Snow Days

 

So what do you do on your snow day? 

It depends where you're snowbound, TigerBlog supposes.  

If you in Florida with a cancelled flight due to the storm, you do what the women's tennis team did. If you're in Princeton with the 25 or so inches of snow that fell here, you build a giant men's lacrosse snowman. 

The uniform on the snowman belongs to Princeton senior David Smythe, by the way. TigerBlog isn't sure exactly who built it, but hey — that's a tremendous effort, no?  

TigerBlog has never made a great snowman, try as he might have through the years. He has spent plenty of time on beaches, so he gives this point to the women's tennis players.  

The University finally was able to get back to normal operations yesterday. TigerBlog starts today by giving a huge shoutout and thank you to everyone in facilities in Athletics and throughout the campus who was out there getting rid of tons and tons of snow. 

In Athletics, that means: Greg Paczkowski, Brad Cabral, Aaron Ostroff, Ryan Statham, Michael Huggins, David Santoro, Matthew Duker, Andrew Mangone, Tyler Mills, Chris Vance, Seth Sherman, Mark Bartlett, Tim Birch, Craig French, Jay Kubitsky, Josef Lavko, Christopher Maple, Paul Merrow, Robert Nacarella, Adam Salmon and Mike Santoro. 

That's a lot of people who did a lot of heavy lifting to get athletics up and rolling again. If you happen to see them out and about, say thank you. 

As the athletic schedule gets going again, there are two huge events on today's calendar. First, there is women's lacrosse at home tonight at 7 against Rutgers, four days after a 14-10 loss to Loyola Saturday in the season opener. 

That opener was similar to the men's the week before in that the Tigers started slowly and couldn't overcome a tough first half, even if the second half was much better. The men bounced back from that to defeat Maryland 13-12 this past Saturday in Game 2. 

Will the women have a similar rebound? It was an 11-2 Loyola lead at halftime and then an 8-3 Princeton run in the second half. Meg Morrisroe and Jami MacDonald had eight goals between them — on just 10 shots between them. MacDonald also had two assists. 

Rutgers comes to Sherrerd Field with a record of 3-1, with an opening loss to Army followed by wins over Delaware, Monmouth and Villanova. Rutgers has scored at least 12 goals in every game and averages 15.25 per.

The other event today is Day 1 of four of the Ivy League men's swimming and diving championships at DeNunzio Pool. If you're looking for schedules, results and any other possible information, you can find it HERE.

The Princeton men are ranked 20th in Division I heading into this weekend, with a 7-0 run through the Ivy dual meets. The Tigers won their first Ivy swimming and diving championship back in 1965 — one year after Jed Graef's Olympic gold medal in Tokyo in the 200 backstroke.

Most recently, the Tigers won it a year ago, giving them 32 of these titles. No other Ivy program has won more. 

Actually, that last sentence got TB to wondering in how many sports does Princeton have the most Ivy League championships. 

Well, the answer is: a lot of them. 

On the women's side, the Ivy League crowns a champion in 17 different sports. Of those, there are nine different ones where Princeton has the most: basketball, cross country, field hockey, golf, lacrosse, open rowing, swimming & diving, indoor track and field and volleyball. 

On the men's side, you have basketball, cross country, golf, swimming & diving, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field. 

Meanwhile, back at DeNunzio Pool, Princeton's Mitchell Schott was the High Point Scorer of the Meet last year after winning three individual races and being part of winning relay. Aidan Wang is looking for his third straight High Point Diver of the Meet.  

Princeton will still have the all-time Ivy title lead no matter who wins this week. The event runs through Saturday night.   

Nobody Ever Does Anything About It

TigerBlog begins today with a thank-you to Princeton women's tennis head coach Elizabeth Johnson for sending the above picture yesterday. 

The women's tennis team played two matches in South Florida this weekend, defeating Florida International and Florida Atlantic. The Tigers, by the way, were ranked 34th in last week's ITA poll (the men were 19th). 

Look at the picture. Palm trees swaying gently in the warm tropical breeze. The clear blue-green of the ocean beckoning beyond. The cloudless sky of blue sending its own personal greeting. 

Now, if you were in the path of the storm that pushed through, look out the window. It's quite the contrast. 

TigerBlog was outside Saturday at the men's lacrosse game at Maryland on a beautiful late February day. The snows of the previous six weeks had almost vanished completely. Grass was actually visible. 

And now? Bang. There's more snow than there was before. And it's the heavy, hard-to-shovel kind. 

