Tigers To Texas

Junior Bridgeman? 

Did TigerBlog hear that name correctly? Did one of the Princeton men's tennis players actually say "Junior Bridgeman" in the time before the NCAA Selection Show yesterday afternoon? 

Yes. It was Top Nidunjianzan, the senior No. 2 singles player, who asked one of his teammates if he knew who Junior Bridgeman was.

Do you know the name? TigerBlog does. He just can't remember the last time he's heard it. 

Junior Bridgeman was a very, very good but not great NBA player in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly for the Milwaukee Bucks, with some time with the Clippers when they were still in San Diego. He averaged more than 13 points per game in both the regular season and playoffs and finished with 12,129 points overall.  

He was actually drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the 1975 draft (No. 8 overall) but was traded to the Bucks in one of the most consequential trades in NBA history — it was that trade that brought Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Lakers.

So why in the world did his name come up? 

According to Nidunjianzan, he had just seen something pop up on social media mentioning Bridgeman's ultra-successful post-basketball career, one that saw his amass a fortune of more than $1 billion before he passed away last year at the age of 71. 

And that was the Junior Bridgeman mention. 

The main event yesterday was the NCAA selections, something that Princeton seemed to be a lock for heading into the show, at least in the rankings that are used. This was mostly a question of where and who, rather than if. 

Princeton went 16-10 overall but 2-5 in the Ivy League, ending a five-match losing streak with wins over Yale and Brown to end the regular season. The Tigers had high hopes after winning the ECAC tournament (a gathering of the eight Ivy schools) in February, but injuries derailed that. 

Still, the team had really strong season prior to that, with wins over teams like North Carolina, Pepperdine and Buffalo, in addition to three NCAA-bound Ivy League schools. Of the 10 losses, eight came against NCAA teams. At one point, Princeton was ranked No. 19 by the ITA. 

The team gathered in the Cordish Family Lounge, overlooking the outdoor courts at the Meadows complex, for the 4 pm show. TigerBlog was impressed by the lack of tension, as every player was confident in what was going to happen. 

It just took a bit longer than anyone expected. For two reasons. 

First, there was the matter of the way the selections played out. The 64-team draw was released in 16 groups of four — of which 15 passed without any mention of Princeton. 

And still there was no panic. As each host site was revealed, there was a clamor about whether or not this would be a spot Princeton would want to go; there seemed to be some hope for San Diego. 

In the end, it would be Texas, in the last group of four announced. Princeton will be taking on SMU Friday at 11 am Eastern time, while Texas will play Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the other opening round matchup. The winners will play Saturday at 4 to see who advances to the Round of 16. 

SMU finished the regular season with a 19-10 overall record and an 8-5 record (tied for fifth) in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Mustangs are led by No. 1 singles player Trevor Svajda, the NCAA singles runner-up this past fall, when Princeton's No. 1 player Paul Inchauspe reached the semifinals. Princeton and SMU have played twice, most recently in 1995. 

For Princeton, it's now three straight NCAA tournaments and four of the last five. TB has written all season about how tough the Ivy League is, and the selections reflected that, as five league teams saw their names come up. 

If the players weren't worried about whether or not they were in, then TB definitely wasn't. Why is that? Well, it seems that the computer on which Princeton was watching the show was a bit behind. By the time the Tigers came up, TB had already gotten two text messages about the draw. 

As with any other sport, the selections for a team that knows it's heading into the tournament has a party atmosphere. Yesterday in the Cordish Lounge was no different. 

And just like every other time, the Tigers exploded out of their seats when they saw their name up there. 

Now it's off to Texas. It's the reward for a season that will always be remembered for what have been had the team been healthy — and a season that will be remembered for the national impact Princeton men's tennis continues to have.  

Another Winning Weekend

TigerBlog wants to ask you a question to start your week: Did you see where Princeton stands in the Learfield Directors' Cup standings after the winter? 

It's insanely impressive. 

Here is the Top 10:
1. ACC
2. Big Ten
3. ACC
4. Big Ten
5. Big Ten
6. ACC
7. PRINCETON
8. Big Ten
9. SEC 
10. ACC

That's ridiculous. To date, Princeton's best finish to date has been 18th, in the 2021-22. And now seventh through the winter? 

Look at that company. 

In case you don't know what the Directors' Cup is, it's a ranking system that looks to rate the top overall college athletic programs, using NCAA tournament participation and success. It's been awarded in Division I, II and III since the 1993-94 academic year. 

Princeton has been the top Ivy League program in all but five of those years. There have been seven Top 30 finishes, but nothing quite like this. Also, in most years, Princeton has gotten more points in the spring than in either the fall or winter. 

What will happen this year? Well, there are certainly some spring teams that are headed into NCAA competition. Could Princeton get a Top 10 finish? That would be extraordinary. 

