Refusing To Melt

TigerBlog feels like he needs to take a minute to talk about the weather for the last week or so.

But first, a story about the first day of first grade, or maybe second grade or even third, but one of those early grades.

MotherBlog had gotten TB a brand-new New York Mets jacket, and TB wanted to wear it on the first day of school. The only problem is that it was still summer and it was really hot out, so it wasn't jacket weather.

What did TB do? He wore it of course, pretending that it wasn't as hot as it really was. TB isn't sure why he remembers this. Why do people remember certain little snippets of their lives from long, long ago and not others? Why would that memory stand out to him? Who knows.

Anyway, keep that story in mind for a few paragraphs, and TB will tell you the relevance.

Meanwhile, this is still February of course. At least it is until the end of the day today.

The average temperature in Princeton for the last week of February is, well, cold. The average temperature the last week of February of 2017 has been, well, hot. There was some warm, but mostly hot.

When the Hofstra men's lacrosse team played at Princeton two years ago - on Feb. 21, 2015 - four inches of snow fell on Sherrerd Field during the game. The temperature at face-off Saturday for the same two teams was 74 degrees.

There were way more people at that game who were wearing shorts and t-shirts, even if it was Feb. 25. Okay, TB gets it. After all, it was sunny and 75 and felt like May - until the massive thunderstorm came through in the late afternoon. The temps dropped more than 30 degrees, and 40 degrees in February never felt so cold.
 
As for TigerBlog's story about the Mets jacket, men's lacrosse coach Matt Madalon gave TB a brand-new Princeton lacrosse hooded sweatshirt. It's exactly the sweatshirt that TB has wanted for gamedays, but again, it's a sweatshirt. Knowing it was going to be in the 70s Saturday, TB still was going to wear it - with the same thoughts going through his head that probably were there when he was 6, 7 or 8.

Except he didn't. Because, you know, it was too hot. So, TigerBlog can confirm, he has matured a bit between back then and being in his 50s.

The real question was going to be what to wear in Baker Rink, which is famously cold all winter. Or most winters. This weekend, it was downright warm in there. Even Steve Conn, TigerBlog's colleague at Yale who was in for the men's game, remarked about how warm it was in Baker.

TigerBlog spent a of time in Baker Rink this weekend. He saw almost all of the women's opening round ECAC playoff series against Quinnipiac, and the men's game against Yale.

When TB was at the men's lacrosse game Saturday, he thought the odds were long that the Princeton women's hockey team could rebound from its 3-2 loss in Game 1. That was back on Friday, when it was also really warm out, and really warm inside the rink.

TB walked over to Baker Rink to watch a little of the first game and ended up staying for three hours, through Princeton's 2-0 lead, Quinnipiac's two-goal rally and then the next 71 exciting minutes of scoreless end-to-end back-and-forth that saw both goalies - Princeton's Steph Neatby and Quinnipiac's Sydney Rossman, who would combine for 119 saves in that game - make great stop after great stop before the Bobcats finally ended the longest game in Tiger hockey history for men or women.

TigerBlog thought throughout the second and third overtimes that whichever team lost would have a real problem turning it around so quickly, physically and emotionally. In fact, he wouldn't have been shocked to see the team that lost Friday fall behind 3-0 in the first period Saturday and never be in it.

That is hardly what happened. In fact, you could say that the women's hockey team refused to melt, even in the warm weather.

Neatby must have really hated giving up that OT goal, because she came back and wiped out Quinnipiac for the rest of the weekend. Her team would win 2-0 Saturday and 2-1 Sunday, with a second-straight shutout stopped with just 13 seconds left, and now it is Princeton who advances on to the ECAC semifinals.

It'll be the Tigers, the fourth seed, at top seed Clarkson Saturday at 1, with Cornell and St. Lawrence in the other semi. The Tigers are very much in the NCAA tournament picture as well, a year after getting an at-large bid.

When the game ended Sunday, Princeton was finally able to celebrate, first on the ice and then in the locker room.

When you win the Quarterfinal series to advance to the ECAC semifinals.... pic.twitter.com/c7BCNh5qLJ

— Princeton WHockey (@PWIH) February 26, 2017

It was an incredible turnaround, from the loss Friday to the joy on Sunday, on skates no less.

They had every right to be exhausted, and hey, they had to be.

It's just that you couldn't tell by the way they were dancing.

Hey, they earned it, in about as difficult a fashion as possible.

You can see it for yourse

Achieving Goals

Hopefully you're not too busy Friday.

If you are, you're missing out on something that TigerBlog is going to say is a bit unprecedented for Princeton Athletics.

It starts at 3, when the men's lacrosse team hosts Johns Hopkins. When that is over, it'll be Princeton-Harvard men's basketball at 5 in Jadwin Gym. Not at 5:30. At 5. Yes, your ticket says 5:30, but the game is actually at 5.

And when that is over? It's Game 1 of the ECAC men's hockey quarterfinal series between Princeton and Colgate at Baker Rink at 7.

That's men's lacrosse at 3, men's basketball at 5 and men's hockey at 7. And they're all huge games.

