Happy Faces

If you happened to visit goprincetontigers.com between Sunday evening and yesterday afternoon, you probably noticed the same thing TigerBlog did.

There were lots of happy faces belonging to Princeton athletes.

The first three stories featured the best kinds of pictures that GPT has. Championship celebration ones.

Those are the best ones. The team has just won a championship, and now they're all together celebrating. It's just raw happiness on the task that has been accomplished, and it comes across very clearly in the photos.

Fortunately, TigerBlog has worked at a place all these years that has earned a lot of these pictures. And every single one of them has been great.

And there they were Sunday, three in a row - women's lightweight rowing, women's lacrosse and men's track and field.

TB wrote about the men's track and field championship yesterday. You can read about it HERE, with way more HERE.

The women's lightweight rowing team won its first Eastern Sprints title since 2011 and seventh overall. The Tigers have now improved from third two years ago to second last year to first this year.

Princeton won by 1.5 seconds over Boston University, who won the championship in two of the last three years and was the defending champion. Next up for the Tigers are the national championships in California June 1.

As for women's lacrosse, the Tigers followed up their Ivy League regular season championship with another Ivy tournament title to earn another photo of happy players.

The Tigers lost to Brown 12-11 in their second Ivy League game back in March, and they followed that with a loss to Maryland in its next game. At that point, TB looked up when Princeton's last three-game losing streak was, and you had to go back to 2010 to find the only three-game losing streak Princeton has had in the last 16 years.

Maybe instead of that, he should have looked up when Princeton's last nine-game winning streak was, because that's how many straight Princeton has now won.

The Tigers ran the Ivy League table, getting a share of their sixth straight league championship and then sweeping past Cornell 11-6 and Penn 13-9 in the Ivy tournament. TB went to look up the last time a team won both of its ILT games by at least four goals, and it turns out that 1) nobody ever had before this weekend and 2) the four-goal win over Penn in the final was the largest margin of victory of any team in an ILT women's final.

Princeton, by the way, has now won two straight and four of six Ivy tournaments. The five won by the Tigers are the most of any program, two better than Penn with three (nobody else has more than one).

Kyla Sears was the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament, and it was really well-deserved. Sears was off-the-charts great in the final, with two goals and five assists and one highlight reel play after another.

She scored one goal where she drew two defenders to her with a stick fake and then split them to get above goal line extended, and she later looked off Penn's entire defense and then made a simple feed on the backside to Julia Haney.

The first one, by the way, ended up as the No. 9 play of the day on SportsCenter.

Kyla Sears and Princeton make #SCTop10! pic.twitter.com/oafw65Wj24

— Princeton WLAX (@princetonwlax) May 6, 2019

 

Princeton, though, got huge performances from basically every player in the game. It was everything a team championship is supposed to be, from the goalie and entire defense that held Penn to just three second-half goals to another dominant performance by Elizabeth George and to freshman Lillian Stout, who come on in the second half to take the draws, finishing with three draw controls and allowing Princeton to win 7 of 11 after the break after winning 3 of 13 in the first half.

The reward for Princeton is a home game, or possibly two, in the NCAA tournament. The Tigers earned the seventh seed, which means the first two rounds will be on Sherrerd Field.

Before the first two rounds will be the opening round, which will be held today. Wagner, the Northeast Conference champ, is at Fairfield, the MAAC winner.

The winner of that game takes on Princeton in the second game of the doubleheader Friday, which starts at 4 as Loyola faces Richmond. Then it's the Princeton game at 7.

The winners of those two will play Sunday for a spot in the quarterfinals, which almost surely will mean a date with No. 2 Boston College, the team that knocked Princeton out a year ago.

In other words, there's not a lot of time for Princeton to celebrate its Ivy League tournament championship.

On the bright side, the pictures will last forever.

The Triple Crown

Today's subject is "Triple Crowns."

TigerBlog will start with the four-legged variety. He's not a huge fan of horse racing in general. He's never even bet on a horse race in his life, though he did grow up about five miles from Freehold Raceway.

TB did learn something this past weekend about horse racing though - quarter horses can run a lot faster than thoroughbreads, and there was a time when the All-American Futurity paid the winner more than the three Triple Crown races combined.

As of which, TB couldn't remember the name of the horse that won the Triple Crown a year ago. Turns out it was Justify, who became the 13th Triple Crown winner and second in fourth year, after American Pharaoh in 2015.

TB will watch the Kentucky Derby is nothing else is on, and he didn't pay close attention to the one that was run this past Saturday. He did think "Maximum Security" was a good name for a racehorse.

It made him wonder what he'd name a horse if he had one to name. Guess he'd just go with "HorseBlog."

Anyway, TB noticed that Maximum Security won, news that left him unmoved. It wasn't until after the race ended that it became interesting.

It started on Twitter with some curious comments about drama at the Derby, which got TB to look into it further and see that Maximum Security was disqualified. TB has no idea why or if it happened to be a good call.