If you were affected by this storm, hopefully you're okay and you still have power — or if not that you get it back soon. This storm was a wild one, with nearly two feet of snow and then crazy winds. 

Also, if you're wondering, the women's tennis team was supposed to be back Sunday night but now can't get back until today at the earliest. What has the team been doing there? "Training and studying," Johnson said. 

That's a good use of time. 

The storm was so intense that in-person classes were cancelled, something that has happened because of weather less than five times probably in all the decades TB has been at Princeton. 

Oh well. As Mark Twain once said: "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it." Or was that Charles Dudley Warner? 

The timing of the storm wasn't horrible as far as the athletic schedule was. Had it come through 24-48 hours earlier, it would have been a logistical nightmare for sports at Princeton and everywhere else in the Northeast. 

The week coming up is a huge one, with major events up and down the schedule. The weather app on TB's phone, by the way, still has a few too many snowflakes for his liking. 

Before any of that becomes an issue, there are two more mentions from this past weekend. 

The first is for the baseball team, which opened its season with three games at North Carolina State, who was ranked 17th in the country. The Wolfpack won the first two games, which, as an aside, improved them to 5-0 on the year. They also outscored Princeton 22-5 in those two games, including 16-1 in Game 2.

So what happened in the third game? Princeton 1, NC State 0.

The run came via an Isaac Lamson home run in the sixth. It was the first career home run for the sophomore. 

The pitching came from Brady Kaufman, who went the first five innings, allowing one hit while striking out three, and then Ryan Penney, who went the last four, allowing two hits and striking out four, including two to end it after allowing a lead-off double in the bottom of the ninth. 

Those are two big-time performances right there. Oh, and both of them are freshmen. 

The Tigers head back to North Carolina for four with Duke this weekend. 

TB also wants to talk about the men's hockey team, who lost in a shootout to Colgate Friday night and then turned around 24 hours later to beat No. 10 Cornell 4-2 on senior night.  

As a result, Princeton heads into the final weekend of the regular season alone in fourth place in the ECAC standings. Fourth is a really good place to be, since the top four teams will receive a first-round playoff bye and home ice in the quarterfinals, while 5-8 will host the opening round next weekend. 

Princeton is three points ahead of fifth-place Harvard, a team whom they play Friday night (in Cambridge), followed Saturday by a stop in Hanover to take on Dartmouth. The standings right now have Quinnipiac with 47 points, Dartmouth with 43, Cornell with 41 and then Princeton with 35.

No matter what happens, Princeton can finish no lower than sixth, which means there will be postseason hockey at Hobey Baker Rink for both the women and the men. The women will host Harvard in their quarterfinal series, which is best-of-three. Those games will be Friday, Saturday and if necessary Sunday, with a 3 pm start time each day.  

That's Golden

That was, without question, a great gold medal men's hockey game at the Olympics. 

The United States defeated Canada 2-1 in overtime, getting a goal from Jack Hughes less than two minutes into the 3v3 period — and not that much time after he lost his front teeth on a high stick in the third period. 

While Hughes may have scored the game-winner, it was USA goalie Connor Hellebuyck who WAS the game-winner, stopping 41 of 42 shots and making some of the most ridiculous saves you will see anywhere (maybe even better than the one that Princeton men's lacrosse goalie Ryan Croddick made to seal the Tigers' 13-12 win over Maryland Saturday).

In all seriousness, it would have been hard to tell which save by Hellebuyck was even his best until the one in the third period. You know the one.

Hellebuyck with one of the greatest saves ever
pic.twitter.com/ouRYLtspvJ

— Pardon My Take (@PardonMyTake) February 22, 2026

How? How in the world did he do that? And on that stage? That might have been the greatest save ever. 

TigerBlog was in the racket center on the Meadows Campus for Princeton-Georgetown men's tennis yesterday, and he was watching the game on his laptop while he also watched the tennis in front of him. Right at the time that Hughes scored, a big roar went up from the other side of the center, though it was also at the same time that Princeton clinched the Ivy League women's squash tournament championship.  

TigerBlog would like to say two things about this Olympic men's hockey tournament. 

First, the intensity with which the teams played throughout was incredible, especially considering they're all highly paid pros. If this had been a February game in, say, Tampa or Winnipeg, there would have been no way that these players would have played as hard as they did. Put a national team jersey on them and put them in the Olympics, and their compete level just ratchets way up.