If you think this happens accidentally, it doesn't. To get big points you have to advance in NCAA tournaments or have high finishes in NCAA competitions. 

Meanwhile, within the Ivy League, Princeton has continued to add to its championship total for 2025-26. This weekend saw two more Ivy League titles added to the list, as the softball team clinched a fifth straight and the men's lacrosse team shared the championship with Cornell with its 17-9 win over Dartmouth. 

That runs the total for the academic year to 14. That's a lot — though not the record, which Princeton set last year with 17. 

Here are your Ivy champs to date: 

Fall - women's soccer, men's soccer, women's volleyball, men's cross country, women's cross country
Winter - women's basketball, women's squash, men's indoor track and field, women's indoor track and field, men's swimming and diving, women's indoor track and field, men's indoor track and field
Spring (to date) - women's tennis, men's lacrosse, softball

That list does not include men's water polo and women's hockey, which won their non-Ivy League championships. It also doesn't include the field hockey team, which won the Ivy League tournament and reached the NCAA final but did not win the Ivy League championship (which goes to the regular season winner).

The softball championship has been particularly impressive. The Tigers won their first 14 Ivy games before a loss against Yale and then rebounded to pummel Harvard 8-0, 12-3 in a Saturday doubleheader to clinch the championship. 

According to the Andrew Borders Sports Bureau, this was the first time Princeton ever swept Harvard in doubleheader with both games by run-rule. 

Princeton clinched the championship after 17 games. Duncan Yin of the Class of 1982, who is as big a Princeton sports fan as there is, did the math on this. 

First, he texted a question to TigerBlog:

Question inspired by our softball team:  After 17 games, what is the maximum number of games that the leader can hold in terms of its lead over the second-place team?

Then he answered his own question:

It's not easy to be up 6 games after only 17 games.  The maximum possible is what? 17-0 leader, five teams at 8-9, one team at 7-10, one  team at 4-13. Max possible mathematically after 17 games is +9 and we're up +6.

TB will take Duncan's word for it. He did go to the Harvard Business School after Princeton, and that doesn't make him a bad person. Quite the opposite. He's a good person and a devoted father. And really good at math, it seems. 

Princeton finished off its weekend by winning the game at Harvard yesterday by an 8-2 score. Next up for Princeton will be three home games against Dartmouth to finish the regular season, before hosting the Ivy tournament the following weekend. For the historical context, it's back to the AB Sports Bureau:

With the win, the 2026 Tigers became just the eighth team since 2007, when the Ivy League season grew to 20 games before becoming 21 games in 2018, to win at least 17 Ivy games. Four of the eight teams are Princeton teams, with 2026 alongside 2008, 2022 and 2025, and it's just the second time an team has won at least 17 Ivy games in back-to-back seasons, along with Harvard in 2011 and 2012. Princeton can go for the league wins record next week when it hosts Dartmouth, as Princeton in 2008, Harvard in 2011 and Dartmouth in 2014 set and then equaled the Ivy wins record of 18.  

Impressive. 

Senior Saturday

Remember that Wednesday night women's lacrosse game between Princeton and Penn a few weeks ago on Sherrerd Field? 

Penn won it 10-9 in two overtimes. It was a great game to watch, even if the home team lost. 

And guess what? There will be a rematch. Will it be as good as the original? 

This is the final weekend of the Ivy League regular season for the women and the men. For Princeton, that means a doubleheader at home against Dartmouth, with the women at noon and the men at 4.  

Of the eight teams that will compete in the two Ivy tournaments, six of them are already known — Yale, Penn and Princeton on the women's side and Princeton, Cornell and Harvard on the men's. Those six will be joined by either Brown or Cornell on the women's side and either Yale or Penn on the men's. 

The women know they will be gathering at Yale, who is locked into the top seed. Penn will be the No. 2, and Princeton will be the No. 3 — hence the rematch. 

For the men, the tournament will be either in Princeton or Ithaca, and the outcome of Princeton's last game does not impact that. If Cornell beats Harvard tomorrow, then the Big Red will host. If Harvard wins, then the tournament comes to Sherrerd Field. 

That's not to say there's nothing on the line for Princeton's men tomorrow. A win assures Princeton of no worse than a share of the Ivy League championship. A Princeton win and Cornell loss means an outright title for the Tigers; the reverse is true for the Big Red. 

There are still scenarios for a three-way or four-way tie for the men. All of those need Princeton and Cornell to both lose. 

The Ivy tournaments will be next weekend, with games Friday and Sunday. The NCAA tournament selections will be announced a week from Sunday. 

TigerBlog says this all the time, but man did this lacrosse season fly by. Has it really been 2.5 months since it started? 

Then again, he also points out that the whole four-year experience flies by. And that brings him to today's real topic. 

