Spring Is Here, Sort Of?

TigerBlog had just hit "save" on the content management system to post the first pregame story of the 2025 men's lacrosse season when he may have actually muttered "this is exciting." 

As he has written many times before, that's the attitude that is needed to be in this business for as long as he has been.

It's the start of the season for three different Princeton "spring" teams this weekend. 

The softball team joins the men's and women's lacrosse teams as their seasons all get underway in the next few hours. It begins today with the softball opener in Chapel Hill, where the Tigers play Drexel at 12:30 and then North Carolina at 3. Princeton will play North Carolina again tomorrow at 1:30, followed by games against George Mason tomorrow at 4 and Sunday at 10. 

Princeton has three four straight Ivy League championships. As you recall from last spring, the Tigers defeated Ole Miss in the NCAA tournament before bowing out.

The women's lacrosse team is home tomorrow against Virginia at 1. The Tigers are ranked 17th, while the Cavs are ranked eighth.

The men's team is at Penn State, also at 1 tomorrow. Princeton is ranked fifth as it heads into the season in search of a fourth straight trip to the NCAA tournament. Penn State, already 2-0, is ranked 10th. 

It was the Nittany Lions who bounced Princeton from the 2023 NCAA tournament 13-12. The leading scorers from that game was Princeton's Coulter Mackesy (six goals) and Penn State's Ethan Long (five goals), and both are back. 

Speaking of Mackesy, he scored 40 goals last year — and enters his senior year 40 goals away from the school career record of 163, held by Jesse Hubbard since 1998. On the women's side, McKenzie Blake scored 67 goals last year — and she is 67 away from the program record of 209, set in 2022 by Kyla Sears. 

That's a crazy stat.

Anyway, spring is here? 

Winter is here too. 

The women's hockey team is home for its regular season finale — but not for the final time of the year at Baker Rink. Princeton hosts Union tonight at 6 and RPI tomorrow at 3 (which will also be Senior Day). 

No matter what happens this weekend, Princeton will be hosting a first-round ECAC playoff game next weekend, since the Tigers are locked into the top eight of the standings. It's very likely, though not locked in, that one of this weekend's opponents will be back at Baker next weekend.

For the men's hockey team, there are still three weekends left in the regular season, beginning this weekend at RPI (7 tonight) and Union (6 tomorrow). Princeton is currently in ninth place in the standings, which means moving up one spot would be necessary to get playoff home ice. 

Ahead for the men are a home weekend against Yale and Brown and a trip to St. Lawrence and Clarkson.

As for basketball, the women are home twice, against Yale tonight at 6 and Brown tomorrow at 5. The Ivy League standings, as TB has said, are pretty well defined right now, with Columbia at 8-0, Princeton at 7-1 Harvard at 6-2 and Brown at 4-4, followed by four teams with at least six losses. 

The biggest game of the weekend — at least in the big picture of the league, not from Princeton's perspective — is Sunday, when Harvard is at Columbia. Harvard is in the interesting position of being in third place in the standings, having lost to both Princeton and Columbia the first time through, but being the highest ranked league team in the NET rankings at 35, followed by Columbia (42) and Princeton (46).

Harvard needs a win over Columbia to have any realistic shot at a regular season championship. Princeton needs to sweep to keep its NET high and to stay in position to play Harvard and Columbia with a championship on the line. 

For the men, it's a somewhat similar look at the standings, where Yale is 7-0, Princeton and Cornell are 5-2, Dartmouth is 4-2 and then everyone else has at least four losses. The Tigers are at Brown tonight at 7 and Yale tomorrow at 8.

Congratulations Thursday

Congratulations.

For what? For anything and everything. It's a Congratulations Thursday here from TigerBlog. 

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There were 16 Princeton players who earned the National Field Hockey Coaches' Association's National Academic Squad honors, announced yesterday. This award prioritizes in-season scholastic achievement, which makes it amazing to consider that two-thirds of the Princeton team qualified for the award while also winning an Ivy League championship and advancing to the NCAA tournament quarterfinals. 

Nobody at Princeton should ever forget that this is a school where the highest levels academically and athletically can overlap. It's been the backbone for decades and decades of success stories that make up what is known collectively as "Education Through Athletics."

Every time TigerBlog sees an award like this, of course, he's reminded of one of the best Pete Carril lines ever. When told that one of his players had been named Academic All-American with a 3.8 grade point average, Carril immediately said "Yeah? He'd be better off with a 3.6 and more work on his jump shot."