The first two can actually be seen on ESPNU, if you're not going to be in Princeton.

The back-to-back games on ESPNU are causing some logistical issues. For instance, the lacrosse and basketball PA announcer is the same person, Bill Bromberg. Can he get from Sherrerd Field to Jadwin Gym to do both games?

That would be a pretty good trick, but it's also unlikely, even with a golf cart to get him between the venues. The lacrosse game will probably be over around 4:50 or 4:55, but it's too risky to chance it. There is little probability that the folks at ESPNU would agree to hold the game to get the PA announcer there.

Jeff O'Connor, who was the voice for five Princeton hockey games this past weekend (including one that went three overtimes), will serve as the PA announcer at men's lacrosse. And then he'll do the men's hockey game.

It's hard to imagine another day where Princeton has had men's lacrosse, men's basketball and men's hockey - three of its five ticketed sports - play consecutively like this. If it ever did happen before, it probably was on a Saturday, not a Friday. TB, for one, cannot remember a time where those three played in a row.

The big question, then, is where to park. By the lacrosse field? By Jadwin? By the rink?

Anyway, TigerBlog will revisit all of this later in the week. He just wanted to give you the heads up on it so you can start to plan.

And remember, the men's basketball game is at 5, not 5:30.

Now TB can get to what he really wanted to talk about today. Or, more specifically, the question he wanted to ask.

What is more impressive? Is it:

A) being picked to finish 12th in a 12-team league and finishing seventh, or
B) being picked to finish first in an eight-team league and rolling unbeaten through the first 12 of 14 games to clinch at least a share of the championship

TigerBlog is referring, of course, to the Princeton men's hockey team (Team A) and the Princeton men's basketball team (Team B).

He'll start with men's hockey.

Princeton started out the season 0-6-1, including an 0-5-1 start in the ECAC. This came a year after finishing 12th and after being picked 12th in the preseason poll.

Contrast that with where Princeton was heading into the weekend. The Tigers were playing for home ice in the first round of the ECAC playoffs, something that requires finishing in the top eight in the league.

After a 7-2 win over Brown Friday, Princeton went into its regular-season finale against Yale knowing that a win would mean not eighth place but actually seventh place. Let that sink in.

This one was all Princeton, who won 4-1. The result was that the 0-5-1 league start turned into an 8-6-2 run from there, and now Princeton gets to play at home this weekend.

TigerBlog was at Baker Rink Saturday night for the game against Yale. When it ended, the Tigers gathered in front of goalie Colton Phinney, who has stood in there for four years while literally thousands of pucks have been fired at him. From TB's vantage point above the goal in the press box, it was clear that Princeton knew it had accomplished something special, even without a championship involved.

As for the men's basketball team, neither Friday at Columbia nor Saturday at Cornell was easy, but in the end, they were like every other Ivy game so far this year for Princeton  - wins.

Princeton is now 12-0 in the Ivy League and assured of at least a share of the championship. It's also possible that Princeton has clinched the No. 1 seed in the Ivy League tournament, but the tiebreakers get a little confusing.

Harvard is 10-2 in the league and can be no lower than the second seed. As TB said, he's not sure what happens if Princeton and Harvard are both 12-2.

He does know that should Princeton beat Harvard Friday, it would win the outright championship. Should Harvard win that game, Princeton could still win the outright title with a win over Dartmouth Saturday or a Harvard loss at Penn Saturday.

Getting back to the question at hand, which is more impressive?

Princeton is 12-0 in the league. Its first eight wins included margins of victory of one, two, five, eight and two by nine, as well as 15 and 31. The last four, all on the road, have been by 19, 14, 19 and 15.

More than that, Princeton has held eight straight opponents to 60 or fewer points. The Tigers have gotten better and better as the year has gone along.

Getting back to the question, which is more impressive, what men's hockey has done or what men's basketball has done?

It's actually not a real question. And they're both very impressive.

There is one way in which they are comparable. They're both goals that were achieved, men's hockey to host, men's basketball to win a league championship.

And how else are they comparable?

There are still other goals left to attain this year.

Jim Barlow, Champion

Jim Barlow was sweating.

Like, a lot. Completely through his gray t-shirt. He had a white towel draped around his neck. He was being "interviewed," sort of, and he was trying to be sincere without making it seem like he was taking it too seriously.

For the 30 minutes before that, he was definitely all business. It was the championship match of the Dillon Gym ping-pong tournament, and it came down to an all-men's soccer final.

It was head coach Jim Barlow and assistant coach Steve Totten. Waiting for the winner would be Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the Jadwin champion.

Apparently, Totten and Barlow play all the time. They certainly looked like vets. This was a pretty high level of ping pong, even if it was just a departmental tournament. There were some big-time points, with two aggressive players who were in full attack mode, punching and counter-punching, as it were.

When it was over, it was Barlow who won, in four games of the best-of-five. His t-shirt told how much effort it was to take it.

TigerBlog would have no chance against either Barlow or Totten. If he played Barlow, his goal would be to win enough points to get Barlow to have to sweat, but he's not sure he could.

