Celebrating The Athletic Class of 2023

The nearly 700 attendees at last night's Gary Walters Princeton Varsity Club Awards Banquet in Jadwin Gym walked past this on their way into the building:

In fact, so did the thousands and thousands of others who passed by Jadwin on their way to and from the tents and parties that Reunions offers. 

It's a testament to what the Class of 2023 accomplished during its time at Princeton, though it's only a partial testament. The actual numbers are fairly staggering.

A year ago, Princeton won 16 league championships. This year, Princeton won 16 league championships. 

Princeton's Class of 2023 produced 45 team national tournament appearances, 63 All-Americans, 55 individual conference championships and 57 team league championships. There were 11 national championships between teams and individuals.

That's pretty crazy.

Even crazier it this note: Every Princeton senior athlete was part of a team that either won a league championship or appeared in the postseason, other than women's rugby, which only became a varsity program this past year.

When Princeton recruit its athletes, the goal is to give them a well-rounded experience. Part of that, though, is definitely a championship experience, and Princeton has been doing just that for decades now.

Many of the members of the Class of 2023, of course, started out as members of the Class of 2022. Like their predecessors a year ago, these athletes were faced with an unprecedented decision — to stay enrolled a miss a year of athletics or withdraw for a year and maintain their undergraduate eligibility.

There was no right or wrong answer. Each of them had to do what they felt they needed to for their own situations. 

The ones who withdrew had to watch a year ago as their original classmates, and in many cases best friends, graduated. It wasn't easy for anyone.

Those days were very much in the rearview mirror last night at Jadwin. Whether they started in the fall of 2018 or 2019, there they were last night, together once again, to start the six-day run of Reunions/Class Day/Graduation. It's as festive as it gets.

As for the banquet, the big winners were women's tennis player Daria Frayman, who took home the von Kienbusch Award as the top senior female athlete, and Sondre Guttormsen, the Roper Trophy winner (Sondre accepted the award via a pre-taped video as he is on the road competing).

Frayman's win made her the fifth women's tennis player to be the von Kienbusch winner, and the other four were all in the 1970s. Their names: Helena Novakova (1972), Margie Gengler (1973), Louise Gengler (1975) and Aimee Knox (1977). 

As for Guttormsen, he emerged from as deep a field of Roper finalists as TigerBlog can remember, and all of them had extraordinary careers here. This choice, similar to the 2017 von Kiensbusch Award, was not an easy one to make (Ashleigh Johnson, the top water polo player in the world, was the winner, but you had multiple Olympians, national champions, and all-time leading scorers who did not win). 

The other four nominees were a national champion wrestler (Pat Glory), a nine-time All-American swimmer (Raunak Khosla), the leader of a basketball team that reached the Sweet 16 (Tosan Ebvuomwan) and a sixth-round NFL draft choice who was also a track and field All-American (Andrei Iosivas).

The banquet featured a great video that took four athletes — field hockey player Claire Donovan, football player Uche Ndukwe, fencer May Tieu and men's hockey player Liam Gorman — and showed them pictures throughout their connection to Princeton. They then spoke about what they saw, and did so in a way that was grippingly emotional.

TB's favorite part of all of these banquets is the senior slide show at the end.

Not every senior wins an award. Not every senior gets to be All-Ivy League, or even a starter. Maybe they all hope that will be the case when they start out here, but that's not everyone's destiny. 

They all have different stories to tell. Maybe they were a starter but got beaten out by someone younger. Maybe they were hurt and never made it back. Maybe they worked as hard as they could every day but just couldn't crack the lineup.

Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack called it a "shared experience, and a unique experience," and that's a great way to put it. 

Whatever their story, they all take something from this experience that will stay with them forever. And they all stuck it out, made it all the way to the end, because it was that important to them.

And for that, they all get their moment in the sun, or at least on the big video screens, as their name and picture appear, two at a time, until every senior has been recognized. They smile. Their friends applaud. 

It's a little thing, but it's also a big thing. It's little, in that it only takes a few seconds. It's big, in that it is a validation of all of the years of hard work, doubt, growth, physical challenges and everything else that goes with being a Princeton athlete. 

Every single one of them earned that moment.

Banquet Night

Judging by all of the responses that TigerBlog got from yesterday's entry, he is not the only one who thinks highly of Jon Kurian.

Pretty much every email or text said the same thing: "Love that guy." 

It was good to get that sort of feedback. It shows you just how many people have come into Kurian's orbit during his time here and how many have come to the same conclusions that TB has. 

One of the people who reached out was Ford Family Director of Athletics Emeritus Gary Walters, who offered this to both TB and Kurian:

"Congrats. Lorin is smiling."

