see. There were eight games over the weekend. TigerBlog got three right.
He missed on all three Ivy League teams. He was wrong about Albany against Loyola. He was wrong about Bryant against Syracuse (okay, everyone was).
He still has a shot at the national champion if Duke wins. He has Denver in the Final Four as well. On the other side of the bracket, his prediction of Loyola and Syracuse in the Final Four and Loyola in the final isn't going to happen.
The entire tournament is turned completely upside down. In fact, either Maryland, Bryant, Notre Dame or Albany will play for the national championship on Memorial Day, and would it shock anyone if that turned out to be the high-flying Great Danes and the incredible Thompsons?
Anyway, even though the President is an affirmed prognosticator of his own, he seems more interested in basketball than lacrosse. Actually, TB has no idea if President Obama is any kind of lacrosse fan at all or if he's ever held a lacrosse stick.
Basketball? That's another story. The news accounts through the years have been filled with stories and pictures of Mr. Obama on a basketball court, shooting, playing.
It's a basketball family clearly.
The Princeton connection comes from Mrs. Obama, who is a member of the Class of 1985. Her brother Craig graduated from Princeton two years before she did, and he remains now one of only two Princeton players ever to be a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year in men's basketball, along with Kit Mueller.
Leslie Robinson is Craig Robinson's daughter. She comes to Princeton from Corvallis High School in Oregon, where she averaged 22 points, nine rebounds and 3.4 assists a year ago while earning all-state honors.
Maybe the President and First Lady will come to a game during her time here. Maybe they'll wait until after his term expires in January of 2017, which would leave the Ivy League portion of her junior year and then her entire senior year.
TigerBlog has met two U.S. Presidents in his time here - Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both after Princeton teams won NCAA titles. Whatever your political beliefs, it is a huge thrill to shake the hand of the sitting President of the United States.
Robinson is one of three members of the incoming class of women's basketball players.
The other two are Kenya Holland from Virginia and Tia Weledji from Kansas. That's a pretty good geographical range.
When TB first saw the names of the new recruits, he thought of Weledji and wondered how long it will take Princeton public address announcer Bill Bromberg to get it right.
Then he thought ahead, to some night in February or March 2018, when these three will presumably, hopefully be together again, this time on Senior Night at Jadwin.
TigerBlog is always fascinated by that juxtaposition. The newbies haven't even arrived on campus. And then in a blink of an eye, four years will fly by and it'll be senior night.
The goal is to win Ivy League championships and play in NCAA tournaments, something that Princeton did four straight years before falling just short this past year. The Tigers did get into the WNIT and did win a first-round game in that tournament.
The program is one of extremely high standards, beginning with the coaching staff. A season like last year's - a game off an Ivy title and a postseason win - still left everyone involved with Princeton women's basketball feeling like the big prize got away.
Now these three women will be joining the program, hoping to get it back to where everyone involved works all year to get it. The Ivy title. The NCAA tournament.
It's become a great program, filled with players who have had great experiences in their four years.
The clock for the Class of 2018 will start ticking soon.
So anyway Mr. President, TigerBlog hopes you liked reading this. He can send you some links to others if you'd like.
Just let him know.
And of course, it's written every day, so if you want to get in the habit of checking it out on a daily basis, that's good too.
It's always good to have new readers.
Why wouldn't he? His niece is mentioned in it.
Better he should read about how his niece - her name is Leslie Robinson - is coming to Princeton to play basketball as one of the members of the Class of 2018 than he should read the one from last Friday, when TigerBlog gave some of the worst predictions in the history of predicting when he came up with his NCAA men's lacrosse tournament thoughts.
Let's see. There were eight games over the weekend. TigerBlog got three right.
He missed on all three Ivy League teams. He was wrong about Albany against Loyola. He was wrong about Bryant against Syracuse (okay, everyone was).
He still has a shot at the national champion if Duke wins. He has Denver in the Final Four as well. On the other side of the bracket, his prediction of Loyola and Syracuse in the Final Four and Loyola in the final isn't going to happen.
The entire tournament is turned completely upside down. In fact, either Maryland, Bryant, Notre Dame or Albany will play for the national championship on Memorial Day, and would it shock anyone if that turned out to be the high-flying Great Danes and the incredible Thompsons?
Anyway, even though the President is an affirmed prognosticator of his own, he seems more interested in basketball than lacrosse. Actually, TB has no idea if President Obama is any kind of lacrosse fan at all or if he's ever held a lacrosse stick.
Basketball? That's another story. The news accounts through the years have been filled with stories and pictures of Mr. Obama on a basketball court, shooting, playing.
It's a basketball family clearly.
The Princeton connection comes from Mrs. Obama, who is a member of the Class of 1985. Her brother Craig graduated from Princeton two years before she did, and he remains now one of only two Princeton players ever to be a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year in men's basketball, along with Kit Mueller.
Leslie Robinson is Craig Robinson's daughter. She comes to Princeton from Corvallis High School in Oregon, where she averaged 22 points, nine rebounds and 3.4 assists a year ago while earning all-state honors.
Maybe the President and First Lady will come to a game during her time here. Maybe they'll wait until after his term expires in January of 2017, which would leave the Ivy League portion of her junior year and then her entire senior year.
TigerBlog has met two U.S. Presidents in his time here - Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both after Princeton teams won NCAA titles. Whatever your political beliefs, it is a huge thrill to shake the hand of the sitting President of the United States.
Robinson is one of three members of the incoming class of women's basketball players.
The other two are Kenya Holland from Virginia and Tia Weledji from Kansas. That's a pretty good geographical range.
When TB first saw the names of the new recruits, he thought of Weledji and wondered how long it will take Princeton public address announcer Bill Bromberg to get it right.
Then he thought ahead, to some night in February or March 2018, when these three will presumably, hopefully be together again, this time on Senior Night at Jadwin.
TigerBlog is always fascinated by that juxtaposition. The newbies haven't even arrived on campus. And then in a blink of an eye, four years will fly by and it'll be senior night.
The goal is to win Ivy League championships and play in NCAA tournaments, something that Princeton did four straight years before falling just short this past year. The Tigers did get into the WNIT and did win a first-round game in that tournament.
The program is one of extremely high standards, beginning with the coaching staff. A season like last year's - a game off an Ivy title and a postseason win - still left everyone involved with Princeton women's basketball feeling like the big prize got away.
Now these three women will be joining the program, hoping to get it back to where everyone involved works all year to get it. The Ivy title. The NCAA tournament.
It's become a great program, filled with players who have had great experiences in their four years.
The clock for the Class of 2018 will start ticking soon.
So anyway Mr. President, TigerBlog hopes you liked reading this. He can send you some links to others if you'd like.
Just let him know.
And of course, it's written every day, so if you want to get in the habit of checking it out on a daily basis, that's good too.
It's always good to have new readers.
Monday, May 12, 2014
A Big Weekend In Alabama
TigerBlog had an awful shopping cart at the supermarket yesterday.
There are three kinds of shopping carts at the supermarket TB regularly uses. There are the traditional ones, with the deep basket and the place for young child to sit. There are the ones that have a miniature car for the little kids to sit in while the parent pushes from behind fills in the cart in the back.
And then there's the one TB likes. It's smaller than the normal-sized ones, and it has no place for a child to sit. It has a top rack and much smaller bottom rack, and it's about the right size for what TB usually gets.
Yesterday he grabbed the first one in the row of carts that were all stacked together in the corridor between the store and the parking lot and went inside. He didn't even make it to the first row of produce before he realized that this cart was terrible.
It's not just that the wheels weren't aligned. They couldn't even all touch the floor at the same time.
He thought about going back to the stack of carts and getting a new one, but he wasn't getting that much stuff so he figured he could tough it out. That turned out to be a mistake.