Barlow certainly earned the championship, beating the two-time defending king Mike Pallister and then Totten, who had beaten him the last few times they had played "friendlies," as soccer people like to say.

There will be another championship awarded on the Princeton campus this weekend. That would be in women's squash, as Jadwin Gym is the host for the Howe Cup, which runs from today through Sunday. Princeton opens the tournament by taking on Yale at 2:30 today.

It's a big weekend for Princeton sports - 25 events worth from today through Sunday. Or 26. Depending on how women's hockey goes.

Baker Rink will be busy all by itself, with either four or five games there this weekend. There will definitely be doubleheaders tonight and tomorrow, and there could be a single game Sunday as well.

The Princeton women will play Quinnipiac today and tomorrow at 3 in an ECAC quarterfinal playoff series. If they split those two games, then there will be a third game Sunday. The winner of the series advances to the league semifinals, which almost surely will be played at St. Lawrence.

The women's games will be followed tonight and tomorrow night by the last two games of the men's hockey regular season, with face-off at 7 both nights. Princeton will host Brown tonight and Yale tomorrow night.

The word "host" could come up again next week for Princeton, which would be an amazing accomplishment. The Tigers, who started the season 0-6-1, are tied for ninth place right now with 15 points, one behind eighth place Dartmouth and three behind seventh place Yale.

Dartmouth is home against St. Lawrence and Clarkson. Yale will also play Princeton's travel partner, Quinnipiac. The team Princeton is tied with, Colgate, plays Union and RPI.

There are quite a few combinations that could come out of the weekend. The bottom line is that Princeton will have home ice in the ECAC playoffs next weekend by finishing in the top eight. If TB has this right, Princeton has the tiebreaker with Yale but not Dartmouth or Colgate.

This is also a huge basketball weekend, for both Princeton men and women, who will play Cornell tonight and Columbia tomorrow. The women are home; the men are on the road.

Let's start with the men, who are 10-0 in the league, two games up on Harvard. The Tigers would clinch the outright league championship with any combination of their wins and Harvard losses that adds up to three, whether this weekend or next (when Harvard and Dartmouth come to Jadwin Gym).

Of course, the regular season will award the champion as always, but this year the path to the NCAA tournament requires winning the Ivy League tournament. Princeton has already clinched its spot in the four-team field.

Actually, if Princeton wins both of its games this weekend, it will clinch the top seed in the Ivy league tournament. 

The women have not, but they almost surely will. Like the men, though, the women would lock down a championship by winning out. In fact, Princeton is one game back of Penn, whom the Tigers play at the Palestra on March 7, four days before the league tournament will be played there.

There are other highlights of the weekend, one of which even involves Sacred Heart University - and TB isn't talking about the Pioneers' men's lacrosse game against Dartmouth.

Actually, speaking of men's lacrosse, Princeton's men is home against Hofstra tomorrow at 1. The Tigers are 2-0 on the year, coming off a really good win over Marist Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, back at Sacred Heart, it'll be Princeton at the Pioneers tomorrow (after Princeton plays at Harvard tonight. Right now, Princeton and SHU are tied for first in the EIVA at 3-1, and perennial power Penn State has already lost twice.

So yes, it's a busy weekend for Princeton.

TB isn't sure when the ping-pong championship will be. Having seen both play, he likes Barlow over Marcoux Samaan - unless he lets his boss win.

You know, like Totten did.

On The Bus

TigerBlog drove onto Nassau Street on his way to Jadwin Gym yesterday when he saw a bus on the other side of the road.

Usually the sign above the driver says where the bus is going. You know, like "New York" or "Philadelphia." When Princeton teams travel, there is a sign that flashes "Princeton Basketball" or "Princeton Tigers" or something like that.

Princeton Athletics used to own two buses of its own, back when TB was still in the newspaper business. Even though he wasn't technically a University employee, he'd still travel on the men's basketball bus when the team would go on the road.

In all the time he's actually been at the University, he's almost never traveled with a team on the bus.

Back on those old University-owned buses, though, TB remembers the bus driver, a man named Steve Gandy. It's possible that nobody has ever been better at a job than Steve Gandy was as a bus driver.

Of all the trips he took on the bus with the men's basketball team all those years, the one that stands out the most was the ride back from Dartmouth in 1991 after the team clinched the Ivy League championship. It was a ride with singing and celebrating, and TB is pretty sure that Steve got the bus from Hanover to Princeton in 4:50.

And what did the 1991 Ivy League men's basketball champion Princeton men's basketball team chant as it neared its home campus, well after midnight? It wasn't "Ivy champs" or "we're No. 1." Nope, it was "Steve is the Man."

TigerBlog remembers it like it was yesterday, not like it was 26 years ago.

Anyway, the bus that TigerBlog saw on Nassau Street yesterday didn't have a specific destination in mind. Or maybe it did.

The sign above the driver said "Last Stop." Last stop? A tad spooky, no? Why not just put "Twilight Zone" on the sign?

As TigerBlog processed that, he drove a few more seconds and saw Mitch Henderson, the head men's basketball coach, as he got out of his car on Nassau Street. It made TB wonder if Henderson gets recognized as he walks around town.