Gary, of course, was referring to Lorin Maurer, for whom the award that Kurian was presented with last week at the final Department of Athletics staff meeting for the academic year. As TB wrote yesterday, the award is given: to that member of the Princeton Athletics family who best reflects the passion, dedication and infectious enthusiasm that defined Lorin Maurer’s character and her inspiring impact on colleagues and friends. Awarded in the memory of Lorin Maurer h78, 1978-2009.

Speaking of namesakes, Gary himself is the namesake for tonight's big event, the Gary Walters PVC Awards Banquet. It's an event that Gary himself originated back in 1998, as a way of presenting the major departmental awards.

That first banquet was held in the lobby of Jadwin Gym. Since then, it has grown from a handful of people to nearly 700, complete with awards, highlights, video tributes and a massive celebration of the graduating athletes.

It also corresponds to the opening night of Reunions, and so there is an incredible party vibe everywhere at Princeton. The Walters Banquet has persevered through thunderstorms, different venues and even a pandemic that forced it to be online twice, but it remains what Gary envisioned it would be: A jewel of a celebration of everything that is great about Princeton Athletics.

There is the Citizen Athlete Award, given to an alum for outstanding contribution to sport and society. The winner tonight will be General Mark Milley, a hockey player fro the Class of 1980 and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which makes him the nation's highest ranking military member.

The is also the Marvin Bressler Award, named for the longtime sociology professor who served as the inspiration for the Princeton Athletic Fellows program after Walters' undergraduate experience with Marv when Walters was the point guard on the basketball team in the 1960s. The Bressler Award goes to "that member of the Princeton family who, through heartfelt support of the University’s student-athletes and coaches, best embodies a belief in the lifelong lessons taught by competition and athletics as a complement to the overall educational mission in the spirit of Marvin Bressler, a Princeton professor of sociology from 1963-94."

Tonight the Bressler Award will be given to Kathleen Mannheimer, who has assisted so many Princeton athletes in her role at the University's Center for Career Development.

Mostly, though, the banquet is about the seniors. The von Kienbusch Award will be given to the top senior female athlete; the Roper Trophy will be given to the top senior male athlete. The 1916 Cup will be presented to the graduating athlete in the highest academic standard.

There is also the Art Lane Award, which is the undergraduate version of the Citizen Athlete Award. This year, there is also the debut of the Chris Sailer Leadership Award, named for the Hall-of-Fame women's lacrosse coach who retired at the end of the 2022 season.

There have been finalists announced for all of those awards. The envelopes will be opened at the banquet. 

It starts with a cocktail hour in which the seniors get to spend some time together, as teammates and classmates. It ends with a video that includes a photo of every senior from every team. 

After that, there is the presentation of the letter sweaters — and then several thousand pictures or so.

When you come to Princeton as an athlete, you're taking on a great challenge. It's not an easy one. The ability to work with the best academically and athletically never is. 

It is, though, a challenge well worth the effort. It may seem overwhelming that first year, but as time goes along, each and every Princeton athlete gets to see the benefit of their experience and learn things about themselves that they probably never realized before. Finally, finally, the end of that experience is here.

Tonight is about of all of that.

Every senior there has more than earned the right to be celebrated.

A Well-Deserved Honor For The New Guy

 

Maybe Jon Kurian has an awful lot of gray hair these days.

It doesn't matter. It also doesn't matter that he's worked here for 20 years now.

To TigerBlog, he'll always be the "New Guy."

Back when Kurian started in the business office, there were quite a few people here with the same first name. As such, he became "Jon the New Guy" and then eventually just the "New Guy."

To that, you can now add "Lorin Maurer Award winner the New Guy."

The official wording of Lorin Maurer Award is this:

Awarded to that member of the Princeton Athletics family who best reflects the passion, dedication and infectious enthusiasm that defined Lorin Maurer’s character and her inspiring impact on colleagues and friends. Awarded in the memory of Lorin Maurer h78, 1978-2009.

Kurian is a very, very worthy recipient. In a department that has seen, restructurings, turnover, changes at all levels, Jon Kurian has remained as much a constant as anyone. His common denominator for all 20 of those years? His passion, dedication and infectious enthusiasm, with an emphasis on the last of those three. 

Of all the people TB has met in his life, at Princeton or anywhere else, Jon Kurian is in the Top 5 of being upbeat. He always seems to be in a good place, and if he's not, he doesn't let on. He works hard and takes what he does here very seriously, but he also knows how to have fun as much as anyone who has worked here in TB's years.

His defining characteristic is his deep laugh, which comes out regularly no matter the situation. He's never met a bad shot in lunchtime basketball that he wasn't willing to take, but he always laughs about it when it inevitably goes awry. He can laugh with the older generation and the younger generation of Princeton Athletics' staff. 

