A Next Generation Henshon And A Trip To Happy Valley

Before TigerBlog gets into the NCAA men's lacrosse game between Princeton and Penn State this weekend, there's something he has to mention.

When Matt Henshon shot the basketball during his Princeton career, there was a pretty good chance it was going in.

In fact, if you add up his two-point shots, three-point shots and foul shots during his career, he made better than 62 percent of his shots. Henshon, a 6-5 forward from outside of Boston, was sort of a Princeton basketball version of longtime NBA star Adrian Dantley — a very smooth player on some great teams.

Henshon was a member of the Class of 1991, which means he played on Ivy League championship teams as a sophomore, junior and senior and was part of epic NCAA tournament games each year. He went from Princeton to Harvard Law School, and today he is a partner in the law firm of Henshon Klein.

TigerBlog saw pretty much every game Henshon played as a junior and senior at Princeton. He's one of those players that Princeton has had through the years who are simply "winning" players, the glue of any championship team. He's also an incredibly impressive person.

Why bring him up today? Because of the Ivy League baseball Players of the Week, that's why.

Princeton's Kyle Vinci was the Player of the Week after shattering the league record for home runs in a season, and his teammate Jackson Emus was the  Pitcher of the Week after going seven innings, allowing four hits and striking out seven. Who was the Rookie of the Week?

That would be Mark Henshon, Brown's second baseman, who went 8 for 16 with three runs, six RBIs and a double. He's also Matt Henshon's son, for those of you who want to feel as old as TB does reading that. 

Mark Henshon was a two-time Ivy Rookie of the Week, and his .305 season average was the fourth-best for the Bears. 

TigerBlog has always said that he would feel old when the children of athletes he covered here started to compete here as well. The first one to do so was men's lacrosse player Jack Crockett, the son of former Princeton offensive lineman Todd Crockett. Then there was Ellie Mueller, the daughter of Henshon's teammate Kit Mueller. Back when TB was writing about Princeton men's basketball in the late ’80s/early ’90s, he never would have imagined his daughter and Kit's daughter would Princeton women's lacrosse teammates one day.

Back in the present day, Jack Crockett and his teammates will be heading out to Penn State to take on the fifth-seeded Nittany Lions in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. Face-off from Panzer Stadium will be 7:30 Sunday night (ESPNU), as the Tigers play the last of eight first-round games this weekend.

Princeton and Penn State have almost no history in men's lacrosse. In fact, they've played only three times, in 1991, 1996 and 1997. Will anyone else beside TigerBlog be at the game Sunday who was at those three as well? 

Princeton is looking to return to Championship Weekend after last year's visit to the Final Four. Doing so will not be easy.

Penn State was the Big Ten regular season champion and earned the fifth seed despite its 17-15 loss to sizzling Michigan in the B1G tournament. Princeton is here because it won the Ivy League's automatic bid by taking the league tournament last year. 

Here are a few Princeton-Penn State numbers:

* Princeton's Michael Gianforcaro is second in Division I save percentage at .592; Penn State's Jack Fracyon is third at .574

* Princeton allows 10.93 goals per game; Penn State allows 10.69

* Princeton averages a little more than 14 goals per game; Penn State averages just under 14 goals per game

* Both teams are below 50 percent on face-offs for the season

In other words, it figures to be a fairly even matchup, which is what you'd expect this time of year. Princeton continues to push through all of its injuries, and the Tigers have peaked at the right time. 

A year ago, Princeton had a week off before its NCAA opener after missing the Ivy tournament. The Tigers then turned around and beat Boston University 12-5 at home and Yale 14-10 at Hofstra in the quarterfinals before falling to Maryland in the semifinals.

This year, Princeton has to turn it around after the euphoria of the Ivy championship game one week earlier. 

Either way, there are only 16 teams who are still playing. It's great to be one of them.

First Pitch, Last Championships

So it's another day, another major honor for senior softball player Serena Starks.

She's having quite a week.

To her Spirit of Princeton Award and her Ivy League Player of the Week Award you can now add Ivy League Player of the Year, which was announced yesterday. Actually, you can make that unanimous Ivy Player of the Year.

Starks leads the Ivy League with a .411 batting average, which is 40 points higher than anyone else. If you go further down the list, there are only four Ivy players within 70 points of her. That's a dominant season.

Starks, who also led the league in hits and runs scored, sits 14 hits away from the Princeton single-season record of 79, set by Stacy Thurber in 1994. 

With 65 hits, Starks is tied with Jen Babik (in 1994) for eighth in a season at Princeton. Every player above her played either in the late 1980s or in the 1990s. It is hardly a coincidence that Princeton's two Women's College World Series teams were in 1995 and 1996.

