Big Game In Cambridge

Here's a stat that is somewhat impressive: Since the start of the 2017 season, the Princeton and Harvard field hockey teams are a combined 77-1 against the rest of the Ivy League. 

Even in the heyday of the Princeton-Penn men's basketball rivalry, they never dominated the other league teams to that extent. TigerBlog hasn't done the research, though he's willing to guess that there has never been another example of two teams in the league who have won 77 of 78 against everyone else at any stretch.

And if it did happen? Then at worst, the current Princeton-Harvard run is only one game off of that.

With that sort of league preeminence, it's not surprising to learn each Princeton-Harvard game is a big one. The next one in the series comes up Saturday in Cambridge, where the teams square off for a noon start. 

Princeton comes into the game at 4-0 in the league. Harvard comes into the game at 4-0 in the league. Princeton has outscored its four Ivy opponents 10-2. Harvard has outscored its four Ivy opponents 19-5.

What's at stake? 

The winner of the game will hold the tiebreaker for the top seed and the host role in the Ivy League tournament, which takes place Nov. 8-10. It would also be assured of at least a share of the league title with one win in it last two games and an outright league title with two wins. 

The last time neither Princeton nor Harvard had at least a share of the Ivy title? How about 1993?

Princeton is 8-4 overall, with losses to No. 1 Northwestern, No. 2 North Carolina, No. 11 Syracuse and No. 15 Penn State (those are RPI rankings). Of those four losses, Princeton had the lead against Northwestern and Penn State and was tied in the second half with both UNC and Syracuse. 

Harvard is 10-2, with losses to UMass and Northwestern. In fact, both Princeton and Harvard lost to Northwestern by a 3-2 score. The Wildcats have allowed a total of seven goals in 13 games, with four of those against the Tigers and Crimson and three in the other 11 combined. 

Princeton is led, of course, by U.S. Olympian Beth Yeager, who leads the Ivy League in goals, assists and points. Yeager reminds TB of another Princeton athlete from a different sport, one who like Yeager is all over the field.

Yeager is technically a midfielder, mostly because there is no position called "everywhere." Does that remind you of anyone else? How about Zach Currier, the men's lacrosse player?

They have much in common. They are both tireless. They can both be found on the offensive or defensive end of the field. They can both do anything their team needs them to do. They both make everyone else on the field with them better. 

And, they are both tenacious, pesky players. If they're on your team, you love them. If they're on your opponent's team, you hate them — but have to grudgingly admit your respect for them.

Princeton is not a one-woman show, of course.

Sophomore Ottilie Sykes is the current Ivy Defensive Player of the Week, after being the league Co-Rookie of the Year last year. There are six freshmen who play regularly. Ella Cashman makes her impact felt for pretty much all 60 minutes. Talia Schenck and Grace Schulze continue to create scoring opportunities.

Gracie McGowan is more than just a social media expert; she's also one of the Ivy League's best defenders. Goalie Robyn Thompson continues to move up the program career lists in wins and shutouts. 

Harvard's roster is also stocked from top to bottom. The game should be a great one. 

The Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament goes to the winner of the Ivy tournament. A year ago, which was the first year of the ILT, Harvard defeated Princeton 4-0 in the regular season and then 2-1 in the Ivy final on a goal with 34 seconds to play. 

Will this be the first meeting between the teams this season? Will they meet again in the Ivy final next month? 

The game Saturday will be the first chance for these two to make their statement for 2024.

Roko's Record

TigerBlog has been to Pepperdine's campus, back in 1987.

It sits overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Malibu. Pretty much anything that is described with those words has to be amazingly scenic.

As he thinks about it, TB wonders how many college campuses he's visited in his life. Back in 1987 he had barely started out in the sportswriting business and was still writing about high school sports, so the number of campuses at the time was pretty small. 

All these years, and all these campuses later, Pepperdine still stands out. How does anyone get any schoolwork done there? It's way too nice there to want to sit in a library. 

The Princeton men's water polo team was on campus yesterday afternoon for a matchup with the Waves, ranked seventh this week.

TB watched the game on ESPN+. Not surprisingly, the broadcast started with a wide angle shot of the surrounding area that led to a close up of the outdoor pool. Why wouldn't it?

The big story was the chance to take down a Top 10 California team. That the Tigers accomplished, leading the whole way and winning xx-xx.

The subplot was the chase for the all-time goals scored record for Princeton men's water polo. Tiger senior Roko Pozaric came into the game with 252, only two behind the 254 John Stover scored before graduating 19 years ago.

Pozaric tied the record in the second quarter and then broke it in the third. By game's end, he had three goals and three assists, leaving him with a career total of 255 goals, the most ever by a Princeton men's water polo player. 