Second, sorry, but as great as this was, it wasn't anything like the 1980 Miracle On Ice. If you hadn't been born yet or weren't old enough to appreciate it, there's no comparison to what that event was. For so many reasons, it's impossible for any athletic event to ever even remotely approach what that was 46 years ago. 

And so these Olympic Games have ended. It'll be four years until TB gets to watch skeleton again. 

Ah, but are you ready for this segue: 

While the United States had to wait 46 years between Olympic men's hockey gold medals, the Princeton women's swimming and diving team only had to wait a little more than 46 weeks for another championship of its own.

Not bad? Too forced? 

The Ivy League championships were held this weekend, and once again it all turned out to be golden for the Princeton women. That's four straight titles, if you're counting. 

It's not easy to put together that level of consistent dominance. There aren't that many teams in any sport that can win four straight, and it has to be quite a feeling to be part of a senior class when that does happen. 

The biggest story, objectively, from these championships is that Penn finished second. When was the last time that a team other than Princeton, Harvard or Yale finished in the top two? 

You have to go back 2002, when Brown was the runner-up to Princeton. Penn, by the way, finished fifth last year. 

As TB said, that is an objective view. This is a Princeton-centric space, though, so permit TB to say the biggest story was the team that won. 

The Tigers put up 1,432 points, followed by Penn at 1,204 and then Harvard at 1,153.5.

Eleanor Sun, a Tiger junior, was once again the High Point Swimmer of the Meet after taking the 200 IM, 400 IM and 200 butterfly, qualifying for the NCAA Championships in all three. Her 200 and 400 IMs were both pool records, with the 400 IM also an Ivy meet record. She was also part of the 800 free relay that set a Princeton record. 

Charlotte Martinkus was the High Point Diver of the Meet for the third time. Martinkus won the one-meter in an Ivy and pool record performance. 

The Ivy men's swimming and diving championships will be at DeNunzio Pool beginning Wednesday. 

The Weekend Part II

The puck had just trickled across the goal line into the back of the net, touching off a massive gold medal celebration for the United States women's hockey team after a 2-1 overtime win over Canada yesterday afternoon. 

And still TigerBlog wasn't sure which team he wanted to see win the game. 

He's an American, after all — but the U.S. team didn't have any Princeton alums. The Canadian team had two.

Those two, Sarah Fillier and Claire Thompson, had to settle for silver after the very dramatic game, one that saw the U.S. tie it with two minutes to go and then win it in the 3v3 overtime. The format certainly ramps the drama way up, that's for sure. 

Fillier, who almost won it in the overtime, are now two-time Olympic medalists, after they both won gold four years ago in China. This is the eighth time that women's hockey has been contested in the Olympics; the gold medal count is now Canada 5, USA 3, Rest Of The World 0.

These Olympic Games are heading into their final weekend. Next up will be the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, where there figure to be many more Princetonians who will compete.

If you're going to watch the Olympics this weekend, make sure you also pay attention to the weekend in Princeton Athletics. TB ran down some of this weekend's events yesterday, and here are some others:

*

There are two big men's hockey games this weekend at Baker Rink, both at 7, as Colgate is here tonight at Cornell tomorrow. '

The ECAC regular season has two weekends to go, and Princeton is currently in fifth place in the league, one point back of Harvard in the race for a first-round tournament bye and then home ice in the league quarterfinals. 

Colgate is in seventh place, with 25 points (Union is sixth with 27), while Cornell is in second, tied with Dartmouth at 38 points. Quinnipiac leads the league with 44. 

The Tigers will finish the regular season on the road next weekend, with a massive trip to Harvard and Dartmouth. 

The Princeton women will be off this weekend and then home in the ECAC quarterfinals next weekend.  

* 

The men's lacrosse team is at Maryland tomorrow at noon, hoping to bounce back after its 13-7 loss to Penn State in the season opener last weekend. The schedule will get no easier after this, as next up will be a home weekend next Friday and Sunday against Syracuse and North Carolina.

If you're following the rankings, then you know that Maryland was No. 1 until Syracuse defeated the Terps last week in the Dome, moving the Orange to No. 1 and Maryland to No. 2. North Carolina? Well, the Tar Heels enter this weekend ranked third. 

Princeton is 0-6 against Maryland since the start of the 2022 season and has not had the lead in the second half of any of those games. 

* 

Meanwhile, about 30 minutes north of College Park, the Princeton women's lacrosse team opens its season at Loyola (also at noon). 