He does now that it was a decision that made millions and millions of dollars change hands, over what apparently was a very ticky tack foul.

The winner then became a longshot, Country Kitchen or Country House or something like that. TB senses for no reason that Country House has little chance to win the Preakness, which will take all of the juice out of the Belmont.

Doesn't matter. TB wasn't going to watch anyway.

So that's the four-legged Triple Crown part.

Then there's the two-legged variety.

Princeton won the Ivy League Heptagonal Outdoor Track and Field championship this weekend on Weaver Track, rolling up 182 points to outdistance runner-up Penn, who had 123. There are 22 events at Ivy Heps for men's track and field, and Princeton earned points in an astonishing 21 of them.

Speaking of astonishing, the win at Outdoor Heps gave Princeton a sweep of the three Heps titles this year, for the Ivy Heps version of the Triple Crown.
This was the first time Princeton has won the Triple Crown since ... last year. In fact Princeton has now won eight straight Heps events, sweeping this year and last year and winning the two track and field titles the year before that.

It's also the ninth Triple Crown for Princeton in its history. No other men's team has ever done it even once, and the only women's program to do it is Princeton, who has done it twice.

Adam Kelly, the NCAA runner-up in the weight throw indoors, was named the co-Most Outstanding Field Performer after he won his second-straight hammer throw. 

The Tigers really started to take control of the meet in Saturday's last event, the 10,000 meter run. Connor Lundy came from way back to finish second, and the Tigers had 14 points in the event after Viraj Deokar and Matt Grossman followed Lundy in fourth and fifth.

Princeton also scored 55 points between the triple jump, high jump and and long jump. It was more than just one event, though, as Princeton had a dominant weekend.

You can read the entire recap HERE.

As for the Princeton women, they finished fourth. Sophomore Obiageri Amaechi was named the Most Outstanding Field Performer as well, with her Princeton and Ivy record 190-1 discus throw, sixth-best in the NCAA so far this season.

Fellow sophomore Rylie Pease won the javelin. Another sophomore, Alexandra Munson, smashed her previous best to finish second in the pole vault at 12-7.5

Lastly, anytime Princeton wins another Heps, you have to take a step back to once again marvel at the career that Fred Samara has put together as Tiger head coach. Between cross country and indoor and outdoor track and field, that's how many championships for Samara?

Oh yeah. This weekend made 46.

That's a ridiculous amount of winning.

Championships At Stake

BrotherBlog is teaching about free speech this afternoon.

Otherwise, he'd be watching Princeton women's tennis in the NCAA tournament at the University of Washington, whose law school happens to be his employer. TigerBlog, thinking about an effective marketing strategy, suggested his brother give the class the day off on the condition they go the tennis match and root for the Tigers.

Hey, it's not even like they're playing against U-Dub.

It's Princeton against Northwestern in the opening round of the NCAA tournament in Seattle. For the Tigers, it's the fifth NCAA appearance in six years and seventh in the last 11.

The other match at that site will feature the host Huskies against Army-West Point. The winners will meet tomorrow afternoon.

Perhaps BB can commit to attending if the Tigers are still playing. It won't be easy.

Northwestern is making its 30th NCAA appearance, including its 24th straight. A year ago Northwestern won two NCAA matches to reach the round of 16.

These Wildcats are ranked 27th in the country. Princeton is ranked 34th. Washington is ranked 10th and is hosting for the first time in 16 years.

Somewhat amazingly, there aren't really all that many athletic events left to the 2018-19 academic year. That's what happens when May rolls around.

There are some huge ones left, and the women's tennis is not the only one with a huge weekend, though they have had to travel the furthest.

The men's and women's track and field teams won't have to travel at all to compete for their Ivy League championships. The Heptagonal outdoor event will be held at Weaver Track and Field Stadium tomorrow and Sunday.

The Princeton men are chasing a second-straight Triple Crown after having won the cross country and indoor track and field championships. In fact, Princeton has won seven straight Heps titles across the three seasons.

This weekend also features the 10th Ivy League men's and women's lacrosse tournaments.

The first eight men's tournaments were held on the campus of the top seed before last year's moved to Columbia. The first nine women's tournaments were also held at the top seed, but this year the women are joining the men in New York City.

Had the old rules still been in place, Princeton would be planning to host the women's tournament, since the Tigers are again the top seed. Instead, it's a chance to experience the neutral site in the big city.

Princeton takes on fourth-seeded Cornell in the second semifinal this afternoon, with the opening draw at 5. Dartmouth and Penn open the tournament at 2; the final is Sunday at 1:30.

The Ivy League tournament determines only the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The 2019 champions will be Princeton and Dartmouth, who both finished at 6-1 in the regular season. Princeton is the top seed by virtue of its win over the Big Green in Hanover.

Realistically, Princeton has nothing to worry about when it comes to being in the NCAA tournament. The Tigers have six wins over Top 25 teams, and two of their three losses are to No. 1 Maryland and No. 6 Virginia.