That thought made TB remember something that happened in the airport in, of all places, Des Moines, Iowa. Princeton had just played at a tournament at Iowa State and was preparing to fly home, when an Iowan walked up to Carril, who happened to be standing next to TigerBlog.They had this actual conversation:

Iowan: "Coach, it was a real honor to have your team out here. We love the way you play basketball. Good luck the rest of the way."
Carril: "Thank you."
Iowan: "You must get that everywhere you go."
Carril "Everywhere except Princeton."

When TB first started writing this every day, he thought that if he ever ran into a day when he couldn't think of anything else to write, he should just tell funny Pete Carril stories.

As for the current men's basketball team, this is another big weekend as the team chases a championship. There are all kinds of outcomes possible for this weekend, which will see the Tigers at Columbia tomorrow and at Cornell Saturday.

It's possible that Princeton could earn the Ivy League championship and No. 1 seed in the Ivy League tournament - or it could come end the weekend tied for first with Harvard heading into its home game against the Crimson next Friday.

Oh yeah. Here's today's reminder. The Princeton-Harvard game next Friday is a 5:00 start, not a 5:30 one.

Princeton is 10-0 in the league. Harvard, at 8-2, is home against Yale (6-4) tomorrow and Brown Saturday. The math is far from complicated. The magic number is two for at least a tie and three for the outright championship.

Princeton plays like a team that really likes each other. How much of that comes from all the time they spend together away from the court, especially on the road?

Each team has its own traditions for bus travel. Who sits where. Who decides what movies to watch. What the protocol is when they arrive at the hotel. It's actually a fascinating dynamic.

The bus rides for Princeton teams - or all college teams - are a huge part of the experience that the athletes have while they're here. It's their chance to get away and be together, for hours at a time. It's as big a bonding experience as the teams have, honestly.

No matter what happens on the court this weekend, it'll be a long ride back from Ithaca after the game Saturday.
 This is how travel works in the Ivy League, especially for sports who play back-to-back. It's a lot of bus rides in the middle of the night.

It might seem like it's annoying.

In reality, friendships that last forever grow out of those rides, as much as they do from anything else.

Princeton Women's Water Polo On ESPNU

TigerBlog is going to mention this a bunch of times between now and the end of next week: The men's basketball game against Harvard on March 3 is a 5 p.m. tip-off, not a 5:30 one.

Again, that's 5. Your ticket probably says 5:30. It's actually 5.

Don't worry. TB will mention it again.

The basketball game is actually the back end of an ESPNU doubleheader that begins at 3 with the men's lacrosse game on Sherrerd Field against Johns Hopkins. This isn't the first time that there's been back-to-back Princeton events on ESPNU.

There are actually three ESPNU events in less than a week, including the women's water polo match against Harvard Saturday at 10:30. That would be one of only two home events this year for the women's water polo team, who also hosts George Washington on April 14.

The day of the basketball doubleheader will be the 52nd anniversary of the last time something happened on this campus, before the women's water polo game against Harvard. This is an easy one. TigerBlog isn't even going to give you a few paragraphs to think about it.

Back on March 3, 1965, Princeton defeated Penn 81-71 in its men's basketball regular-season finale at Dillon Gym. What was so significant about that game that it hasn't been repeated until now?

Yes, that was the last game in which a Princeton athlete who had already won an Olympic gold medal competed on this campus as a Tiger. In that case, it was Bill Bradley.

This time it's Ashleigh Johnson. It's easy to overdo the whole "returning gold medal" thing, but Johnson is one of the most special athletes Princeton has ever produced. With only two more chances to see her play on the Princeton campus, DeNunzio Pool should be jammed for both.

Bradley and Johnson are the only two Princeton athletes who have ever returned to compete for Princeton after winning Olympic gold. That's pretty impressive. 

When it came time to make the ESPNU schedule for the year, TigerBlog was going to be pretty insistent on trying to get a women's water polo game to be included. As it turned out, he didn't have to be. ESPN wanted to showcase Johnson as well.

The intimidation factor of having to play against Johnson must be fairly high. Here you are, playing in college, and the goalie for the other team is an Olympic gold medalist and the two-time world Player of the Year for the sport.

She's allowed 13 goals so far this year, while making 41 saves. TB is pretty sure that after each of those 13 goals, the scorer thought "I just scored on an Olympic gold medalist" and smiled.

Ashleigh Johnson is not the only one in her family on the Princeton team. Her sister Chelsea is the team's leading scorer, with 15 goals (on just 16 shots).

TigerBlog knows very little about water polo, other than he's a big fan of Luis Nicalao, the head coach. And he watched most of the U.S. games at the Olympics last summer, where it was impossible not to be struck with just how amazing a player Ashleigh Johnson is.

He's guessing a .759 save percentage and a .938 shooting percentage are pretty good.

There are 16 women's water polo players at Princeton. Of that group, 12 are from California, which is the epicenter of the sport in this country. Ashleigh, and her sister obviously, are Florida natives, and there is one other Floridian (freshman goalie Kasey Bersh) and one from New Zealand (Charlotte Valentine).