Need someone to dress as Santa? He's in. Want to go to see Jimmy Buffett? He'll never say no. He's the kind of person you definitely want to have on your side. 

Kurian was presented with his award at the final staff meeting of the year, which was last week. He spoke briefly about Lorin, who worked with Princeton's Athletic Friends' Groups before she tragically was killed in a plane crash in 2009 at the age of 30.

As you know from reading this space, TigerBlog always remembers Lorin on the anniversary of her death, which is Feb. 12. He has done so every year since it happened.

In those 14 years since, there have been a lot of people who have come and gone here. The numbers of those remaining who knew Lorin have dwindled considerably, to the point where she is just a name on an award to most. 

To those who knew her, including TB, she remains very much a part of this place. Kurian certainly remembers her.

In his words after he was given the award, he mentioned Lorin's spirit. He referenced TB, how each year he tells the story of how Lorin would walk by his office and, if she had nothing to say, would just smile.

It was a moment that made Kurian clearly emotional. It's one thing to win an award; it's another to win one named for a dear friend of yours who died so horribly young. 

Kurian came here somewhere around 2003. At the time, he was an intern. In fact, he needed a 350-hour internship to fulfill a course requirement (at Syracuse), and TB remembers the conversation about how it would take 400 hours to get him to the point where he could do 350 hours and did the department need a "350-hour pain in the butt?"

As it turned out, Kurian was brought on for those 350 hours. When they ended, he stayed, and nobody told him to leave. At some point, presumably, he started to get paid. He's still here today. 

When Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack read out Kurian's name as this year's Maurer Award winner, TB smiled. He was happy to see that Kurian get the recognition that he has earned so clearly through everything he's done here. 

As TB said, Kurian is a constant in an ever-changing place — with an infectious enthusiasm that is just that, infectious, and inspirational.

Take A Bow, Tigers

The big run had long been over. 

There was still time for a little run. In the end, while that little run might not have changed the outcome, it did speak volumes about the Princeton baseball team.

Princeton, after three grueling games in three days, went into yesterday's final round of the first Ivy League baseball tournament having played its way back through losers' bracket. Waiting there for the Tigers was Penn, who had played twice, both wins, once Friday and once Sunday.

To win, and receive the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, Princeton needed to sweep the Quakers. 

Of course, in all of college sports, there might be nothing tougher than coming back through the losers' bracket of a four-team baseball tournament. To win it, you have to play five games. The team that comes through the winner's bracket can do it in three.

Last year, there were 16 NCAA Division I tournament baseball regionals with four teams each. That meant that 32 teams lost their first game of the tournament.

How many of those 32 made it back through the losers' bracket to win the regional and advance to the Super Regional? Zero.

Why is that? 

It's simple. Pitching. There are a lot of innings to cover in a very short time, and you either have to go way deeper in your staff than your opponent does or you have to throw pitchers on short rest.

Looking back at the regionals last year, only five teams that lost their first game made it all the way back to the last round. Of those five, only one — Vanderbilt — forced the if-necessary Game 7. Vandy, a team with great pitching depth, lost the final game 7-6 to Oregon State.

The other teams that lost their opener and made it to the last day? They lost the first game of the last round with these scores: 22-6, 13-4, 15-9 and 11-4. 

In other words, the odds were not with Princeton.

The Tigers fell behind early and saw it get away quickly. It was 1-0 after the second inning, but Penn exploded from there, with four in the third, eight in the fourth and three in the fifth. Suddenly it was 16-0 Quakers, and the Tigers' chance to extend to the season one more game was clearly gone.

Even with all that, though, a funny thing happened from there. First, Princeton shut out the Quakers the rest of the way. And second, Princeton put up two of its own in the bottom of the fifth, getting an RBI single from Eric Marasheski and an RBI on a fielder's choice for Scott Bandura. 

It was 16-2 heading to the bottom of the ninth. TigerBlog had a sense that somehow, Princeton would get another run, that this Princeton team would not go quietly.

And that's what happened. Fittingly, it came on a home run. Matt Scannell came up with two outs and nobody on, and he drilled one over the centerfield fence. It extended Princeton's school record for home runs in a season to 66.

And so what if the season ended one batter later, with the final 16-3?

This is a Princeton team that went 7-33 last year and then turned that around to go 24-23. That 17-game turnaround in victories, by the way, is the most in Division I baseball this season.

This is a Princeton team that went from 3-18 and last in the Ivy League a year ago to playing on the final day of the first league tournament to get to the NCAAs.