As he put things in the cart, it got even worse and more out of balance. Eventually it would only go to the left unless TB sort of picked it up off the ground and redirected it.
Of course, when he was done, he just put it back at the end of the row of carts, leaving it for someone else to have to deal with, as opposed to taking it out back and burying it.
TigerBlog was wondering how old these carts are - how many miles they have on them, as it were - and how often the average supermarket replaces them.
Years? Decades?
If TB's cart dated back to early 2010, then it was as old as it had been since Princeton had beaten a Top 25 team in women's tennis - until this past Friday.
The women's tennis team had a remarkable weekend at the NCAA tournament. It began with a 4-3 win over No. 25 Arizona State in the first round and then continued with a 4-2 loss to second-ranked Alabama in the second round in a match that could have gone either way when it was 2-2 with a third set in the other three matches.
When you think of the great accomplishments of Princeton teams in the NCAA tournament, this weekend's stay by the women's tennis team probably doesn't leap to mind. That's a shame, because what the Tigers did was extraordinary.
Alabama is the second-ranked team in the country in women's tennis, a sport that has enough teams to justify a 64-team NCAA tournament field. That's something reserved for sports like basketball and soccer on the women's side.
Princeton went toe-to-toe with the Crimson Tide, and did so with a lineup that featured no seniors.
It started with the win over Arizona State, a perennial NCAA tournament participant, one that has played in 27 straight postseasons. Princeton was playing in its fifth all-time and first since 2010.
The win was Princeton's first ever in the NCAA
Alabama is a team thinking national championship, not getting bounced in the second round by a team from the East, let alone a team from the Ivy League. Princeton pushed the Crimson Tide to the brink and did so after going five hours in its match against ASU.
And with the lineup the Tigers have, next year and beyond figure to be exciting.
All in all, it was a remarkable effort by the Tigers. If it had been in, say, basketball, it would have been national news.
Okay, the women's tennis tournament isn't what the basketball tournament are. So what?
That doesn't diminish what Princeton did this weekend.
Maybe it wasn't the 1965 men's basketball Final Four or a lacrosse championship.
It was still a great performance.
There are three kinds of shopping carts at the supermarket TB regularly uses. There are the traditional ones, with the deep basket and the place for young child to sit. There are the ones that have a miniature car for the little kids to sit in while the parent pushes from behind fills in the cart in the back.
And then there's the one TB likes. It's smaller than the normal-sized ones, and it has no place for a child to sit. It has a top rack and much smaller bottom rack, and it's about the right size for what TB usually gets.
Yesterday he grabbed the first one in the row of carts that were all stacked together in the corridor between the store and the parking lot and went inside. He didn't even make it to the first row of produce before he realized that this cart was terrible.
It's not just that the wheels weren't aligned. They couldn't even all touch the floor at the same time.
He thought about going back to the stack of carts and getting a new one, but he wasn't getting that much stuff so he figured he could tough it out. That turned out to be a mistake.
As he put things in the cart, it got even worse and more out of balance. Eventually it would only go to the left unless TB sort of picked it up off the ground and redirected it.
Of course, when he was done, he just put it back at the end of the row of carts, leaving it for someone else to have to deal with, as opposed to taking it out back and burying it.
TigerBlog was wondering how old these carts are - how many miles they have on them, as it were - and how often the average supermarket replaces them.
Years? Decades?
If TB's cart dated back to early 2010, then it was as old as it had been since Princeton had beaten a Top 25 team in women's tennis - until this past Friday.
The women's tennis team had a remarkable weekend at the NCAA tournament. It began with a 4-3 win over No. 25 Arizona State in the first round and then continued with a 4-2 loss to second-ranked Alabama in the second round in a match that could have gone either way when it was 2-2 with a third set in the other three matches.
When you think of the great accomplishments of Princeton teams in the NCAA tournament, this weekend's stay by the women's tennis team probably doesn't leap to mind. That's a shame, because what the Tigers did was extraordinary.
Alabama is the second-ranked team in the country in women's tennis, a sport that has enough teams to justify a 64-team NCAA tournament field. That's something reserved for sports like basketball and soccer on the women's side.
Princeton went toe-to-toe with the Crimson Tide, and did so with a lineup that featured no seniors.
It started with the win over Arizona State, a perennial NCAA tournament participant, one that has played in 27 straight postseasons. Princeton was playing in its fifth all-time and first since 2010.
The win was Princeton's first ever in the NCAA
Alabama is a team thinking national championship, not getting bounced in the second round by a team from the East, let alone a team from the Ivy League. Princeton pushed the Crimson Tide to the brink and did so after going five hours in its match against ASU.
And with the lineup the Tigers have, next year and beyond figure to be exciting.
All in all, it was a remarkable effort by the Tigers. If it had been in, say, basketball, it would have been national news.
Okay, the women's tennis tournament isn't what the basketball tournament are. So what?
That doesn't diminish what Princeton did this weekend.
Maybe it wasn't the 1965 men's basketball Final Four or a lacrosse championship.
It was still a great performance.
Friday, May 9, 2014
Women's Lax, Women's Tennis, Track And Field - And Ping Pong
The good people of Dillon Gym are sort of their own subculture.
It's a mix of coaches and campus rec over there, centrally located in the middle of campus. For every one person who wanders into Jadwin Gym, TigerBlog figures 20 or so probably walk into Dillon.
TigerBlog is part of the Jadwin crowd. It's a mix of coaches, administrators and staff over here, a little bit off the beaten path of the University campus, though with much, much better parking.
The Dillon people and the Jadwin people work together in that they are all part of the same department but don't really work together on a day-to-day basis. It's hardly a regular occurrence when one of the Dillonites wanders over to Jadwin or vice versa.
They're not like the Hatfields and the McCoys or anything like that. Far from it. They're just separated by a huge part of the campus, and they don't always get to see each other all the time.
TigerBlog has been a Jadwin person for a long time. In all that time, he can't remember anything like what's currently going on with the McCoys, as it were, where apparently there is a staff ping-pong tournament going on.
TB saw the bracket yesterday, which was Day 1 of the competition, which according to the bracket will lead to a championship match in two weeks. Apparently the big opening round upset was women's volleyball coach Sabrina King's win over men's lightweight rowing coach Marty Crotty.
TigerBlog has only see one of the 27 people in the field play ping-pong. For whatever reason, he'll go with men's soccer coach Jim Barlow to win it all, even though he's one of the 26 he's never seen play. It just seems like something he'd be good at.
He also likes men's lacrosse coach Chris Bates, who would meet Barlow in the semifinals. On the other side, he'll stay with King - though she'd have to get past men's golf coach Will Green - and go with women's lightweight rowing coach Paul Rassam as his other person in the Final Four.
He has no idea if any of these people are actually any good in ping pong.
Women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer isn't in the field. She's busy right now anyway, what with her team at Virginia for this afternoon's opening round game of the NCAA tournament against Penn State. The opening draw is at 4, and the winner plays Virginia Sunday.
Princeton and Penn State are hardly strangers. They meet for the 35th time overall and second time in three weeks, after Penn State won 13-12 in the final game of the regular season.
About two hours before the lacrosse game starts, Princeton will be playing Arizona State in Alabama in the opening round of the NCAA women's tennis tournament.
Laura Granville has the Tigers in the NCAA tournament in her second year. Arizona State coach Sheila McInerney has a little more experience - she's been there for 30 years.
Come to think of it, TigerBlog figures Granville is probably a good ping pong player too.
The other really big event this weekend is Heps track and field, which will take place at Yale.
Princeton's men are the three-time defending champion. The women are looking for their 10th Heps title and first since 2011.
Princeton is loaded with individual contenders among the men and women, most notably Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer throw on the women's side. Ratcliffe has the Ivy League's best throw this season - and the NCAA's best throw, for that matter.