While it has to be intimidating to play against Johnson, she has to be just about the perfect teammate.

TigerBlog has met her a few times, but he hardly knows her well. Still, it's not hard to figure some things out quickly about her.

First, she's taller than you think. Second, she is one ripped muscle on top of another.

Beyond that, she is definitely humble and soft-spoken, and it's easy to tell from being around her that she really values the Princeton part of her athletic experience.

It's a great opportunity for Ashleigh Johnson and for Princeton women's water polo to be at home, and on national TV. TigerBlog has to thank his colleagues at ESPN for being open to showing water polo, which the network seems to love.

Princeton will be away from DeNunzio after its game Saturday until the George Washington match on March 3, playing in such varied locations as Cambridge (including a Harvard rematch), Lewisburg (at Harvard), Oneonta (in upstate New York) and out to California.

So it's Princeton-Harvard women's water polo at 10:30 Saturday on ESPNU. And then the following Friday, it's Princeton-Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse at 3, followed by Princeton-Harvard men's basketball at 5.

Not 5:30.

Say it with TigerBlog - 5, not 5:30.

At Home On The Road

TigerBlog wrote about Dave Leach yesterday, about how he's leaving for Penn to head up the Campus Rec department there.

Do they still play intramural softball on Franklin Field, like they did when TB was in school? TigerBlog also played intramural flag football and co-ed flag football on Franklin Field, with the rule for the co-ed team that a woman had to be the quarterback.

TigerBlog's team had a quarterback named Donna who could throw a ball a long way and as such made it all the way to the championship game of the league. Waiting there was a quarterback with long fingernails with bright red nail polish who could throw 50-yard spirals without breaking any of them. As such, TB's team lost in the final.

As for intramural softball, TigerBlog had a friend named Andrew who somehow had never played baseball or softball in his life, or for that matter seen the sport. When he smacked a ball deep into the outfield, he literally did not know what to do next. TB's friend Charlie had to yell at him to run, and to run counter-clockwise.

That really happened.

TigerBlog has played intramural sports at Princeton as well. Advice - don't run into angry grad students. He's pretty sure that it was against the grad students that Senior Associate AD for Finance and Administration Chris Brock had his nose busted in what remains one of the bloodier spectacles TB has ever witnessed.

Meanwhile, back to last Friday afternoon, that's when the meeting was called so that Dave could tell everyone he was leaving. TigerBlog was struck by the difference between that Friday afternoon and basically any other Friday afternoon in February in Jadwin Gym in the last, oh, 33 years or so.

There were no basketball games to be played here last weekend. That had to be a first for February.

The first year of a full double round-robin in Ivy League women's basketball was 1982-83, but it doesn't appear that it was until a year later, the 1983-84 season, that the league went to its current format of having teams play at reverse sites. In other words, if the men were, say, at Harvard and Dartmouth, the women would be home with Harvard and Dartmouth.

Since then, TigerBlog knows of no weekend where both teams were away. It may have happened; TB just doesn't know about it. Or why it would have happened.

If you remember back to January, Princeton hosted Yale and Brown for both men and women because of the finals schedule. As a result, both games were away this weekend, and as a result, Jadwin had a much sleepier feel to it than it would normally have on a Friday February afternoon.

Being away was not a problem for either basketball team. Both won twice, at Yale Friday and Brown Saturday, and both seem to be playing their best as they head into the key weeks of the season.

Back a few weeks ago, the women were 1-2 in the league heading into a home weekend against Dartmouth and Harvard. With seven of the last nine games to be played on the road, that weekend was critical. It seemed like making the Ivy tournament might be iffy.

Now? Princeton is 7-2, and if the Tigers win out, they'll have at least a share of the Ivy title. Princeton has not mathematically clinched a spot in the league tournament, with Cornell and Brown both at 5-5, but it will take a lot to keep Princeton out.

Princeton figured to get better as the season went along. The Tigers graduated four starters from last year, so it was going to be awhile until the team fully gelled. Now that it has, it's going to be a tough out.

Penn was unbeaten in the league heading into this weekend, but the Quakers lost at Yale Saturday. Now the standings have Penn at 8-1, followed by 7-2 Princeton and 7-3 Harvard. Princeton, Penn and Harvard all play each other again before the regular season ends, so the race could go in a lot of directions before the tournament.

Interestingly, Princeton is at Penn on Tuesday, March 7, four days before the Ivy tournament will be played on that court. That game could decide the champion, which will be whoever wins the regular season, or could be meaningless.

As for the men, Princeton is 10-0, two games up on Harvard and four games up on Yale. The Tigers continue to get better week-to-week, and this is a team that has everything figured out - right now. There is still a lot to do, though.

Were this any other year, then Princeton would be focused on winning the championship and then turning its attention to the NCAAs. This year, there's the Ivy tournament, with its own set of challenges.