Princeton is ranked ninth in the coaches' poll but dead last in a different Division I stat: The Tigers will be the last of the 133 teams in the country to start their season. Loyola is ranked 19th and has already played three games, with a win over Lehigh sandwiched between losses to Johns Hopkins and Florida. 

Princeton needs to replace its all-time leading goal scorer, McKenzie Blake, but there are returning impact players all over the field, including three on the Tewaaraton Award preseason watchlist: Dylan Allen, Haven Dora and Jami MacDonald. 

It's unlikely that MacDonald will set the Princeton career scoring record, but it is likely that she'll set the MacDonald family record. She enters her senior year with 189 career points, which leaves her 19 away from tying older brother Mikey, the 2015 Roper Trophy winner as the top male senior athlete. 

If you're wondering, the points record at Princeton is 307, held by Kyla Sears. MacDonald had 92 a year ago, so there is a chance. 

*

The women's basketball team is home tomorrow at 5:30 against Brown in the only game this weekend. 

Princeton and Columbia are tied for first in the league at 8-2, one game ahead of both Harvard and Brown at 7-3.  There's a three-game drop from there to fifth place, where Penn is 4-6, which means that the four teams for Ivy Madness are pretty much dialed in. 

Princeton defeated Brown 58-49 in Providence earlier this season. The rest of this weekend's schedule is Columbia at Dartmouth, Yale at Penn and Cornell at Harvard. 

The men's race is much more balanced, with five teams separated by two games from third to seventh. Princeton, at 4-6, is currently one game back of fourth place, with a game tonight at Brown (7).  

*

The complete weekend schedule can be found HERE.

Darin Yrigoyen?

Are you serious?

TigerBlog received the typical email he gets prior to an event for one of the teams he covers, asking for a roster and basic team information and needs. Of course, this one was different than any he's ever gotten before. 

The sender was the women's tennis contact at Florida International, where Princeton will play Saturday, before playing at Florida Atlantic Sunday. 

If this was all normal, then why did TB say "are you serious?" Well, that's because the contact at FIU is Darin Yrigoyen. 

If you don't recognize the last name, Darin's father is the great Chuck Yrigoyen, one-time member of the Princeton Office of Athletic Communications and long-time Associate Commissioner at the Ivy League Office. He's also one of the all-time greats in Jadwin Gym lunchtime basketball history and would be a first-ballot Hall-of-Fame, if such a thing existed. 

TB has always said that he'd feel old when the children of athletes whom he covered at Princeton would come to compete here as well, and that's something that's happened quite a few times. Darin Yrigoyen though? TB remembers when he was born, for crying out loud. 

Now he feels old. 

*

The Olympic gold medal game in women's hockey will be held today at 1:10 pm Eastern time between the United States and Canada. This isn't exactly the Miracle on Ice; it's more the Inevitable on Ice. 

Maybe in four years, they can have these two play a best-of-seven for the gold and then have everyone else play for the bronze?

Princeton is represented by two players on the Canadian team — Sarah Fillier and Claire Thompson — both of whom already own gold medals from four years ago. The United States team is a heavy favorite this time around, having already taken down Canada 5-0 earlier in the tournament. 

Canada has won five of the previous seven gold medals since women's hockey was added in 1998. The other two belong to the USA. 

Canada won the 2022 gold medal game 3-2 in Beijing.  

* 

The Ivy League women's swimming and diving championships began yesterday and will run through Saturday at Brown. 

Princeton will be going for its fourth straight championship and 27th overall, which would rank third among Ivy League women's programs all-time, behind the 28 of Princeton field hockey and Harvard women's squash. 

Princeton went 7-0 in the dual meet portion of its Ivy League schedule, though the official champion wil be the winner of the meet in Rhode Island this weekend.  

 *

By the way, speaking of the Winter Olympics, you know where the next ones will be in 2030? The French Alps, with most of the events about a three or four hour drive from where the current ones are being held. 

*

Is .611 a good batting average? 

Actually, a better question might be is .526 a good batting average? That's where Princeton's Graciela Dominguez stood after the opening weekend in Florida, where the Tigers went 4-1. 

Of course that's a great number to put up. It also puts Dominguez in third place on her own team, behind Braeden Hale (she of the .611) and Karis Ford (.545). Hale, a first-team All-Ivy League selection last year as a freshman, ranks seventh in Division I in batting average after the first weekend. 