You can agree with the sentiments from two paragraphs ago and laugh at the ones in the previous paragraph. It's okay. 

Congratulations to the field hockey players. 

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Further congratulations go out to Joanna Dwyer, the Northeast Water Polo Conference Sports Information Director of the Year. 

TB pointed out to Dwyer that a year ago, she was a senior at Elon who was looking for her first full-time job and had no idea what water polo was all about. Now look at her. 

The accomplishment was well-earned. Dwyer combined her broad content-creation skills with a willingness to, well, dive head first into a sport with which she had no previous experience. When you're good at what you do and you're willing to work hard to learn what you don't know, good things will happen. 

Congratulations to Joanna.

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Next up is the men's fencing team, which swept all four of its matches to win the Ivy League championship this past weekend at Penn. 

Princeton's closest bout was Sunday's clincher, a 14-13 win over Columbia. 

For Princeton, it was the first back-to-back Ivy titles since 2016-17 and the first perfect Ivy run since 2012. The NCAA Regionals will be held March 8 in Teaneck, and the NCAA Championships will be held at Penn State March 20-23.

Congratulations to the men's fencing team. 

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Zach Currier is a former Princeton men's lacrosse player. Does it seem that long ago that he was playing as a Tiger?

Since then, Currier has won a World Indoor Championship and championships on the indoor and outdoor professional level. It's hard to imagine he will not be a Hall of Fame inductee when his playing days are over. 

TB saw on Instagram that Zach and his wife Eva are expecting their first child. That's worthy of a congratulations on Thursday. 

If the new generation has half of the competitiveness of the father, then there will be new fastest Canadian potty-trained baby record. 

By the way, this is opening weekend for Princeton men's (at Penn State Saturday at 1) and women's (home against Virginia at 1) lacrosse. 

Congratulations to Zach and Eva.

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TigerBlog has minimal, minimal experience as a sports photographer. He does know that there's a feeling that a photographer gets in between that moment of snapping a picture and checking to see if came out exactly as was hoped in the moment.

When it turns out that you did get the picture, it bring a great sense of satisfaction. Hey, even TB has gotten to experience that, maybe less than five times ever, but still. 

With that in mind, congratulations go out to photographer Caean Couto, who had to smile when he saw the shot he took of Princeton men's basketball player Malik Abdullahi in the Tigers' win over Penn at the Palestra last Friday. 

Not bad, huh? 

Princeton's men have a big weekend, with games at Brown (tomorrow at 7) and Yale (Saturday at 8). The women's basketball team will be home against the same two opponents, hosting the Bears (6 tomorrow) and Bulldogs (5 Saturday). 

Congratulations on the picture Caean. 

Remembering Lorin Maurer, 16 Years Later

 

TigerBlog goes back into the archives today, back 16 years ago to be exact.

 

It was on that day that he, and the rest of Princeton Department of Athletics and world beyond, woke up to the shocking news of the plane crash outside of Buffalo. Among those killed was Lorin Maurer, who oversaw the Princeton Athletic Friends Groups at the time. She had just turned 30.

 

Each year since, TB has written about the emotions of losing a colleague and a friend. With each year, the number of people who knew Lorin has dwindled until now there are only a handful left who remember her, the warmth she always displayed, the smile that never went away. In fact, her smile is the last thing TB ever saw from her. 

 

Here is how TB put it back in 2009, with the comments he received afterwards... Lorin, you were truly an exceptional person, and nobody who knew you will ever forget you:

 

When she walked past the door of TigerBlog HQ yesterday afternoon, like she had a million times before and figured to a million times again, Lorin Maurer paused, smiled and kept going. She never said a word; TigerBlog didn't say anything back to her.

Who could have ever have imagined it would be the last time he'd ever see her?

Lorin Maurer was killed late Thursday night when Continental Connection Flight 3407 crashed near Buffalo. She was heading there for the wedding of her boyfriend's brother (her boyfriend was not on the flight); she was just 30 years old.

TigerBlog knew Lorin since she first started working here in 2005. We've worked together any number of times on all kinds of projects. As with any people who approach projects from different angles, we had our disagreements and clashes, but for the most part we were on the same page.

She was young and full of life. She had accomplished a great deal in her young life, and sadly, much of that was learned while writing her obituary. The last time TigerBlog ever saw her summed her up perfectly. Nothing to say? Flash a smile, and let that speak for you: "Hello; hope you're doing okay; I'll see you another time."