The list of players on the single-season hits list above Starks reads like a Who's Who of great Princeton softball players, with Thurber, Tara Christie (76 in 1996), Michelle Morale and Amanda Pfeiffer (both 74 in 1995) and then Babik (69 in 1995) and Linda Smolka (69 in 1988).

Starks has at least two games left to move up the charts, as the Ivy League softball tournament begins today in Princeton. It's a double-elimination format, and it starts today with matchups at noon between Princeton and Columbia at noon and then Harvard and Yale at 2:30.

There will be three games tomorrow, starting at 10 am, when the winners of today's games play in the winners bracket final in Game 3. The two losing teams from today play at 12:30 in Game 4, with the loser of Game 4 eliminated. The Game 4 winner then plays the Game 3 loser in Game 5, with the loser of that one also eliminated.

Game 6 will match the Game 3 winner and Game 5 winner at noon Saturday. If the Game 3 winner takes that game, then that team is the tournament champion with the automatic NCAA tournament bid. If the Game 5 winner wins Game 6, then that forces Game 7, which becomes winner take all.

If that sounds confusing, TigerBlog apologizes.

As TB said, and as is the case with all Ivy tournaments, the prize is the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The Ivy League champion is decided by the regular season, and Princeton and Harvard are the co-champs no matter what happens this weekend. Princeton is the host and top seed because of its two wins over Harvard during the season.

The baseball tournament, in which Princeton has clinched a spot, is next weekend, with a similar format, only spread over four days, not three. The site will be determined by the outcomes of this weekend's games, but it will be either Harvard or Penn.  

The NCAA softball selections will be announced Sunday night.

By the way, if TigerBlog is reading the composite schedule correctly, the softball games will be the final home events of the year. 

The Ivy League awards championships in 33 sports, and 29 of those have already been awarded. 

The final four will be earned this weekend, including on the baseball side, where Harvard hosts Yale and Penn hosts Columbia. Penn and Harvard are tied at 13-5, and Harvard holds the tiebreaker for top seed and host. Columbia need one win or one Yale loss to snag the fourth tournament spot.

The final three will come from the Ivy League women's rowing championships and Eastern Sprints for men's lightweights and heavyweights are held.

Princeton is currently the No. 1 ranked team in the country in both women's open and men's lightweight. The women's lightweight team is also No. 1, and the two-time defending national champion Tigers have already salted away Eastern Sprints in that division.

All of the racing this weekend will be on Lake Quigsigamond, in Worcester, Mass. Heats begin at 8:45 and run through midday, and then finals will begin at 1 and run until 6.

Both the Princeton women's open first varsity 8 and the men's lightweight first varsity 8 are unbeaten on the season. The men's heavyweight team is ranked sixth nationally.

The full schedules and results as they happen will be available at row2k.com.

It's Time To Celebrate

TigerBlog is celebrating.

Why? Because he just made the last payment on his car. It was a 60-month loan, and now it's all paid off. TigerBlog even has a $20 bonus, because he made the last two payments at once. 

See? Isn't this awesome.

Account is closed. Those are three fun words.

TigerBlog has had a car for more than 40 years now. During that time, he's had a car payment approximately 85 or so percent of the time. Not having one rocks. 

Also, he'll be running his current car for as long as it'll hold up. He hopes that will be a very long time.

While TB is in such a good mood, what else is there to celebrate? 

* Princeton Athletics produced three of the seven winners of the Spirit of Princeton Award, which is one of the highest honors for an undergrad. Those three are Aaron Leung from men's heavyweight rowing, Alexander Mrkalj of men's volleyball and Serena Starks (softball).

What did they do to earn the award? What didn't they do? Again TB is left to marvel at Princeton athletes and wonder "where do they come from?"

If you want to know what they did, you can read all about them HERE. TB recommends you do. You'll be marveling as well. 

If you're wondering about their majors, three of the seven are SPIA majors, with two engineers and one each in economics and computer science. 

The seven winners, by the way, were chosen from among 200 nominees. That makes it all the more amazing. 

* Starks, meanwhile, had to pull off a fairly unique double this week when it came to being honored. She was one of the Spirit of Princeton winners, and she was also the Ivy League Player of the Week. She took home that recognition for the second time in four weeks.

Think about that. Spirit of Princeton Award. Ivy Player of the Week Award. All in the same week. Yeah, that's impressive. 

Starks is hitting .411 on the season as she looks to join Marissa Reynolds, who hit .436 in 2017, as the only Princeton softball players of the last 20 years to finish the season at .400 or better.  

TB will borrow these two sentences from the release on goprincetontigers.com: 

Starks leads the Ivy in batting average, runs scored (36), hits (65) and total bases (77) and will help lead the Tigers into the Ivy League Tournament, which begins Thursday at Princeton Softball Stadium at Strubing Field. The top-seeded Tigers will open against fourth-seeded Columbia tomorrow at noon, and tickets are available HERE.

