A Black Cat And A Brown Win

How should TigerBlog refer to Jingles?

CatBlog? MeowBlog? The Official Pet of TigerBlog?

The last one isn't really accurate. Jingles is not TigerBlog's cat. He's Miss TigerBlog's cat.

TB is not a cat guy. He loves dogs. As he likes to say, his dream is to be the nice old retired man who is always walking his dog.

Cats? His only previous cat experience was way back when when he lived in Trenton in his friend Jim Chesko's house. Chesko had two cats, Cybil and Lola. Cybil was the friendly one. Lola was the really, really, really unfriendly one.

MTB uses words like "majestic" and "beautiful" and "perfect" to describe, uh, MeowBlog. He's a nice enough cat. He's a little more than a year old, and he's certainly made himself at home in that time.

And he is a good looking cat. TigerBlog's favorite picture of him is when MeowBlog is perched on top of the fridge, next to the Princeton lacrosse bobblehead.

You couldn't tell that Jingles was handsome by looking at him Saturday night around 9:30. That's because he was hidden under the couch, petrified when MTB came back from a formal event with eight friends, of which seven were girls and one was a boy named Kevin.

To Kevin's credit, he hung in there nicely with a room full of girls. TigerBlog probably wouldn't have done as well when he was 16.

Oh, and as for TB, he was banished from the couch, where he'd been flipping between Ohio State-Wisconsin and the baseball playoff game, to the couch in the other room, where eventually MeowBlog poked his head out.

Then he and TB said together on the couch, listening to the giggling from the other room. This went on forever, or at least until around 11 or so.

What happened to those little kids TB used to know, by the way? When did they grow up? 

It was the end of a fairly busy day for TigerBlog. He wasn't able to attend the Princeton-Brown football game (for reasons that he'll share tomorrow), which left Bill Bromberg to do the public address at Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.

TB assumes Bill, the regular PA announcer for Princeton basketball and lacrosse, did a perfectly fine job. That's because TB didn't any complaints.

That could also be because when you win a big league game 31-7, like Princeton did against the Bears, nobody complains about the PA announcer.

TigerBlog followed the football game via Twitter. When he first checked, Princeton was up 14-0. That was in the first quarter.

It got to be 21-0 and then 28-0 at the break. The second half was cruise control, setting up a rather big game coming up this weekend, when Harvard comes to Powers Field.

Once again John Lovett was amazing. His numbers?

* 6 for 7 for 71 yards and two touchdowns passing
* 7 carries, 21 yards, one touchdown rushing
* 1  reception, 7 yards

Lovett wasn't alone in playing well.

Chad Kanoff was 16 for 23 for 185 yards and a TD. James Frusciante caught two touchdown passes, both from Lovett. Isaiah Barnes had four catches for 81 yards, including the TD from Kanoff.

For the first five games of the season Princeton is averaging 34.6 points per game and has been over 30 points in all four wins. The lone loss still saw Princeton score 28.

All of this takes the Tigers to next Saturday and the game against Harvard.

The Ivy League football season is at the exact halfway point. Each team has played all three of its non-league games and two of its seven Ivy games, and there is now a five-week sprint to the finish with four league games each weekend.

As an aside, TigerBlog would love to see a week off now for the league and then the five-week sprint after that.

Right now there are three 2-0 teams - Princeton, Harvard and Penn. There will be at most two after this Saturday, with the winner of the game at Princeton at 3-0, where Penn will be if it can get past Yale Friday night.

Cornell and Yale are both 1-1. Dartmouth, Columbia and Brown are all 0-2.

As another aside, Sacred Heart defeated Cornell 31-24 this weekend.

Princeton defeated Harvard is a pair of wild games in 2012 and 2013. Harvard has won the last two years, by 49-7 in 2014 at Princeton and 42-7 last year in Cambridge.

This year, TB suspects, will be a tad closer than the last two. Harvard will come in also at 4-1, after a 27-17 loss against Holy Cross Saturday.

On its most simplistic level, it'll be the No. 1 scoring defense team in the league (Harvard) against the No. 1 scoring offense team in the league (Princeton). Harvard is second in the league in scoring offense; Princeton is third in scoring defense.

Princeton and Harvard, at Princeton. With first place on the line. 

It's a pretty good way to start the second half of the season.