Mia Valenzuela was named Ivy Rookie of the Week after having at least one hit in all five games, with two home runs and two doubles. Valenzuela came to Princeton from Houston's St. Agnes Academy, which is also the Tigers. In fact, Valenzuela won the school's Tiger Pride Award a year ago. 

Next up for the Tigers (the ones from Princeton) is a weekend in Chapel Hill, N.C., with five more games on the schedule, beginning tomorrow with North Carolina Central and Appalachian State, with another App State Saturday, as well as a game against the host Tar Heels, and finishing up Sunday morning against, of all teams, Rider. 

Princeton and Rider are separated by about eight miles or so, and they will play on a field about 500 miles from either campus. 

*

The baseball team will also be in North Carolina this weekend, and next, for that matter. 

Princeton will open its season with three games this weekend at North Carolina State and then be back next weekend for four more at Duke. The weekend after that? There's a trip to South Carolina to start its spring break portion of the schedule.  

ECAC Champs II

In TigerBlog's piece yesterday about the women's hockey team's ECAC regular-season championship, he forgot to mention one item. 

While Princeton and Yale tied for the ECAC title, neither won the Ivy League championship. That went to Cornell, who finished with 21 points, to 20 for Yale and 18 for Princeton. 

The ECAC regular season has 22 games for each team, with one home and one away against the other 11 league teams. Of those 22 games, though, the Ivy vs. Ivy games count in the Ivy standings, so those 10 games are a subset of the ECAC ones. 

As such, you can have co-champs in the ECAC who do not win the Ivy League. It's a pretty interesting anomaly, and you know how TigerBlog loves a good anomaly. 

The ECAC Hockey League, by the way, isn't the same entity as the ECAC. Confusing, right? 

The ECAC itself dates back to 1938, when Asa S. Bushnell (Princeton Class of 1921, by the way) became the first commissioner. Today the ECAC is an extension of Northeast Division I, II and III schools, pretty much all of whom are in other primary leagues (such as the Ivy League, for instance). 

The ECAC, according to its mission statement, "exists to enhance the experience of student-athletes participating in intercollegiate athletics, and provide great value for universities and colleges, by sponsoring championships, leagues, bowl games, tournaments and other competitions throughout the Northeast."

One of the championships that the ECAC sponsors is Division I tennis, both for men and women. Those two tournaments — which featured all eight Ivy League teams and nobody else — were held the last two weekends at the Si Qin Family Indoor Tennis Center at Princeton. 

The women's event saw Princeton go 2-1 two weeks ago. This past weekend, it was the men's turn. 

The final matched Princeton and Columbia Sunday. Guess what? It was one of the best Princeton events TigerBlog has seen in a long time.

Princeton and Columbia both won their first two matches by 4-0 counts, setting up a championship match between the two top seeds. Columbia was ranked 12th nationally; Princeton was on the cusp of the national rankings. 

Throw in that Princeton had already come close to beating two other ranked teams (Arizona State, North Carolina State) and lost 4-3. And throw in that Princeton had lost 14 straight to Columbia.  

The match started at 3:30. It was nearly 7:30 when it ended. Final score: Princeton 4, Columbia 3. 

It was crazy. It was wildly intense. Every point seemed to make a big difference. It was everything you could have asked from a sporting event.  

If you don't know how college tennis matches work, there are three doubles matches to start off, and whichever team wins two gets a team point. Then there are six singles matches, worth one point each as well. It takes four points to get a team to win. 

There are other differences from what you see during Wimbledon or the U.S. Open. For one thing, if a game gets to 40-40, then the next point wins. And then for another, it's hardly quiet during play. Spectators. Players. Teammates. The sound bounces everywhere, always. It turns the whole event into something of a party atmosphere.

The biggest subplot of Sunday's match came at first singles, where Columbia's Michael Zheng and Princeton's Paul Inchauspe met. It was a rematch of the NCAA singles tournament semifinal last fall, when Zheng defeated Inchauspe in three sets on his way to his second-straight individual national championship. In addition, Zheng also happened to win a match in the Australian Open main draw a month ago. 

The match between them Sunday was a great one. It was incredible shot-making, by both players. Inchauspe won the first set. Zheng won the second. If you were waiting for Inchauspe to fold, well, you're still waiting — he won the third set and the match. 

Princeton had won the doubles point. Aleksandar Mitric gave Princeton a win at No. 6. Columbia won at No. 2, No. 4 and No. 5. All were back-and-forth matches that only made the drama build and flip almost game-by-game. 

And so it was 3-3 as the third set at No. 3 started. The crowd was big and very into it. The building was loud. Very loud. 