What's at stake then?

Well, first of all, there's the opportunity to play at home in the NCAAs. The NCAA women's lacrosse committee had Princeton at No. 7 in their rankings a week ago, which would equal a home game and first-round bye. That's a pretty tangible thing on the line.

Then there's what Princeton head coach Chris Sailer said on her weekly podcast with TigerBlog this week. It was something along the line of "when there's a championship to play for, we want to win that championship."

It's a pretty good attitude to have.

To win this championship, Princeton is first going to have to beat a team that it just did six days ago. The Tigers defeated Cornell 18-15 last Saturday in Ithaca, running out to a 12-5 halftime lead and a 14-5 lead in the second half before the Big Red finished strong.

Cornell always plays Princeton tough, and the Big Red are playing to get into the NCAAs. Plus, Cornell figures to have gotten a lot of confidence from the way the second half went last week.

Should Princeton get past Cornell, up next would be two teams whom the Tigers defeated by two goals, snapping tie games in the final three minutes both times.

Winning this tournament won't be easy. Then again, not much about this season has been easy for Princeton, but the Tigers are still Ivy League champions again, for the sixth straight year.

So that's women's tennis far way, men's and women's track and field at home and women's lacrosse not too far but not as close as it otherwise might have been.

On Sale Now

Click HERE to buy Princeton football season tickets
Click HERE to buy Princeton-Dartmouth tickets for the game at Yankee Stadium
 
Well, it's May already, which means of course that it's time to talk Princeton football.

The 2018 season, as you recall,  ended somewhat perfectly. Actually, you don't need the "somewhat" in there.

Princeton went 10-0 in 2018, winning its third Ivy title in six years and second in three years. The Tigers were unbeaten for the first time in 54 years and had the highest-scoring offense in Ivy League history, with 47 points per game and eight games of at least 40 points.

Princeton also proved it could win when the points weren't coming as easily. The biggest game of the year was in Week 8, when the Tigers defeated Dartmouth 14-9 in what essentially was the Ivy League championship game. Dartmouth finished its season 9-1.

So what's next?

Well, for starters, a history lesson.

Princeton and Rutgers played in the first college football game, back on Nov. 6, 1869, in New Brunswick, on the site where the College Ave. Gym now stands. A week later, the teams met in Princeton.

From the Princeton Companion:
The twenty-five players from each college played in their street clothes, and the several hundred spectators stood around on the side or sat on a wooden fence. There were no coaches, no officials, no programs -- the Rutgers Targum, on which we chiefly depend for the record of the game, tells us that Princeton's first goal was made ``by a well directed kick, from a gentleman whose name we don't know, but who did the best kicking on the Princeton side.'' The Targum is equally silent about the identity of the first wrongway player in American football history, a Rutgers man ``who, in his ardor, forgot which way he was kicking,'' and scored for Princeton instead of Rutgers. By agreement, the home team's style of play was used, and Rutgers won, 6 goals to 4; a week later, Princeton won the return match on its grounds, 8 goals to 0. 

The 2019 season will mark the celebration of 150 years of college football, and obviously Princeton will be mentioned often. Perhaps as a way of honoring that first game, TigerBlog should write a similar sentence in a story this year:
"He ran for a touchdown. No idea who it was, but it looked good."

That would go over really well, he's pretty sure.

TB has always wondered what that first game must have looked like. He's seen drawings, but is that how it actually was?

And what if you brought the players from that day back to see what the sport has become in the last 150 years? Or what will it look like 150 years from now?

Meanwhile, back in 2019, Princeton will have five home games this  season, and one game at Yankee Stadium. That game, the Nov. 9 game against Dartmouth, will be during the week of the 150th anniversary.

Princeton will open the season Sept. 21 at home against Butler. After that, it's a trip to Bucknell, a place where TB saw one of the two muddiest football games he's ever seen, a 10-6 Bison win in 1996. The other was in 1990, when Trenton State College defeated Ramapo 9-0, by the way.

Princeton is then home on back-to-back Saturdays against Columbia and Lafayette, and then it's six Ivy games to end the year: at Brown, home against Harvard, at Cornell, the game against Dartmouth in Yankee Stadium, home against Yale and at Penn.

As you remember, the Ivy schedule change last year saw the Tigers at Harvard and Yale. This year, both are home.

This happened in 1886 as well. TB will make one prediction for Princeton's 2019 season - the scores against Harvard and Yale will be different than they were that year, when the Tigers defeated Harvard 12-0 and tied Yale 0-0.

Yeah, 1886 was the only other time this has happened, when Princeton played both at home.

Anyway, why talk Princeton football in the earliest days of May?

Because season tickets went on sale yesterday. TB included the link above for season tickets (which are $44 for faculty, staff and children and $59 for alums and the general public) and the link for Yankee Stadium tickets.

It's already well past the halfway point between the end of last year's 10-0 season and the start of the 2019 season. Opening kickoff will be here shortly.