To get there, Princeton had to fight and battle every step of the way this weekend. There were two marathons, including the epic 13-11 win over Columbia Saturday and then the 10-3 win over Harvard Sunday that kept it going one more day. Unfortunately, as happens in these tournaments, it left Princeton with its pitching staff basically on fumes. 

And what happens when your pitchers are tired? They don't get rocked all over the field. More than that, they lose the strike zone. Against Penn yesterday, Princeton pitchers walked 14 and hit seven. That's how it works.  

But this is a team that never gave up. It's a team that went down swinging all the way to the final inning.

Congratulations to Penn on winning. 

And congratulations to Princeton for what it did this weekend, and this entire season. 

Take a bow, Tigers. 

Epic, And Fortuitous

If you are looking for the hero for the Princeton baseball team for the Ivy League tournament to date, the answer is "who in the world can say?" 

And that speaks volumes about this team.

Is it Scott Bandura, who has homered in every game Princeton has played? Is it Justin Kim, whose relief appearance yesterday against Harvard was equal parts brilliant and gutsy? Maybe it's Nick DiPietrantonio, or Kyle Vinci, or Matt Scannell or anyone else you want to choose. None of that matters to anyone in a Tiger uniform now. All that matters is that this team is still playing today.

What a weekend it was for Princeton baseball. 

TigerBlog would have thought that the best word to describe the Princeton baseball team's 13-11 win over Columbia in the losers' bracket of the Ivy League tournament Saturday would have to have been "epic."

It certainly was, in every sense of the word. There haven't been too many games that Princeton has played in any sport in recent years that have been more grueling than this one, for that matter. It lasted three minutes short of four hours after a 45-minute rain delay, saw Princeton rally from five runs down and saw Columbia rally from six runs down before Scannell's two-run eighth-inning single proved to be the difference. 

Princeton also blasted three home runs in the game, with a Vinci grand slam, a three-run shot from Nick DiPietrantonio and a solo shot from Bandura. There were 24 runs, 24 hits, four errors, eight pitchers and an astonishing 404 pitches.

So yes. It was clearly epic. It required every ounce of effort, toughness and togetherness Princeton could manage.

As it turned out, though, it was more than just epic. It was also, to use another word, "fortuitous."

How so? 

The game ran so long that the second game of the doubleheader, the winners' bracket game between Penn and Harvard, had to be pushed back to yesterday. As a result, instead of playing a team in its first game of the day after both were rested, instead Princeton got to play a team who had already played one game yesterday.

That team turned out to be Harvard, who lost 10-7 to Penn in a game that ran three minutes past three hours and featured 344 pitches of its own. 

Was it an advantage for Princeton? Who knows. Probably, but how much of one? Again, who knows.

Princeton again gutted it out, this time defeating the Crimson 10-3. The Tigers got three more home runs in that game, as Bandura and DiPietrantonio again hit long balls, as did Brendan Cumming. DiPietrantonio had five RBIs, three of which came on his second-inning blast after the Tigers trailed 2-0 and then two more on a seventh-inning single as Princeton broke the game open.

Freshman pitcher Kim, who threw 44 pitches in the game Saturday, came back and was masterful in relief yesterday. After fellow freshman Will Sword made his first start and kept the Tigers in it for three innings, Kim went the rest of the way, shutting out the Crimson for six innings, ending it with a strikeout and then a slam of his glove on the ground. His numbers included two hits, four strikeouts and 90 pitches.

The result of all of this baseball is that Princeton is still alive as the tournament reaches its final day. The task now is to sweep Penn on the Quakers' home field.

First pitch is at 11. Should the Tigers win that game, then there would be a deciding game afterwards. If Penn wins the first game, then the double-elimination tournament ends there.

As you know, the winner of this tournament gets the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. 

TigerBlog said Friday that it's not easy to lose the first game of a four-team double-elimination tournament and come all the way back, but that's just how it's happened. Harvard beat Princeton 3-2 way back on Friday, which seems like a long time ago — certainly it was a lot of pitches ago — in a game that Princeton led 2-0 before three late unearned runs won it for the Crimson. 

Bandura, by the way, homered in that game as well. 

That set up the game Saturday, which was played in a misty rain as Princeton and Columbia both played to keep their seasons going. The game seemed to change almost inning to inning, as it was 5-0 Columbia, then 5-4 Columbia, then 8-5 Princeton after Vinci deposited his grand slam over the fence. For Vinci, by the way, that was his 21st home run of the season, which extends his Ivy record. 

Columbia got a run back in the seventh, making it 8-6. Okay. Close game. Princeton got three in the bottom of the seventh to get it to 11-6. Okay. Comfortable lead. Right? 