The match had Princeton's Landon Ardila against Columbia's Sachin Palta, the No. 37 player in the most recent ITA singles rankings. It didn't matter. Ardila played with a visible combination of poise and confidence, and he rolled through the set 6-1, touching off a celebration worthy of the moment. 

Have the Tigers seen the last of the Lions? Hardly. The teams meet again in New York City on April 12, with an Ivy League championship possibly at stake that day. 

Can it live up to what the teams did Sunday? If it does, then that's going to be an incredible scene.  

No Judgement

You know what TigerBlog hates (besides winter)?

Sports that are judged. You're just begging for reputational biases or, even worse, outright cheating, all of which lends itself to questionable outcomes. 

Take the side-by-side bumpy-hill skiing, or whatever it's called. Two skiers race down a hill, stopping along the way to twirl and somersault and a bunch of other things that slow them down, eventually getting to the finish line — and then you wait for the judges to decide who won. 

When TB watched this event (he thinks it's called "dual moguls") the other day, he couldn't help but think of the words of one of the greatest American authors of all time: 

Then those things ran about with big bumps, jumps and kicks and with hops and big thumps and all kinds of bad tricks.  

Why not just make the tricks the same for all the skiers and then whoever gets to the bottom first after having done all of those tricks wins? Instead, the woman who won the gold medal finished well behind the silver medalist, but the judges awarded her first by one point. 

Bonus points, by the way, to those who correctly identified the quote, which TB will tell you at the end.  

You know what event TB was awed by? Skeleton. 

Basically, you're on a sled similar to the one that everyone had as a kid, only you're flying down an icy course at speeds that approach 80 miles per hour, with winding turns and 180 degree direction changes, not to mention your face a fraction of an inch from the track. TB wants to try it, and by that he means "no possible way would he ever do that." 

Janine Flock was the women's gold medalist and one of the feel-good stories of the Winter Olympics. The 36-year-old Austrian was in her fourth Olympics without ever having won a medal, finishing fourth in 2018. 

Lucky for her nobody came along after she crossed the finish line to tell her that someone who went slower won the gold because of subjective judging. 

Speaking of things that happened on ice this weekend, how about the end of the ECAC women's hockey regular season? That was as wild as almost anything the Olympics has had so far. 

Princeton went into the regular season assured of one thing — a first-round playoff bye and home ice for the quarterfinals (which, he supposes, is actually two things). How would it all play out? 

It started Friday night, when Princeton hosted Yale, where a win would have clinched the outright title. Instead, the Bulldogs won 2-0, vaulting them over Princeton and into first place with one game to go. 

Where did that leave the standings? Yale now had 45 points, followed by Princeton with 44 and Quinnipiac at 43. With three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime win, one for an overtime loss and zero for a regulation loss, the permutations were many. 

Saturday night saw Brown at Princeton and Yale at Quinnipiac. The Princeton-Brown game ended first, when Issy Wunder scored in overtime after the Bears had tied the game with 1:30 to play in regulation. This was all after Wunder had given Princeton a 2-1 lead with eight minutes to go.

The OT win left Princeton with 46 points, which meant Yale would win the outright championship with a regulation win, something that seemed inevitable with a 3-1 Bulldog lead with less than two minutes to go. 

And then? Shockingly, Quinnipiac scored two empty-net goals 38 seconds apart and then won it in overtime. Shocking indeed. 

When it all settled, Yale earned one point for its OT loss, making it a 46-46 tie for the championship, with Quinnipiac one point back at 45. For Princeton, its first ECAC regular season title came in the first year for head coach Courtney Kessel.

Yale earned the No. 1 seed over Princeton through the tiebreakers. Princeton will be the No. 2 seed, giving the Tigers this weekend off while its opponent is determined. The quarterfinals will be the following weekend, and the league's semifinals and final will be in Lake Placid March 6-7.

Oh, and extra credit goes to those who knew that quote was from "The Cat In The Hat." 

Two Championships, One Today And One Tomorrow

Where to start with your week? 

Should TigerBlog go with the women's hockey team, which came out on top of the final ECAC regular season standings after a wild weekend? Or perhaps with the women's squash team and its dominant Ivy League championship? 

Both are compelling. Both earned home postseason berths with their wins this weekend.  

He considered combining the two into one entry, but that didn't seem fair, given what both teams accomplished. So what did he do? 