Princeton football 2019. The 150th anniversary season.

Tickets on sale now.

Good Luck Courtney

TigerBlog remembers his first podcast with Courtney Banghart.

It was also his first podcast ever, so he had no idea what to expect. He told her that if they messed up, they could either start over and keep going and edit it later. He figured it would be a constant starting and stopping, a lot of "oh wait, that sounded dumb, can we fix it?"

Then he and Courtney began talking. And then, 15 minutes later, they were done. Simple.

TB and Courtney repeated this process every week for the last two years. They even came up with a great name for a basketball coach's podcast: "The Court Report."

In all the times they did their podcast together, they never once had to stop because they'd messed up. They had a good chemistry from the start, and their 15 or so minutes each week always seemed to fly by easily.

As TB thinks about those podcasts, though, it's the time before and after them that really resonates now. There would always be a conversation, about anything, everything or nothing, but always a conversation.

And out of those conversations TB really grew to know who Courtney was, and how she thought, and where she eventually saw herself, and what went on in her mind.

Because of that, TB can say two things for certain: 1) when he found out she was leaving Princeton to take over at North Carolina, he wasn't surprised and 2) he knows how hard it is for her to leave this place.

If you think Courtney stepped away easily, you're wrong. She gave a lot to Princeton, building a program from the ground up, to where it is now - a model of success by every conceivable measure.

Along the way, she developed incredible relationships with so many different constituencies. She was a constant presence all over campus and the local area, speaking to any number of groups about basketball and leadership and anything else.

The alumni group, which in women's basketball is extremely close and extremely loyal, embraced her as well as one of their own, even if she was a Dartmouth alum. It didn't matter what decade you had played women's basketball at Princeton; you were on board with Courtney, and she embraced you.

Mostly, she developed really strong ties with her players. She got them to believe in themselves, and she got them to believe that any basketball goal they had was attainable at Princeton.

And then she backed it up.

She took a program that had never been to the NCAA tournament and went there eight times. She won seven Ivy League championships and, beyond that, even got her team in the dance one time as an at-large, something that has never happened any other time in Ivy League basketball, men or women.

She got her team into the Top 25. She won an NCAA tournament game, the second in Ivy history. She sent players to the professional ranks in Europe, and to the WNBA.

And she produced model citizens, ones who won the top awards at this University, including the Pyne Prize this current year for senior Sydney Jordan.

Also, as TB has said many times, she turned her team's games into events. Attendance has skyrocketed. The audience has changed - Banghart created a male audience for her team, something TB would never have imagined when he first started watching the team 30 years ago. 

Leaving that was not easy. Courtney wrestled with it.

But as she said to TB many times before or after their podcasts, she had been in the Ivy League since she was 17, first as a player at Dartmouth, and then as an assistant coach. And then, at age 29, the head coach at Princeton.

Her first season was 7-23. Her second was 14-14. Her third was 26-3. There's been no looking back. She won more than 80 percent of her Ivy League games, a figure that goes to just short of 90 percent when you take away the 8-15 record of her first 23 Ivy games.

Since then? How does 129-16 sound.

She was also 5-1 in Ivy League tournament games, with three championship game appearances in the three years of the event and championships the last two years.

Now she's off to North Carolina. It's a name synonymous with basketball, that's for sure.

She'll throw herself into that challenge the way she did into this one, and TB has no doubt that there are great days ahead for UNC women's basketball.

As for Princeton women's basketball, the Tigers are in great shape. They figure to be the preseason favorite in the Ivy League again, and the 2019-20 season will feature Bella Alarie's run for a third straight Ivy Player of the Year award and the program's career record for points.

There are a ton of great young players in the program, and the future is very bright. Courtney is leaving the Tigers in great shape.

What's her legacy from her time at Princeton? Well, it depends on how much you want to hold it against her that she was only here for 12 years. Was that long enough to stamp herself as the greatest women's basketball coach in Ivy League history? 

North Carolina made its announcement yesterday morning, complete with a picture of Courtney in Carolina blue. TB thinks it was actually Photoshopped.

It doesn't matter. She's a Tar Heel now.

But she'll always carry Princeton with her. It was here that she learned to be a head coach and then excelled as a head coach. It's here that she touched so many people, won so many championships, played in so many big games, brought in so many great players - and mostly built a program that everyone at Princeton loved.

Leaving that wasn't easy.

Even if it was time.

After Perfection

TigerBlog has two pairs of black Princeton-issue sneakers that are not exactly identical, though they're very similar.

When he left for Cornell for lacrosse Friday, he put on one pair of them - or at least he thought he did. It wasn't until he got to the hotel in Ithaca that he realized that he'd actually taken the left sneaker of one pair and the right sneaker of the other pair.

TB isn't sure if the most amazing thing is that he did that in the first place or that nobody all weekend noticed. On the other hand, maybe people did notice but were just too polite to say anything.