The second game tomorrow, at around 2:30, will match Harvard and Yale. TigerBlog is trying to think of another Harvard-Yale game held on Princeton's campus, and he can't think of one. There hasn't been one in an Ivy League men's or women's lacrosse tournament, or in the basketball tournaments this year. He has to be overlooking something simple he's guessing. 

The softball tournament is double elimination, and it continues Friday and Saturday. The winner gets the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

* The Ivy League champion men's golf team will play in the NCAA Regional next week at the University of Oklahoma. The Tigers, you recall, won the league tournament by 18 strokes over Columbia two weekends ago.

To qualify for the national championships, Princeton will need to finish in the top five among 14 teams in Oklahoma.

* Princeton finished second at the Ivy League Heptagonal track and field championships at Penn this past weekend on both the men's and women's side. Princeton had 20 athletes earn All-Ivy League honors, 12 on the women's side and eight on the men's.

Not shockingly, Princeton had first-team All-Ivy pole vaulters on both teams. Sondre Guttormsen continues to add records and championships to his already-stacked resume, and freshman Tessa Mudd continues to build one of her own, as she added the outdoor Heps to her indoor title. 

The NCAA regionals begin two weeks from today in Jacksonville.  

* The women's water polo team is winging its way west today as it readies for the quarterfinal round of the NCAA tournament. The Tigers will play Friday night at 9 Eastern against Cal in Stockton. 

Princeton is making its fourth NCAA appearance and first since 2015.

Diamond Updates

TigerBlog was walking towards the field at Lawrence A. Wien Stadium for Princeton's men's lacrosse practice Saturday when the entire Columbia baseball team came walking towards him.

The team was coming from practice on its home field, which is adjacent to the football stadium. As they walked by, TB asked if they were off for the weekend, and they said that they were.

"Why?" TB said. "The weather's too good?"

They laughed. By the way, the staff at Columbia deserves some kudos for the job of hosting the men's lacrosse tournament, especially considering that the school does not field a team in the sport. 

As for the baseball team, all they had was practice this weekend. Up next for Columbia will be three games this weekend at Penn, as the Ivy baseball regular season wraps up ahead of the first league tournament.

There are three teams who are definitely in: Princeton, Harvard and Penn. There are two teams who could still get the last spot: Columbia and Yale, who plays three at Harvard this weekend.

Princeton is in the clubhouse at 13-8 in the league, which is a 10-game improvement over last year's 3-18 finish. That alone should get Scott Bradley some votes for Coach of the Year.

Princeton also has demolished the school records for home runs. The Tigers have blasted 58 of them, the most ever by a Princeton team, and Kyle Vinci took care of the Ivy League record with his 20th this past Saturday against Brown.

Vinci, in fact, ranks 11th in Division I total home runs and third in Division I in home runs per game, at 0.49. The nation's leader in Florida's Jac Caglianone at 0.55 per game, followed by Troy's Shane Lewish at 0.53. Perhaps you remember Caglianone for his non-celebration of one of his homers after Florida had a pitcher ejected for celebrating a strikeout.

Meanwhile, back in the Ivy League, Harvard holds the tiebreaker over Penn to be the top seed and host for the tournament in two weekends should the teams have the same results this weekend. Should they both get swept, there would be a three-way tie for the championship with those two and Princeton, but Harvard would again hold the tiebreaker.

Meanwhile Columbia has a two-game lead on Yale. Should they end up tied, the tiebreaker belongs to Columbia, who swept Yale, which means the only way Columbia doesn't get the fourth slot would be if it got swept by Penn and Yale swept Harvard. 

As for the softball side, before Princeton had its practice Thursday before the first game of the men's lacrosse tournament, a bus pulled up inside the gate at the Baker Field complex as a few students waited to get on board. Columbia's outdoor athletic facilities are about 100 blocks north of the main campus, up at 218th and Broadway. The buses run back and forth every 20 minutes as the athletes make their way from classes up to practices.

What do you do on the bus for 20 minutes each way, they were asked? There were two answers: sleep, and study. That pretty much covers it.

The athletes who were waiting for the bus while Princeton was getting ready were softball players. They'll be at Princeton this week for the first Ivy tournament. 

The Tigers are the top seed after sharing the regular season title with Harvard but taking two of three from the Crimson. The tournament is a double elimination format, beginning Thursday with those same bus traveling Lions against Princeton at noon, followed by Harvard and Yale at 2:30. 

The two first-round losing teams play each other Friday, followed by the game between the winners. The team that loses the first game is eliminated, and the team that wins plays the team that loses the second game. The loser of that game is also eliminated, leaving two teams, one of whom is unbeaten. Does that make sense?

Those three games are Friday. Then, Saturday, the two remaining teams play, and if the unbeaten team wins the first game, it is the champion. If it doesn't, then there is one more game for the championship.