Senior Day. 

TigerBlog received the following text messages this week, one from the father of a player on the men's team and one from a father of a player on the women's team. Here's what they said: 

Woman dad: How is it possible that this is the last regular game for her?
Man dad: How did it go so fast? I just dropped him off for orientation.

Yup. That's how it goes.  

Here's what TB wrote about his own experience as a Princeton dad, at the Senior Day of his own daughter, back in 2022. That's another thing that's hard to believe — it's been four years already? 

Senior Day for TigerBlog has always been a combination of a pain (in writing the script) and anxiety (getting everyone in the right place at the right time, trying to get the timing right and more than anything else not leaving anyone out). He long ago lost track of how many of these Senior Days he's done from the perspective of someone from athletic communications.

This time, though, it was completely different. This time, he was on the field, along with his daughter, He'd describe it as surreal, to see his own daughter be a part of one of these moments, only there were so many other emotions that were dominant at the time.

As they walked out past a lineup of teammates on either side, TB tried to take as much of it in as possible. As special as this felt to him, this wasn't his moment. This was his daughter's moment.

As such, he found it hard to focus on anything other than her, and as they walked, he saw something that he'll never forget. It was the widest smile his daughter has ever had.

She knew how hard it was for her to get to that moment. And she knew that her Senior Day was something to cherish. 

TB smiled widely as well, all as he brushed away a tear or two.

TigerBlog hasn't looked at a Senior Day the same way since. 

Stayin' Alive

Does the guy in this picture look like one of the greatest disco dancers of all time? 

The photo was a mere 40 or so years before he dominated the Brooklyn disco scene. Oh wait. Was that a different Tony Manero?  

The one pictured here is the Tony Manero (born April 4, 1905) who won the 1936 U.S. Open at the famed Baltusrol Country Club in Springfield, about an hour north of Princeton. The one in this video (born Feb. 18, 1954) is a different Tony Manero: 

Maybe they're related? Or maybe one is fictional.  

Stayin' Alive. Stayin' Alive. 

Still the greatest intro to any movie ever. 

*

Speaking of Baltusrol, it will host the Ivy League men's and women's golf tournaments this weekend, beginning tomorrow and running through Sunday. 

Do you know what year Princeton won its men's golf first league championship? Hint — it was before Tony Manero won at Baltusrol. In fact, it goes back to 1928, when the Tigers won the Eastern Intercollegiate Championship. 

Do you know when Princeton won its most recent league championship? That was last year, when the Tigers won the title and Richard Fantinelli was the medalist, for the second time. 

Will this year break the recent pattern of the last six seasons? The Ivy champ has been Yale, Princeton, Yale, Princeton, Yale and Princeton. 

The official Ivy League championship for men was first awarded in 1975. Since then, Princeton has won 23, well ahead of second-place Yale's 12. 

As for the women, Princeton also won last year. The Tigers enter this year's tournament tied with Harvard for the most Ivy championships, with eight apiece, one ahead of Yale.  

*

The Penn Relays began in 1895 as an offshoot of a relay race between teams from Princeton and Penn and they're still going strong today. If you're a track and field fan, or even just a sports fan in general, you need to go to Franklin Field one of these years. 

Or this year, since the relay carnival is underway and running through Saturday. There are no Ivy League titles at stake, though there are Championships of America to be won.

Beyond that, there is the spectacle itself that is the Penn Relays, where thousands of athletes converge on Franklin Field, which finds itself nearly full, as if the Eagles were playing there in the 1960s again.

It's a continuous schedule of race after race, with high school students at one moment and Olympians the next. As TigerBlog said, it's definitely worth the pilgrimage. 

Princeton's men and women will be well-represented in West Philadelphia.  

* 

Need someone to root for today? How about the Northwestern women's tennis team. 

The Widcats take on Maryland today at 2 in the opening round of the Big Ten tournament. Why root for Northwestern? Is this a Carla Berube thing? No, but that's not a bad reason. 

Princeton and Maryland are among the teams sitting on the NCAA at-large bubble right now. A Maryland loss would definitely help Princeton's cause. 

The selections for the men (who appear to be comfortably above the bubble but you never know) and women will be Monday afternoon.  

Go Wildcats. 

*

The Princeton baseball team has three games this weekend at Dartmouth and then three more at home against Harvard next weekend as the Ivy League regular season comes to a close. The Tigers enter this weekend in a logjam of teams chasing Ivy tournament spots. 

Right now, Yale and Brown are sort of tied (Yale is 11-4; Brown is 10-4) for first, followed by 9-6 Penn. Going from there, the other five teams in the league enter the weekend separated by only two games. 

Princeton is very much in the mix at 6-9, tied with Dartmouth, a half-game back of Harvard and Columbia, a game ahead of Cornell. Clearly every game is huge. 