It's not like he had one black sneaker and one orange or something ridiculous. But they did not match. He's not even sure how he did that. 

That was one fascinating thing about TB's weekend.

Another was the NFL draft.

TigerBlog was following the draft on an app that would denote the player selected and then immediately assign a letter grade from A to F for the pick. C'mon now. How in the world can anyone know who will succeed and who won't.

For all of the coverage of the draft and for everything that goes into the picks, the reality is that what, half of the first round picks will never become stars? And half of the third rounders will?

The Giants selection of Duke quarterback Daniel Jones with the sixth overall pick sums the whole thing up perfectly. Jones might be great. Jones might be a bust.

Nobody will know this for a few years though.

You can't judge a draft on the night of the draft. You have to wait to see how it plays out.

Yes, it's fun to mock players when they're picked. And fans get into it.

Still, none of it matters. Will Jones be better than the other quarterbacks who were picked later, especially Ohio State's Dwayne Haskins? Maybe. Maybe not. TB has no idea.

TB does know that Jones was originally going to come to Princeton before he changed his mind and went to Duke.

Now, imagine how this might have played out for the Tigers. Jones is the sixth pick in the NFL draft. But what if he had come to Princeton?

Well, the Tigers couldn't have been any better with him than they were without him. They were perfect without him this past year, going 10-0 and putting together the best offense in the history of the Ivy League - 47.0 points per game and eight games with at least 40.

And each of the last three years, a Princeton quarterback has won the Bushnell Cup as the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year, John Lovett in 2016 and 2018 and Chad Kanoff in between.

It's weird to think that way, but the No. 6 pick in the draft might not have helped Princeton.

As for Lovett, he signed a free agent contract with the Kansas City Chiefs. His teammate Stephen Carlson signed with the Cleveland Browns as a tight end; the Browns already have Princeton alum Seth DeValve on the team.

Carlson was a wide receiver at Princeton, but he has an NFL tight end's body and is at his best near the goal line. In fact, he is third all-time at Princeton with 16 TD receptions.

 He caught 51 passes for 683 yards and five touchdowns last year on the 10-0 team, and he is also eighth all-time in receiving yards with 1,632 and 10th in receptions with 125.

As for Lovett, he could be a real NFL gem if given the chance. TigerBlog was really impressed with how New Orleans used Taysom Hill a year ago, as a quarterback, runner, receiver and special teams player. Lovett can do all of those things.

TB doesn't think Lovett was ever on special teams, but he did everything else on that list. He's an incredible short yardage guy who can throw or catch a pass. To have that varied of a skillset is rare. TB knows that Kansas City has a lot of quarterbacks, but they didn't sign Lovett to be a classic QB. They don't exactly need one of them.

TB loves his chances.

If you've seen Lovett lately, you might have noticed that he certainly looks like an NFL player. As in he's gigantic.

Princeton was perfect a year ago. The reward for these two is what's coming after perfection.

And Women's Lacrosse Makes 10

Tess D'Orsi was flying down the left side. Elizabeth George was flying down the right side.

The Princeton women's lacrosse team was flying towards an Ivy League championship. Princeton was flying towards its 10th Ivy title - and 12th overall title - of the academic year.

A day in Ithaca that started out with snow showers and an excruciating loss for the Tiger men's lacrosse team didn't end too badly.

The Princeton women's lacrosse team defeated Cornell 18-15 to win its sixth straight Ivy League championship and earn the No. 1 seed in this weekend's Ivy League tournament. Of the 33 goals in the game, none was prettier than this one:

GOAL! Elizabeth George has a set of wheels and she hits the top left corner!https://t.co/MnLAZh32ns pic.twitter.com/YAHaC8Ajgv

— Princeton WLAX (@princetonwlax) April 27, 2019

TigerBlog was in the press box at Schoellkopf Field watching both ends of the doubleheader. The goal that George scored seemed preordained as she sprinted down the field, even before D'Orsi got her the ball perfectly. And when Elizabeth George is coming at you full speed, you don't have much of a chance to do anything about it.

While that goal seemed inevitable, this sixth-straight championship did not.

Princeton won its Ivy opener back on March 2 over Columbia 19-1 and then jumped out to a 9-2 lead in 12 minutes against Brown in its second Ivy game three weeks later. From there, the wheels came off, Brown battled back and Princeton left Sherrerd Field shocked by a 12-11 defeat.

The road to an Ivy title at that point was going to be anything but smooth.

The good news for the Tigers was that they knew on that day that if they won their last five, they'd have that sixth straight championship. The bad news was that to do so, Princeton was going to have to win on the road at Dartmouth, at Penn, home against Harvard, at Yale and lastly at Cornell.

Given that Dartmouth and Penn are Top 20 teams and that Cornell is a fierce rival, this was not going to be easy. And it wasn't. Maybe that makes this one especially sweet.

In fact, Princeton would win all five of those games. Of those five wins, three would be by two goals and one would be by three. No, this wasn't easy.

