Overrated Juno, Underrated Orban

TigerBlog couldn't help but laugh at the apologetic tweets of meteorologists in this area after they overestimated the coming snowfalls - dubbed Winter Storm Juno - by about 20 inches or so.

The forecast that originally was for a few inches ballooned Sunday to calls of up to 30 or more, eventually settling on about 18-24 for this area.

What happened? TigerBlog says there was about three or four inches.

Of course, the entire "the next storm of the century is coming" - or should that be "the sky is falling" - mode was triggered. This meant a run on the supermarkets and endless wall-to-wall television coverage, even when there was nothing to report.

Oh, and school closings. Based on the forecast, every school in the area announced it would be closed Monday afternoon or evening at the latest.

So what happened? It snowed a bit.

It wasn't a dusting or anything. It was a few inches, and it was definitely the most snow that's fallen around here so far this winter.

It just wasn't epic.

The ferocity of the storm missed this area and instead walloped New England. Boston, for instance, got a ton of snow.

Because the weather people got the forecast so wrong, there were more than just school closings. The New York City subway system was shut down. Driving on any New Jersey roads was banned.

These are big decisions that cost millions of dollars. And they were made based on the forecasts.

There was a great tweet from the Finnish embassy that showed a man sitting on a swing surrounded by snow everywhere, piled up over his head. He's wearing an undershirt with no coat.

What TigerBlog doesn't understand is why all of the meteorologists needed to say they were sorry. It's not like they tried to make a mistake.

As TB understands it, the difference between getting pounded by the blizzard and having it just miss was very subtle. It's not like the forecasts were for sunny and 45 degrees.

Of course, people jumped all over the incorrect weather people with their own tweets.

And why? It's because people love to jump on the mistakes others make. Hey, TigerBlog makes mistakes all the time. And people jump all over them.

Hey, it's part of putting something out there in the public domain.

So it's okay meteorologists. No biggie. Better safe than sorry.

And so now, for the first time all winter, there is noticeable snow covering the ground. This is when TB really hates winter, when he can't see the grass through the snow and when the snow turns black in the roads.

The snow arrived just a few days before the start of spring practices at Princeton. In fact, the first regular season men's lacrosse game is Sunday, when Delaware is at High Point.

Princeton opens its season against Manhattan two weeks from Saturday. This would appear to be fairly nuts.

Princeton will enter the 2015 season with two Major League Lacrosse draftees. The first is Kip Orban, the 2015 captain, who went in the third round to Charlotte; the other is Mike MacDonald, who went to Rochester in the sixth round.

It's TigerBlog's contention that Orban is as underrated a player as there is Division I lacrosse this year and, along with Sean Hartofilis of the Class of 2003, one of the two most underrated players he's seen at Princeton.

Of course, since TB is in charge of publicity for the men's lacrosse team, can the case be made that it's his fault that Orban is so underrated?

Orban was not a first-team, second-team or honorable mention All-Ivy League selection last spring. Of the 23 offensive midfielders on the Inside Lacrosse preseason All-America team, none of them are Kip Orban. He was not on IL's preseason All-Ivy League team.

On the other hand, guess who enters 2015 with the longest streak of consecutive games with at least one goal in Division I? Kip Orban, who has at least one in 26 straight.

There are only four players (three attackmen and Orban) in Division I who enter 2015 with at least goal in 16 or more games and only two (Orban and Yale's Conrad Oberbeck) who have at least one in more than 17 straight, which basically means that only four returning players had at least one goal in every one of his team's games last year.

Why is Orban so underrated? It's because he played on the same midfield line with Tom Schreiber and Jake Froccaro the last two years. Schreiber is one of the great college midfielders ever; Froccaro put up 10 goals in one game a year ago.

Orban? He's steady, solid, tough, effective, reliable. Just not high profile.

Even the draft pointed that out.

Orban was picked in the third round, the eighth offensive middie taken. With his size and strong outside shot, he could be an effective two-point shooter in MLL. The team he joins finished last in the league in scoring a year ago, so he has a chance to help right away.

Of course, when it came time for the Major League Lacrosse website to track the draft, one pick was omitted. Orban was selected right after Cornell's Matt Donovan, but, Orban's name never appears. It still doesn't, most of a week later.

Right. Of course it doesn't.

That's the kind of thing that happens when you're this underrated.