*

Speaking of Brown, TigerBlog was on the Bears' website yesterday and was greeted by a giant picture of an old friend. 

Mitch Dalton, who spent five seasons as an assistant with the Princeton men's swimming and diving team, has been named the head women's coach at Brown. Mitch heads to Providence after being the associate head coach at Texas for six years and five years at USA Swimming since leaving Princeton.

TB sends congrats and wishes him the best — except when competing against Princeton of course. 

 

The Marriott Seven

TigerBlog mentioned yesterday that he stayed in two Marriotts over the weekend.

The second one was in Providence, where he stayed Saturday night in advance of the women's tennis team's Ivy League clinching win at Brown Sunday. 

It was in the lobby of that hotel where TB encountered something new. There was the typical small lobby convenience area, where you could get drinks, snacks, ice cream, toiletries, etc. You've seen this hundreds of times. 

TB spotted A&W cream soda, which seemed fairly appealing. Then he saw something completely different. Instead of simply taking the bottle up to the front desk, this was now automated. He had to tap his credit card, and his selection would be processed when he opened the refrigerator door. 

And there was the holdup. No matter what he tried, he couldn't figure out how to open the door. And there was the soda, just staring at him. Eventually, he had to go over to the front desk and ask what he was doing wrong. 

Turns out, he had to push a button on the display after he tapped his card. The young man who helped him said that nobody gets it right on the first try and that the button should be clearer. 

Either way, the cream soda rocked. 

The night before he was in the Newton Marriott, where the Princeton men's lacrosse team stayed before its 15-14 win over Harvard. This is not to be confused with the hotel over the Mass Pike where Princeton teams have also stayed many times and which has changed names about 10 times. 

Were the Tigers the only team in the hotel that night? Yeah, no. 

In fact, those Tigers weren't the only Tigers there. The men's volleyball team was as well. 

In all, TB counted seven teams. In addition to the two Princeton teams, there was:  

* Lafayette men's lacrosse (at Boston University)
* Duke baseball (at Boston College)
* Washington U baseball (at Brandeis)
* Columbia women's tennis (at Harvard)
* Penn softball (at Harvard)  

Call them "The Marriott Seven."

The men's volleyball team swept Harvard, vaulting the Tigers over the Crimson and into the EIVA tournament, which begins today against with a quarterfinal against George Mason at Penn State. That match begins at 4:30, followed by a match between Sacred Heart and Charleston. 

Second-seed NJIT will play the Princeton-George Mason winner tomorrow at 4:30, followed by top seed Penn State against the SHU/Charleston winner. The final will be Friday at 7.  

Back at the hotel, how'd everyone else do? 

Lafayette lost big at BU, 13-2. Duke was swept by BC, who turns out to be a Top 25 team. Wash U. lost two of three against Brandeis. Columbia women's tennis lost to Harvard. 

And then there's Penn softball. 

The Quakers were swept by Harvard Saturday and then won the third game Sunday. That makes the non-Princeton teams in the Marriott 8 2-9. 

Princeton's perfect run through the Ivy League ended Sunday with a loss to Yale. It happens in baseball and softball. Remember a week ago when there were three Division I teams unbeaten in their conference? 

Now there are none — Princeton lost once, Washington lost three times and even Southeastern Louisiana lost twice. Incredibly, there is one Division I baseball team who is unbeaten in its league. Any guesses? 

Princeton is still 14-1 in Ivy softball, which leaves a four-game edge over Harvard with six games to go. For Princeton and Harvard, those next three games are against each other, this coming Saturday and Sunday in Cambridge. 

Obviously Princeton is in the driver's seat. Even one win in the series would clinch no worse than a tie for the league championship for the Tigers. 

Beyond this weekend, you have Princeton at Dartmouth for three and Harvard at Columbia for three. Columbia is currently in third place at 9-6, followed by Penn at 7-8 and Brown at 6-8. That win Penn picked up Sunday at Harvard was a huge one. 

The top four teams will reach the Ivy League tournament, which will determine who wins the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Princeton is the only team that has hosted the tournament since its inauguration two years ago.  

Oh, and the undefeated-in-conference baseball team? That would be UCLA in the Big Ten.  

A(lpaca) To Z(zzzzzz)

TigerBlog's weekend with Princeton Athletics went from A(lpaca) to Z(zzzzzz).

In between? A lot of miles. Two huge wins. One celebration of an all-time season. One Ivy League championship celebration. 

Yeah. It was a very good weekend. 

It actually started back in February, when winter weather forced the postponement of the field hockey banquet, which was rescheduled for Friday, April 17. The problem with that for TigerBlog was that the men's lacrosse team was at Harvard Saturday, April 18. 

Could he do both? The banquet started Friday night at 6. It's a long way from Princeton to Cambridge. 