So what to make of all this? How do you make sense of the fact that a 30-year-old just starting out, with so much energy and zest, is gone like that? How do you rationalize the fact that you were just in the same meeting the day she died, that you have another meeting scheduled with her on Monday? How do you figure that you came to HQ figuring to work on a lacrosse program and that you wrote a youthful colleague's obit instead?

The first reaction is that you never know what's coming down the road, so you have to stop every day to appreciate whom you have and what you have. But that should all be obvious. It's not something we all do enough of, but Lorin's passing isn't going to change that.

She had a great many friends here at Princeton, not only in the athletic department but also in development and with alums throughout the country with whom she interacted. She was well-liked and well-respected for the job she did.

TigerBlog thought for awhile about something profound to say, some inspiration to draw from her death. In the end, what is there to say?

She was here yesterday, so alive. She's gone today. It's beyond sad.

That's all there is to say.

 

And That's 500 Wins

The nightmares that TigerBlog will have because of the commercials during the Super Bowl of the people born with cowboy hat heads should end somewhere around the time ... well ... they'll never end. 

The worst part? He cannot for the life of him tell you what the product in the advertisement was. That's the absolute worst kind of commercial — nightmare inducing and for no real payoff. 

There were very few completely awful commercials, which is an improvement from most years. There were a handful that TB would say were great, but the majority were simply "nice," as opposed to the standard of the last decade or so, which was defined by Super Bowl commercials that were simply trying wayyyyy toooooo hard to be funny and cutting edge — and failed miserably doing so.

There were three commercials from Sunday that stood out to TB. First, there was the Liquid Death drink. TB will actually seek it out to see how it tastes. 

Then there was the breast cancer commercial. It took a very difficult subject and handled it in a way that was just perfect. 

The best commercial? That was the Harrison Ford one for Jeep. The last line was also perfect, and the entire message evoked only feelings of warmth. 

Oh, and TB's prediction of Philadelphia 28, Kansas City 17? That was a pretty good one. The Eagles were just the better team, playing against a team with a great mystique — but not a great offensive line. 

Booger McFarland, speaking on Friday's "Pardon the Interruption," basically said that if the Eagles were to win, then Saquon Barkley wouldn't be the MVP, because the Chiefs were simply not going to let the star running back beat them. That's pretty much how it turned out. 

And one last Super Bowl note, and that would be Jalen Hurts and his combined stats in his two Super Bowl appearances: 44 for 60 for 525 yards and three touchdowns, with 143 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns (he ranks first and second for rushing yards in a Super Bowl game by a quarterback with 72 and 71).

Okay, back to Princeton Athletics and round numbers. 

Princeton's women's basketball team defeated Penn 74-60 Saturday afternoon at Jadwin and in the process earned Tiger head coach Carla Berube her 500th career win. Now that's a big clean round number everyone can appreciate it.

Berube spent 17 years at Tufts before coming to Princeton, and she won 384 of those 500 games with the Jumbos. She is 116-22 at Princeton, for a total of 500-118 and a winning percentage of .809.

Can you imagine winning eight of every 10 games and having your career percentage go down? 

Berube's record in many ways speaks for itself. In many ways, it doesn't.

For instance, you can make a case that the current Princeton season may be her best coaching job yet. Keep in mind who is not on this team from a year ago — Kaitlyn Chen, Ellie Mitchell, Chet Nweke — and who is on this team but unable to play after a knee injury back in November — Madison St. Rose. 

Think about how much firepower was on the team last year that isn't there now. Having St. Rose back was going to go a long way to overcoming those losses, and she lasted less than seven games. 

Was the season over the? Nope. Berbube's teams don't work that way. 

With a new emerging group of stars (Ashley Chea, for instance, had 25 against Penn), Berube's team is 16-5 overall and 7-1 in the Ivy League, one game back of Columbia, who comes to Jadwin Gym Feb. 22. Those two, plus Harvard, seem to be complete locks for the upcoming Ivy tournament, with the Crimson at 5-2. 

Brown is 4-4, while every other team has at least six losses in the league. Princeton, Columbia and Harvard are 15-0 against the rest of the league. 

If you look at the NET rankings, the top three Ivy teams are all in the top 45. It's very likely that there will be at least two of them in the NCAA tournament. 

Harvard is ranked 35th. Columbia is ranked 42nd. Princeton is ranked 45th.

Congratulations to Carla Berube on her big round number. 