Princeton first needed a great play by Kyla Sears on a loose ball and then feed to Kathryn Hallett for the late game-winner in a 14-12 win at Dartmouth. Then there was the matter of the three non-releaseable two-minute yellow cards in the final eight minutes, including two that overlapped, which led to the game-winning goal by George while the Tigers were still down a player in a 13-11 win.

Then it was 14-12 over Harvard. Then 19-4 over Yale. And finally Saturday, it was Cornell, and the need to win once again away. As it turned out, the need to win on the home field of the other three teams in the Ivy League tournament.

Princeton did so, running out to a nine-goal lead in the second half and then having to hold off a furious charge by the Big Red. When it was over, it was the sixth-straight title and 15th in program history, all led by head coach Chris Sailer.

Next up is the Ivy League tournament at Columbia, where Princeton will be matched again with Cornell, the fourth seed, Friday at 5, after Dartmouth and Penn play at 2.

For Princeton, it was also Ivy League championship No. 10 for the 2018-19 academic year. It's always a goal for the Tigers to reach double figures in an academic year, and now it's happened again.

It's also the 12th team championship, as two other Princeton teams who compete in non-Ivy leagues also won this year. For the complete list you have:
fall Ivy champs - football, men's cross country, men's soccer, women's soccer
winter Ivy champs - women's basketball, women's hockey, men's indoor track and field
spring (so far) - women's tennis, men's golf, women's lacrosse

There have also been championships for men's water polo and men's volleyball.

If you're looking for a really good measure of sustained athletic success, it's this: Princeton has now reached double figures in Ivy championships in 26 different academic years. Harvard has done it 10 times. No other Ivy team has ever done it.

Congratulations to all of Princeton's champions for this academic year.

And to the women's lacrosse team.

That one was not easy. 

Princeton has now reached double figures in

The Greatness Of Kevin Lowe

Records, as they say, are meant to be tied.

Or at least that's how it is with the record for points in a career for Princeton men's lacrosse.

Kevin Lowe started his career with a goal and two assists against Johns Hopkins in 1991 and ended it with an overtime goal to beat Virginia in the 1994 NCAA championship game. That last goal gave him 247 career points, and that number has spent 25 years as untouchable.

It's not that great players didn't take their best shot at it. Ryan Boyle came the closest, finishing with 232. There were four other players who reached 200 points, and that group is an extraordinary one - Jon Hess, Jesse Hubbard, Mike MacDonald and Tom Schreiber. None of them had more than 215, which means none of them came all that close to Lowe.

Now, though, that magic number of 247 has been equaled. It's not stunning - it's been obvious this would be happening for almost three years now.

With his 10 points against Harvard last weekend, Princeton junior Michael Sowers now has tied Lowe with 247 career points. With his next point, Sowers will be in sole possession of the record, and with every one after that, he will begin to put the record so far out of reach that it'll be similar to what Bill Bradley did in men's basketball back in 1965.

Just as in Bradley's case, nobody will ever approach what Sowers is doing.

The numbers that Sowers is putting up are insane. He has the highest points per game average in Division I in the last 38 years (and the fifth best ever), and when it comes to assists, his per game average is fourth all-time and the best in 35 years.

When it comes to single-season scoring at Princeton, he is first, second and third. That's also ridiculous.

It took Sowers 41 games to get to 247. It took Lowe 60. Of those 101 games the two have played between them, TigerBlog estimates he was at probably 85 of them.

He also estimates that only one person has been to more of those games than he has, and that's Bryce Chase, the longtime member of the program who has seen more Princeton men's lacrosse than anyone.

"The way I judge people in sports," Bryce says, "is how do they make the people around them better. Kevin Lowe was the best here at making people around him better. Well, Kevin and now Michael. Ryan Boyle is the smartest lacrosse player I've ever seen. Kevin and Michael are the best at making the people around them better."

TigerBlog has spent the last three years chronicling Sowers' achievements, and as such, he's also spent a lot of time writing about Lowe as well. As in, "Sowers is on pace to catch Lowe" or "Sowers is the fastest to 100 points since Lowe." That kind of stuff.

Now that Sowers has caught Lowe, TB wanted to make sure people don't forget how great a player Kevin Lowe was.

When TB and Bryce were talking about their memories of Lowe's playing days here, they both remembered the same play, where Lowe, falling out of bounds along the sidelines, threw a 25-or-so-yard pass for an assist. 

What else does TigerBlog remember about Kevin Lowe as a player, other than that he remains the only player ever to score an overtime game in the NCAA and Major League Lacrosse championship games?

First, he is the smoothest player TB has ever seen. There was never any wasted motion or effort ever. It's one of the first things TB noticed about him. Every movement was perfectly efficient.

Second, there was his vision. He could see everything. He was a high school quarterback (and safety) and point guard, and he could see everything.

TB remembers him clearly, his head up at all times, always feathering the right pass to the right player at the right moment.