Uh, no. Columbia came storming back, getting five in the top of the eighth, and suddenly it was 11-11. No worries. Scannell untied it. And then, after all of those runs and all of those hits, why would anything be easy? 

Reece Rabin walked the lead off man and then gave up a hit. Then he got a double play. Columbia kept it going with a walk, which meant the tying run was on base. Then what? A fly ball to Bandura in right, who squeezed it to end it.

And so Princeton, 3-18 in the Ivy League a year ago, plays today for a shot at the NCAA tournament. Yes, Princeton has to win twice. No, don't sell them short. Not after this weekend. Not with the way this team fought and fought and fought to keep it going.

Baseball Tournament Time

There is nothing that distracts TigerBlog quite like the Daily Princetonian archives.

For instance, there was yesterday afternoon. TB was looking through the Princeton baseball records on goprincetontigers.com when he saw that the record for strikeouts in a game is 17, set twice, by the same pitcher — L.A. Young. It seems Mr. Young struck out 17 Lafayette Leopards in consecutive seasons, on April 26, 1890, and again on April 25, 1891.

When TB went to the Daily Princetonian archives to find out more, he learned that there was no mention of the 1890 game at all and only this about the 1891 game:

The game with with Lafayette at Easton, after the first inning, in which Princeton made seven runs, was a fine exhibition of ball playing. Lafayette put up a good game after the first inning and though the ball was hit hard and often, Princeton scored but one more run. Young's pitchingwas superb. Fox, for Lafayette, made a brilliant catch of a hot liner.

Of course, in searching for that little bit of information, TigerBlog also got sidetracked with things like this: 

The University of Michigan has 2,420 students, a larger/lumber than any other college or university in the country. 

That was in a Princetonian news and notes section. He also found reference to an upcoming "real tennis" world championship match, one that would feature a best-of-13-sets format that would be played over four days if necessary. As it turns out, "real tennis" is still a "real thing," and the world championship still exists. Who knew? 

So what was TB doing in the Princeton baseball record book? He was looking up how many complete games Princeton pitchers had this year and then contrasting it with the records.

The Tigers have had four complete games this year, three of which came from Tom Chmielewski and one of which came from Jackson Emus. If you think that doesn't sound like many, consider that Princeton accounts for more than half of the complete games in the Ivy League, since everyone else had a combined three.

Complete games are largely a thing of the past, of course, on all levels. In the Major Leagues this season, there have been only 10 complete games. 

Cy Young is MLB's career leader in complete games with 749 of them. If you go down to No. 8 on the all-time list, you find Old Hoss Radbourn, who threw 488 complete games. As it turns out, Old Hoss was really named Charles, which isn't nearly as interesting. Old Hoss, who pitched in the Majors from 1880-1891 and who won 310 games, is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Princeton record for consecutive complete games, by the way, belongs to Harry Gutheil, who once pitched 11 straight. And was this in the 19th century? No, this was across two seasons, 1992 and 1993. Gutheil was an undersized lefty who could throw a complete game in 60-70 pitches and be in complete control the whole time. He's one of TB's all-time favorite Princeton athletes.

Why the interest in complete games? Well, it's because the first Ivy League baseball tournament begins today at Penn's Tommy Lasorda Field. 

It'll be third-seeded Princeton and second-seeded Harvard at 11, followed by top-seeded Penn and fourth-seeded Columbia. The losers play at 11 tomorrow, with the loser of that game eliminated. The winners then play at 3. The tournament continues Sunday with another elimination game and then a game between the remaining unbeaten and the team that makes it back through the losers' bracket. There would be a deciding game Monday at noon if the team that was unbeaten loses the second game Sunday.

In other words, to get all the way through the tournament, you're going to need pitching. It would be helpful if your starters went deep into games, and the teams that lose today will find themselves having to use a lot of arms if they get to Monday. 

Chmielewski, not surprisingly, was a unanimous first-team All-Ivy League selection, as was Tiger outfielder Scott Bandura. Kyle Vinci, the Ivy League record-setter for home runs in a season with 20, was a second-team choice (TB wrote a feature story about Vinci that you can read HERE).

Princeton also had two other second-team picks, utility player Matt Scannell and DH Caden Shapiro, and two honorable mention picks, relief pitcher Jacob Faullkner and second baseman Noah Granet.

As Vinci said in the story, there isn't a member of the team who wasn't motivated by last year's 3-18 eighth-place finish. Now the Tigers are in the top 4 and ready for the first pitch of the first league tournament. 

It's time for important baseball in May for the Tigers.

And The Nominees Are ...

TigerBlog ran into Greg Carroccio, one of Princeton Athletics' photographers, last week.