His plan became to rent a car, go to the banquet, drive up to Massachusetts, leave the car there and take the men's lacrosse bus back. Sure it would be a lot of time in the car but hey, he's done it a million times. 

Then, he realized that the women's tennis team would be finishing its regular season at Brown Sunday, April 19. Harvard to Brown? Not far. Maybe TB could get a ride, go to the match and ride back on the women's tennis bus. 

And that's what happened. 

TB met the alpaca at the farm that hosted the field hockey banquet Friday night. They were certainly friendly. They'd come right up to you. 

As for the banquet, this past field hockey season was an incredible one. The Tigers won the Ivy League tournament and then three NCAA tournament games, reaching the NCAA championship game before falling 2-1 to Northwestern in the second overtime. 

There was a lot there to celebrate. Head coach Carla Tagliente, as she always does, spoke from the heart about the season, about coming so close to achieving the biggest prize, how the team got there, how they grew together, how much she'll cherish what they all accomplished together. 

There were two videos and speeches from juniors about the six graduating seniors. There were awards and gifts and thank yous and food. And alpaca. 

TB left around 8:15. He rolled into the Newton Marriott at 1:11 am, after losing about 40 minutes in traffic due to an accident on the Merritt Parkway. 

Princeton, as TB wrote yesterday, won its game at Harvard 15-14 on a Colin Burns goal with 17 seconds left. Burns was named Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week yesterday, by the way. 

To get from Harvard to Brown, TB enlisted the services of Bernie Buonanno, the father of current Tiger sophomore Peter Buonanno and former women's lacrosse player Kari Buonanno, who had been a teammate of Miss TigerBlog's.

Bernie, himself a member of the Brown Hall of Fame after his own lacrosse career, dropped TB off at the Providence Marriott about an hour before the women's tennis team arrived. The Tigers were coming from Yale, where they had lost Saturday afternoon. 

Yale and Princeton both entered the final day of the season at 5-1 in the league. The Bulldogs were home against Penn and were heavy favorites; they would win 4-2.

Whether the Tigers realized it or not (and TB can tell you they didn't), they needed to beat Brown to get a share of the championship for themselves. It was a rainy day in Providence, and the rain bounced off the room on the fourth floor of the Pizzatola Center, which is the home of Brown basketball and, unknown to TB until Sunday despite all the times he'd been in the building, the indoor home of Brown tennis. 

There are four courts on the fourth floor. Princeton won the doubles point, and then Alice Ferlito and Bella Chhiv won at No. 1 and No. 2 singles. Brown got a point back, leaving one match in the third set and two others that were just starting. Princeton needed one of those three. 

That point came from Madeleine Jessup at No. 4, who dropped the first set of her match 6-4 and then won the next two 6-4, 6-3. The other two matches were abandoned. Princeton had won 4-1. 

For the women's tennis team it was the fifth Ivy title in six seasons and 19th overall. They'll wait a week now to see if they get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. 

Sunday, though, was about celebrating. TB can't imagine how photos and videos they took as they took in their accomplishment, but it's a very high number. Then it was the bus ride back to Princeton. At one point, an impromptu chorus of "We Are The Champions" broke out, though those were the only four words they all seemed to know. 

Hey, they were champions. The lyrics wouldn't matter. 

The bus got back to campus around 10. It was a little more than an hour later that TB was home and in bed. 

The alpaca were at 6 Friday. It was around 11 Sunday — 53 hours later — that TB was able to get zzzzzzzzs at home. 

One celebration. One huge win. One championship win. Lots of happy Tigers. 

That was a good weekend.  

Follow The Leader

Colin Burns scored the first goal of Saturday's Ivy League men's lacrosse game between Princeton and Harvard in Cambridge. 

Then he scored three more, including one where he hockey-sticked a shot into the goal to just beat the shot clock. 

In between all of these goals, the junior Princeton men's lacrosse captain spent his time while the ball was on the other side of the field yelling to his teammates on the sideline to keep the energy going through the times where it seemed to be getting away from the Tigers — and there were plenty of times when that seemed to be the case. 

All of that was in the past, though. Now the game was tied, late in the fourth quarter, the ball in Burns' stick with the shot clock and game clock his enemy. 

Before TigerBlog says what happened next (plus you probably already know anyway), here are a few things you need to know about Colin Burns. 

First, TigerBlog remembers the first time he met him. Burns was an incoming freshman. It was at at fall practice. 

It took about 10 seconds to realize which former Princeton men's lacrosse player immediately came to mind. That would be Jon Hess, one of the trio of what might be (or, according to TB is) the greatest attack unit of all time, along with his 1998 classmates Jesse Hubbard and Chris Massey. They were the cornerstones of three straight NCAA championships, a feat that has not been matched since. 