He used the random number app on his phone and asked it to generate a number between 1-100. If it came up evens, he'd start with women's hockey. If it came up odds, he go with women's squash. 

It came up "43," so it's women's squash day. Tomorrow will be women's hockey.  

You know which team TigerBlog was rooting for in the Princeton-Harvard women's squash match yesterday? 

Hint - It's not necessarily obvious. Hint 2 - It was Princeton, but ... 

Princeton defeated Harvard 7-2 yesterday to close out a perfect Ivy League regular season. The win gave the Tigers the outright Ivy League championship and the host role for the first Ivy League women's squash tournament, which will come to the Meadows racket center this coming weekend. 

There's a lot more to Princeton's win than just that, though. 

Harvard came into the weekend ranked No. 1 in the country and why not? The Crimson have been a machine of late, with 10 of the last 13 Howe Cup national championships. Princeton, by the way, was ranked second, while Penn was ranked third. 

In the league? Harvard had won nine straight titles entering this weekend and had a 74-match regular-season Ivy League winning streak.  

The weekend began with Princeton and Harvard unbeaten, followed by Penn, with only a 6-3 loss to Princeton. The Crimson started their weekend in Philadelphia Saturday, at the same time the Tigers hosted Dartmouth.  

Princeton, as expected, won 9-0. Harvard-Penn? The winning streak ended there, as the Quakers won 6-3. 

That set up yesterday's final day of the regular season. A Penn win over Dartmouth, which was something of a given, would leave the Quakers with one league loss. A Harvard win would have set up a three-way tie. A Princeton win would have meant the championship outright for the Tigers. 

Maybe TB should have let the drama build, but he already gave away the ending. If you forgot, it was 7-2 Tigers. In only one match did Princeton lose more than one game. 

The 7-0 run through the league was Princeton's first since 2013. The Tigers have now won seven league championships all time.  

Meanwhile, back at which team TigerBlog was rooting for in the match? That would be Princeton field hockey. Where did the field hockey team fit in? 

Well, TFH, as its known, went into the academic year tied with Harvard for the most Ivy League championships all time for any women's programs with 28 each. Princeton reached the NCAA field hockey championship game and won the league tournament this past fall, but it did not win the regular season, which is where the championship is officially won. 

As such, Harvard women's squash would have taken a 29-28 lead in championships with another one. Instead, the two remained tied at the top. TB even sent a text to the team group chat telling the players to thank a squash friend.

The Ivy League squash tournament is new. Unlike the other Ivy tournaments, there is no automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, as the squash national championship is decided by the College Squash Association's Howe Cup tournament. 

It should still be a fascinating event. Princeton, as the top seed, will play fourth seed Cornell. Penn and Harvard will have their rematch (by virtue of the women's win, the men's tournament will also be at Princeton and feature the Tigers, Yale, Harvard and Penn; the men's winner will host both tournaments next year). Both tournaments will be held this coming Saturday and Sunday; the CSA championships for both will be March 5-8 in Philadelphia. 

So that's the women's squash. Women's hockey will be here tomorrow. 

Oh, and skeleton too.  

Beginnings, Middles, Ends And More

It's opening weekend for some, championship weekend for others and pretty much anything in between for the rest. 

In other words, there's a lot going on this weekend, so TigerBlog will jump right into it.

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The women's basketball team is at Columbia tonight at 6, in a game that will be televised on ESPNU. Princeton is a game up on the Lions and Harvard as they head into the weekend, though all three figure to be locks for the upcoming Ivy League tournament. 

Columbia and Princeton played two weeks ago in Jadwin Gym, where the Lions won 73-67 to give the Tigers their only league loss (and only loss in the last 17 games). There were eight players in that game (five Lions, three Tigers) who were in double figures. 

Columbia then turned around and lost the following night at Penn. Like that weekend, this one is also a back-to-back, with Princeton then at Cornell Saturday at 5 and Penn at Columbia. 

Princeton-Columbia women's games have become incredibly intense the last few years, and tonight's game figures to be no different. No matter what happens tonight, both teams will have to turn it around in less than 24 hours and be ready to play again. 

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Opening weekend? Yes it is, for Princeton softball and men's lacrosse. 

The softball team is in Florida, where it will play games at Jacksonville and North Florida, whose campus is located within walking distance of TB's college roommate Charlie's house. 

By the way, here is the closest beach to North Florida. It's about a 15-minute ride from the campus: 

TigerBlog took that picture when he was there in December. He didn't realize how close North Florida was to his friend's house. It certainly looks like a good place to watch softball, especially in February. 