Water polo is not an easy game to play. You're constantly treading water, and pretty much anything goes in terms of contact. 

Forget the contact, actually. Just go find a pool, jump in, palm a ball and tread water for 20 seconds or so before trying to throw it into a goal. 

Just make sure there's a lifeguard there. 

Then there's the goalie position. You're also treading water, only you're expected to basically vault yourself out of the pool to reach a ball traveling at a high rate of speed and keep it out of a relatively large cage. 

Pozaric's record-breaking goal came on a five-meter shot with 4:14 left in the third quarter. The native of Croatia, who'd never been the United States until the day he arrived at Princeton, thumped it into the right side and then raised his fist. 

It didn't look like much of a celebration. Did he not know he had just set the record? Or was there still work to be done in the game? 

🚨ROKO FOR THE RECORD🚨

The Tigers have a new all-time leading goal scorer! pic.twitter.com/aMVLFdTlKI

— Princeton Water Polo (@Pwaterpolo) October 15, 2024

Pepperdine didn't go quietly, cutting it from 12-8 to 12-11 with 17 seconds to play. TB, not being a water polo expert, wondered if there was some sort of "put them on the foul line and hope they miss" strategy for the end game.

Nope. The Waves tried to create a steal, but there was no steal to be had. Princeton was able to hold on. 

The win over the No. 7 team in the country was preceded by a 10-8 loss to No. 2 UCLA and a 19-10 win over unranked Westcliff. 

What's left on this trip? 

The Tigers are at No. 3 Southern Cal today and then No. 4 Friday, followed by the final game on this challenging Fall Break trip, at No. 8 Cal Sunday before the flight home.

Princeton is ranked 11th this week, behind two Eastern teams: No. 6 Fordham and No. 10 Harvard. There are huge games to be played as October rolls into November, with the end goal a return trip to the NCAA tournament, where Princeton reached the semifinals last year. 

There are five remaining regular season games, beginning with two at DeNunzio Pool against LIU and Iona on Saturday, Nov. 2. After that, there is a trip to play at MIT, Harvard and Brown the following weekend, all building to the Northeast Water Polo Conference tournament in DeNunzio Nov. 22-24.

Remembering Digger

TigerBlog received an email yesterday morning from one of the biggest Princeton Athletics fans there is, Glenn Morris of the Class of 1972. 

Of course, he's never "Glenn." He's always "Merc."

He is Princetonian through and through. He's a landscape architect who, among other connections to the University, has given Reunions tours to showcase the campus trees. 

He came to Princeton in 1968, when it was all men. He graduated in a co-ed class. It was quite a time to be a Tiger.

In his case, though, he's never stopped. He was in Macon, Ga., this past Saturday to see the Princeton-Mercer football game, and he sent TB this photo:

In case you're wondering, going left to right, you have: Fritz Cammerzell, William Underwood, Bob Wright and Merc. William Underwood is the president of Mercer University, while the other three are all in the Class of 1972. 

The game in Macon didn't go the Tigers' way, though as you can see — to quote what Merc wrote to TB — "President Underwood was most gracious as was the Mercer community ... the many Tiger fans could not be more pleased with our courteous reception."

President Underwood, by the way, has no Princeton connection. A graduate of Oklahoma Baptist and then the University of Illinois Law School, he has been the Mercer president since 2005.

It was a day of football and friendship, all under a perfectly blue sky in a nearly filled stadium. It was a day of competition, of improvement, of coaching and of learning. 

It was the kind of day that was tailor made for someone who, sadly, wasn't there. He would have loved it, except the outcome; the only people who would have loved it more were those who would give anything to have even one more day, one more Princeton football game, with him.

TB certainly is in that group.

This past Saturday, the day of the Princeton-Mercer game, was the third anniversary of the day that Steve DiGregorio died, after a battle, a ferocious battle, against pancreatic cancer. There haven't been too many days of the more than 1,000 that have gone by since where TB hasn't thought of Digger, one of the best people he's ever met and one of the best friends he'll ever have in this lifetime. 

In many ways, it hasn't really completely sunk in that he's gone, at least not in an emotional way. Maybe TB never really thought about how often he spoke to Digger, or how much they had in common, or how many funny stories they had to share. 

TB tries to go over to the cemetery where Digger is buried and visit the gravesite as often as possible. When he does, he finds himself staring intently at the ground, trying to wrap his arms around the unfairness of it all.

Digger left behind a wife (Nadia) and three sons (Zack, Derek and Aaron), and it's unlikely that you ever met a better husband or father.

His legion of friends was vast, from his days with Princeton Football as an assistant coach and later just a huge fan, to his time at Nutley High School as its award-winning football coach, to the people he met at Muhlenberg as a football player there, and to any stop he ever made in his lifetime.