In some ways, it's a good insurance policy to have. Princeton still has to play Harvard, who will be here March 3. If Harvard wins that game, then it would need Princeton to lose once more to have a chance at a co-championship. With no tournament, that would make for a winner-take-all playoff game in which Harvard would have all the momentum. With the tournament, it's just Step 1.

The tournament has certainly changed a lot of the dynamics in the league. In any other year, nobody would really be paying attention to the move that Penn has made, going from 0-6 and out of it to 4-6 and very much in control of what happens the rest of the way. That's one of the things the tournament was supposed to do, make more late-season games meaningful. There's no way to dispute that.

Oh, and should Penn get in the tournament, then it would be a red-hot team that would be playing on its home court.

The tournament is looming, for both Princeton teams, presumably. For now, there's the coming weekend, with the women home against Columbia and Cornell and the men on the road.

And before he goes, TigerBlog wonders if the Ivy League would ever consider going to doubleheaders in basketball, instead of men and women at opposite sites.

Would that be better? It would be less stress on department staffs, with every other weekend off. TB would want to have the men play before the women some weekends and the women play before the men on others.

Would it attract bigger crowds? Would there be a greater number of crossover fans?

Hmm. TB would be on board with it.

Good Luck To You, Dave Leach

It was around 3:30 or so Friday afternoon when TigerBlog's office phone rang.

For every time TB's office phone rings these days, it probably rang 100 times 10 years ago and 1,000 times 20 years ago. The dynamics of why tell a large part of the story of the evolution of communications, so TB will just leave you with the obvious basics - cell phones, texting, greater availability of online information, etc.

Anyway, at this particular time, it was Kim Meszaros, the assistant to Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux. There was to be an impromptu meeting in Mollie's office.

What could it be, TB wondered as he came up the stairs. Maybe Mollie wanted to see him so that she could double his salary? Hey, he could hope.

When TB walked into Mollie's office, he saw an interesting cross-section of his colleagues. There was Greg Paczkowski from facilities, Allison Rich of compliance, Dave Leach from campus recreation, Kim and Mollie. What did these people have in common?

Eventually, that group was joined by others. What was the occasion?

Well, as it turns out, it was a very unexpected one. Dave Leach was the center of the meeting, called so that Dave could tell his colleagues that he was leaving Princeton.

If you're a Princeton varsity sports fan, you probably don't know who Dave Leach is. If you're almost anyone who works on the campus, then you do.

Dave Leach seems to know everyone. And everyone seems to know him. Better than that, everyone seems to like him.

Dave is a hard guy not to like. He's personable, always upbeat, always with a smile and a handshake and a few minutes to say hi and see how you're doing. And more than that, he seems to be genuinely interested in the answer.

His title at Princeton is Senior Associate Director of Athletics for Campus Recreation. In is position, Dave interacts with people from basically every corner and constituency of the Princeton campus.

The programs that are run out of Campus Rec are massive, and they bring together thousands of people in Dillon Gym. There are club sports, intramural sports, physical education classes, workouts rooms, exercise classes, games, contests and everything else under the sun. It seems like Dillon is jammed with people from before the sun comes up until late into the night.

It has to be a logistical nightmare to keep it all coordinated.

Maybe TigerBlog's favorite thing about Dave Leach is the way he never, ever takes credit for anything. He always talks about his "team," the people with whom he works in Campus Rec. He gives them all the credit, never even considering taking any for himself.

Of course, there are great people who work with Dave in Dillon Gym. The Campus Rec crew is very proud of the work that they do and the programs they put together, and they're constantly working to create new opportunities for the campus community.

It's easy to tell that they love Dave Leach as much he loves them. It had to be an emotional moment for him to break the news to them. Certainly it wasn't easy for Dave to tell everyone in Jadwin Friday afternoon.

So where is Dave going? Well, uh, yeah - he's going to Penn to take over the Campus Rec program there. Dave has always been a Philly guy at heart, and he's stepping onto a campus that has more undergraduate students, a larger campus-wide staff and a huge number of graduate students, including a med school and law school.

It's a great challenge for him, and he's the right person for the task. Seems like a fair trade too - Princeton got TigerBlog from Penn, and now Dave Leach is going from Princeton to Penn.

In the meeting Friday, Dave pointed out that TigerBlog always says the same thing when someone leaves Princeton, that TB always says that from then on, that person is "dead to him." It's a joke, of course.

The truth is that it's never an easy decision for someone to move on from Princeton. Dave is right - he has a great team in Dillon Gym. And he's been a big part of the overall athletic administration, not to mention a huge fan of Princeton's varsity teams.

The Princeton Department of Athletics is a great place to work. It's a small group, and it's one that works hard together and pulls for each other in every way. Dave has been one of the main faces of that effort for the last decade or so.
 There aren't too many people TB has ever met in his life nicer than Dave Leach. TB was a bit stunned to hear he was leaving, though he understands it and is happy for him.

He wishes him the best. And TB thinks he can speak for all of Princeton, not just those in athletics, when he says good luck Dave. You'll certainly be missed.

98 vs. Now, And The Rest Of The Coming Weekend

TigerBlog was broadcasting the Princeton-Cornell men's basketball game on the radio with Patrick McCarthy last Friday night when he remarked about the members of the Princeton team of 1998 who were at the game.