If you're a Princeton fan, make sure you appreciate what you've been seeing from her teams since Day 1 for her. 

"Noah Savage Isn't A Bad Guy"

All TigerBlog heard in the lead up to getting his tonsils out was that he could eat all the ice cream he wanted. 

Who has been pushing that myth for all these years? Has to be someone in Big Ice Cream.  

If TB has learned one thing, it's this: "ice cold = horrible pain." Actually, he's also learned that "very hot = horrible pain." You want to hit the sweet spot of warm, like room temperature Yoo-Hoo, which has dominated his consumption for a week. 

Keep that in mind for your sore throat needs. 

By the way, TigerBlog was watching the last five minutes of the first Giants-Patriots Super Bowl game yesterday. You remember the Helmet Catch play made by wide receiver David Tyree, right? 

Do you remember the play before that? It was a pass from Eli Manning that went to where Manning thought Tyree was going to be but wasn't. Instead, it went straight to Rodney Harrison, who makes the interception nine times out of 10. This time, though, it went through his hands. If it hadn't, then the Helmet Catch never would have happened. 

Fate, right? 

In sports closer to home, the Princeton men's basketball team made history at Penn with a 61-59 Friday night. Before that history, TigerBlog will share a funny moment, when Penn's notoriously, um, pro-Quaker color commentator Vince Curran was asked during a dead ball if he could say something nice about Princeton. 

Curran thought and thought and then came out with this: "Noah Savage isn't a bad guy." 

Nope. Noah is as good as it gets. It was just all in the presentation. If you've heard Curran, you know what TB means.

As for the history, this was the first time in program history that two players reached 998 career points in the same game.

What? No round numbers? Does that matter? 

Xaivian Lee finished Princeton's 61-59 win over Penn with 1,003 career points after an 11-point, nine-rebound, four-assist afternoon.

Caden Pierce had nine points, seven rebounds and three assists in the game. He now has 998 for his career. 

It would have been cool for both of them to get to 1,000 in the same game (something that's happened twice on the women's side with Kate Thirolf and Maggie Langlas and then Allison Cahill and Maureen Lane). Or would it? 

John Nolan, in the process of building his name in the broadcasting world in Indiana, and TigerBlog have had a long-running back-and-forth on the subject of America's obsession with round numbers. This is another example of that. 

Lee made the biggest play of the game, and it wasn't on a play where he actually scored. Instead, Penn was ahead 58-56 after a made free throw with 53 seconds to go. The second foul shot was no good, and Penn's 6-10 Johnnie Walter was the first to the rebound. 

It appeared for a moment that Walter was going to have an uncontested layup, making it a two-possession game. Then, in a blink, the 6-4 Lee came away with the ball instead. It was a subtle play, but it changed the entire trajectory of the game. 

Now, instead of a sure-fire four-point Penn lead with less than a minute to go, it was a two-point Penn lead, one that became a one-point Princeton lead when Lee set up Dalen Davis for a three-pointer on the next possession. 

Penn tied with by making the first of two foul shots. Lee gained possession of the miss on the second shot again, and he then somehow set up Jackson Hicke with less than a second to go. Hicke was fouled on his shot attempt and then made both, giving Princeton a big win. 

The weekend's results left each men's team with seven of its 14 games played. The top four after the next go-round of the double round robin will gather in Providence for the Ivy League tournament. 

Are those four teams pretty clear right now? 

Yale is 7-0. Princeton and Cornell are 5-2 each (the Tigers are in New Haven this coming Saturday at 8 after playing at Brown Friday at 7). Dartmouth, who has yet to appear in the men's ILT, is 4-3. Everyone else has at least five losses. 

Nothing is etched in stone yet, though you can do the math as well as anyone. 

Oh, and one other side note for the regular season finale between Princeton and Penn at Jadwin on March 8? A Princeton win would even the all-time series at 126-126, which would make it the first time it's been tied since 3-3 in 1905.

Catching Up

Bill Bradley scored 2,503 points in his three varsity seasons at Princeton, the most recent of which was 60 years ago.

Nobody has come close to that number since. TigerBlog would be shocked if anyone ever did. 

Joe DiMaggio had a 56-game hitting streak once. That was in 1941, or 21 years before Bradley scored his first point at Princeton. If you're wondering, his first point was followed by 27 more on Opening Day 1962-63.

