Welcome To Postseason

Welcome to May. 

Welcome to postseason. 

It starts at 11 this morning, at least Eastern time, when the men's tennis team plays SMU at the University of Texas in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. The host Longhorns will play Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the second match, and the winners play Saturday in the second round. 

Princeton and SMU are a combined 37-21 on the season. Of those 21 losses between them, eighteen have come to NCAA tournament teams. 

Princeton is looking to get to the NCAA second round for the second year in a row, after beating St. John's last year in Round 1 before falling to Virginia.

The match is likely to be moved indoors due to rain in the forecast. You can follow the live stats HERE.

There is rain in the forecast for Ithaca as well, though there is no chance that the Ivy League tournament for men's lacrosse will be moving indoors. Funny thing about this forecast: There was no rain in it when TigerBlog was packing yesterday for the trip. There were cold temps, but no rain. 

And so TB packed lots of sweatshirts and layers, though sadly no rain stuff. Maybe he should have simply assumed that the first weekend in May in Ithaca always requires being prepared for rain and cold, not just one or the other. 

Hey, he's seen snow there for the Ivy lacrosse tournament. On Mothers' Day.  

Rain or no rain, cold or no cold, it'll be Cornell and Harvard at 4 and then Princeton and Yale at 6:30. The winners meet Sunday at 1 for the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

No matter what, Princeton and Cornell have already shared the 2026 Ivy championship. Also, both of those teams — and quite likely Harvard — are headed to the NCAA field when the bids are announced Sunday night. 

All of those games can be seen on ESPNU. 

Meanwhile, the forecast in New Haven is for clear skies and reasonably warm temps. The Princeton women will be there for their Ivy League tournament, which also begins today. 

Game 1 will be between Yale and Brown, with the opening draw at 4. Princeton and Penn will then play at 7, with the winners to meet Sunday at noon for the automatic bid. Princeton and Penn played a great game the first time around, one that the Quakers won 10-9 in two overtimes. 

The rematch will have huge NCAA implications, since the winner gets two prizes: a shot at the automatic bid and the chance to boost an at-large resume.  

The postseason will be intense. The day before? That wasn't as intense, at least not while the two lacrosse teams waited outside Caldwell Field House for their departures. That was more of a party atmosphere. 

The women, all in matching sweatsuits, sat between the field house and DeNunzio Pool, waiting for their food orders to arrive. TigerBlog congratulated Jami MacDonald on being the Ivy League Attacker of the Year. 

The men's players, as they waited for their bus, played Hacky Sack. Even photographer Camryn Ley joined in, after looking like a kid at the playground who was hoping to get the attention of the big kids. 

TB also showed the Ivy League Defenseman of the Year graphic to Jack Stahl, who was unanimously voted for the honor after a year that saw him also named the Division I Breakout Player of the Year in midseason by Inside Lacrosse. 

Stahl stands 6-4 and says very little. He's Teddy Roosevelt's kind of player — talks softly and carries a big stick. That quote, by the way, is literally etched in stone at Class of 1952 Stadium. 

TB wasn't expecting a huge reaction when Stahl saw the news, and, in keeping with his persona, there wasn't one, just a bit of a smile. TB could tell Stahl was happy, obviously.

Princeton had six first-team All-Ivy men's lacrosse player, tied for the second-most in program history. Only the 1997 team, with seven, had more — and that team went 15-0.  

It was a day to be happy. It was still April, after all. Then the buses left, eventually arriving at their destinations. And then April turned to May. 

And now it's time for postseason. 

Now it's time to get serious.  

Goodbye, April

Goodbye, April. 

You have to love the month. It has no idea what it's trying to do. 

According to AccuWeather, in Princeton this April you had five days where the high temperature was over 80 degrees, with four more with a high between 77 and 79. That's eight of 30 days where it was at least 77.

Ah, but then there's the flip side. There were 11 days where the low was below 40, six of which where it was below freezing. 

The truly fun part is that five of the sub-40 days came after the five 80-plus days. 

Don't ever change, April.

*

The Ivy League baseball regular season comes to an end this weekend. There are three teams who are locked into the tournament — Penn, Brown and Yale, any of whom could still be the host. 

There are also four teams in a race for the fourth and final spot — Princeton, Columbia, Cornell and Dartmouth. 

Princeton ends its season with three home games against the Crimson, who have already been eliminated from the ILT. The enter the weekend in fifth place, at 8-10 in the league, one game up on Dartmouth and Cornell. 

Then there is Columbia. The Lions had a postponed game against Brown from earlier in the season that was made up yesterday, when Brown did Princeton a big favor with a win that dropped the Lions to 8-9-1. That "-1" is a tie game with Yale that won't be finished, so winning percentage will be the ultimate decider of the last spot.  

Working in Princeton's favor is the fact that it holds the tiebreaker over Dartmouth and Cornell after having won the season series against each. The Tigers also have the tiebreaker over Columbia, but unless Princeton somehow ends up with a tie then that won't matter. 

The other three matchups this weekend have Columbia at Cornell, Dartmouth at Yale and Brown at Penn. 

First pitch for Saturday's doubleheader at Clarke Field is 11:30 and for Sunday's single game is noon.  

*

The Larry Ellis Invitational Meet will be held at Weaver Track & Field Stadium this weekend, beginning tomorrow and running through Sunday. 

As was the case with the Sam Howell Invitational a few weeks ago, TigerBlog would like to remind everyone who Larry Ellis was. 