Gabe Lewullis. Darren Hite. Sean Gregory. Mike McDonnell.

It wasn't surprising. The two head coaches in the game, after all, were also members of that team, Mitch Henderson from Princeton and Brian Earl from Cornell.

The 1997-98 Princeton men's basketball team went 27-2 overall and 14-0 in the Ivy League. By season's end, the Tigers were ranked in the top 10 nationally - seventh, actually.

Come NCAA tournament time, Princeton was a fifth seed. The first round matched Princeton and UNLV, and then Runnin' Rebels coach Bill Bayno sat next to TigerBlog at the pre-tournament meeting the day before. When TB introduced himself and said where he was from, Bayno didn't flinch and said "nice to meet you. We have no chance of beating you."

As it turned out, Bayno was right. Princeton won 69-57, behind 21 from Earl and 19 from Henderson. Two days later, that magical season ended with a tough 63-56 to a Michigan State team that two years later would win the NCAA title. Princeton and Michigan State were tied in the final minute before Mateen Cleaves untied it with a long three-pointer that TB can still, sadly, see splashing through the net.

By the way, both Henderson and Earl played all 40 minutes of both of those NCAA games.

Anyway, part of the conversation TigerBlog had with Patrick - who was around three or so back in 1998 - involved what would have happened if that Princeton team, in its prime, played the current Princeton team. These Tigers are 15-6 and 8-0 in the league headed into this weekend's huge trip to Yale and Brown.

TigerBlog asked Mitch the same question yesterday, and Mitch said that TB wasn't the first person to ask him. So what's the answer?

Well, obviously there isn't one. The 1997-98 team was a great one, obviously, one that shot 50 percent from the field and from three-point range. Its center, Steve Goodrich, played in the NBA.

This team isn't ranked nationally, let alone ranked in the top 10. But it's a different world. For starters, would the 1998 team get all the same great shots it got with a 30-second clock? Would that team have been able to slow down this team, which plays at a much faster tempo.

The current team routinely shoots transition three-pointers off a fast break less than 10 seconds into the shot clock. The 1998 team almost never did that.

It's one of those unanswerable questions that people love to debate in sports. For TB, the real answer is this: the fact that it's debatable at all shows you how much better Ivy League men's basketball has gotten across the board since 1998.

That team, by the way, is one of the special teams in Princeton history, certainly in the last 30 years, since TB has been around here. 

The current team is part of a year unlike any other in Ivy history, and that is because of the advent of the Ivy League tournament. Princeton is two games up on both 6-2 Harvard and Yale and four games up on fourth place Columbia.

There's a four-way tie at 2-6 for fifth place. It's possible Princeton has already clinched a spot in the Ivy tournament field, as the best any of the fifth place teams can do is tie Princeton, and Princeton may already have the edge on all of them in the tiebreakers. Even if it hasn't clinched a spot already, it would do by winning any of its remaining six games or by having none of the four fifth-place teams go 6-0 the rest of the way.

Princeton has its sights set higher, though. Goal No. 1 is the championship, which goes to the regular-season winner. Goal No. 2 is the NCAA tournament, which goes to the tournament winner.

On the women's side, Princeton sits in third place at 5-2, just behind 6-2 Harvard. Penn is 7-0. The fourth place team is Brown at 5-3; fifth place would be Cornell at 3-5.

Princeton still has a game with Penn and would love to play for a championship on the final night of the regular-season at the Palestra, which is also the site for the tournament. Presumably, though, there would be a big advantage to finishing second or third, and that would be avoiding Penn on its home court in the opening round.

This is also a rare weekend for Princeton basketball in that both teams are on the road, at Yale tonight and Brown tomorrow. Why? Because final exams scheduling meant that both teams were home with Yale and Brown the first time around, back in January. TigerBlog isn't sure this has ever happened before.

There are still three weekends of Ivy basketball left. The hockey seasons are closer to the finish line.

So here's your women's hockey question: would you rather be a point ahead in the race for home ice in the playoffs heading into the final weekend but have to play the top two teams or a point behind (with the tiebreaker in your favor) but playing two teams below you in the standings?

The top four teams will host best-of-three playoffs next weekend. Right now, Colgate has 27 points and is in fourth place. Princeton has 26 and is in fifth. Quinnipiac has 25 and is in sixth. All three are home this weekend, which is the last of the regular season.

Colgate, though, has to play Clarkson and St. Lawrence, who are in first and second. Princeton and Quinnipiac both host RPI, who is in eighth place (three points up on Harvard for the last playoff spot), and Union, who is in last.

Princeton has the tiebreaker over both Colgate and Quinnipiac, should it come to that. What does it mean? Princeton would get fourth place and home ice unless Colgate gets more points out of the weekend than Princeton does or unless Quinnipiac gets two more points out of the weekend than Princeton does.

As for the men, all 12 teams make the playoffs. Princeton is in eighth with two weekends to go, and the Tigers are 11-5-2 in their last 18 games after an 0-6-1 start to the year. Princeton is clearly in the turnaround stage for the program, and hosting a playoff series this year would mean the Tigers are way ahead of schedule.