Those are the big events of the weekend.
The ping pong tournament picks up again next week.
It's a mix of coaches and campus rec over there, centrally located in the middle of campus. For every one person who wanders into Jadwin Gym, TigerBlog figures 20 or so probably walk into Dillon.
TigerBlog is part of the Jadwin crowd. It's a mix of coaches, administrators and staff over here, a little bit off the beaten path of the University campus, though with much, much better parking.
The Dillon people and the Jadwin people work together in that they are all part of the same department but don't really work together on a day-to-day basis. It's hardly a regular occurrence when one of the Dillonites wanders over to Jadwin or vice versa.
They're not like the Hatfields and the McCoys or anything like that. Far from it. They're just separated by a huge part of the campus, and they don't always get to see each other all the time.
TigerBlog has been a Jadwin person for a long time. In all that time, he can't remember anything like what's currently going on with the McCoys, as it were, where apparently there is a staff ping-pong tournament going on.
TB saw the bracket yesterday, which was Day 1 of the competition, which according to the bracket will lead to a championship match in two weeks. Apparently the big opening round upset was women's volleyball coach Sabrina King's win over men's lightweight rowing coach Marty Crotty.
TigerBlog has only see one of the 27 people in the field play ping-pong. For whatever reason, he'll go with men's soccer coach Jim Barlow to win it all, even though he's one of the 26 he's never seen play. It just seems like something he'd be good at.
He also likes men's lacrosse coach Chris Bates, who would meet Barlow in the semifinals. On the other side, he'll stay with King - though she'd have to get past men's golf coach Will Green - and go with women's lightweight rowing coach Paul Rassam as his other person in the Final Four.
He has no idea if any of these people are actually any good in ping pong.
Women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer isn't in the field. She's busy right now anyway, what with her team at Virginia for this afternoon's opening round game of the NCAA tournament against Penn State. The opening draw is at 4, and the winner plays Virginia Sunday.
Princeton and Penn State are hardly strangers. They meet for the 35th time overall and second time in three weeks, after Penn State won 13-12 in the final game of the regular season.
About two hours before the lacrosse game starts, Princeton will be playing Arizona State in Alabama in the opening round of the NCAA women's tennis tournament.
Laura Granville has the Tigers in the NCAA tournament in her second year. Arizona State coach Sheila McInerney has a little more experience - she's been there for 30 years.
Come to think of it, TigerBlog figures Granville is probably a good ping pong player too.
The other really big event this weekend is Heps track and field, which will take place at Yale.
Princeton's men are the three-time defending champion. The women are looking for their 10th Heps title and first since 2011.
Princeton is loaded with individual contenders among the men and women, most notably Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer throw on the women's side. Ratcliffe has the Ivy League's best throw this season - and the NCAA's best throw, for that matter.
Those are the big events of the weekend.
The ping pong tournament picks up again next week.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Oh So Close
TigerBlog isn't sure whom he likes in the NCAA men's lacrosse tournament.
He knows what he doesn't like about it. Princeton isn't in it.
TigerBlog had pretty high hopes for Princeton for this season. In the hit-or-miss world of college lacrosse, sometimes the breaks go your way and sometimes they don't, and when they don't, there's no room for error.
To succeed in Division I men's lacrosse, more than anything else, a team must win close games. There were 21 Ivy League men's lacrosse games played this season, and 10 of those - one fewer than half - were decided by one or two goals.
If you take out the six that Dartmouth played, of which none were decided by one or two goals, then the 15 games that involved the other six teams saw 10 decided by one or two goals. Princeton went 2-4 in the league, with three one-goal losses and one two-goal loss.
Those numbers don't include the Ivy League tournament, where two of the three games were one-goal games.
In games like that, little things make a huge difference. For Princeton, the season began to get away in back-to-back losses at Yale (16-15) and Brown (11-10), putting the Tigers into a hole from which they never managed to escape.
And what did Princeton in those two games? The Tigers were missing Justin Murphy, the face-off man, due to an injury. In those two games, Princeton won 20 of 60 face-offs.
Murphy won 55% of his face-offs for the year. Even if he only won 50% in those two games, that would have meant five more possessions that Princeton would have had and five fewer that its opponent would have had in each game. Would that have been enough to sway those two games? Would that in turn have changed the entire season?
Yes.
Princeton went 7-6 with three one-goal losses and two two-goal losses, and one of those two-goal losses was to North Carolina, who scored with 13 seconds left or else it would have been another one-goal game.
Compare Princeton to Penn. Princeton did not reach the Ivy League tournament or NCAA tournament. Penn won the Ivy League tournament and is the No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament.
Want to know what separates Penn from Princeton? Penn is 7-0 in one- or two-goal games. Want to know a game that Penn didn't win? Princeton 15, Penn 12, in the Ivy opener for both.
It's subtle. A team wins a few close games and gets its confidence that it can do it again. A team loses a few one-goal games and the "here we go again" vibe starts the next time the game is close.
TigerBlog knows that Princeton could play with any team in the country. He also knows that doesn't matter, that a few moments here or there derailed the entire season.
Okay, it happens sometimes. Seasons get away. TB gets it.
What he doesn't want is for the fact that the Tigers didn't reach the postseason to detract from the career that Tom Schreiber had at Princeton.
TigerBlog saw every game Schreiber played at Princeton. He is an extraordinary player who can do things that TB has never seen anyone else who ever played at Princeton do, and his unmatched career numbers don't begin to capture his greatness, as impressive as they are.
Schreiber is one of five players in Ivy League history - and the only Princeton player and the only middie on the list - with at least 100 career goals and at least 90 career assists. Think about that. For a middie to have 100 goals is rare enough (only Josh Sims at Princeton has ever done it besides Schreiber; Jake Froccaro has 51 goals in two years), but 90 assists?
His ability to feed and to shoot with either hand is awesome. He continually wowed crowds every time he touched the ball, and he was as unstoppable as any player who ever played at Princeton.
Beyond that, he's a fierce competitor, a natural leader, a great clutch player - and real class act. He's all of those things.
Unfortunately, his career at Princeton is over. His lacrosse career isn't.
TigerBlog figures Schreiber will be a force in Major League Lacrosse and ultimately on the U.S. national team for years. His post-Princeton career, TB figures, will be fairly similar to Matt Striebel's, another Princeton middie, who holds the MLL record for career games played and who has won multiple professional and international championships.
As for the 2014 NCAA tournament that Princeton won't be in?
TigerBlog didn't see that one team this year that he thinks will roll through. He's rooting for Denver and Bill Tierney, of course. And he thinks the Ivy League will do well this weekend.
He sees the quarterfinals as Duke-Hopkins, Penn-Denver, Syracuse-Cornell and Loyola-Harvard.
He sees a Final Four of Duke, Denver, Syracuse and Loyola. He sees a final of Duke and Loyola.
He'll go with Duke to win it all.
He knows what he doesn't like about it. Princeton isn't in it.
TigerBlog had pretty high hopes for Princeton for this season. In the hit-or-miss world of college lacrosse, sometimes the breaks go your way and sometimes they don't, and when they don't, there's no room for error.
To succeed in Division I men's lacrosse, more than anything else, a team must win close games. There were 21 Ivy League men's lacrosse games played this season, and 10 of those - one fewer than half - were decided by one or two goals.
If you take out the six that Dartmouth played, of which none were decided by one or two goals, then the 15 games that involved the other six teams saw 10 decided by one or two goals. Princeton went 2-4 in the league, with three one-goal losses and one two-goal loss.
Those numbers don't include the Ivy League tournament, where two of the three games were one-goal games.
In games like that, little things make a huge difference. For Princeton, the season began to get away in back-to-back losses at Yale (16-15) and Brown (11-10), putting the Tigers into a hole from which they never managed to escape.