In many ways, Lowe is a bit overlooked as a player, possibly because he wasn't the flashiest player ever.

"He could make it look effortless," Bryce says. "The game would end and you'd say 'well Kevin didn't have a great game.' Then you'd look and he had one and four."

TigerBlog called Lowe earlier this week to talk about how Sowers tied his record, what he thinks of Sowers, if he expected to have his record last as long as it did.

It's always good to talk to him. These days, he has three kids, the oldest of whom is a high school freshman and lacrosse player. Lowe has spent a great deal of time coaching his kids through the years.

"Sowers is a scoring machine," Lowe says. "It was pretty clear that he was going to get there. It was just a matter of when. I've seen him play live several times. He's quick. He's aggressive. He's bold. He's fun to watch."

The game was different when Lowe played. Princeton played a slower pace, and the Tigers often took three, four, five or more minutes off the clock on possessions when they had the lead in the fourth quarter.

"I can count the number of fast break goals I scored on one hand," Lowe said, laughing. "It's different now. It was a crawl to 10 goals back then. We'd get up and then we'd put the clamps on."

They're certainly different players. Lowe was 6-1, 180 as a player, which makes him about five inches taller than Sowers. Lowe wasn't as quick as Sowers, and he couldn't change direction like Sowers can (but then again, it's possible that nobody else who's ever played can do that).

They both, though, were pure quarterbacks of an offense. Get the ball to them, and good things are likely to happen.

As Bryce said, their ability to make everyone around them better is their most defining characteristic. That an extraordinary vision. They share both of those qualities.

For now, they also share a record. Sowers has a chance tomorrow to take sole possession of the record when the Tigers play at Cornell. They need a win by at least three goals to reach the Ivy League tournament, and well, you're probably bored of reading about the rest of the craziness surrounding the tiebreakers.

So for today, you can read about Kevin Lowe. For his part, Sowers says that he's met Kevin Lowe: "I spoke with him after the fall banquet and after a few games. He's a great guy. Unfortunately, I've never seen any video of him as a player."

There are probably a lot of people who haven't.

You can get a sense of some of how he played HERE. He's No. 16. 

It's been 25 years, after all, since Kevin Lowe set his record. It stood for quarter-century, and it took an extraordinary talent to catch it.

But that doesn't take away from how great a player Lowe was.

"Michael is an amazing player," Lowe said. "He's got a long way to go too. He's going to get well past 300 points. That's not a number a lot of guys will ever get."

TigerBlog was honored to have Lowe be such a huge part of his introduction to this sport all those years ago.

And it's because he saw him play so much that he can really appreciate what it is that Sowers has done.

TigerBlog has told everyone who would listen that Sowers was going to destroy the record. He also said it wasn't just anyone's record.

It was Kevin Lowe's.

There haven't been too many players anywhere who have ever been better than he was.

A First Home Run And A Second NCAA

Well, that's what TigerBlog gets for not staying up until 2 am or so watching the Yankees-Angels game Tuesday night.

TB wrote about Mike Ford, the Princeton alum and 2013 Ivy League Pitcher and Player of the Year who is in the early stages of his Major League career, with the New York Yankees.

When TB wrote that entry, the Yankees had not yet started their game in Anaheim against the Angels, and Ford had one Major League hit. To that point, he'd been walked intentionally twice and had one hit, which TB presumes is a rarity.

Anyway, TB went to sleep without considering what might happen in the game in California. When he woke up, he saw that he'd missed quite a lot for Ford.

First, he hit a single. Then he followed that with another hit, giving him his first multi-hit game, and he did it in style, smashing a home run over the centerfield fence.

You can see the home run HERE. For those who think John Sterling's home run calls are cute and clever and creative (as opposed to tired and irritating), you can hear what he came up with for Ford.

If you watch the video, you'll see how Ford is trying to play it cool, even though you know he just wants to smile 10 times wider than he's permitting himself to in the moment. 

Congratulations to Mike Ford on his first Yankees home run. How many undrafted guys stick it out for seven years in the Minors before getting their first shot and end up homering?

It's a great story, one that TB would have included yesterday had he stayed up much, much later than he did.

As for today, the big story in Princeton Athletics is the men's volleyball team's NCAA tournament opener at Barton College in Wilson, N.C.

TigerBlog didn't know much about Barton, so he looked on their website to see what he could learn about the Bulldogs. For starters, he found out that Barton is a Division II program in most sports.

He also found out that like Princeton, Barton didn't lose any football games last season. For that matter, Barton hasn't lost in a long, long, long time.

In fact, the last time Barton lost a football game, Princeton's best player was named Dick Kazmaier. It turns out that Barton is reviving football after dropping the sport in 1950.

If the football team is anything like the men's volleyball team, it'll be competitive in no time. This is Year 8 of the men's volleyball program for Barton, and the team will be making its second NCAA appearance. 