Meanwhile, back at DiMaggio, TB always figured that of any record considered to be unbreakable, DiMaggio's would be the "easiest" to catch. Why? Because it would only take 57 games to do so. 

History suggests that TB's logic if flawed. There have been a lot of Major League players who have played 57 games since 1941. Nobody has come closer than 44 straight games (Pete Rose in 1978) since.

When you are faced with numbers that are overwhelming like these, you realize just how rare the accomplishment itself was. It becomes even more amazing when such a record ultimately falls. 

Back when Penn redid the concourse at the Palestra, it put up a tracker of the men's basketball series against Princeton, probably figuring that there was no way the Tigers would ever catch up. 

According to research done by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Jonathan Tannenwald, as much an Ivy basketball historian as TigerBlog, the most Penn ever led Princeton by was at 25 games, 122-97, after the Quakers won at Jadwin in 2009. 

Here are some other interesting notes Tannenwald came up with (you will be able to read his work online tomorrow):

* Penn built a 23-game lead by 1938 and then matched that several times between then and 1956
* From 1963-69, Princeton won 12 of 13, getting within seven games. Penn then won four straight, pushing the lead back to double figures, where it would stay until 2020
* The series currently stands at Penn 126, Princeton 124

And last, but certainly not least:

* the last time the series was tie was at 3-3 in 1905. Penn won the first three games in the series, beginning on Valentine's Day 1903, which means that Princeton has never, ever at any point held the all-time lead in the series. 

There is no guarantee the Tigers ever will, but the next chance to get closer is tonight at 7 at the Palestra. Should Princeton win that one, then the chance to tie the Quakers would come up on March 8 at Jadwin. 

Nothing is a given, certainly not in a series with this kind of history. Speaking of history, though, it's very likely that at least one Princeton player will reach 1,000 career points tonight, and possibly two, as Xavian Lee (992) and Caden Pierce (989) are both within their average's distance of getting there. 

Blake Peters won't get to 1,000 career points. The senior three-point shooter enters the game tonight with 652 for his career. 

Here a few Peters notes for you, though:

* he is seventh all-time at Princeton with 178 career three-pointers made
* if he maintains his current Ivy League average of 3.5 made threes per game through the rest of the regular season, he'd have 206 (which would bring him within six of moving past Spencer Weisz and tying Gabe Lewullis for fifth at Princeton)
* he is 18 for 33 from three-point range in the last four games

Of course, tonight is about current events, not the past. 

Princeton heads Philadelphia after a huge 69-49 win over Brown last Saturday, a win that came 24 hours after a loss to Yale. It also ended a two-game Ivy losing streak. 

Right now, the league standings have Yale at 6-0, Cornell at 5-1, Princeton at 4-2 and Dartmouth at 3-3, followed by Penn, Brown and Harvard at 2-4 and Columbia at 0-6. This is the last weekend of having a single game for the men.

As for the women, they'll play Penn at home tomorrow at 2. The current standings there are like this before the weekend: Columbia 7-0, Princeton 6-1, Harvard 5-2, Brown 4-3, everyone else either five or six losses. 

Also, for the many people who have reached out to TigerBlog, he's trying to get by on Yoo-Hoo and Kojak reruns, but it's a losing battle so far. To his surgeon, TB says "you were right. The first few weeks after were going to be awful."

Oh, and Super Bowl prediction: If the Eagles win then all will be well. If the Chief win, even if its 52-0, everyone will scream about the refs. 

TB will go with Philadelphia 28, Kansas City 17.

What Did He Say?

It's quite possible that TigerBlog was hallucinating yesterday as he watched "The Rockford Files" reruns while trying to take his mind off the searing pain that has became standard this week in his immediate post-tonsil world. 

In fact, TB wasn't really paying all that close attention, but he's pretty sure he heard Jim say this to the guy who was paying him $200 a day plus expenses: "Wait, you still think you're the lacrosse captain at Andover?" The response? "It was Lawrenceville."

By the way, the guy who claimed to have been a lacrosse captain played Fletcher Daniels on "Hill Street Blues."

Hey, what else are you supposed to do when you're in post-surgical misery besides watch classic 1970s television shows on Roku. Oh yeah. You're supposed to write a blog.

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David Ma was a very deserving ECAC men's hockey defensive Player of the Week this past week. He logged huge minutes Saturday night as Princeton defeated No. 19 Dartmouth 3-1 to finish a weekend sweep, one that began with a 4-3 OT win at Harvard Friday night. 