The winner of the tournament gets the Ivy League's automatic NCAA tournament bid.

It's something new for Ivy League athletics, which is always fun. It's followed by the same format next weekend for the baseball tournament. 

Mad-uh-lon, Mad-uh-lon

The Princeton men's lacrosse postgame tailgate was already in a highly festive mood Sunday afternoon at Columbia. 

And why wouldn't it be?

The Tigers had just completed a remarkable weekend in Upper Manhattan, taking down Penn and Yale to win the Ivy League tournament and earn the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. When the selections came out last night, Princeton learned that it would be at Penn State in the opening round Sunday night at 7:30. 

The party just after the game consisted of parents, friends, alums. There were tons of former players, especially younger alums who embrace this team for the successes the last two years, a trip to Championship Weekend in 2022, a return to the tournament in 2023 — successes that many of them never go to experience first hand. Instead of bitterness, all they feel is love for the program.

Eventually, a chant of "Mad-uh-lon, Mad-uh-lon" broke out, a rhythmic salute to the head coach, Matt Madalon. As unassuming as a head coach can be, Madalon has done a remarkable job with his team the last few years, racing off to a 5-0 start in 2020 before that season ended, holding his players together from all over the country during the Covid year, hitting the ground running when play resumed a year ago and guiding this year's team through the worst injury crunch the team has seen in a long time, not to mention a four-game, 28-day losing streak in the early season that pretty much ended any hope of an at-large bid.

He'll tell you that he doesn't care about individual honors. He will constantly point out the work that anyone in his program does, regardless of their role. There hasn't been a bus driver whose hand he hasn't shaken or who has not been invited to team meals. There is no member of a hotel staff who hasn't been thanked profusely.

Madalon will tell you the best part of this weekend is that it gave them all at least one more week to practice and be together. Make no mistake. He's fiercely competitive. He just understands how to channel that competitiveness and get the most out of everyone around him.

This year's team went into the weekend knowing its path into the NCAA tournament was clear: Win twice, or go home. 

Friday night was a physical, difficult, gut-wrenching battle with Penn. Neither team ever led by more than two. A two-goal lead felt like five or six. Goals came at a premium for the first three quarters. Neither team scored in the first 14:57 of the third. Princeton scored just once from midway through the first quarter until early in the fourth, going a remarkable 37 minutes without a goal.

In the end, it was Princeton 9, Penn 8, a win not secured until freshman face-off man Andrew McMeekin won a draw with 13 seconds left, after the Quakers had once again made it a one-goal game. 

The game yesterday lacked that drama. This time, Princeton defeated Yale 19-10 in a game that was 13-3 at the half and 16-4 at one point of the third quarter. The Tigers rolled, all the way into the NCAA tournament.

Those were things that Princeton fans, media people, anybody could see. 

What you coudn't see was what happened away from the field, before the game Friday and especially between games Saturday.

First, there was Friday. Princeton played Penn at 8:30, which is a long time to hang around a hotel. So what did Madalon do? He found a park near the Fort Lee hotel and took his team there to get out and about, move the legs, stay fresh, stay loose, stay together. 

There wasn't much special about the park. There was a lake in the middle of it. Players could play catch. There was laughing and making fun of each other. Quinn Kramer threw a ball all the way across the lake, and Hunter Engel caught it on the other side. 

It was a perfect way to make a few hours of waiting melt away.

Then there was Saturday. Princeton, off of that physical game, had to quickly turn things around to get ready for Yale. There was a light practice at Columbia, but mostly the day was about hydrating, resting, refueling — feeding the Tigers, as it were. 

To make sure everyone was hydrated, Madalon got off the bus after practice, went over to the beverage store next to the hotel, bought eight cases of water, piled them onto two handtrucks and brought them back to the hotel. It was a small thing, but TigerBlog (who was pushing the other handtruck and who dropped four cases of water onto the shoulder of the road that leads to the George Washington Bridge) couldn't help but be impressed. There are not a lot of head coaches who would have done that. Like, almost none. 

After that, there was dinner, catered in the hotel by the Italian restaurant that Princeton went to Thursday night. Picture a hotel banquet room with 50-plus lacrosse players and another 10 staff members, with an Italian buffet. Of course there was a mess.

Then Madalon started to clean it up. By himself. Then the rest of the staff jumped in to help. Within 30 minutes or so, the room was back to being clean, neat and orderly. 

Again, that's not what head coaches usually do.

Princeton is back in the NCAA tournament after its remarkable weekend. This is a team that is playing without a starter on attack, two starting middies, a senior captain shortstick D middie and its No. 1 face-off man, all out with season-ending injuries. It has been plug and play all year.

You think they all weren't tortured every one of those 28 days in between wins? You don't think the entire team could have thrown its hands up after losing three overtime games? You don't think that all of the injuries could have taken a huge toll? 