The season actually kicks off today, when Princeton will be at Jacksonville to take on Stony Brook at 11 am and the host Dolphins at 4. The venue shifts to North Florida tomorrow, for games at 3 and 5 against Stony Brook again and then UNF. Princeton will then play Iona Sunday, also at North Florida at 10 am.

Princeton has won four straight Ivy League championships and is now the preseason favorite to make it five, after the league poll was announced this week. 

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The Jacksonville forecast is for sunshine and temps near or above 70 this weekend. The Princeton forecast for tomorrow is for sunshine and 44 degrees, which, after the last month, will feel like 70 degrees.

The moderation in the weather comes at a perfect time, as the third-ranked Princeton men's lacrosse team opens a season of great promise with a visit from Penn State (noon). The Tigers won in State College last year in a game that was moved indoors, and there was some thought that this game might have to find an indoor site too until this forecast came along. 

Penn State is playing its third game, with a win over Colgate that was followed by an overtime loss to Villanova last week. The game on Sherrerd Field tomorrow starts a stretch of four games in 16 days, all against teams who, like Princeton, have a legitimate chance to win the NCAA championship. 

After this game, it'll be Princeton at No. 1 Maryland and then home against No. 2 Syracuse and No. 5 North Carolina. If you're into good lacrosse, there's plenty of it coming your way. 

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Princeton's athletic website yesterday featured two, well, features. 

One of them was from TigerBlog's colleague Warren Croxton, who wrote about former women's basketball player Krystal Hill, Class of 2011. You can read his story HERE.

Hill was a big part of the great transformation of Princeton women's basketball, which went 7-23 her freshman year, 14-14 her sophomore year and then 26-3 and 24-5 her last two years, winning the league championship both times and reaching the NCAA tournament for the first two times in program history. 

Since then, there has been nothing but sustained success — for the team and for Hill, who went on to medical school at Penn and now is an internal medicine physician at the Veteran Affairs medical center in Houston and assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine,

The other feature is TigerBlog's story on men's lacrosse senior Chad Palumbo, the preseason Division I Midfielder of the Year by USA Lacrosse. Palumbo's story is about way more than lacrosse, though. 

He was diagnosed with a rare soft tissue cancer before his senior year of high school, and his resilience in the face of that illness has been inspiring. His growth as a lacrosse player has also been impressive, to the point where he's gone from being benched as a freshman to being a captain this year. 

Oh, and he also tied the program record for goals in an NCAA tournament game last spring with six against Syracuse in the quarterfinals, despite sustaining a knee injury on the first of those goals. It would be six months before he was fully recovered. 

You can read about Chad HERE.

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The Ivy League women's squash championship and host role for the inaugural league tournament will be decided this weekend at the racket center at the Meadows Campus. Princeton hosts Dartmouth tomorrow and then No. 1 Harvard Sunday, with both at noon. 

This is from the preview story on goprincetontigers.com:

Harvard and Princeton are both 4-0, with Penn right behind at 3-1. All three teams have clinched Ivy League Tournament bids, with the fourth spot coming down to the last weekend among 2-3 Cornell, 1-3 Dartmouth and 1-3 Yale. Harvard will go to Penn on Saturday before coming to Princeton. The women's top seed will host the tournament, set for Feb. 21-22. 

The men will also host Dartmouth and Harvard this weekend, with start time also at noon. The building will also be the host for the ECAC men's tennis championships (No. 2 seed Princeton plays Dartmouth tonight at 6).

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This is the final weekend of the ECAC women's hockey regular season. As TB wrote Tuesday, Princeton is still very much in the running for the championship. 

First-place Princeton hosts Yale tonight (6) and Brown tomorrow (3). The Tigers are already assured of no worse than fourth place in the league, which means a first-round playoff bye and the host role for a best-of-three quarterfinal series. 

Princeton has 44 points entering this weekend, two ahead of second place Yale. There are almost endless scenarios for the way the weekend breaks, but obviously Princeton can win the championship by winning out. 

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The complete schedule for the weekend is HERE. 

Remembering Lorin Maurer, 17 Years Later

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

It was on that day that he, and the rest of Princeton Department of Athletics and world beyond, woke up to the shocking news of the plane crash outside of Buffalo. Among those killed was Lorin Maurer, who oversaw the Princeton Athletic Friends Groups at the time. She had just turned 30; she'd be nearing 50 today.

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's all there is to say.