The first thing TB said to him was that it was hard to believe that another year had come and gone. Did he remember when he took the field hockey team photo back in August? Did that really seem like nine months ago? 

It didn't, Carroccio said, agreeing with TB. 

TigerBlog cannot believe how quickly the years fly by. What day is today? May 18th? Oh wait. One second.

If today is May 18th, then it's TB's cousin Paul's birthday. Paul is the oldest of the first cousins on TB's mother's side, and he was recently the father of the bride when his daughter Rachel got married back in March. That was actually on the day that Princeton played Rutgers in men's lacrosse, and that day doesn't really seem all that long ago either.

In the meantime, happy birthday Paul.

Okay, back at another academic year that has flown by, Princeton is wrapping up finals for second semester. After that comes the sprint to Reunions, Class Day and Commencement. 

If you're not aware, Reunions begins one week from today. The campus will be bulging with alums and families, and it's one big party after another. It's the 60th Reunion of the Class of 1963, which includes the great Bryce Chase. It's the 25th for the Class of 1998, which is also something that's hard to wrap TB's head around.

The first night of Reunions also corresponds with the Gary Walters Princeton Varsity Club Awards banquet, which is also a week from tonight. Gary, the Director of Athletics from 1994-2014, created this banquet early on in his tenure, with the first one held in the lobby of Jadwin Gym to a relatively small crowd.

From there, the event has grown to what it is now, a large gathering that is a celebration of Princeton's senior athletes, complete with videos, highlights, commentaries and of course awards. The banquet has been held on the concourse of Princeton Stadium, at the boathouse, at the Grad College and even online. Now it's back in Jadwin, only in the main part of the arena.

In advance of the banquet, the Department of Athletics has started releasing the finalists for the senior awards. If you were on the website yesterday, you saw the first of these announcements, with the nominees for the Art Lane Award and the Chris Sailer Leadership Award.

Still to come will be those athletes who will be the finalists for the von Kienbusch Award and Roper Trophy, which go to the top senior female and male athlete. While those awards are the ones that get the most attention, and rightly so, since they are a celebration of the best among so many great athletes, the awards that were announced yesterday are just as impressive. Actually, maybe even more so.

The Art Lane Award recognizes outstanding contribution to sport and society by an undergraduate athlete. Read what the nominees have done — and then remember that they did all this while competing at such a high level of intercollegiate athletics while also being Princeton students. 

The Chris Sailer Award is a new one. It's obviously named for the Hall of Fame women's lacrosse coach, who retired a year ago. This is the wording of the award:

The award, made possible by Lucy Small DeStefano '99 S94 and Chris DeStefano '94 S99, will be awarded annually to senior student-athletes who demonstrate exceptional leadership and a commitment to serving others.

In many ways, it's hard to quantify leadership. You can't just list what it is they do to lead. When you have great leaders, though, you know it. You can see it. And your organization, or in this case your team, is way better off for it. 

It's an honor to be recognized for any of these awards, but it's even more so to be in the inaugural group of finalists for the award. These five are also top flight athletes, with All-Americans (Hannah Davey in field hockey, Quincy Monday in wrestling, Keller Maloney in water polo), a school record holder (Arianna Smith of women's track and field) and a key figure on a team that won its opening round NCAA tournament game in back-to-back years (Grace Stone of women's basketball). 

The winners of all of the senior awards will be announced at the banquet. As a reminder, that's one week from tonight in Jadwin Gym. 

Another year comes, and another year goes. It ends in style, as always.

Tosan At The Combine

Princeton head men's basketball coach Mitch Henderson will be throwing out the first pitch at the New York Yankees game a week from today against the Baltimore Orioles.

By the way, did you know the Orioles have the second-best record in Major League Baseball, behind only the Tampa Bay Rays? Also, did you realize that Texas is leading the American League West by four games now? And who is the team's general manager? 

Of course it's Chris Young, the former Princeton men's basketball and baseball player. Young spent 13 seasons as a pitcher in the Major Leagues, so clearly he made a good choice for his professional sport. It's just that TigerBlog and every other Princeton fan will always wonder what might have been had Young stayed with basketball, both for his final two years at Princeton that he lost when he signed his pro baseball contract and then for the NBA.

Speaking of pro basketball, there were 44 players who were invited to the NBA's G-League Combine, held in Chicago over the weekend. 

Out of that group, there were eight who then earned a second invitation to stay around for another week and participate in the NBA's Combine. That's eight of 44, or an 18 percent chance of being among the eight.

As you probably know by now, Princeton's Tosan Evbuomwan is one of them. Judging by the math, it's another great performance by Evbuomwan in the last few months.