Of course, by that time, TB had never seen Burns play. It wasn't his on-field style that reminded TB of Hess. It was his obvious leadership quality. 

You talk to him for five minutes and you can't miss it. There's a reason he's a junior captain. 

Meanwhile, back at Saturday's game, there was a lot at stake in this one, things like "putting yourself in position to win an Ivy championship" and "stay in the hunt to host the Ivy League tournament" and "add another Top 10 win to your resume."

Wait. Wait. Here's something else to know about Burns. 

He has started every game of his career to date. If he stays healthy, he's headed for around 15th or so all-time at Princeton in points.  

And yet he's fairly underrated. Mostly he's been known for his years playing with his high school and club teammate Nate Kabiri, who has also started every game of his Princeton career. 

Burns played his first two seasons with Coulter Mackesy, a Tewaaraton Award finalist last year and Princeton's career leader in goals scored. This year, he's joined on attack by Kabiri (as he has from Day 1 as a Tiger) and Chad Palumbo. Those other two were just named as Tewaaraton Top 25 nominees for this season. 

Kabiri is the team's leading scorer. Palumbo is second. Both will be All-Americans. 

Burns? He's not the most athletic. He's not the most physically imposing. All he does is lead, make big plays and win. Since he and Kabiri moved onto the attack unit together, Princeton is 34-11. Since the start of last year? Make that 23-6. This year? It's 10-2 and heading to another NCAA tournament. 

He's the team's third leading scorer, with 21 goals and 14 assists. Underrated perhaps, but in the situation at game's end Saturday, you're perfectly fine with the ball in his stick. 

And there it was Saturday, in his stick — briefly, since in a flash it was in the back of the net. Maybe a little more than a flash, but, with overtime looming, Burns came from behind the cage and bounced it home. 

See for yourself:  

OH MY BURNSIE pic.twitter.com/XcHTVEeSlG

— Princeton Men's Lacrosse (@TigerLacrosse) April 18, 2026

There were 17 seconds left in the game and three seconds left on the shot clock. 

Final score: Princeton 15, Harvard 14. His fifth goal of the day, which is a career high. 

Princeton hosts Dartmouth Saturday in its regular season finale. A Tiger win means at least a share of the Ivy championship. A Tiger win and Harvard win at Cornell means an outright title and brings the Ivy tournament to Princeton. 

No matter what, Princeton is headed to the NCAA tournament. It'll be the team's fifth straight appearance. 

As for Burns, he'll keep doing what he does. He brings 76 goals and 40 assists for his career into the game against Dartmouth, but stats will never be what defines him. 

He's defined by innate leadership. TigerBlog saw it the first time he talked to him. 

Everyone could see it Saturday. He led with his words and with his play. 

Princeton came away with a huge win because of him.  

Introducing The Head Coach

The Princeton men's lacrosse team is at Harvard tomorrow at 1 in a Top 10 matchup that will go a long way in helping determine the Ivy League championship and the site of the upcoming Ivy League tournament. 

As amazing as it might seem, there are only two weekends left in the regular season. Princeton will play at home against Dartmouth next Saturday, while Harvard will be at Cornell (who plays Dartmouth tomorrow). Right now, Princeton, Harvard and Cornell are in a three-way tie at 3-1 for first place in the league. 

The ILT is a mere 14 days away. The NCAA selections are only 16 days away. With its two Top 10 RPI wins and five Top 20 RPI wins, Princeton is pretty likely to hear its name called for the fifth straight year. 

Speaking of how time flies, Matt Madalon is now 10 years into his tenure as the head coach of the men's lacrosse team. Prior to that, Madalon had never been a head coach on any level, though he'd been an assistant and coordinator in Division III and at Princeton, as well as a very accomplished player in college and in the pros. 

The Princeton head coaching roster is loaded with names who have that sort of background. In fact, you could say most of Princeton's head coach were never a head coach prior to coming here. 

And now, to that list, you can add Lauren Gosselin. Maybe "list" isn't the right way to put it. Maybe "successful formula" works better. After all, those first-time head coaches have pretty much across the board been winners. 

A week after announcing that she had been hired as the 11th head coach in Tiger women's basketball history, Princeton formally introduced Gosselin in Jadwin Gym yesterday afternoon. 

It started with this video, which if you haven't seen yet, you definitely need to watch: 

Winning.

That's what @Coach__LB is all about. pic.twitter.com/2clZL8nirO

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) April 9, 2026

You know what line was great? The part about going around the country and ending up back at Jadwin Gym. And the response of the players speaks a great deal about who Gosselin is.

When someone becomes a head coach for the first time, the No. 1 question isn't about sport knowledge or Xs and Os or really anything else that enables that person to get the job. That's all for interviewing and resumes and cover letters and such. 