And what did Princeton in those two games? The Tigers were missing Justin Murphy, the face-off man, due to an injury. In those two games, Princeton won 20 of 60 face-offs.
Murphy won 55% of his face-offs for the year. Even if he only won 50% in those two games, that would have meant five more possessions that Princeton would have had and five fewer that its opponent would have had in each game. Would that have been enough to sway those two games? Would that in turn have changed the entire season?
Yes.
Princeton went 7-6 with three one-goal losses and two two-goal losses, and one of those two-goal losses was to North Carolina, who scored with 13 seconds left or else it would have been another one-goal game.
Compare Princeton to Penn. Princeton did not reach the Ivy League tournament or NCAA tournament. Penn won the Ivy League tournament and is the No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament.
Want to know what separates Penn from Princeton? Penn is 7-0 in one- or two-goal games. Want to know a game that Penn didn't win? Princeton 15, Penn 12, in the Ivy opener for both.
It's subtle. A team wins a few close games and gets its confidence that it can do it again. A team loses a few one-goal games and the "here we go again" vibe starts the next time the game is close.
TigerBlog knows that Princeton could play with any team in the country. He also knows that doesn't matter, that a few moments here or there derailed the entire season.
Okay, it happens sometimes. Seasons get away. TB gets it.
What he doesn't want is for the fact that the Tigers didn't reach the postseason to detract from the career that Tom Schreiber had at Princeton.
TigerBlog saw every game Schreiber played at Princeton. He is an extraordinary player who can do things that TB has never seen anyone else who ever played at Princeton do, and his unmatched career numbers don't begin to capture his greatness, as impressive as they are.
Schreiber is one of five players in Ivy League history - and the only Princeton player and the only middie on the list - with at least 100 career goals and at least 90 career assists. Think about that. For a middie to have 100 goals is rare enough (only Josh Sims at Princeton has ever done it besides Schreiber; Jake Froccaro has 51 goals in two years), but 90 assists?
His ability to feed and to shoot with either hand is awesome. He continually wowed crowds every time he touched the ball, and he was as unstoppable as any player who ever played at Princeton.
Beyond that, he's a fierce competitor, a natural leader, a great clutch player - and real class act. He's all of those things.
Unfortunately, his career at Princeton is over. His lacrosse career isn't.
TigerBlog figures Schreiber will be a force in Major League Lacrosse and ultimately on the U.S. national team for years. His post-Princeton career, TB figures, will be fairly similar to Matt Striebel's, another Princeton middie, who holds the MLL record for career games played and who has won multiple professional and international championships.
As for the 2014 NCAA tournament that Princeton won't be in?
TigerBlog didn't see that one team this year that he thinks will roll through. He's rooting for Denver and Bill Tierney, of course. And he thinks the Ivy League will do well this weekend.
He sees the quarterfinals as Duke-Hopkins, Penn-Denver, Syracuse-Cornell and Loyola-Harvard.
He sees a Final Four of Duke, Denver, Syracuse and Loyola. He sees a final of Duke and Loyola.
He'll go with Duke to win it all.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
The Sharp Round Thing
Miss TigerBlog decided that she was going to make one of those homemade pizzas last night, and she needed to open a can of sauce or tomatoes or something.
The only problem is that she'd never actually soloed on the can opener before. It's not an electric one. It's an old school manual one.
TigerBlog wasn't around to open it for her, so she called to ask how. And this put TB in the really weird position of trying to explain over the phone how to do such a simple task, one that he has done about a billion times in his life.
At first, TB tried to think back to when he opened his own first can. He has no idea.
Anyway, think about it. How would you begin to describe to someone how to use a can opener? TB certainly struggled.
It's a can opener. Use it to open the can. How hard can it be?
TigerBlog used terms like "long arms" and "sharp round thing" to try to explain it. He felt a great deal of satisfaction when he heard MTB say "got it." She was pretty fired up about it too.
And to think how close TB came to simply ordering a pizza to be delivered.
TigerBlog is fascinated for some reason by that story. It was such a simple question. How does the can opener work? And yet it was so hard to explain it over the phone.
Okay, now that you're in the whole can opener thing, TB can get to the point today.
Before he does, he also wants to mention that as he's writing this, he has "The Pope of Greenwich Village" on in the background. If you've never seen it, the movie from 1984 and is one of those movies that 1) is great and 2) can be seen a million times. Darryl Hannah just slapped Mickey Rourke in the face in one of the best scenes in the movie.
Anyway, the NFL draft is coming up. TigerBlog doesn't understand in the least why the NFL draft has become the big show that it has. It's everywhere. People have built lucrative careers around it. ESPN would probably go out of business without it.
What's the attraction? Most of the time, nobody had ever heard of the players who get picked until some draft guide or guru mentioned them.
And then there's whole hit-or-miss side to the draft. Teams spent millions of dollars on evaluating talent, on workouts, on combines, on all of it - and still miss more than they hit when it comes to who eventually pans out and who doesn't.
Princeton football coach Bob Surace spent nearly a decade as a coach with the Cincinnati Bengals. He was in the office the other day talking about some of his experiences with how the draft works, the unpredictability of it all, the way coaches will root for teams in front of them to take a certain player so they don't get stuck with him when their turn comes.
The No. 1 pick in this draft could be Jadeveon Clowney from South Carolina, whose entire lure appears to be from one massive hit in a bowl game two seasons ago. Can there be more red flags from a player than Clowney has shown?
He didn't have a dominant season. He doesn't seem to really be all that interested in playing, from reports at least. He's the kind of ridiculous physical player who impresses in every workout and looks like he has limitless potential.
These players fail at a high rate. And yet Clowney will be snapped up very, very early. TB won't be shocked if he never pans out.
TigerBlog is much more interested in a different player in this draft.
Caraun Reid figures to give Princeton a defensive lineman who is drafted for the second straight year, after Mike Catapano went in the seventh round to Kansas City a year ago. Reid figures to go way earlier than that.
Reid was featured recently in the New York Times, which wrote about his unique background, beyond just being a Princeton athlete.
Reid isn't what you think of when you think of an NFL draft pick. Oh, physically he is. He's a 300-pounder who moves with quickness and fierceness. He helped himself considerably at the Senior Bowl and in pre-draft workouts, and now he's ready to see where he lands.
What makes him different is that he's more than just a football player.
He's deeply spiritual, the son of a minister. He's a singer, and the NY Times story mentions how he couldn't sing after the press conference announcing Mollie Marcoux as the new AD, along with his teammates Roman Wilson and Seth DeValve.
He's a quiet, soft-spoken man. He is very engaging, and his experience at Princeton has been everything that is great about college athletics.
He came to Princeton as a native of the Bronx, which is hardly a football area. He leaves Princeton with a degree, a well-rounded undergraduate experience and a chance to fulfill his NFL dreams.
Oh, and his team went from 1-9 to 8-2 and Ivy League champion.
How much better could it have gone?
The only problem is that she'd never actually soloed on the can opener before. It's not an electric one. It's an old school manual one.
TigerBlog wasn't around to open it for her, so she called to ask how. And this put TB in the really weird position of trying to explain over the phone how to do such a simple task, one that he has done about a billion times in his life.
At first, TB tried to think back to when he opened his own first can. He has no idea.
Anyway, think about it. How would you begin to describe to someone how to use a can opener? TB certainly struggled.
It's a can opener. Use it to open the can. How hard can it be?
TigerBlog used terms like "long arms" and "sharp round thing" to try to explain it. He felt a great deal of satisfaction when he heard MTB say "got it." She was pretty fired up about it too.
And to think how close TB came to simply ordering a pizza to be delivered.
TigerBlog is fascinated for some reason by that story. It was such a simple question. How does the can opener work? And yet it was so hard to explain it over the phone.