Yes, all of that could have happened. 

This is a team that wins because of its deep pool of talent and the way they are prepared. As much as that part is obvious, this is also a team that wins because of its culture.  

And that culture has been built by its head coach. 

With a trophy in his hands yesterday, he certainly earned the chant of the fans — even if it probably embarrassed him.

Friday Night At Columbia

TigerBlog starts today with something you have to read, whether you are a lacrosse fan or not.

This is the story that Trevor Tierney, the first-team All-American goalie on Princeton's 2001 NCAA championship team, wrote about his father Bill, whose Hall of Fame coaching career is now in its final weeks.

Trevor is a unique person in Princeton men's lacrosse history. You don't have to talk to him long to realize he's a goalie, because he definitely has the personality for it. 

He's one of the most cerebral Princeton athletes TigerBlog has ever met. He has incredible depth in his thinking. Had he been born 400 years earlier, he would have become one of the greatest philosophers ever. 

He's smart. He is very, very soft-spoken. And he can write. He's like Sean Gregory, the former men's basketball player who now writes for Time Magazine. When they write, you can really feel the emotion of what they're saying.

That would be true no matter what Trevor wrote. The fact that he's writing about his father at this point of his father's career makes it 10 times, 100 times, more emotional.

You can read the whole piece HERE.

Here's how it starts:

My father has an inauspicious jewelry box in his study at home. Dust gathers on the glass cover. Ten championship rings sit unworn, scattered unceremoniously inside.

They became relics — memories of special teams, people and experiences that went by too fast with the passage of time.

As someone who was raised by, played for and coached alongside Coach Bill Tierney, the following is how I remember his incredible coaching career as it comes to a close.

A tribute to my father, coach and childhood hero.

How good is that? 

Tierney's Denver team appears to be in great shape to play in the NCAA tournament this year, with or without the Big East's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. 

For the Princeton men, it will need the automatic NCAA bid from the Ivy League tournament if they are going to have a chance for a repeat visit to Championship Weekend.

If you recall last year, Princeton did not qualify for the Ivy tournament but instead got an at-large NCAA bid. The Tigers then defeated Boston University and Yale to reach the Final Four, where it lost to eventual champion Maryland.

As a result, the current Princeton team has 15 players who have seen the field in an NCAA semifinal game, including seven who started, but it has no player who has ever been in a Ivy League tournament game. That anomaly changes tonight.

Princeton, the third seed, takes on second-seeded Penn tonight in the second Ivy semifinal game at Columbia's Lawrence A. Wien Stadium. The first game matches top seed Cornell against fourth seed Yale at 6, meaning the Princeton game should start around 8:30. Both of those games can be seen on ESPNU.

The winners meet Sunday for the automatic bid. That game will be at noon, on ESPN2.

Keep in mind, you can watch the Princeton women at 4 on Penn Park, where the Tigers will play Yale in the first semifinal, followed by Penn-Harvard. That championship game is also Sunday at noon. 

Can you get to the game at Penn at 4 and then the men's game at Columbia at 8:30? If you do, let TigerBlog know.

Princeton began its Ivy season with a 9-8 loss to Penn at Franklin Field back on March 18. From there, Princeton won its next four league games, defeating Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and Harvard by an average of 8.5 goals. That set up last weekend's game at Cornell for the league championship, which the Big Red won 14-13, also in overtime.

Princeton, in fact, is 0-3 in OT games this year, having lost to Rutgers the week before Penn. That's a first in program history.

Princeton head coach Matt Madalon always talks about having two paths into the NCAA tournament. There's the at-large route, which eluded Princeton with the three OT losses. Had they all been wins, then Princeton would be an NCAA lock. It shows you how slim the margin of error can be.

Then there's the automatic bid. That's what Princeton is playing for this weekend. 

Whatever got Princeton here doesn't matter. This the start of something new, a full season in one weekend.

West Philly Weekend

TigerBlog would like to add Uche Ndukwe to the list of people he congratulated yesterday. 

Ndukwe became the latest Princeton football player to get his shot at the NFL, as he signed with the Minnesota Vikings to participate in their rookie minicamp.

Every time TB sees a Princeton player get his shot after going undrafted, he thinks of Ross Tucker, who got his chance and made the most of it, lasting seven very productive years in the league as an offensive lineman. TB wrote a feature story about Tucker when Tucker was a Princeton senior back in 2000. In that feature, Tucker said that his goal was to get into someone's training camp to see if he'd get to keep the helmet when he got cut. 

Instead, he made it through and established himself as a legitimate NFL lineman. Today he has a big career in football media. 

So maybe Ndukwe will follow in those footsteps. Just getting as far as he has is quite an achievement, one that also earns congratulations. By the way, TigerBlog continues to believe that any NFL team that would give wide receiver Dylan Classi a shot would be impressed by him.