Externally, at least, it's about how that person steps out of the shadow and into the spotlight. That's what it means to be the head coach. 

Will this person be able to be the lead singer? Not every former assistant can make that jump. 

If Gossselin's performance at yesterday's event is any indication, then she clearly can. She's been at Princeton for seven years on the staff of Carla Berube (who left to become the head coach at Northwestern), and in that time, she found herself, in her words, in "the nitty-gritty."

Now, as she said, she moves into "a CEO role." As such, she said that there will be a transition for her. 

TigerBlog was curious to see how she did, and like probably everyone who watched, he was wildly impressed. She spoke to her players about her commitment to their development — on the court and off — and to her own development. 

TB was really taken by that comment, since he's pretty sure he's never heard it before. Isn't that the kind of coach you'd want to play for, right? 

She thanked all of the people who have enabled her to get to this point, beginning with her husband Andrew and baby son Luke. She thanked Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack and those on the search committee. She thanked her players, who clearly believe in her. She was congratulated by video by some of the program greats she coached, as well as Berube and her former colleague Lauren Dillon.  

In this day and age, the inevitable questions about the transfer portal had to be asked of her, and she handled them flawlessly. Why Princeton? She handled that perfectly too. She mentioned all of the first-time head coaches she has as colleagues and said she'd be knocking on the doors that she hasn't already. 

She still has to complete her staff, but she did announce that Jordan Edwards will be staying on at Princeton. 

And she mentioned the billboard, the one on Route 1 that announced her arrival. She did so in a way that was humble and humorous. It was another moment that she played just right. 

As in her first major appearance as the Princeton women's basketball lead singer, Lauren Gosselin served up a big hit. Her personality came through. Her competitiveness came through. 

And, as she also said, she's excited to get to work. Opening day is still nearly seven months away. 

For a spring day in Jadwin, the new head coach couldn't have had a better performance. 

 

Logistically Speaking

TigerBlog walked in from the parking garage yesterday with Kimberly Keenan-Kirkpatrick, the Director of Operations for the men's and women's track and field programs. 

Keenan-Kirkpatrick has had quite the accomplished career, in both coaching and administration. She set several school records as a runner at Kent State before going to Seton Hall Law School, and she then spent 25 years working in administrative roles, lastly at Syracuse. 

She then jumped back into coaching, at Colgate, before coming to Princeton in her current role in 2023. 

If you think it's easy to be the Director of Operations for track and field, consider that this weekend alone Princeton has athletes who are competing at five different events in four different states: California, North Carolina, Virginia and New Jersey. That's a lot of logistics to sort out. 

To expand on TB wrote yesterday about his experience with the tennis teams, each sport has its own culture and own way of doing things. What is unheard of for one team is commonplace for another. Princeton would never send teams to multiple locations in most sports. In track and field, it happens all the time. 

This weekend is another example of that. For the record, you'll have Tigers at the Wake Forest Invitational, the Virginia Challenge (in Charlottesville), the Mt. Sac Relays (in Walnut, Calif), the Bryan Clay Invitational at Azusa Pacific, and the IC4A championships at Rutgers.  

That's a lot of logistics to have to coordinate. Flights. Ground transportation. Hotels. Meals. Training times. Athletic medicine. That's not easy. 

Oh, and the Bryan Clay Invitational? From its website, it advertises itself as: 

"the fastest and largest collegiate meet in the US! Set next to the stunning Azusa foothills in Southern California, we promise as electric atmosphere, fantastic weather and incredible competition."

What more can you ask for than that?  

The Penn Relays will be next weekend. 

*

It's Cup season — and not just the Stanley Cup, whose playoffs will be starting soon. 

No, this is Cup season for intercollegiate rowing. For someone who loves history the way TigerBlog does, the genesis of pretty much all of the Cup for which the various crews race is fascinating. 

In all there are 17 Cups between Princeton's lightweight and heavyweight men and lightweight and open women. Some date back to the 1800s. Others are more recent and bear the names of some of Princeton's greatest coaches. 

You can read more about Princeton's Cup history HERE.

This weekend will have the heavyweight men at Harvard for the Compton Cup, a race that dates to 1933. The lightweight men are home with Penn and Georgetown for the Wood-Hammond Cup, which goes back to 1941. 

As for the women, the open team is home against Yale, Virginia and Tennessee for the Eisenberg Cup, the oldest one the women race for, going back to 1975. The lightweight women are off this weekend. 

* 

The baseball team is home for three this weekend against Penn, with two Saturday beginning at 11:30 and then a third game Sunday at noon. 

The top four teams in the league will reach the Ivy League tournament and play for the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. With nine games to be played (or 10 for Harvard and Brown), the Tigers are two games back of fourth place. 