Okay, now that you're in the whole can opener thing, TB can get to the point today.
Before he does, he also wants to mention that as he's writing this, he has "The Pope of Greenwich Village" on in the background. If you've never seen it, the movie from 1984 and is one of those movies that 1) is great and 2) can be seen a million times. Darryl Hannah just slapped Mickey Rourke in the face in one of the best scenes in the movie.
Anyway, the NFL draft is coming up. TigerBlog doesn't understand in the least why the NFL draft has become the big show that it has. It's everywhere. People have built lucrative careers around it. ESPN would probably go out of business without it.
What's the attraction? Most of the time, nobody had ever heard of the players who get picked until some draft guide or guru mentioned them.
And then there's whole hit-or-miss side to the draft. Teams spent millions of dollars on evaluating talent, on workouts, on combines, on all of it - and still miss more than they hit when it comes to who eventually pans out and who doesn't.
Princeton football coach Bob Surace spent nearly a decade as a coach with the Cincinnati Bengals. He was in the office the other day talking about some of his experiences with how the draft works, the unpredictability of it all, the way coaches will root for teams in front of them to take a certain player so they don't get stuck with him when their turn comes.
The No. 1 pick in this draft could be Jadeveon Clowney from South Carolina, whose entire lure appears to be from one massive hit in a bowl game two seasons ago. Can there be more red flags from a player than Clowney has shown?
He didn't have a dominant season. He doesn't seem to really be all that interested in playing, from reports at least. He's the kind of ridiculous physical player who impresses in every workout and looks like he has limitless potential.
These players fail at a high rate. And yet Clowney will be snapped up very, very early. TB won't be shocked if he never pans out.
TigerBlog is much more interested in a different player in this draft.
Caraun Reid figures to give Princeton a defensive lineman who is drafted for the second straight year, after Mike Catapano went in the seventh round to Kansas City a year ago. Reid figures to go way earlier than that.
Reid was featured recently in the New York Times, which wrote about his unique background, beyond just being a Princeton athlete.
Reid isn't what you think of when you think of an NFL draft pick. Oh, physically he is. He's a 300-pounder who moves with quickness and fierceness. He helped himself considerably at the Senior Bowl and in pre-draft workouts, and now he's ready to see where he lands.
What makes him different is that he's more than just a football player.
He's deeply spiritual, the son of a minister. He's a singer, and the NY Times story mentions how he couldn't sing after the press conference announcing Mollie Marcoux as the new AD, along with his teammates Roman Wilson and Seth DeValve.
He's a quiet, soft-spoken man. He is very engaging, and his experience at Princeton has been everything that is great about college athletics.
He came to Princeton as a native of the Bronx, which is hardly a football area. He leaves Princeton with a degree, a well-rounded undergraduate experience and a chance to fulfill his NFL dreams.
Oh, and his team went from 1-9 to 8-2 and Ivy League champion.
How much better could it have gone?
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Oh Yah, You Betcha
TigerBlog stumbled on "Dancing With The Stars" last night.
Ordinarily, something with the word "Stars" in the title wouldn't hold TB's interest unless it was on PBS or National Geographic and was about astronomy. This time, TB was actually impressed with what he saw. There was real talent involved, and the teams seemed to be working really hard to be on top of their games.
He saw enough that he might watch it again.
He will definitely watch "Fargo" again. And again and again.
If you haven't watched it yet, you have two options. One is to go on-demand and watch the first three episodes so you're caught up. The other is to wait a few weeks and watch the entire season all at once. Not watching at all? That's a bad option.
"Fargo," as everyone knows, was a 1996 movie that won two Academy Awards, one for Best Actress for Frances McDormand and one for Best Screenplay for the Coen brothers. Ethan Coen, by the way, is a 1979 Princeton grad.
The movie was about a quirky policewoman who pursues quirky criminals while encountering other quirky people along the way, all of whom have quirky accents.
The show has those same elements, but without the same exact characters. It's actually a pretty good idea, take a famous movie name that conjures up the quirkiness and then change it around so it keeps some of what made the movie great without actually having the characters be watered down versions of the original.
It's not easy to turn a movie into a TV show. Some have succeeded, such as Hall-of-Fame shows like "The Odd Couple" and "M*A*S*H." Many more have flopped.
The TV show version of "Fargo" is off to a great start, largely because of how great the new characters are, especially Billy Bob Thorton as the really bad guy and whoever it is who is playing the policewoman. Actually her name is Allison Tolman, and this is her first big part.
Episode 4 is on tonight. TigerBlog thinks Season 1 is just eight episodes long, which will take it to June 3.
Princeton Athletics won't be quite over by then, unless no Tigers qualify for the NCAA track and field championships, which is unlikely.
Still, it's getting quiet around here. At most there are around 20 more competitions left for the 2013-14 academic year.
The next two are NCAA tournament opening round matchups: women's tennis between Princeton and Arizona State, to be held in Alabama Friday, and women's lacrosse against Penn State at Virginia.
There are still five Ivy League titles to be award, beginning this weekend with the men's and women's track and field championships at Yale. Next weekend are the three Ivy League rowing championships.
And that's it for Ivy titles for this year.
Every May is like this. The calendar of events starts to get shorter, and the last chapters of the academic year are written.
This time, of course, it's all different.
The last event of this year will also be the last one of the 20-year tenure of Gary Walters as Ford Family Director of Athletics. TigerBlog hasn't seen the schedule yet for next fall, but whenever the first field hockey or soccer or women's volleyball game is contested, Mollie Marcoux will be the AD.
It'll be a big summer of transition from Gary to Mollie. This is all going to be new for almost every person who works here.
But that's still a few weeks away.
Now it's time to compete for championships for the remaining sports.
And for the final five episodes of "Fargo."
It's not quite Season 1 of "Homeland." It's close, though.
Ordinarily, something with the word "Stars" in the title wouldn't hold TB's interest unless it was on PBS or National Geographic and was about astronomy. This time, TB was actually impressed with what he saw. There was real talent involved, and the teams seemed to be working really hard to be on top of their games.
He saw enough that he might watch it again.
He will definitely watch "Fargo" again. And again and again.
If you haven't watched it yet, you have two options. One is to go on-demand and watch the first three episodes so you're caught up. The other is to wait a few weeks and watch the entire season all at once. Not watching at all? That's a bad option.
"Fargo," as everyone knows, was a 1996 movie that won two Academy Awards, one for Best Actress for Frances McDormand and one for Best Screenplay for the Coen brothers. Ethan Coen, by the way, is a 1979 Princeton grad.
The movie was about a quirky policewoman who pursues quirky criminals while encountering other quirky people along the way, all of whom have quirky accents.
The show has those same elements, but without the same exact characters. It's actually a pretty good idea, take a famous movie name that conjures up the quirkiness and then change it around so it keeps some of what made the movie great without actually having the characters be watered down versions of the original.
It's not easy to turn a movie into a TV show. Some have succeeded, such as Hall-of-Fame shows like "The Odd Couple" and "M*A*S*H." Many more have flopped.
The TV show version of "Fargo" is off to a great start, largely because of how great the new characters are, especially Billy Bob Thorton as the really bad guy and whoever it is who is playing the policewoman. Actually her name is Allison Tolman, and this is her first big part.
Episode 4 is on tonight. TigerBlog thinks Season 1 is just eight episodes long, which will take it to June 3.
Princeton Athletics won't be quite over by then, unless no Tigers qualify for the NCAA track and field championships, which is unlikely.
Still, it's getting quiet around here. At most there are around 20 more competitions left for the 2013-14 academic year.
The next two are NCAA tournament opening round matchups: women's tennis between Princeton and Arizona State, to be held in Alabama Friday, and women's lacrosse against Penn State at Virginia.