Meanwhile it will be a weekend of other congratulations, though it's not quite certain yet to whom. There will especially be lots of people to congratulate if you happen to be in the area of West Philadelphia.

In fact, there will be two Ivy League team championships, a bunch of individual Ivy League championships and an automatic NCAA tournament bid earned there Sunday. 

The Ivy League Heps outdoor track and field championships will be held at Franklin Field Saturday and Sunday. The Ivy League women's lacrosse tournament will be held about 100 yards away or so, at Penn Park.

The Princeton men will be going for yet another "Triple Crown" by winning Heps cross country, which the Tigers did in the fall, indoor Heps, which the Tigers did in the winter, and then outdoor Heps, which will be happening this weekend.

Should Princeton be able to pull it off, that would make 11 Triple Crowns for the men's team. The 10 that Princeton has so far are 10 more than the rest of the league combined does.

The indoor meet this year was insanely close, as Princeton edged Harvard by a single point. The final numbers were 164-163. 

Princeton's women are also one of the favorites on their side of the event. Princeton's most recent outdoor Heps title was in 2011. 

The first event of the weekend is the women's hammer throw, which starts at 11. The men's pole vault, by the way, is at 3 Saturday, if you want to see what heights Sondre Guttormsen can reach next. He is not the only Tiger worth watching, of course, among the men and the women. 

The full schedule of events for Heps can be found HERE.

The Ivy League women's lacrosse tournament starts tomorrow at 4 at Penn Park, which is behind Franklin Field and the Palestra. The first semifinal matches Princeton, the third seed, and Yale, the second seed, in a rematch of last year's championship game. Top-seeded Penn will take on No. 4 Harvard in the second semifinal at 7.

The final, which will determine the league's automatic NCAA bid, will be Sunday at noon, which is the same time as the women's steeplechase and the men's discus. 

Princeton lost to Yale 15-10 back on March 4. In that game, Yale had a huge edge on the draws (22-6). The Tigers got three goals each that day from Grace Taukus and McKenzie Blake.

That was two months ago today. It might have been a million years ago, for as much as it impacts what happens tomorrow. That's how seasons work. 

The men's tournament, by the way, is at a predetermined site, in this case Columbia, where Princeton will play Penn tomorrow at 8:30. The women's tournament is at the home of the top seed. 

TigerBlog had a chance to speak with Princeton head coach Jenn Cook for this week's podcast and asked her which she preferred, and she said that she likes having the women's tournament separate from the men. 

Also on the podcast, TB spoke with seniors Christy Sieber and Shea Smith. If you've been to a Princeton women's lacrosse game and seen the orange and black bulldog, that would be Smith's dog Watson.

A Princeton bulldog? Yes, indeed. Will he be torn tomorrow, when Princeton plays those other Bulldogs? 

Overdue Congratulations

Okay, so TigerBlog has told you that you can now get every day's entry on goprincetontigers.com.

If you're bookmarking, that would be goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog.

The issue that TigerBlog is having is a logistical one. He had been posting the first few paragraphs each day here, with a link that takes you to the webpage. There have been two issues.

First, he writes each day's entry and then sets it to go live shortly after midnight, both on blogspot (the old platform) and on goprincetontigers.com. He then takes the goprincetontigers.com link and pastes it onto blogspot after the text of a few paragraphs. 

Unfortunately, that link doesn't seem to work. He needs the link once the story goes live, except it's going live after midnight. What to do. What to do.

Second, even as he's tried to steer people to the main webpage, readership numbers on blogspot continue to grow. Old habits die hard, it appears.

Oh well. He'll keep working on it. As long as you read it somewhere, everything is good.

In the meantime, there are these subjects to cover, all of which involve overdue congratulations: 

* For starters, congratulations to Andrei Iosivas on being selected in the sixth round of the NFL Draft last weekend. The common reaction seemed to be the obvious one — Orange and Black to a team whose colors are orange and black. That works out well.

The Princeton wide receiver joins a team that has a good a chance as any to be in the Super Bowl this coming season. Certainly the Bengals have the franchise quarterback in place. 

Traditionally, from what TigerBlog could find, a sixth-round pick has just under a 50 percent chance of making the roster but has close to a 90 percent chance to be on the practice squad if not the active roster. 

Of course, players drafted in the late rounds or who are undrafted free agents help their cause considerably if they play special teams. Iosivas will certainly have every opportunity to show what he can do as both a receiver and on special teams. TB would guess that Iosivas' orange and black days are far from over.

Iosivas had two Princeton teammates who signed undrafted free agent contracts. Offensive lineman Henry Byrd signed with the Broncos, while linebacker Matthew Jester signed with the Rams. 