The NBA Combine began Monday and runs through Sunday, also in Chicago. There were 78 original invitees, before the eight who were promoted from the G League event. 

You can watch some of the Combine and some of the games there on ESPN2 or ESPN+.

If you're a Princeton fan, you already knew what kind of player Evbuomwan is. He's been a dominant presence for the Tigers, earning Ivy League Player of the Year honors as a junior and then being a unanimous first-team All-Ivy pick as a senior. 

The Ivy Player of the Year this past season, by the way, was Penn's Jordan Dingle, who has since transferred to St. John's, where he will play for Rick Pitino. Dingle averaged 23.4 points per game last year, second in Division I behind Detroit Mercy's Antoine Brown, who finished his career (five years) two points away from Pete Maravich's all-time NCAA scoring record. Maravich only played three years, with no three-point shot, and there will never, ever, ever be another scorer in college basketball like Maravich.

Dingle is going to St. John's to increase his chances of being drafted a year from now. For Evbuomwan, this year is the year to see where he stands in the NBA Draft, which comes up June 22nd.

It was a magical run for Princeton and Evbuomwan this past winter. The Tigers shared the Ivy League title with Yale and then beat the Bulldogs in the Ivy tournament final to get to the NCAA tournament.

Once there, Princeton knocked out second-seeded Arizona and seventh-seeded Missouri to reach the Sweet 16. The run ended against Creighton, but Princeton men's basketball carved itself a never-to-be-forgotten moment in the history of a program that is filled with them.

Of all the players who emerged during the NCAA tournament, perhaps none made the mark that Evbuomwan did. His all-around game, the one that he showcased in Jadwin Gym game after game, really stood out. He showed he could play the point, he could defend a range of players, he could create his own shot, he could rebound, he could block shots and he could also hit a three-pointer. 

He could have used his final year of eligibility as a grad transfer, but he chose to go into the NBA Draft process instead. He is a fascinating prospect.

For one thing, he is from England, so playing in Europe would be in many ways going home. Second, he hasn't really played for very long, so he has considerable upside. His task this week is to show how athletic he is compared to top prospects, something he clearly did at the G League Combine. 

TigerBlog has been checking out mock drafts, and Evbuomwan's ame has appeared in almost all of them. In fact, he usually shows up in the 47-49 range.

What can a pick in the second round expect? He can expect a legitimate shot at making the NBA team, and he could almost surely expect a two-way contract that would pay him a different amount if he played in the NBA or the G-League. 

Or, of course, he could play in the Europe for a few years and build his game there. Either way, these are exciting times for Evbuomwan, and for the Princeton program, which in a very short amount of time will have shown it could get to the Sweet 16, send one player to the NBA (Devin Cannady) and now have another on the verge of joining the league. 

Boat Titles

TigerBlog definitely shortchanged the rowing teams in yesterday's entry. 

He didn't mean to do so. It was more a product of circumstance. 

He was at the Princeton-Penn State men's lacrosse NCAA tournament game, which was getting started not that long after the racing on Lake Quigsigamond was reaching its finals. He tried to write up as much as he could beforehand, and then he tacked on the rowing results after the lacrosse game.

He wanted to mention what the rowers accomplished, but he didn't really have time to dive in, as it were. So today he's back with some more. 

He did follow the results on row2k.com, which is a wild site. If you ever want to know anything at all about racing, that's the place to go.

The Princeton open women continued their unbeaten season by taking the Ivy League championship. If you're keeping track, that's eight times in the 10 years of the Ivy League's event that Princeton won the first varsity 8 race, including each of the last six.

The Ivy League champion for women's open rowing used to go to the winner of the first varsity 8 race at Eastern Sprints, until the NCAA began awarding automatic bids to conference winners. As such, the Ivy League event was born, and the automatic NCAA bid goes to the team that wins the overall points standings.

In this case, that was also Princeton, who edged Yale 85-84 in the final scoring. Princeton got 32 points for winning the first varsity after being seven points behind the Bulldogs before that. The difference between Princeton's first place and Yale's third? Eight points. 

Princeton's open women will now compete at the NCAA championships on the Cooper River in Pennsauken May 26-28. The NCAA's first women's rowing championship was in 1997, and there has never been a year when Princeton has not qualified. 

Since 2013, the national championship has gone to one of four schools: Texas, Washington, Cal and Ohio State. Texas has won the last two (team and first varsity 8), but the Tigers defeated the Longhorns back in April. It should be a great regatta. 

The Ivy women's championships were held at the same site as the men's Eastern Sprints Sunday, which meant that the Tiger lightweight and heavyweight men were competing for Ivy championships as well. The lightweight women, the two-time defending national champ, already won their own Eastern Sprints earlier this season.