Like Princeton, Barton advanced to the NCAA tournament by winning its conference championship in five, defeating King 17-15 in the final game to take the Conference Carolinas title. Barton and King have tied for the regular-season championship three straight years.

Barton, who is 25-4, has played two EIVA teams this year, losing to George Mason and defeating Harvard. The Bulldogs have a 12-man roster, and five of those players are from Europe - three from Greece, one each from Norway and Serbia.

Of those 12 players, by the way, 11 are between 6-3 and 6-8 and half are either 6-4 or 6-5. The 12th player is 5-8.

Exactly half of Princeton's 18-man roster is from California. There are also 14 players at least 6-4, including 6-11 George Huhmann, the EIVA Player of the Year and tournament MVP (he's from Missouri).

There are also two players from Puerto Rico and two Texans. The rest of the roster is one player each from Hawaii, Florida and Pennsylvania.

The winner of this match heads to Pepperdine Tuesday for the next round in the seven-team event. Hawaii, the top seed, and Long Beach State, the second seed, have byes into the semifinals. You can watch Princeton-Barton HERE, with a 7:30 start time.

The entire tournament takes little more than a week, with the national semifinals a week from today and then the final a week from Saturday.

Princeton, by the way, has moved into the national rankings at No. 13 after it dominated the EIVA this year. It's Princeton's first appearance in the rankings since 2015.

It's Princeton's second appearance in the NCAA tournament ever and first since 1998.

It happens tonight.

Once It's On The Resume

TigerBlog isn't quite sure what Ross Tucker's career goal was when he came to Princeton.

He doubts it's what it turned out to be - media megastar. If you follow the NFL or college football, then you've probably heard or seen Ross Tucker or TV or heard him on the radio.

Or maybe you're one of his Twitter followers. If not, you can follow him now, and if you time it right, you can be his 200,000th follower.

Now that he's wondering, TigerBlog looked it up. Ross was a politics major at Princeton, and he wrote his senior thesis on gender equity and Title IX. 

TB saw yesterday an announcement that Ross has been added to the Philadelphia Eagles preseason television broadcasts. He's already done a ton of NFL stuff on the radio, and he has a lot of experience broadcasting Ivy League football on television.

He's very good, very engaging. He analyzes the game really well, and he does so as if he's your friend from next door who invited you over to watch.

Maybe it's because TB has known him for a long time - does this count as name dropping? - but he feels like very few people on TV do a better job of letting their actual personality come out while they're broadcasting. He doesn't force anything. It's just a very natural presentation. 

Ross is a 2001 Princeton grad who was started out as a defensive lineman his freshman year and then became an offensive lineman his last three years. How good was he?

There's this from the release about his hire:
"Tucker enjoyed a seven-year NFL career as an offensive lineman."

When TB read that, it reminded him of a conversation he had with former Princeton men's basketball coach John Thompson III after he took Georgetown to the Final Four in 2007.

Once it's on the resume, TB told him, it stays there forever.

It's the same with Ross Tucker, NFL vet.

And it's the same with Mike Ford.

Perhaps you remember Ford from 2013, when he was both the Ivy League Player of the Year and Pitcher of the Year, making him the only Princeton player ever to achieve that double. He's also the only Ivy League player ever to win those two awards plus the Ivy Rookie of the Year Award, which he won in 2011.

It took Ford seven seasons in the minors before he got called up to the New York Yankees last week. He started the season at Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes Barre, where he had five home runs and 14 RBIs - as well as a .897 slugging percentage and a 1.364 OPS - in just 39 at-bats.

Those numbers got the Yankees' attention with all the injuries they've had.

Since then, he's had his first Major League hit - a double - and he's scored his first two Major League runs.

No matter what happens from here, he'll always know he's played in the Major Leagues. That's on the resume forever as well.

TigerBlog is, of course, struck by the fact that almost any Princeton alum in a professional sport automatically gets him rooting for that team, except Ford. It's still the Yankees, after all.

Meanwhile, the NHL playoffs continue along without the Detroit Red Wings, Vancouver Canucks and Ottawa Senators. As a result, the three Princeton seniors who made the NHL debuts this spring with those teams are back on campus, working on their theses and finishing their classes to graduate on time.

That part is as extraordinary as playing in the NHL.

Ryan Kuffner went from setting the program record for career goals to playing for the Red Wings. Josh Teves went straight to the Canucks.

Max Veronneau went on to the Senators, where he scored two goals and had two assists.

Now they're back at Princeton, back in classes and doing their independent research.

It has to be a fairly interesting perspective, going from playing your senior season to spending a few weeks traveling around on charter flights and staying in first class hotels while achieving what presumably is their lifelong dream and then coming back to being just another student at Princeton.

TigerBlog saw them at the men's lacrosse game against Siena, he thinks, when they came to see hockey teammate Luke Keenan make his lacrosse debut. They looked like any other college, students, which, of course, they are.

Again, though, no matter what happens, they'll always be NHL players. That'll be on their resumes forever.