TB wrote this about him shortly after he died: 

He was someone whom TB looked at more than once and thought "if you could be more like he is, you'd be a better person."

Those are the truest words TB has ever written, he's pretty sure. 

There's a tendency to lionize people after they're gone, whether in the "retroactive sanctification" way that Marvin Bressler always cited when he spoke about how a player would suddenly become indispensable to Pete Carril after four years of nothing but criticism, or in the way that people rarely want to say anything bad about someone after they've passed away. 

In Digger's case, there really isn't any way to lionize him. That's just the kind of person he was. 

Digger would have come away from the game at Mercer happy to have had the chance to compete against the No. 7 team in the country and yet with a full list of areas that need work. He wouldn't sugar-coat it for his players, but they would know it wasn't personal, that their coach had only their best interest in mind, as athletes, students and people. 

As such, they would run through a wall for him. If you think that's lionizing, well, then you could have asked any player he ever coached who was there three years ago at his funeral. You didn't even have to ask them. You could just see by the tears they shed. 

The last thing Digger ever said to TigerBlog was this: "I love you buddy." The last thing TB ever said to him was "I love you too."

He wouldn't just a word of that. He'd simply add that he misses his friend deeply — and he's not the only one who does so. 

College Football Saturday

You want to know how much college football was on TV Saturday? 

The answer is: A lot.

TigerBlog watched a bunch of it. He started at noon with Wisconsin-Rutgers and Washington-Iowa; both times the team he was rooting for lost. He ended well into the evening with Ohio State-Oregon and Penn State-USC.

By the way, it's hard to remember all the teams that make up the geographical craziness that is the Big Ten these days. It's pretty wild to realize that all four of those games were in the B1G.

TB is pretty sure that he heard one of the announcers on one of the games mention the stat about teams in the league who have traveled more than two time zones, in either direction. Those teams are something like 2-11 now. 

There was more to the Saturday menu than just the Big Ten, of course. TB watched at least a little of a bunch of other games, including Vanderbilt-Kentucky, Missouri-UMass, South Carolina-Alabama and a bunch of others. 

Not all of the games he saw were Power 4 conference games. He checked in on Sacred Heart-Howard (the Bison won), for instance.

Of course, he kept an eye on the early Ivy League games. He saw Yale get out to a huge lead on Dartmouth and then went back later to see the final score, only to find that it was 37-37 and headed to overtime. 

Dartmouth would come all the way back and win it, 44-43. If you're a Princeton fan, you couldn't help but think of the 2012 Princeton-Harvard game, when the Tigers zoomed back from 34-10 down with 12 minutes to go to win 39-34 in regulation on a Quinn Epperly TD pass to Roman Wilson from 38 yards out with 13 seconds to go.

Here's what TB wrote after that one:

Really, it was something like from a sports movie, where the underdogs need the late touchdown and the ball seems to hang in the air forever - and nobody can really believe what happened. 

The main event for TB Saturday was Princeton's game at Mercer. One thing TB noticed about all the different games he saw was that there is a distinctive character and atmosphere at each stadium, and Mercer's Five Star Stadium seemed to fit right into that thinking. 

It did look like a great place for a game on a beautiful day in Georgia. There seemed like all kinds of different vantage points for fans to watch, from a grassy area to the stands to what appeared to be a guest box. 

The ESPN+ announcers were good and fair. They were prepared, and they didn't get unreasonably excited for moments that didn't warrant it. What more can you ask? 

As for the game, Mercer is the No. 7 team in the FCS. Princeton was coming off a loss to Columbia in its Ivy opener and was looking for some answers prior to the stretch of six league games in six weeks. Plus, the game was in Macon.

The final was Mercer 34, Princeton 7, and yet there were quite a few bright spots for the Tigers. If you watched the game, then you had to be impressed with:

* the Princeton defense, who held Mercer to only two field goals in the first three quarters; the Bears did score TDs on a punt return and a fumble return, but the Princeton D was tough all day. 

* freshman linebacker AJ Pigford, who had four tackles, three for loss, and a fumble recovery. This was after he had two tackles for the first three games. Pigford was fast and decisive, and he did all this less than an hour from his hometown of Snellville, Ga.

* Another AJ, this time AJ Barber, had three catches for 51 yards, including a 41-yard reception. He continues to be a threat on every play.

* Chase Christopher had 11 tackles and was all over the field. 

More than anyone else, though, there was sophomore running back Ethan Clark, who came into the game with 12 career carries for 37 yards, with a long of seven, for his career. Mercer, for its part, was the No. 1 rushing defense team in the FCS, allowing just 29.2 yards per game.