There are still five Ivy League titles to be award, beginning this weekend with the men's and women's track and field championships at Yale. Next weekend are the three Ivy League rowing championships.
And that's it for Ivy titles for this year.
Every May is like this. The calendar of events starts to get shorter, and the last chapters of the academic year are written.
This time, of course, it's all different.
The last event of this year will also be the last one of the 20-year tenure of Gary Walters as Ford Family Director of Athletics. TigerBlog hasn't seen the schedule yet for next fall, but whenever the first field hockey or soccer or women's volleyball game is contested, Mollie Marcoux will be the AD.
It'll be a big summer of transition from Gary to Mollie. This is all going to be new for almost every person who works here.
But that's still a few weeks away.
Now it's time to compete for championships for the remaining sports.
And for the final five episodes of "Fargo."
It's not quite Season 1 of "Homeland." It's close, though.
Monday, May 5, 2014
One Tournament Down, One To Go
TigerBlog's job at the Ivy League women's lacrosse tournament was to enter the stats into the computer. He did it for all three games, Friday's two semifinals and yesterday's final.
At the same time, he also watched the men's tournament games on ESPN3 on a different computer, sort of paying attention when he could.
At one point yesterday, there was a timeout in the women's game at the same time there was a goal scored in the men's game. As the men's teams lined up for the face-off, TB reflexively entered it into the stats for the women's game and then deleted it when he realized what he was doing.
The men's game, of course, has face-offs. The women's game has draw controls.
Of any sport that men and women both play, lacrosse is by far the most different. Actually, other than having sticks with pockets - and those pockets are radically different - and the basic concept of putting the ball in a goal, the two sports have almost nothing in common.
They don't play on the same size field. They have a different number of players on the field (10 for the men, 12 for the women). The rules about contact, defending, basically everything are different.
For years, TigerBlog couldn't believe that women's lacrosse didn't play with fixed boundaries, as opposed to having the game simply stop when the play got too close to the bench or the fence and then picked it back up. Eventually, those rules were changed.
The men's game in recent years has made great strides in improving the pace of play, and these changes have all been for the better, especially the restarts. TB thinks the women's game could benefit from quicker restarts as well.
TB also doesn't understand why women's lacrosse doesn't enter some sort of timing rules for clearing the ball and some sort of stalling rules, especially for the end-game.
Penn defeated Princeton 9-6 in the women's final yesterday. The Quakers survived in double overtime against Harvard in the semifinals, while Princeton pasted Cornell.
Penn ran out to a 6-2 halftime lead against Princeton yesterday. The Quakers outshot Princeton 21-3 in the first 30 minutes.
Princeton was able to settle things down in the second half and put together some offense. Penn, taking advantage of the fact that there are no timing rules, possessed the ball for huge stretches in the second half, when it took just three more shots.
Why shoot? There was no need to. And it worked out perfectly for the Quakers, who even repeatedly passed up the chance to go straight to the goal on free position shots.
In the end, Princeton ran out of time to finish any kind of comeback. For Penn, it was a well-executed second-half strategy.
Princeton and Penn are the Ivy League co-champions. Both teams were pretty much a lock for the NCAA tournament once they won their semifinal games Friday, and that's how it turned out last night, when the draw was announced.
Princeton's draw is a strange one, in that the Tigers play Penn State at Virginia, with the winner to play the host team. It's strange, in that Princeton and Penn State played little more than a week ago, when Penn State defeated the Tigers 13-12 in Happy Valley. Princeton has also played UVa during the season, in a game the Tigers won 15-13.
Penn, on the other hand, drew Canisius in the first round, with a shot at No. 1 Maryland for the winner.
In the end, the 2014 Ivy women's tournament was a very nice showcase for the league's top teams, and it did give Cornell and Harvard a crack at earning an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, but neither did.
TB is a huge fan of the Ivy lacrosse tournaments. The Ivy League is almost always a multiple-bid for both the men and women, and in fact five Ivy teams are headed to NCAAs.
Women's lacrosse is a game of athleticism. The way the game is played, the No. 1 commodity is speed, which creates scoring opportunities and also leads to free position chances.
Princeton's Erin McMunn set a tournament record with 10 goals in two games, including seven against Cornell. Blake Dietrick, the first-team All-Ivy women's basketball player, had one - but it might have been the nicest one of the weekend.
After the game against Penn ended, TB brought the computer and printer from Class of 1952 Stadium back to Jadwin, as there are no more games at 52 this year. As he walked back to where his car was parked, he walked past a Princeton player wearing sweats with the No. 15 on them, which led TB to surmise it was goalie Annie Woehling, who had been strong in both games.
TigerBlog nodded to her and told her she had played well. Woehling said thank you and kept going. She had the look of a player who knew that it hadn't been her team's day but that there would be at least one more day to come on this season, something that was confirmed a few hours later when the NCAA field was announced.
The Ivy League women's lacrosse tournament had a nice run on Sherrerd Field. Now it's time to look ahead to the other tournament, the one with the bigger prizes at stake.
At the same time, he also watched the men's tournament games on ESPN3 on a different computer, sort of paying attention when he could.
At one point yesterday, there was a timeout in the women's game at the same time there was a goal scored in the men's game. As the men's teams lined up for the face-off, TB reflexively entered it into the stats for the women's game and then deleted it when he realized what he was doing.
The men's game, of course, has face-offs. The women's game has draw controls.
Of any sport that men and women both play, lacrosse is by far the most different. Actually, other than having sticks with pockets - and those pockets are radically different - and the basic concept of putting the ball in a goal, the two sports have almost nothing in common.
They don't play on the same size field. They have a different number of players on the field (10 for the men, 12 for the women). The rules about contact, defending, basically everything are different.
For years, TigerBlog couldn't believe that women's lacrosse didn't play with fixed boundaries, as opposed to having the game simply stop when the play got too close to the bench or the fence and then picked it back up. Eventually, those rules were changed.
The men's game in recent years has made great strides in improving the pace of play, and these changes have all been for the better, especially the restarts. TB thinks the women's game could benefit from quicker restarts as well.
TB also doesn't understand why women's lacrosse doesn't enter some sort of timing rules for clearing the ball and some sort of stalling rules, especially for the end-game.
Penn defeated Princeton 9-6 in the women's final yesterday. The Quakers survived in double overtime against Harvard in the semifinals, while Princeton pasted Cornell.
Penn ran out to a 6-2 halftime lead against Princeton yesterday. The Quakers outshot Princeton 21-3 in the first 30 minutes.
Princeton was able to settle things down in the second half and put together some offense. Penn, taking advantage of the fact that there are no timing rules, possessed the ball for huge stretches in the second half, when it took just three more shots.
Why shoot? There was no need to. And it worked out perfectly for the Quakers, who even repeatedly passed up the chance to go straight to the goal on free position shots.
In the end, Princeton ran out of time to finish any kind of comeback. For Penn, it was a well-executed second-half strategy.
Princeton and Penn are the Ivy League co-champions. Both teams were pretty much a lock for the NCAA tournament once they won their semifinal games Friday, and that's how it turned out last night, when the draw was announced.
Princeton's draw is a strange one, in that the Tigers play Penn State at Virginia, with the winner to play the host team. It's strange, in that Princeton and Penn State played little more than a week ago, when Penn State defeated the Tigers 13-12 in Happy Valley. Princeton has also played UVa during the season, in a game the Tigers won 15-13.
Penn, on the other hand, drew Canisius in the first round, with a shot at No. 1 Maryland for the winner.
In the end, the 2014 Ivy women's tournament was a very nice showcase for the league's top teams, and it did give Cornell and Harvard a crack at earning an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, but neither did.
TB is a huge fan of the Ivy lacrosse tournaments. The Ivy League is almost always a multiple-bid for both the men and women, and in fact five Ivy teams are headed to NCAAs.