Ma had a goal and two assists in that game, including assisting on the game-winner. 

The sweep at Harvard and Dartmouth was Princeton's first since 2010. It also moved Princeton into the thick of the battle for home ice in the first playoff game. 

How tight are the ECAC standings right now? Princeton is tied with RPI for eighth with 16 points. If you go all the way to the bottom of the standings, you'll notice that the team there has 14 points. In other words, that's five teams within two points — at least one of those five will get a home game in the playoffs. 

Meanwhile, this weekend's schedule has Clarkson and St. Lawrence at Hobey Baker Rink tomorrow and Saturday, with puck drop at 7 both nights.

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Did you see the end of the Nets-Rockets game Tuesday night? 

There are hundreds of games in an NBA regular season, and very few of them will have the drama that the game at the Barclays Center did. And, best of all, guess who was right in the middle of it all? 

Tosan Evbuowman.

Basically, the Nets were down by four with 10 seconds left. Evbuomwan inbounded the ball to Keon Johnson, who hit a three-pointer. Evbuomwan then lined up to guard the inbounds pass before dropping off and then, somehow, found himself with the ball, which he then tipped above the three-point line to D'Angelo Russell, who drained the game-winner. 

The Nets went from down 97-93 to a 99-97 winner in a blink. Evbuomwan had assists on both of the late threes, plus a steal. 

Tosan Evbuomwan kept playing at the end here. He had 14-4-4 tonight and provided a major assist on the game-winning three for the Nets in a stunning win over the Rockets. pic.twitter.com/rPronuTQlc

— Derek Jones (@DerekJones79) February 5, 2025

He also finished with 14 points on 7 for 11 shooting, with four rebounds and four assists. His numbers with Brooklyn through 16 games: 10.0 points, 4.7 rebounds, 46.8 percent field goal shooting, 32.5 percent three-point shooting, 24.8 minutes. 

You know what else tells you that he's establishing himself as a legitimate NBA player? That he was on the court at the end of the game. 

Tosan Evbuowman is the easiest professional player to root for since Andrei Iosivas. 

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There will a men's squash showdown Sunday at Penn for the Ivy League men's squash championship when Princeton heads to Philadelphia to take on the Quakers. Princeton is ranked No. 2 nationally; Penn is ranked No. 1.

The CSA website keeps track of a team's record and then breaks it down way further, to total games won and total points won. In case you're interested, here's how the teams stand so far:

Princeton is 9-0, with a record in all of its matches of 67-14. If you're wondering about games, Princeton is 207.76. If you're wondering about points, that's 2,871-2,088.

Penn is 15-0, with a record in all of its matches of 128-7. If you're wondering about games, the Quakers are 391-63. In points, that's 4,769-2,727.

*

There will also be Ivy League championships crowned at Penn this weekend in men's and women's fencing, who will compete in the league round-robin event as well. 

Princeton earned a share of both titles a year ago. The Tiger women will be going for at least a share for the fourth straight year, while the men will search for their first back-to-back Ivy titles since 2016-17 and 18th overall.

Tonsil Talk

TigerBlog is in his 60s. 

He also had his tonsils out Monday morning — among other things to fix some issues in the back of his throat. Everything went well, though it's made for pretty much the worst sore throat imaginable. 

On the other hand, it might even be worse to hear the response every time he mentioned his procedure: "Why didn't you get that done when you were a kid? ... I didn't know they did that for people your age? ... I had that when I was five and all I remember is getting a lot of ice cream."

TB has no idea why he waited so long for this. All he knows is that he wished he'd done it way back when. 

TigerBlog had to be at the hospital at 5:30 am — as did a whole bunch of other people in advance of their various surgeries. As he sat there, TB couldn't help but wonder what everyone was having done, and if he was the only tonsil guy there. He did strike up a conversation with three other people who were waiting and said "what are you in for," to which everyone laughed and no one answered. 

Before he was wheeled into the operating room, TigerBlog had this exchange with his surgeon:

Surgeon: How are you?
TigerBlog: How are you more importantly?
Surgeon: I'm good.
TigerBlog: You still remember how to do this one? I think there are some videos on YouTube if you forget.

Always good to double check on the relative stranger who is about to go into the back of your throat with very sharp instruments. 

TB's pep talk seemed to work, since everything apparently went smoothly. And now, other than his complete inability to speak or to swallow anything, TB is on the road to recovery. 