Clark then carried 21 times for 117 yards and his first career TD. These yards were not easy at all, considering who the opponent was. 

With the non-league portion of the season over, Princeton will host Brown Friday night at 7. After that will be Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, Yale and Penn. 

There is a very long way to go in this season. Princeton has plenty of time to play itself into contention next month. 

The trip to Mercer didn't produce a win. It did produce a great college football experience, though.

If you want to devote an entire Saturday to watching, you can see the country is filled with them. 

Off To Georgia

It's a little more than four hours drive from Spartanburg, S.C., to Macon, Ga.

If TigerBlog had to guess, he thinks that Mike Cross will be making that ride this weekend — or have a pretty good reason why he isn't. 

Cross is the commissioner of the Southern Conference, whose offices are located in Spartanburg. If his name is familiar, it's because he spent 10 years as a high-level administrator for Princeton Athletics. 

As people have come and gone here through the years, TigerBlog has liked to think that they viewed their time at Princeton as more than a stepping stone to the next position and that they look back on when they worked here with great fondness. It's a certainty that Cross, one of TB's favorite people he's ever worked with, does just that. 

Ah, but now his loyalties will be tested as Princeton heads to Macon to take on one of the SoCon's teams, Mercer. Kickoff from Five Star Stadium (that's the name of the facility, not it's Michelin rating) is at 3:30, and the game can be seen on ESPN+.

Last week it was the Tigers and the Lions. This week, it's the Tigers and the Bears. Insert "oh my" where you see fit.

This isn't just any team, by the way. Mercer is currently 5-0 and ranked seventh in the FCS, with wins over two other Top 25 teams (Wofford and Chattanooga). There was also a win over Bethune-Cookman by the rarely seen score of 31-2.

This will be the first meeting ever between Princeton and Mercer. It'll also be, for whatever it's worth, the first of two straight games against teams nicknamed "Bears," as Princeton will host Brown a week from today. 

The Mercer Bears are a year removed from their first-ever FCS postseason berth. In fact, Mercer took down Gardner-Webb 17-7 in the first round before falling 41-0 to eventual champ South Dakota State. If 41-0 seems bad, "bear" in mind that South Dakota State won its semifinal game over Albany 59-0.

Mercer football dates back to 1892, though it has taken some huge breaks in fielding a team. It didn't have one at all between 1941 and 2013, and though it's been 132 years since the first Mercer team took the field, this is only the 51st season in program history. 

As TB looked into the team's history, he enjoyed the story of two members of the Georgia Hall of Fame who played at the school in the 1920s, brothers named Smith. Their nicknames? There was Crook Smith and Phoney Smith.  

Has Princeton ever had any Crooks or Phoneys? No way.

Mercer did not play last week. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It depends how you look at it. The team had a week off after playing five straight, but the momentum of the 5-0 start may have waned. 

The numbers the team has put up are impressive. Mercer leads the FCS in three statistical team categories: team completion percentage, rushing defense and passing efficiency defense. Not shockingly, a team that leads the country in the last two of those allows only eight points per game, which actually ranks second. 

Another Mercer Smith — current quarterback D.J. Smith — has completed 73 of 95 passes, which is just below 80 percent. He's thrown for 981 yards and eight touchdowns and rushed for three more touchdowns, but he's also thrown five interceptions.

It's a challenge, to be sure. 

Princeton ranks second in the Ivy League in passing defense and in sacks. Going against a quarterback like Smith, that's a pretty good place to start. Pressuring him and keeping his completion percentage in this stratosphere would be very helpful. 

Offensively, Princeton gained nearly 200 yards on the ground in the win over Howard but only a little more than 50 per game in the losses to Lehigh and Columbia. Princeton has also struggled with time of possession, at 25:10 per game. 

Mercer does not let teams move the ball on the ground. If Princeton can, the dynamic of the game changes immediately.

This is the final non-league game before a run of six straight Ivy games for the Tigers. It's also a chance to get on a plane and fly to take on a Top 10 opponent. 

Yes, it'll be a big challenge — but it's also an exciting one.

Goals And More Goals

TigerBlog is a regular Wordle player.

It was, by the way, former women's basketball assistant coach Milena Flores who first introduced him to the game a few years back. Since then, TB is pretty sure he's played every single day.

You know what causes him a lot of stress? His current Wordle streak. He entered today having gotten 197 straight puzzles correct. Can he get to 200? 300? 365? 

Somewhere former men's basketball coach Bill Carmody is shaking his head, mumbling about "The Whammy." 

It took TB all six tries yesterday. He is part of a group of five who play the game every day, all using a different starting word that changes each time and is chosen by whoever had the lowest score the day before. TB's longtime friend and colleague Dan Day is one of the people on the group, and he selected "noble" as the word to start yesterday, in honor of Princeton's latest Nobel Prize winner, John Hopfield.