Women's lacrosse is a game of athleticism. The way the game is played, the No. 1 commodity is speed, which creates scoring opportunities and also leads to free position chances.
Princeton's Erin McMunn set a tournament record with 10 goals in two games, including seven against Cornell. Blake Dietrick, the first-team All-Ivy women's basketball player, had one - but it might have been the nicest one of the weekend.
After the game against Penn ended, TB brought the computer and printer from Class of 1952 Stadium back to Jadwin, as there are no more games at 52 this year. As he walked back to where his car was parked, he walked past a Princeton player wearing sweats with the No. 15 on them, which led TB to surmise it was goalie Annie Woehling, who had been strong in both games.
TigerBlog nodded to her and told her she had played well. Woehling said thank you and kept going. She had the look of a player who knew that it hadn't been her team's day but that there would be at least one more day to come on this season, something that was confirmed a few hours later when the NCAA field was announced.
The Ivy League women's lacrosse tournament had a nice run on Sherrerd Field. Now it's time to look ahead to the other tournament, the one with the bigger prizes at stake.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Tournament Thoughts
TigerBlog will be at the women's lacrosse tournament tonight.
He'd rather be at the men's, no offense to the women. It's just that he was hoping Princeton would have qualified for both.
The first game today on Sherrerd Field will be Harvard and Penn at 4, followed at 7 by Princeton and Cornell. The winners meet Sunday at noon, and the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament will go to the winner.
Regardless of what happens this weekend, Princeton and Penn will be the Ivy League co-champs.
On the men's side, it's Cornell and Penn in the first game and Harvard and Yale in the second.
Sherrerd Field will become the first facility to host both the men's and women's Ivy tournaments. The Ivy tournament is being played at Princeton for the first time on the women's side and at Harvard for the first time on the men's side.
The Ivy League is an interesting league.
It famously has no tournament in basketball (or postseason in football), but it has these two lacrosse tournaments. There is a championships series for baseball and softball but just the regular season in everything else.
TigerBlog is okay with most of it - he'd love to see the Ivy football champion in the playoffs.
He's long on record as hating the idea of a basketball tournament, and he loves what the lacrosse tournaments have done for the regular season. It's not a one-size-fits-all situation; you can be pro-tournament in one sport and anti-tournament in another.
It's like when people say you have to invite Aunt Martha to the wedding because you invited Aunt Polly. Why does it have to work that way? Maybe Aunt Polly has always been nice to you while Aunt Martha is a drunken pain in the butt? So what if they're sisters.
TigerBlog will be okay with a basketball tournament shortly after the league starts to get multiple bids to the NCAA tournament, something that has never happened. And even then he wouldn't want to see a full eight-team tournament.
He loves the lacrosse tournaments, how they put such a premium on getting into the top four in the league, how just about every game has something riding on it. Wouldn't that be even more true in basketball?
The difference is that TB wants to give the league its best chance to succeed in the NCAA tournament. There will almost surely be multiple Ivy League teams in both the men's and women's NCAA tournament, and these tournaments are affording the other teams the chance to move into the field as well.
Besides, there's a big difference between establishing yourself as the best team in a double round-robin league as opposed to a single round robin. If anything, TB would love to see soccer tournaments, though that would also mean giving up a regular season game, he assumes.
Meanwhile, back at lacrosse, TigerBlog is still not 100% convinced that Princeton won't find itself in the NCAA tournament on the men's side when the field is announced Sunday at 9 on ESPNU. He's not exactly willing to bet the college tuition that the Tigers will be in, but he thinks there is at least a slight chance.
That chance requires Penn to win the Ivy League tournament and Hofstra to win the CAA tournament and get back into the top 10 in RPI. TigerBlog won't pretend to be an expert in everything that would go into getting Hofstra back into the top 10 or would get Princeton into the field. He knows a Navy win over Maryland and a Loyola win over Johns Hopkins will help but might not be enough.
Maybe he's being falsely optimistic. Certainly he thinks the odds are small. But they're not zero at least.
As for the women, TB thinks that Princeton has a great chance to be in the NCAA field no matter what happens this weekend in the Ivy tournament. A win in the first round would certainly be a big help; two wins would make any speculation unncessary.
Princeton has made a big second-half run, after starting the season 1-3 and dropping the league opener at Brown. Now it's a Princeton team big on confidence, playing at home against a Cornell team it beat 10-7 in overtime on March 29, hopefully to be followed by a game against either Penn (a 9-5 Tiger win) or Harvard (15-6 Tigers).
The indisputable part about a conference tournament is that it can be an exciting event. TigerBlog will be the first to admit that without a basketball tournament, the league is missing out on some drama, though in TB's mind, that's a fair trade-off to get the best team to the NCAA field.
In lacrosse, with multiple teams going, you get the best team and the drama.
And this weekend you get it at Sherrerd Field.
He'd rather be at the men's, no offense to the women. It's just that he was hoping Princeton would have qualified for both.
The first game today on Sherrerd Field will be Harvard and Penn at 4, followed at 7 by Princeton and Cornell. The winners meet Sunday at noon, and the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament will go to the winner.
Regardless of what happens this weekend, Princeton and Penn will be the Ivy League co-champs.
On the men's side, it's Cornell and Penn in the first game and Harvard and Yale in the second.
Sherrerd Field will become the first facility to host both the men's and women's Ivy tournaments. The Ivy tournament is being played at Princeton for the first time on the women's side and at Harvard for the first time on the men's side.
The Ivy League is an interesting league.
It famously has no tournament in basketball (or postseason in football), but it has these two lacrosse tournaments. There is a championships series for baseball and softball but just the regular season in everything else.
TigerBlog is okay with most of it - he'd love to see the Ivy football champion in the playoffs.
He's long on record as hating the idea of a basketball tournament, and he loves what the lacrosse tournaments have done for the regular season. It's not a one-size-fits-all situation; you can be pro-tournament in one sport and anti-tournament in another.
It's like when people say you have to invite Aunt Martha to the wedding because you invited Aunt Polly. Why does it have to work that way? Maybe Aunt Polly has always been nice to you while Aunt Martha is a drunken pain in the butt? So what if they're sisters.
TigerBlog will be okay with a basketball tournament shortly after the league starts to get multiple bids to the NCAA tournament, something that has never happened. And even then he wouldn't want to see a full eight-team tournament.
He loves the lacrosse tournaments, how they put such a premium on getting into the top four in the league, how just about every game has something riding on it. Wouldn't that be even more true in basketball?
The difference is that TB wants to give the league its best chance to succeed in the NCAA tournament. There will almost surely be multiple Ivy League teams in both the men's and women's NCAA tournament, and these tournaments are affording the other teams the chance to move into the field as well.
Besides, there's a big difference between establishing yourself as the best team in a double round-robin league as opposed to a single round robin. If anything, TB would love to see soccer tournaments, though that would also mean giving up a regular season game, he assumes.
Meanwhile, back at lacrosse, TigerBlog is still not 100% convinced that Princeton won't find itself in the NCAA tournament on the men's side when the field is announced Sunday at 9 on ESPNU. He's not exactly willing to bet the college tuition that the Tigers will be in, but he thinks there is at least a slight chance.
That chance requires Penn to win the Ivy League tournament and Hofstra to win the CAA tournament and get back into the top 10 in RPI. TigerBlog won't pretend to be an expert in everything that would go into getting Hofstra back into the top 10 or would get Princeton into the field. He knows a Navy win over Maryland and a Loyola win over Johns Hopkins will help but might not be enough.
Maybe he's being falsely optimistic. Certainly he thinks the odds are small. But they're not zero at least.
As for the women, TB thinks that Princeton has a great chance to be in the NCAA field no matter what happens this weekend in the Ivy tournament. A win in the first round would certainly be a big help; two wins would make any speculation unncessary.