The men's lightweights are the No. 1 team in the country, and they certainly looked the part Sunday, winning their own Ivy title. Princeton won both the first varsity 8 and second varsity 8 races, something the program had only done twice before, in 2003 and 2010. 

The Tigers also won the Jope Cup for the overall points total, something that the lightweights have now done 16 times. 

The heavyweight men's first varsity 8 race was the final one on a long day of racing. For the first time since 2016, the Princeton boat finished in the top two, falling to heavily favored Yale by a second. The second varsity 8 also won silver, giving Princeton a very strong showing, and some serious momentum heading into the IRA national championships.

That meet will be held June 2-4 in West Windsor. The women's lightweights will be seeking that third straight title. Obviously the two men's teams will be right in the mix.

It was a great day of racing Sunday, that's for sure. TB is sorry he only threw a few lines in yesterday. 

By the way, as he writes this, he's on the men's lacrosse bus back from Penn State, after the excruciating 13-12 loss. It's a harsh way for a season to end, and even after staying overnight in State College, it was hard for everyone who got on the bus to swallow that there were no more practices or games for this group.

As head coach Matt Madalon said to the team after, there are 17 teams in the tournament and only one gets to end the season in a pile. 

Multiply that by every team in every sport, and you're left with one really overriding thought: If it's not about the journey, then you're doing it wrong.

 

A Wow In Women's Water Polo

Maybe the Princeton women's water polo team felt at home playing at the University of the Pacific, which is also the Tigers and also has orange and black as its colors, in this weekend's NCAA tournament.

The Tigers — the Princeton ones — certainly didn't find the moment too big. Not in the least.

Princeton took down California 11-9 Friday night in the NCAA quarterfinals, becoming the first non-West Coast school to reach the Final Four since Michigan did so in 2016. It was also Princeton's first Final Four trip in women's water polo.

Going one step further would have been great, but then again, in women's water polo this year, nobody was able to take that step. Princeton fell 18-8 in the semifinals to USC, one of two teams that dominated everyone else all year.

In fact, USC and Stanford, who met yesterday in the final, were perfect against every other team in the country. 

So yes, the Tigers fell short of an NCAA title, but what they did was amazing. These Tigers finished at 30-4, regained the CWPA championship and then made a real statement about how good they are with the win at Pacific. 

In fact, what the women's water polo team did this weekend will be remembered as one of the very best moments of this academic year in Princeton Athletics. 

Not all great runs end with the championship, after all. 

The Princeton softball team didn't win the Ivy League tournament title, but the Tigers did show what they were made of nonetheless.

Princeton lost the first game of the weekend, to Columbia. Losing the first game of a double-elimination tournament does not make for an easy road back. 

Despite that, Princeton came back to knock off Yale and Columbia Friday to set up a showdown against Harvard, the team with whom it tied in the regular season for the Ivy League title. 

The task for Princeton was to win twice Saturday, and oh did the Tigers come close. They won Game 1 6-0, setting up the "if necessary" game. And that game was dramatic and tense, as a Princeton rally fell just short in a 3-2 loss. 

Again, you don't always win the championship, but you can always do everything you can as a team to extend your season as far as possible.

The Ivy League baseball tournament will be held at Penn this coming weekend. The Quakers swept Columbia in a doubleheader Saturday while Harvard split with Yale, and those results meant two things: 1) Columbia was officially the fourth team in the Ivy tournament along with Penn, Harvard and Princeton and 2) Penn took a one-game lead over Harvard into the final day of the regulars season.

Because Harvard had taken two of three from Penn during the season, a Harvard win and Penn loss Sunday would have sent the baseball tournament to Cambridge. Instead, the Quakers won their game 10-4, clinching the outright title and the hosting rights, even though Harvard beat Yale as well. 

The matchups for the first round of the tournament will be Penn-Columbia and Princeton-Harvard. Like softball, this one is also double elimination, though it's spread over four days instead of three. First pitch is Friday in Philadelphia.

The baseball championship that Penn won was the 30th the league awarded this year and left only the three rowing titles, which were going to be decided yesterday. One of the reasons TigerBlog wanted to see Penn win was because it denied Harvard an 11th Ivy title. Princeton came into the weekend with 11. 

That number grew to an insurmountable 12 when the women's open rowers won the Ivy League first varsity 8 race by 1.5 seconds over Penn. The final total was 13, as the men's lightweights followed with an Ivy title of their own about an hour later.

The heavyweight men didn't win, but they did have a great showing, finishing in second. 

Again, not all great efforts end in championships. Some do. Some don't. You cherish the ones that do, and you respect the ones who also gave everything they had.