As it turned out, the Wordle word was "Mommy." That's a rough one, with three of the same letter. TB was really sweating it out as he came home with "foggy" and "woozy" before getting "mommy." 

Ironically, the one member of the group who failed is, herself, a mommy of two named Tanya. TB couldn't help but scold her for that, especially since she chose "kooky" as her last try. 

Today's starting word for the group, by the way, is "pixel."

*

In more important news about games, the men's water polo team will be heading to California for fall break, beginning with a game Sunday at UCLA, who defeated Princeton 17-16 in overtime earlier this year.

The Bruins are currently the No. 1 ranked team in the country. By the time this trip ends, Princeton will have also played No. 2 USC, No. 4 Pepperdine, No. 5 Pacific and No. 6 Cal. 

How's that for a challenge? It's quite likely that no Princeton team has ever had to go through a gauntlet quite like that one.

The Tigers, for their part, are currently ranked ninth. 

Something else that is likely by the end of the trip is that there will be a new leader in career goals scored at Princeton for men's water polo. Right now, the leader is John Stover, who scored 254 before graduating in 2005. 

Current senior Roko Pozaric is in second place, with 247 in his career, obviously seven away from tying Stover. 

*

When TB saw that Stover had scored 254 goals, it got him wondering if anyone has ever scored more goals in any sport at Princeton. His guess was that if anyone did, it would have had to come in women's water polo, since it's unlikely that any other sport that has goals scored would come close to 254.

The record is lacrosse, for instance, is 209, by Kyla Sears. The men's record is 163, by Jesse Hubbard, though Coulter Mackesy is only 40 away from tying that as he starts his senior year (and he had 55 two years ago and 40 last year).

Soccer, ice hockey and field hockey would get nowhere near 200. As TB looked, the highest total for any of those sports is 121, the number scored by Kelly O'Dell, who graduated in 1984, in women's hockey. That is, by the way, one more goal than the second place person. Any guesses who that is?

So that only left women's water polo. And guess what? TB should have been able to guess.

The answer is Adele McCarthy-Beauvais, who scored an astonishing 325 in her career before earning a share of the 2003 von Kienbusch Award. TB has played in pickup basketball games with McCarthy-Beauvais and can vouch for the fact that she is an incredible all-around athlete. 

There are actually three other women's water polo players who have more than Stover's 254 — Elyse Colgan (272), Katelyn Rigler (265) and Cassie Nichols (255).  

*

Speaking of goals scored, the field hockey career record is 107, held by Kat Sharkey. Her husband, men's lacrosse great Tom Schreiber, scored 106.

Think she's ever pointed that out to him?

Schreiber, by the way, also had 94 assists, to 31 for Sharkey. 

*

The men's soccer team will on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium Saturday at 4 against Cornell. Princeton is 2-0-0 in the league, with wins over Harvard and Brown. 

Cornell is 1-1-0, with a win over Dartmouth and a loss to Yale. Cornell is also ranked No. 18 in the most recent RPI, behind only No. 15 Penn in the league. 

Princeton is the next-highest ranked Ivy team at No. 38. Big game Saturday? Yes, it is.

Cornell, by the way, is the highest-scoring team in the league. Princeton has allowed the third fewest goals. 

Admission is free. 

 

*

The field hockey team is home this weekend, with a game at 4 tomorrow against Brown and then at 1 Sunday against Delaware. Princeton has played 10 games this year, only two of which have been at home. 

Harvard and Dartmouth come to Dillon Gym for women's volleyball this weekend.

The complete schedule for all events can be found HERE.

The Preseason Poll

Before TigerBlog gets into today's main subject, he offers a reminder that this evening at 6 the women's soccer team hosts Penn on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. 

Princeton and Columbia are tied for first at 2-0-0 in the league. As TB has written, each Ivy women's soccer team is in a stretch where it played this past Saturday, will play a game tonight and then will play again Sunday. 

The Ivy League women's soccer tournament (and field hockey tournament, for that matter) will be held on the second weekend of November. By that time, the college basketball season will have begun, and that brings TB to today's main topic of interest.

The Ivy League released the results of its preseason men's basketball poll. Princeton was the No. 1 selection, getting 15 of the 16 first-place votes to finish with 127 points. Yale was next with 108, though the other first-place vote went not to the Bulldogs but to Brown, who was third with 92 points. 

From there, it went Cornell (67), Columbia (58), Harvard (55), Penn (51) and Dartmouth (18).

Princeton has won three straight Ivy League championships and four of the last seven, by the way. The 2023 Tigers reached the NCAA tournament Sweet 16, as you know.

So what does the preseason poll mean as far as the final standings?