* Congratulations also go out to the women's water polo team, who rolled to the CWPA championship this past weekend at DeNunzio Pool. The Tigers defeated St. Francis 8-3 in the semifinal and then Harvard 12-8 in the final, after Harvard had defeated the seven-time defending champion Michigan in the other semifinal. 

Princeton will now play in the NCAA tournament in Stockton, Calif., this Friday night at 9 Eastern, as the 10th-ranked Tigers take on No. 6 Cal in the quarterfinal round. Princeton is in the NCAA tournament for the fourth time in program history, after making it in 2012, 2013 and 2015. 

* The women's tennis team, which won its seventh Ivy League title in the last eight seasons, found out its NCAA tournament draw Monday night. The Tigers will travel to Charlottesville, where they will take on Fordham in the first round Friday at 1. The winner of that match gets the winner of Virginia, ranked 11th, and LIU.

Fordham is the Atlantic 10 champion, something the team accomplished with its 4-1 win over Virginia Commonwealth in the league tournament final. VCU had beaten Fordham 4-3 during the regular season. The Rams are also 0-3 against the Ivy League, with losses to Columbia, Yale and Brown.

Daria Frayman was named the Ivy League Player of the Year, which is hardly surprising, given her No. 7 individual national ranking. Frayman and Neha Velaga were named first-team All-Ivy in singles, and Frayman and Grace Joyce — ranked 26th nationally — were named first-team All-Ivy in doubles. 

* And then there's Sondre Guttormsen. The Olympic pole vaulter, who is already a three-time NCAA champion at Princeton, did it again, breaking all of his own records with a personal best vault of 5.90 meters, which is 19.36 feet, last weekend in Texas.

That vault is a new school and Ivy League record, as well as the best among NCAA pole vaulters this year — and actually pole vaulters anywhere in the world. Yes, that's how good Guttormsen is.

Sondre, his brother Simen and the rest of the Tigers go for another Triple Crown this weekend at the Ivy League Heps track and field championships at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

Seven For Seven

Here's a quick trivia question for you:

The Ivy League has expanded to seven conference tournaments in the 2022-23 academic year. What is the only school in the league to reach all seven? 

While you're thinking about ... oh, you already know the answer. It's Princeton.

Why would TigerBlog mention it if that wasn't the case? 

In case you're keeping track, that seven sports with league championships now: women's volleyball, men's basketball, women's basketball, men's lacrosse, women's lacrosse, baseball and softball.

There will be three other tournaments next year, when field hockey and men's and women's soccer get in on the fun.

The scoreboard looks like this:

Princeton - 7
Yale - 5
Penn - 5
Harvard - 4
Columbia - 2
Cornell - 2
Brown - 1
Dartmouth - 1

If you bothered counting, you noticed that this list adds up to 27 instead of 28, which would be seven tournaments times four teams. The final spot in the baseball tournament is still up for grabs between Columbia (11-7) and Yale (9-9 after defeating Princeton 7-6 in New Haven.

Columbia finishes the season at Penn this weekend for three. Yale is at Harvard for its final three. Columbia holds the tiebreaker after having swept Yale, so basically any combination of Columbia wins and Yale losses that equals two puts the Lions in the postseason as well.

The softball tournament will be held at Princeton in two weekends. The baseball tournament site is completely up for grabs, as Penn and Harvard are 13-5 and Princeton (three at home against Brown) is 12-6. Harvard has the tiebreaker over both Princeton and Penn, and Penn holds the tiebreaker over Princeton.

The only way the Tigers can host is to finish above, and not tied with, both teams. If they finish in a tie for first, then that would mean a share of the Ivy title. The tournaments only determine the automatic NCAA tournament bid.  

The baseball and softball tournaments will be double elimination events. The lacrosse tournaments are single elimination. 

The Princeton women will play Friday at 4 against Yale at Penn, with the games at Penn Park and not Franklin Field. The big stadium will be hosting the Ivy League Heps outdoor track and field championships.

Princeton went into Saturday still unsure of whether or not it would be in the tournament and then clinched a spot later that day. The curious part is that the Tigers didn't even play Saturday. They needed wins by Penn (over Dartmouth), Yale (over Columbia) and Brown (over Cornell) to secure their bid, and all three of those happened.

Princeton then went out Sunday and took down Harvard 17-13 on Senior Day. Even though the Tigers honored their seven seniors, it was a freshman, Amelia Hughes, who earned an Ivy honor, taking home the Defensive Player of the Week award with her 14-save effort in goal. The Ivy League does not have a Rookie of the Week in women's lacrosse, but this was the third time Hughes won the Defensive honor.

The Princeton men play against Penn Friday at 8:30 in New York City, as that event is being held at Columbia's Lawrence A. Wien Stadium. Can you get to both games? 

Well, the women's game figures to end right around 6 or slightly after. That gives you 2:15 or so to get to Columbia. You can do it. 