Does the name Bob Beamon mean anything to you? Beaman was the one who soared 29-2 1/4 in the long jump at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City, shattering the existing record by nearly two feet. For more than two decades, nobody came close to touching the record, and it was among those considered unbreakable — until it was broken in 1991, when Mike Powell leapt 29-4 1/4. Now, 38 years later, Beamon's jump is still second. 

Why bring up Beaman? He grew up in New York City, Jamaica, to be exact. It was there that he was first mentored by the then-Jamaica High School coach. His name? Larry Ellis.

That's the same Larry Ellis who went on to become one of Princeton's most legendary coaches ever, with a 22-year run with the men's track and field program, as well multiple cycles as an Olympic coach. Also like Howell, Ellis was a true gentleman and a warm, welcoming person. 

He could also cut to the chase, at least in one example that TB overheard. He was walking down the Jadwin Gym balcony one day when he saw Ellis and one of his athletes in a conversation against the railing:

Athlete: What do I have to do to get my time down?
Ellis: Run faster.  

TB will never forget that. 

Ellis passed away in 1998 at the age of 70.  

*

Among the rowing highlights this weekend will be a matchup Saturday between the third-ranked Princeton heavyweight men and No. 6 Brown on Lake Carnegie for the Content Cup, which honors Martha Content Joukoswky, Brown Class of 1958, and dates to 1994. 

The women's open rowing team welcomes Penn and Central Florida Saturday as well. The lightweight women have their Eastern Sprints Sunday in Worcester. 

*

The Princeton softball regular season ends this weekend with three games against Dartmouth at Cynthia Paul Field. The facility will be back in business next weekend, for the Ivy League tournament.

Princeton, 17-1 in the league, has already clinched the Ivy title and the host role for the ILT. Should Princeton get at least one win this weekend against the Big Green, it would tie the record for most wins ever in an Ivy softball season.

The rest of the field for the tournament isn't set yet, as three out of Columbia, Harvard, Brown and Penn will be in town next weekend. 

*

The complete weekend schedule is HERE. 

You Too, Nance?

You see this picture? 

TigerBlog has shown it a few people who know who's in it and they've all had one of two reactions: 1) there's a lot of goals in that picture or 2) did she end up passing him?

So yes, there are a lot of goals there. And yes, she did pass him. 

That would be the MacDonald family. TigerBlog was going to correct that it was the MacDonalds plus him, but then he thought better of that. 

And why not? He considers himself an honorary MacDonald, something he earned when he thumped them all in their family card game, Wizard. 

This is what TB wrote about it after he played with them the first time: 

TB had never heard of it until he sat down to play with the entire MacDonald family. The fact that he didn't know the rules notwithstanding, TB won — three times. And that was after he saw cards thrown, insults hurled, marital choices questioned (at least that's what Linda MacDonald said to her husband Steve) though it was all in good fun. They are a great group, the MacDonalds. 

This picture was taken this past Saturday, after the women's lacrosse team's Senior Day win over Dartmouth. It was Jami MacDonald's final Sherrerd Field appearance, after eight years of MacDonalds who dominated at the facility. Her brother Mikey was the 2015 Roper Trophy winner; he still has scored more points in a season at Princeton than any other men's lacrosse player not named Michael Sowers. 

Jami, who was named the Ivy League Attacker of the Year yesterday, brings 260 career points into Princeton's Ivy League tournament semifinal against Penn at Yale Saturday. Mikey? He finished his career with 208. Jami also has the edge in goals (158-132) and assists (102-76). 

It's going to be a long, long time before siblings will ever reach 468 points (and counting) between them. 

There's a different picture from Saturday that TB wants to talk about though. It's this one: 

This one is from halftime of the men's game, when, despite the rain, Princeton Athletics honored two longtime legends who will be retiring at the end of this academic year: Karen Malec and Nancy Donigan. 

TigerBlog wrote about Karen a few weeks ago, when she first announced that her 36-year career at Princeton was going to be coming to a close. You can read that HERE.

Today is Nancy's turn. TB could actually just do a "find" and "change" for "Karen" to "Nancy," because much of what applies to Karen applies to Nancy, who, by the way, have always been really close friends. 

When TB first came to Princeton, Nancy and her husband Joe had two little kids. You can see them all in the picture — with their next generation of little kids. Where did the time go? 

Nancy is retiring after 39 years at Princeton, most of which has been spent in the compliance office after starting out in the football office. She was a great athlete in her own right and is a member of the Notre Dame High School (in Lawrenceville) Hall of Fame.  

When TB thinks about what to write about Nancy, he comes back to two words: warmth, and smile. Nancy exudes the first and almost always has the second. 

TigerBlog has had his share of ups and downs during his time at Princeton. Through it all, Nancy has been a constant as a friend whose support, compassion, humor and kindness have helped sustain TB through those downs. 

Much like Karen, Nancy is just fun to be around. She laughs. She jokes. She lives each day devoted to her family and to those closest to her. Whatever she's doing, she maximizes the enjoyment for everyone in her orbit. 

On top of who she is, there's the job she's done. Pretty much every athlete who has come through Princeton during her time has no idea who she is. They have no way of knowing that if she didn't do her job the way she did, they would never have gotten a chance to compete as a Tiger. The coaches here certainly know how important she's been for their programs.  

When TB heard the news that Nancy was retiring, his first thought was "you too, Nance?" What will Princeton Athletics be without Nancy Donigan? Much like it will be without Karen Malec. 

Better for having had them here as long as they were — and yet never really the same again.  

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.