Penn will come to Clarke Field in third place at 8-4, one game out of first. After this weekend, Princeton will be at Dartmouth for three and home against Harvard for three. Harvard is in fourth. 

*

The women's lacrosse team is at Brown Saturday, with the opening draw at noon. With two regular season league games left for all eight teams, there are essentially five teams who are competing for four Ivy tournament spots — and Princeton and Brown are two of them. 

Yale is in first place at 5-0, followed by 4-1 Penn. Princeton, Brown and Cornell are all 3-2. 

Princeton and Brown have already beaten Cornell, which means that both teams would hold the tiebreaker over the Big Red. Making it tougher for Cornell is its schedule, which has Penn this weekend and Yale next weekend. 

Princeton will host Dartmouth next weekend, while Brown will be at Penn. 

Should Cornell lose twice, then Princeton and Brown would be in the Ivy tournament no matter what. Should Cornell win twice, it would be putting itself in position to host the tournament with some help (i.e, a Harvard win over Yale Saturday). That's how many different permutations there are. 

Here's a simple one: The Princeton-Brown winner clinches an ILT spot. 

*

The full weekend schedule is HERE. 

On The Bus

 

See this picture? 

If you're in TigerBlog's basic age range, you'll recognize it as example of what was known every Saturday on Wide World of Sports as "The Thrill of Victory." If you don't know the reference, click HERE.

Also if you're in TB's age range, then 1) that still gives you chills and 2) you don't need him to tell you that the ill-fated ski jumper was Vinko Bogataj. Somewhat famously, at the 20 anniversary dinner for Wide World of Sports, Muhammad Ali asked Vinko for his autograph. Oh, and Vinko is still alive, now 78 years old. 

Meanwhile, the woman in the picture is Princeton women's tennis sophomore Pearlie Zhang. Her thrill of victory captured here came when she scored the deciding point in Princeton's 4-3 win over Cornell this past Friday in Ithaca. 

Sort of.  

The actual thrill came about 30 minutes before that, except TigerBlog didn't get a good picture of it. So what did he do? He asked her to recreate it.  

And hey, that's exactly how she looked after she delivered the last winner. So who will ever know the difference, right? 

The win at Cornell was followed Sunday by Senior Day back in Princeton, as the team honored its lone senior, Eva Elbaz. If you haven't read TB's feature story on her yet, you can HERE.

The day was important for more than just that, though. This match, well, matched the last two Ivy League teams who hadn't lost — 4-0 Princeton vs. 4-0 Columbia. 

Princeton toughed that one out, winning 4-2 when Alice Ferlito won a tiebreaker to complete a straight-set win at No. 1 singles for the deciding team point. Paige Gandy, the newest member of the Princeton creative team, was there to get Sunday's Thrill of Victory moments:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by PRINCETON WOMEN'S TENNIS (@princetonwtennis)

 

TigerBlog is relatively new to being the Princeton tennis contact, but it hasn't taken him long to be all in  on the two teams. 

It's been a struggle for the men since the league season began, as the team has been riddled with injuries. Before that, Princeton was the highest ranked Ivy League team and had won the eight-Ivy-team ECAC championship. 

Even with the injuries and the accompanying struggles in the league, where the Tigers have not yet won a match, Princeton is still very much in the hunt for an NCAA tournament spot heading into the final weekend, which will feature home matches against Yale Saturday and Brown Sunday. 

It'll also be Senior Day for the men Sunday, with three seniors: Top Nidunjianzan, Sebastian Sec and Ellis Short. 

The women will be at Yale Saturday and Brown Sunday. A win either day guarantees no worse than a share of the Ivy League championship. Two wins would mean an outright championship, no matter what else happens in the league. 

For TigerBlog, the experience with the tennis teams has been, in one word, fun. They're both fun groups — and where else can you see all of the men's and women's players in one group team photo:

TigerBlog jumped on the bus to Cornell to see what the difference would be between traveling with the teams he's used to (field hockey, men's lacrosse) and a different one (in this case, women's tennis). He's very glad he did. 

For starters, there are 11 players, as opposed to 24 field hockey players or 52 men's lacrosse players. That alone changes the whole dynamic. Here is one of his main observations: the volume level of the women's tennis bus is pretty much halfway between that of field hockey (loud) and men's lax (very not loud). 

Also, it was a much less regimented trip. By the nature of having so many more players, the other teams need to have might stricter itineraries. 

Mostly, though, it was a chance to get to know a group of coaches and players he didn't know at all a few months ago, to figure out the personalities behind their stats and their styles on the court. And to see them compete for their goal, of an Ivy championship. 

TB has been doing this for a very long time. He has always said that the best part is the opportunity to work with some of the greatest young people you'll find anywhere — and to hopefully do at least a little to help them have the best experience at Princeton they can. 

The trip to Cornell? It was definitely worth it.