He also got some nice text messages from his daughter after the fact, checking in to see how he was doing. And he also got this message after the procedure was over from his son: "When is your surgery?"

Two days before his operation, TigerBlog went to Villanova to watch the men's lacrosse team's scrimmage against the Wildcats. What's more ridiculous than that was the fact that Saturday was also opening day of actual games in Division I lacrosse. 

Princeton doesn't have a real game until Feb. 15, when the women are home against Virginia and the men are at Penn State. 

The Princeton men's team has four players who are the sons of former Princeton athletes who competed while TB was already covering the Tigers. One of them is Kevin Morrow, a freshman defenseman, who father David was the 1993 Division I Player of the Year and a 2018 NCAA Silver Anniversary Award winner. You can make a case that David Morrow is the greatest defenseman in lacrosse history.

Another is Cooper Mueller, whose father Kit was a two-time Ivy League men's basketball Player of the Year (1990, 1991). There is Porter Malkiel, whose father Jon was part of two NCAA championship teams on the men's lacrosse team (1992, 1994). And there is Billy Barnds, whose father Tom was the 1990 men's lacrosse captain.

As TB stood on the sideline at the scrimmage, he realized that Jon Malkiel was a high school junior when TB first started watching Princeton lacrosse. 

For years and years, TB thought that he'd feel old when the children of athletes who covered at Princeton started to compete as Tigers themselves. Those days have come and gone, and TB still hasn't felt old. 

Maybe it's because he still had his tonsils? He doesn't anymore. 

This season will be TB's 36th with the men's lacrosse team. He's been with the team for six NCAA titles and 11 Final Fours, most recently in 2022. The last three seasons have all ended in the NCAA tournament. The current season begins in the top 10.

Along the way, TB has had the chance to meet hundreds of Princeton men's lacrosse players, and they are among the best people he's met in his life. The experiences he's had with Princeton Lacrosse have taken him literally all over the world. 

When the time comes some day from him to think back on his career and asks the question "what it worth it," the answer will be a resounding "yes."

Ah, but he's not there yet. The thrill of another season is building. It's what Bill Tierney always used to say — each season is its own entity, its own challenge, its own reason to be excited. 

That's how you stay young. 

"My Brother Has Some Wings On Me"

TigerBlog was talking to someone the other day about the nature of sports when he heard this perfect description:

"Sports is life condensed into a few hours."

TB was really taken aback by that. He really likes that. 

Specifically, it's a reference to the emotional swings that can found in athletic competition and how they can run the gamut across all points of the compass. It's about more than just winning and losing. 

It's about how much of oneself an athlete has to invest to reach the fullest potential and then to put yourself on display to be judged publicly, with nowhere to hide. How many setbacks can there be, how many moments of joy — and they can lead one into another in rapid succession. 

Where else are you going to find that? 

If you followed anything to do with the Senior Bowl this past Saturday, you definitely got to see it all. And it certainly hit close to home for Princeton.

The game-winning touchdown was scored by TCU wide receiver Jack Bech on the final play of the game. Bech wore No. 7 in the game. The play started with seven seconds to play. The pass came from quarterback Seth Henigan, from the University of Memphis.

That would be the Memphis TIGERS.

Bech wore No. 18 for the Horned Frogs this year, when he put up one of the best seasons in program history for a wide receiver. His 1,034 receiving yards were the fourth-most in a single season at TCU, and he had nine touchdown receptions on his 62 receptions. 

He had 200 yards on nine receptions in a 35-34 loss to the University of South Florida, making him one of only five players from a Power Four Conference school to reach 200 receiving yards in a game this past season. He was a second-team All-Big 12 selection and an honorable mention All-American, among many other awards.

Bech is projected as a third or fourth round pick in this coming NFL Draft. He certainly helped his cause with his performance at the Senior Bowl, where he caught six passes for 68 yards in addition to the game-winning catch.

There was so much more to it than just the numbers and the winning play.

Jack Bech is the younger brother of Tiger Bech, the Princeton football alum who was killed in the terrorist attack in New Orleans in the early hours of New Year's Day. The Bech family has been remarkable in how it has so publicly grieved and done so much to keep Tigers' memory alive. 

They have focused on who Tiger was, what a bright light he was able to shine on the world in his 27 years. They've done so in a way that is so genuine and so inspirational that you can't help but manage a bit of a smile when you think of them, after everything that they've been through.

"It's simple, my brother has some wings on me," Bech said after the game to NFL.com's Tom Pelissero. "He gave them to me and let all of that all take place.