TigerBlog figured he'd look back at the preseason polls and the way the teams finished in the years since the first Ivy tournament, back in 2017. It turns out that the preseason poll is a pretty good predictor of where the teams will finish.

In fact, there's never been an Ivy men's basketball tournament that didn't include at least three of the top four teams in the preseason poll. There have been seven Ivy tournament fields that have been sit (only six were played, as the 2020 tournament was postponed by the pandemic). 

Of the 28 teams in those seven tournaments, all but three were selected in the top four of the preseason poll. That's pretty accurate prognosticating.

Princeton returns two first-team All-Ivy League selections with Caden Pierce and Xavian Lee. When was the last time Princeton returned two first-team All-Ivy picks? TB will give you a few paragraphs to think about it. 

As for the 2024-25 season, Princeton's opening tip will be Monday, Nov. 4, when Iona comes to Jadwin Gym. Just in case you're wondering, Nov. 4 is less than four weeks away. 

Pierce and Lee are working their way up into elite territory on the Princeton career lists. Both are juniors, and both will go past 1,000 career points if they simply match their numbers from last year. 

Beyond that, if you only double their point totals for two years, then you'd have Pierce with 1,486 and Lee with 1,294 — and that doesn't factor in any improvement moving forward. Lee more than tripled his point total from freshman to sophomore year, and Pierce nearly doubled his.

The answer to the All-Ivy question, by the way, is 2005, when Judson Wallace and Will Venable returned after being first-team All-Ivy a year before. When was the last time Princeton had two players who were first-team All-Ivy who returned and then were both named first-team All-Ivy again? You get a few more paragraphs for that one.

Pierce, of course, is a great rebounder. Through two years, he has exactly 500 of them. Only one Princeton men's player has ever reached 1,000 rebounds, and that's Bill Bradley, who finished with 1,008. 

Can Pierce break that record, the same way Ellie Mitchell broke the 50 year old women's record a year ago?  If Lee equals his assist total from last year for his last two seasons, he'd finish fifth all-time at Princeton.

The two are hardly the only weapons Princeton has. Blake Peters is back for his senior year; if he equals last year's three-pointers made total, he'll end up sixth all-time at Princeton. Dalen Davis averaged 10.2 points per game for the final 10 games of last year, with 21 points in 22 minutes in the Ivy tournament against Brown. Deven Austin, who showed what his potential is as a freshman two years ago, is back after rehabbing an injury last year. 

That's a great core for a team picked to win a championship. As always, Jadwin will be a fun place to be this winter.

Lastly, the answer to the second question is Steve Goodrich and Sydney Johnson, who were both first-team picks in 1996 and then again in 1997.

Fan Of The Week

Each weekend, hundreds of athletes across eight Ivy League schools compete across all kinds of fall sports.

And, in the beginning of the new week, the Ivy League recognizes athletes from each sport in a variety of ways. 

This week, for instance, Princeton has had the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week in women's soccer and field hockey. Neither was a huge surprise.

Pietra Tordin was the women's soccer honoree after she scored three second-half goals to turn a 2-0 lead into a 5-0 lead on the way to an 8-0 win over a Brown team that had not lost in 29 straight Ivy League games. The three goals moved Tordin, a junior, into 12th place all-time at Princeton in goals scored. 

The big Princeton win came on the same field where Brown had beaten Princeton 6-1 two years earlier. That's 15 goals in two games between the teams on the new Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium.

Also, remember that this week is the week where all eight Ivy schools have a midweek league game. For Princeton, that will bring Penn to Myslik Field tomorrow night at 6.

The current Ivy standings have Princeton and Columbia at 2-0-0, Yale at 1-0-1, Brown and Cornell at 1-1-0 (both with a loss to Princeton), Penn at 0-1-1 and Harvard and Dartmouth at 0-2-0.

Meanwhile, Beth Yeager was the field hockey honoree. Princeton scored four goals in two games this weekend — and Yeager had two goals and two assists, with a goal and two assists in a 3-1 win over Cornell Friday and then the lone Tiger goal in a 2-1 loss to Syracuse Sunday. 

And where does Yeager, also a junior, rank in career goals at Princeton? How about 12th? She's also 12th in points too. 

There's a certain balance there between the two. 

The field hockey standings have Princeton and Harvard at 3-0, followed by 2-1 Brown and then four 1-2 teams (Penn, Cornell, Columbia, Yale) and 0-3 Dartmouth. 

Princeton has played 10 games to date but only two have been at home. The Tigers have six regular season games left, of which five will be at home, beginning Friday at 4 against Brown and then Sunday at 1 against Delaware. 

The Princeton-Harvard game will be in Cambridge a week from Saturday. 