Princeton has made a big second-half run, after starting the season 1-3 and dropping the league opener at Brown. Now it's a Princeton team big on confidence, playing at home against a Cornell team it beat 10-7 in overtime on March 29, hopefully to be followed by a game against either Penn (a 9-5 Tiger win) or Harvard (15-6 Tigers).
The indisputable part about a conference tournament is that it can be an exciting event. TigerBlog will be the first to admit that without a basketball tournament, the league is missing out on some drama, though in TB's mind, that's a fair trade-off to get the best team to the NCAA field.
In lacrosse, with multiple teams going, you get the best team and the drama.
And this weekend you get it at Sherrerd Field.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Ring Bearers
TigerBlog was in the mail room yesterday when he noticed something rather interesting. And fairly random.
It was a cross, made of milk chocolate.
Apparently it's the last survivor of a collection of chocolate, including those great chocolate Easter Bunnies that everyone loves. Okay, it's not quite a Dove bar or M&Ms. Still, who doesn't love a good chocolate Easter Bunny.
When TB saw the chocolate cross, it reminded him of a scene from Mel Brooks' "Two Thousand Year Old Man," the one where Brooks' business of making Stars of David by having six men ram into each other was wiped out by a cross, which required only two. "It was so simple," Brooks says. "Who knew?"
Anyway, the chocolate cross left TigerBlog wondering what the etiquette would be for eating it. Would it be disrespectful of one of TB's people to eat a chocolate cross? Or would it be worse for a Christian?
TB has seen all kinds of chocolate in his time. He can't remember a chocolate cross.
Anyway, TB passed on it. He thinks it's still there.
The chocolate cross wasn't the only reasonably random thing that TB saw in Jadwin yesterday.
For one thing, he found a Seder plate on his bookcase. An actual Seder plate, not a chocolate one.
And then he walked into the business office in the afternoon and saw, of all things, the Ivy League football trophy. It also had a note on it, one that said that it was being picked up by Eion Hu on May 1.
TigerBlog recognized the name immediately as one of Harvard's all-time great running backs. He's not quite sure what Hu's connection to this area is, but it's obvious that he's coming to take the trophy to Cambridge.
In the case of the trophy, because there was a co-championship, it spends half the year at one school and half at the other. TigerBlog was taken aback immediately by the fact that it's been basically half a year since Princeton won the Ivy League football championship. Or its share of it, anyway.
Today is May 1. Six months ago was Nov. 1, which was both the Friday before Princeton took on Cornell and six days after Princeton's epic win over Harvard.
As time goes by, the details of the season blur. Mostly what TB remembers is that Princeton was picked sixth but then put together the greatest offensive season in league history.
Princeton reached at least 50 points five times in 10 games, including against both Harvard and Cornell. The offensive engine was driven by Quinn Epperly, who set a ton of Princeton records, with some Ivy and NCAA records tossed in.
Princeton's win over Harvard was a 51-48 thriller that ended for the second year in a row with a game-winning TD pass from Epperly to Roman Wilson. Epperly's numbers that day? How about 37 for 50 for 321 yards and six touchdowns. He also added 86 rushing yards just for fun.
The next week? Princeton 53, Cornell 20. And Epperly? He was 32 for 35 for 325 yards and three touchdowns, along with three rushing touchdowns. He completed his first 29 passes - an NCAA record.
Remember those games? Remember the season?
Princeton lost its opener to Lehigh and then won eight straight before falling in a blizzard at Dartmouth. Had the Tigers won that last one, the trophy would be staying in Princeton for the full 12 months.
Still, 2013 was a breakthrough year for Princeton, accomplished by a senior class that went 1-9 and 1-9 its first two years. If you forgot the details of the season, then maybe you saw the recent story about the Ivy League championship rings.
Or the many tweets from, among others, defensive coordinator Jim Salgado, who has sent out numerous pictures of his ring.
It's something at once tangible and symbolic, a representation of a truly great season, one that ended in a championship.
Princeton earned its share of the title with a 59-23 win over Yale on a perfect November day at Princeton Stadium. Epperly put up four touchdowns in that game, three passing and one rushing.
The details from the season may no longer be fresh, even if it's only been half a year.
The result was a championship.
If case you needed a reminder, it was on more than 100 fingers. And in the business office.
It was a cross, made of milk chocolate.
Apparently it's the last survivor of a collection of chocolate, including those great chocolate Easter Bunnies that everyone loves. Okay, it's not quite a Dove bar or M&Ms. Still, who doesn't love a good chocolate Easter Bunny.
When TB saw the chocolate cross, it reminded him of a scene from Mel Brooks' "Two Thousand Year Old Man," the one where Brooks' business of making Stars of David by having six men ram into each other was wiped out by a cross, which required only two. "It was so simple," Brooks says. "Who knew?"
Anyway, the chocolate cross left TigerBlog wondering what the etiquette would be for eating it. Would it be disrespectful of one of TB's people to eat a chocolate cross? Or would it be worse for a Christian?
TB has seen all kinds of chocolate in his time. He can't remember a chocolate cross.
Anyway, TB passed on it. He thinks it's still there.
The chocolate cross wasn't the only reasonably random thing that TB saw in Jadwin yesterday.
For one thing, he found a Seder plate on his bookcase. An actual Seder plate, not a chocolate one.
And then he walked into the business office in the afternoon and saw, of all things, the Ivy League football trophy. It also had a note on it, one that said that it was being picked up by Eion Hu on May 1.
TigerBlog recognized the name immediately as one of Harvard's all-time great running backs. He's not quite sure what Hu's connection to this area is, but it's obvious that he's coming to take the trophy to Cambridge.
In the case of the trophy, because there was a co-championship, it spends half the year at one school and half at the other. TigerBlog was taken aback immediately by the fact that it's been basically half a year since Princeton won the Ivy League football championship. Or its share of it, anyway.
Today is May 1. Six months ago was Nov. 1, which was both the Friday before Princeton took on Cornell and six days after Princeton's epic win over Harvard.
As time goes by, the details of the season blur. Mostly what TB remembers is that Princeton was picked sixth but then put together the greatest offensive season in league history.
Princeton reached at least 50 points five times in 10 games, including against both Harvard and Cornell. The offensive engine was driven by Quinn Epperly, who set a ton of Princeton records, with some Ivy and NCAA records tossed in.
Princeton's win over Harvard was a 51-48 thriller that ended for the second year in a row with a game-winning TD pass from Epperly to Roman Wilson. Epperly's numbers that day? How about 37 for 50 for 321 yards and six touchdowns. He also added 86 rushing yards just for fun.
The next week? Princeton 53, Cornell 20. And Epperly? He was 32 for 35 for 325 yards and three touchdowns, along with three rushing touchdowns. He completed his first 29 passes - an NCAA record.
Remember those games? Remember the season?
Princeton lost its opener to Lehigh and then won eight straight before falling in a blizzard at Dartmouth. Had the Tigers won that last one, the trophy would be staying in Princeton for the full 12 months.
Still, 2013 was a breakthrough year for Princeton, accomplished by a senior class that went 1-9 and 1-9 its first two years. If you forgot the details of the season, then maybe you saw the recent story about the Ivy League championship rings.
Or the many tweets from, among others, defensive coordinator Jim Salgado, who has sent out numerous pictures of his ring.
It's something at once tangible and symbolic, a representation of a truly great season, one that ended in a championship.
Princeton earned its share of the title with a 59-23 win over Yale on a perfect November day at Princeton Stadium. Epperly put up four touchdowns in that game, three passing and one rushing.
The details from the season may no longer be fresh, even if it's only been half a year.
The result was a championship.
If case you needed a reminder, it was on more than 100 fingers. And in the business office.
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