Maybe you saw the long embrace between Jack and his parents after the game. It was so emotional, so powerful. 

"My brother had some wings on me."

One month after tragically losing his brother, @TCUFootball's Jack Bech scored the game-winning TD and won @seniorbowl MVP 💜 @tompelissero pic.twitter.com/8Rlw1vlK3O

— NFL Network (@nflnetwork) February 1, 2025

TigerBlog had a chance to spend some time with Michelle Bech, Tiger's mother, and Ryan Quigley, his teammate and best friend, shortly after the tragedy. The more he's come to know about the Bech family and those close to them, the more impressive they all become. 

To see what happened at the Senior Bowl was just extraordinary. It was another moment where there were memories of Tiger everywhere.

And that's just how the Bech family wants it. And needs it. 

"Sports is life condensed into a few hours."

That was rarely truer than it was Saturday at the Senior Bowl. 

To The Groundhog

Okay, once again, TigerBlog has to point out the obvious.

If the groundhog's forecasting prowess can determine whether or not there will be an early spring or six more weeks of winter, then those two outcomes are supposed to be radically different. Of course, six more weeks from Feb. 2 is March 16, which is five days before the end of winter. 

In other words, six more weeks of winter and an early spring are the same thing. Then again, what do you expect from getting highly scientific weather analysis from a rodent?

Yesterday was Groundhog Day, when said rodent gets to make the annual prediction about how much more winter there will be. It wasn't that big of a deal until 1993, when the movie of the same name was released. 

Somehow, it didn't earn a single Academy Award nomination. And yet? There aren't too many movies that are thought of more fondly than "Groundhog Day," which was funny and touching and clever. 

It also made "Groundhog Day" a term used to refer to things that happen over and over, as opposed to weather prediction. That's not easy to do.

Anyway, March 16, in addition to being six weeks from Groundhog Day, will also be the championship game of the Ivy League men's basketball tournament. The women's final will be the day before.

The tournament will be held at Brown, by the way. 

If the tournament were to start today, only Princeton would be in both the men's and women's tournaments. Of course, there is a very, very long way to go until then. 

Princeton's women improved to 6-1 in the league with a pair of wins this weekend, taking down 74-38 and Brown 60-47. Back when Pete Carril was the Princeton men's coach, TigerBlog used to think that holding a pair of opponents under 100 points for a weekend was an extraordinary accomplishment.

It's even more impressive these days, with the shorter shot clock, the more athletic teams, the greater balance in the league, more reliable three-point shooters. Carla Berube's Princeton teams still emphasize defense above all else, and the results speak for themselves.

The score of the Princeton-Brown game may make it seem like it was a comfortable win, but it was anything but. In fact, it was a 43-43 game at the end of the third quarter, and Brown had the home court and the confidence that grows as you come closer and closer to an upset.

Instead, the fourth quarter was all Princeton. The Tigers shut out Brown for the first 7:07 and allowed only four points for the entire 10 minutes. Princeton, meanwhile, ripped off the first 13 points of the quarter, including getting back-to-back threes from Fadima Tall, who finished with a career high of 18 points.

As the women are at the midway point, Columbia is 7-0, followed by the 6-1 Tigers, 5-2 Harvard and 4-3 Brown. Every other league team has at least five losses.

Winning a road game against a good team when it's tied after three quarters is impressive. So too is what the Princeton men's team did Saturday, at home against Brown.

Princeton came into the game having lost two straight league games, including one Friday night against Yale, who swept the weekend at Princeton and Penn to stay unbeaten through six games. Brown came into the game having won at Penn Friday night. 

That's a different kind of challenge. How did Princeton handle it? 

The Tigers sprinted away from Brown with a 20-5 run midway through the first half and then held off any move from the Bears, winning 69-49. It was an impressive start to finish performance from a team that had to turn the page quickly after the game Friday night.

As a side note, Princeton's dynamic junior duo of Caden Pierce and Xaivian Lee are closing in on 1,000 points each. As the Tigers prepare to head to the Palestra Friday night, Lee is sitting on 992, while Pierce is at 989. 

For the men, the standings now have Yale at 6-0, Cornell at 5-1, Princeton at 4-2 and Dartmouth at 3-3. Brown, Harvard and Penn are all 2-4, while Columbia is 0-6.

There's a long way to go between now and Ivy Madness. And Groundhog Madness, with its early spring and six more weeks of winter all rolled into one.