So that covers Players of the Week and such. Ah, but what about a Fan of the Week? 

For that, TigerBlog nominates this man:

Who is this? That would be Mike McGowan. And who is that? 

His daughter Gracie is TigerBlog's boss a senior on the field hockey team. TB said the first part because Gracie does most of the social media posting for field hockey and men's lacrosse. TB's role is to make graphics and clip videos. Gracie then takes what TB sends her and turns it into the majority of the content you'll see on the social media feeds for the two teams.

Here's an average conversation between the two:

TB: Hi Gracie. Here is the graphic.
GM: That's perfect.
TB: Thank you.
GM: But can you change the photo and make the font a little smaller and use a different background?
TB: What happened to perfect? 

Gracie came to Princeton from Lake Forest, Ill. This past weekend, Mike drove from the family home there to see the games at Cornell and Syracuse. 

It's 720 miles from Lake Forest to Ithaca. It's 55 miles from Ithaca to Syracuse. It's only 710 miles from Syracuse to Lake Forest.

During the games he attends, by the way, Mike keeps a running commentary for the international parents who cannot make it to see their own daughters play. Princeton's field hockey team has 24 players, 12 Americans and 12 foreign. It's a big-time service he provides.

When Princeton's game against Syracuse ended Sunday, it was around 1:45 or so. By the time the postgame tailgate ended, it was probably around 3. 

Mike then hopped in his car and drove home. He said he was only going to stop once. 

Since it's an 11-hour drive, he wouldn't get home until after 2 am. 

When TB woke up yesterday, he texted Gracie to ask her if her dad had gotten home okay. Turns out he did. 

That's a lot of dedication to watch your daughter play. On the other hand, Gracie McGowan is a senior. Is it worth all that time and effort. It is, 100 percent. TB would have done the same, and he knows a lot of other parents who would as well. 

That's Fan of the Week worthy, no?

An 8-0 Win For 100

Well, if you're going to play three Ivy League women's soccer games in nine days, you might as well start out with pretty much the most perfect script you could have imagined.

Such was the case for Princeton Saturday. 

The Tigers, like all eight Ivy women's soccer teams, began a portion of the schedule that figures to do a great deal to start to sort out the championship contenders and the teams that will make runs for the four league tournament spots. Each team was to play Saturday and then turn it around quickly for games Wednesday and Sunday. 

It's a challenge, to be sure. There's travel. There's game-planning for three different opponents. There are serious swings in the standings that by definition will have to happen.

Prior to this stretch, each team had played one league game. By this coming Sunday night, half the league schedule will have been played. 

Princeton began that gauntlet by hosting Brown Saturday. There were subplots beyond the obvious, including the fact that Princeton head coach Sean Driscoll had 99 wins at Princeton before the game.

Oh, and there was also this little fact: Brown had not lost an Ivy League game since 2018, which was 29 games ago for the Bears. 

So what happened? 

Well, TigerBlog checked the score for the first time at the half and saw it was 1-0 Tigers. Then he didn't go back to the score until he saw this graphic postgame:

FINAL | Princeton 8, Brown 0

That. That was a lot of goals.

Tigers drop the four-time defending Ivy champs 8-0!

We're 2-0 in the @IvyLeague! pic.twitter.com/WJrL7NdO2z

— Princeton WSoccer (@PrincetonWSoc) October 5, 2024

TB had to do a double-take. Was it really 8-0? 

It was. 

So that was, all at once, all of the following:

* Driscoll's 100th win
* the end of the Brown unbeaten streak
* Princeton's first over Brown since 2017
* the most goals scored in an Ivy game by Princeton since an 8-1 win over Penn in 1985
* the largest margin of victory in an Ivy game for Princeton since a 10-0 win over Columbia in 1985
* the largest margin of victory in any game since a 9-0 win over Lehigh in 1999

Those are crazy numbers.

How'd it go from 1-0 to 8-0 in 45 minutes? It was a somewhat normal first half, with only a goal from Lili Bryant 30 minutes in. Okay, there are 1-0 soccer games at the half all the time. 

It took less than a minute of the second half to get it to 2-0, as Heather MacNab cashed in on a penalty kick. Then it was Pietra Tordin's turn to get involved — times three. 

Tordin, who won bronze with the U.S. at the Women's U20 World Cup in Colombia recently, scored the next three, in a span of 15 minutes. Suddenly it was 5-0. 

Princeton wasn't finished, though. Isabella Garces made it 6-0 with 13 minutes left, and then the last two came from Grace Rossner and Ally Murphy a little more than a minute apart. 

The win improved Princeton to 7-3 overall and 2-0 in the league. Next up is Penn Wednesday night at 6 at home, followed by a trip to Yale Sunday. 