On the women's side, the top seed and host, Penn, plays the second game Friday. The Quakers will face Harvard, and that game will start around 7. On the men's side, the top seed is Cornell, and the Big Red take on fourth-seeded Yale at 6, in the first game. 

Whoever advances to Sunday's finals, you won't be able to see both of those games in person. They both start at noon.

By the way, the only time in the last two years that the Ivy League held a tournament and no Princeton team was there was last year in men's lacrosse. How did that work out for the Tigers? 

They made it to the NCAA Final Four instead. That puts Princeton in the very, very strange position of having a team full of players who have played on Championship Weekend but have never played in the Ivy tournament.

Taking You Out To The Ballgames

Today, TigerBlog takes you out to the ballgames.

First, there was the Princeton softball team, which took two of three this weekend from Dartmouth to end up in a tie with Harvard for the Ivy League championship. Because Princeton took two of three from Harvard during the regular season, Princeton will be the top seed and host for the first Ivy tournament, which is in two weekends, in Princeton. 

The Tigers will be joined by Harvard, Yale and Columbia. 

Princeton needed to take two from Dartmouth to get a share of the title because Harvard swept Columbia. The weekend started ominously for Princeton, who lost the first game in Hanover 7-0. Now the Tigers had to sweep a team that had some momentum, which as you know in baseball and softball is only as good as your next pitcher.

In this case, it was Molly Chambers, who pitched all seven innings, allowing one run on six hits while striking out three in a 4-1 win. That set up Saturday's game, and for a while it looked like the Tigers might coast, especially when Allison Ha blasted a grand slam in the fifth inning to give Princeton an 8-1 lead. It became 10-1 by the end of the inning. 

In softball, an eight-run or better lead after five ends the game. Princeton needed three outs — but Dartmouth got six runs, and then one more in the sixth. Suddenly it was 10-9, but that would be where it would stay, as Alexis Laudenslager, who had started the game, came back in for the bottom of the seventh, allowing a single but getting two strikeouts and a ground out to end it. 

For Princeton, it's the 21st Ivy softball championship in program history. 

And then there was the baseball team.

TigerBlog referred to the Princeton baseball team last week as "Bradley's Wallbangers," an homage to the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers.

If you don't know, the ’82 Brewers made it to the World Series, losing in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals. The team made a managerial change in midseason, promoting hitting coach Harvey Kuenn when the team was a game below .500 in June. From that point, the Brewers took off, led by a powerhitting lineup that earned the nickname "Harvey's Wallbangers." 

Apparently, a Harvey Wallbanger is a cocktail made with vodka, Galliano (which also the name of TB's friend Corey's dog when they were kids) and orange juice. The last mixed drink TigerBlog had featured milk and chocolate syrup, but he digresses.

Bradley's Princeton team has more than earned the nickname of "Wallbangers," as it has rewritten the Princeton record book with its home run prowess. Every game it seems like the Tigers have been bashing the ball over whatever fence happens to be around, and the result has been a rise to near the top of the Ivy League standings.

Because of the weather, Princeton played a doubleheader Friday at Yale and led off Game 1 with a home run courtesy of Matt Scannell. Business as usual? 

Hardly. Scannell's homer was the only one Princeton would hit in 18 innings between the two games. It also equaled the total number of runs that Yale would score in the two games combined. One.

In fact, Yale would get only five hits in the game, and all five of those came in Game 1. Princeton's Tom Chmielewski went all the way on a five-hit shut out, striking out 10 and walking none. He threw 104 pitches on the day. Final score: Princeton 8, Yale 0.

Surely that would be Princeton's best-pitched game of the day, right? Well, it might have been. It was a shutout. It was a complete game. What it wasn't was a no-hitter.

That came in Game 2.

Princeton had three pichers combine to hold the Bulldogs without a hit, though the home team did get one run on a sixth-inning sacrifice fly. Jackson Enus, Jacob Faulkner and Justin Kim combined on the no-hitter. Final score: Princeton 9, Yale 1.

That's an amazing day of pitching. That's 18 innings, five hits, one run, 22 strikeouts, four walks. Does it get much better than that? 

Princeton's wins clinched a spot in the upcoming Ivy League tournament. How is that?

Right now, the standings have Penn and Harvard at 13-5 each, followed by 12-5 Princeton. Columbia is 11-7, and Yale is 8-9. The best Yale can be is 12-9 (beating Princeton and sweeping Harvard), which is also the worst Princeton can be, and the Tigers have already secured the head-to-head tiebreaker over Yale with the two wins. Princeton also swept Columbia, so if it comes to be a three-way tie at 12-9 with Princeton, Yale and Columbia, Princeton would have the best record among the three head-to-head.

Of course, a win today creates a three-way tie for the top with one weekend remaining. To end the regular season, Princeton will host Brown, Harvard will host Yale and Penn will host Columbia.