As for Driscoll, getting to 100 wins as a Princeton soccer coach is impressive stuff, and it puts him in with elite company in Tiger history. In fact, men's soccer at Princeton dates to 1906, and the women have had a varsity team since 1980.

In all that time, how many coaches have reached 100 wins? 

For the women, only Julie Shackford had done so before Driscoll. Shackford, now the head coach at William & Mary, won 203 with the Tigers.

For the men, Jimmy Reed won 136 games in 29 seasons from 1938-66. The all-time leader in wins at Princeton by a soccer coach is the current men's coach, Jim Barlow, who won his 215th Saturday night at Brown 2-1 to go to 2-0 in the league.

Like pretty much every good coach, Driscoll won't take credit for his achievement. He'll share it all with his assistants and players and all the others who have helped his program move to this point.

Also, if TB knows anything about good coaches, he also won't have time for milestones. Not during a season. Not during a week like this in a season. 

There are still two more games to go. Princeton is now one of two teams in the league to be 2-0-0, along with Columbia. 

The Lions are still down the road for the Tigers though. First, though, it's Penn Wednesday and Yale Sunday. 

What happened Saturday will be a memory come kickoff time.

Tigers And Lions

In keeping with the "Wild Kingdom" theme for the latter part of this week, TigerBlog did a bit of research on the difference between the largest of the big cats: Tigers and Lions.

As it turns out, Lions are much more sociable than Tigers. On the other hand, Tigers are bigger and longer. 

Lions, as you probably know, travel in packs called a "pride." Some "prides" can have as many 30 lions who travel and hunt together, with often only one of those lions a male. 

Tigers are more solitary. Tigers hunt alone.

The story TB read had some interesting facts, and some relatively unnecessary ones — such as how to tell the difference between the two. That's pretty obvious, no?

The last part of the story asked the question of who would win in a fight between the two. As it turns out, they don't really overlap too often, with the majority of wild Tigers in India and wild lions in Africa. 

There was, though, one famous dust-up between the two species, back in 1914 at the Bronx Zoo. On that occasion, a tiger wandered over to the lion cage and, well, it was pretty much all tiger from there. 

Will there be a repeat of that outcome tomorrow, at a location about four miles away from where the 1914 fight occurred? Or will it the revenge of the Lions? 

This time, it'll be at Wien Stadium, and not the Bronx Zoo, where the Tigers and Lions meet up. This time, it's in football, as Princeton is at Columbia at noon tomorrow.

The game is the Ivy League opener for both. While traveling in their separate circles the first two weeks, both teams have a win and a loss.

The Tigers started out with a loss to Lehigh and then followed that with a win over Howard. Columbia won its first game, defeating Lafayette, and then lost last week to Georgetown.

What do the stats say through two weeks? TB's first thought is that there hasn't been enough Ivy football yet to draw any serious conclusions. 

Then again, there is always something to take away. 

Consider, for instance, that Columbia is the top rushing team in the league at this point, with 185.5 yards per game on the ground. If you look at the Lions' two games, they had 204 rushing yards against Lafayette in the win but still had 167 last week in the Georgetown loss. 

Princeton went from minus-7 rushing yards against Lehigh to 195 against Howard. Also through two games, Columbia is No. 2 in the league in rushing defense (87.5 per game).

When it comes to rushing stats in the early season, here's an interesting one: Columbia has two of the top four rushers in the league with Joey Giorgi (second) and Malcolm Terry II (fourth), and yet the two of them combined do not have the same number of yards as the league leader, Penn's Malachi Hosley (153.5-137.5).

Hmmm. Is there anything else interesting statistically after two weeks? 

Oh, here's one. It's one of TB's favorites every year. 

Princeton leads the league in the number of fourth-down conversion attempts with nine. The next two teams are Harvard and Brown, with five each. TB is (almost) always a fan of going for it on fourth down. 

This will be the 93rd meeting between the two, and Princeton holds a 75-16-1 lead in the series, which dates to 1874. Princeton has won 11 of the last 12 meetings, including a 10-7 win a year ago on a rainy night in Princeton.

This is the only Ivy game in the first four weeks for these two teams. Princeton will be going from playing a team for the first time (Howard last week) to the 93rd time (Columbia this week) and then back to the first time next week (at Mercer). Columbia will play Wagner next week.

Getting off to a winning start in the Ivy League is huge. Factor in that the team that comes away with a win will have two weeks to get ready for the league sprint of six games in six weeks, while the other team will have to wait two weeks to try to turn the page on a league loss. 

It's the Tigers and the Lions on this week's Wild Kingdom Game of the Week.

Oh, and TB was right. "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" was on Sunday nights on NBC after football, followed by "The Wonderful World Of Disney."