Ron Fogarty, the Princeton head coach, said something interesting yesterday. It took them 800 days to win nine games (in his first two-plus years) and now 76 days to win 11 more. That's pretty cool.

There's a lot of other stuff in Princeton sports this weekend. There are 23 events in all. The full schedule is HERE.

The Ivy League women's swimming and diving championships conclude at Brown. Men's squash is in the national team championships.

Hmmm. Is there anything else?

Oh yeah. It's opening day for lacrosse tomorrow, with Princeton women against Temple at noon and the men against NJIT at 3.

And the weather is supposed to be great.

Back at the question of the 1998 team against the current one, TigerBlog thinks there'd be too much Goodrich in the middle, too many made shots - and two guys who would be like head coaches on the court.

Rambling Man

Some days, TigerBlog can't think of anything to say.

Others, he has so much to say he doesn't know where to start. And once he does start, who knows where the conversation will go.

Today is one of those days where he's just going to ramble. So where to start? With Bob Bradley.

Actually, let's start with Grant Wahl. Do you know who Grant is? He is probably the foremost American international soccer writer of all time. And he is a Princeton alum.

In fact, he's a former student worker in the Princeton Office of Athletic Communications, along with such notables as current Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan and someone who could possibly replace her one day, sprinter-turned athletic administrator-turned lawyer John Mack.

TigerBlog never thought of that before. If Mollie stays 10-15 more years, then maybe John Mack would be the right guy for the job at that point. Mark that one down.

So meanwhile, back at Grant, he covers soccer all over the world for Sports Illustrated. Way back before then, though, he worked here in the OAC, and he wrote what was an eye-openingly great story about a Princeton football running back named Bill Jordan, which ran in the Daily Princetonian and in the football game program.

Grant was buddies with Nate Ewell, another member of the OAC student-worker Hall of Fame. Nate is one of TigerBlog's favorite people, and this is one of TB's favorite stories about Nate:

Back in 1996, the men's basketball team defeated Penn in the Ivy League men's basketball playoff game at Lehigh on a Saturday. Pete Carril then announced he was retiring after the NCAA tournament. The selections that Sunday paired Princeton with UCLA, the defending national champ.

None of this should be all that unfamiliar to you if you're a Princeton fan.

Anyway, that Monday was one of the busiest days TigerBlog has had in all his time here. Everyone wanted to talk to Carril. Oh wait, that reminds TB of another story, and hey, since it's rambling day, let him tell you that one.

Speaking of great writers, do you know who Jerry Izenberg is? Jerry was the longtime columnist for the Star-Ledger, and he is the best sportswriter TB has ever read. TB hasn't seen Jerry in years, but back when TB used to see him at various events, Izenberg had this great ability to be the hard-hitting cynical rough old-fashioned sportswriter while also being a wonderful guy to be around. He always had a kind word and greeting for TB, who was somewhat awed by him, to be honest.

After the win over UCLA in Indianapolis, TigerBlog was again swamped by requests for Carril. Like, hundreds of them. Literally hundreds of phone messages. He would check his voicemail (on his work phone, nobody had cell phones yet), and by the time he cleared his messages, his voicemail would be full again.

Pete was actually really good about getting back to as many people as possible, but then it was time for practice. As Carril took the court, TigerBlog said that he had one more request for him. This is the actual conversation:
TB: There's one more writer who wants to talk to you.
Carril: I don't care who it. I'm not talking to him.
TB: It's Jerry Izenberg.
Carril: Well, I gotta talk to that guy.

Izenberg is 86. He's a few months older than John McPhee. It appears that was a good time for American writers to be born.

The last time TB and Mr. McPhee rode their bikes outside, it was a little over 40 degrees and there was a wind in their faces as they rode up the small hill in the park. Mr. McPhee always was able to get up the hill much easier than TigerBlog, who assumed that Mr. McPhee must have had a better bike than he did.

Where was TB? John McPhee. Jerry Izenberg. Pete Carril. 1996. Oh yeah. Nate.

Back on that Monday, as TB tried to finish his NCAA tournament guide and take care of the media, in the back of his mind he knew he had to do three things for men's lacrosse, whose season has just started.

Speaking of lacrosse, there's a doubleheader Saturday on Sherrerd Field, with the women against Temple at noon and the men against NJIT at 3. Opening day for both.

Back in 1996, TB knew he had to stop what he was doing with basketball for the lacrosse stuff, but he just didn't have the time. Nate then walked up to him and casually said "don't worry. I did Ivy Player of the Week nominations, wrote the release for Player of the Week and updated the notes for the Virginia game."

Ah Nate. One of the best ever.

Okay, so 1996. Nate. Grant.

TigerBlog saw on Twitter that Grant had mentioned something about Bob Bradley and being an American coach. As it turns out, Bradley had written a piece for The Players' Tribune about his experiences coaching all over the world and how he never really put so much stock in the idea that he was taking a lot of Americanized ideas with him until after he left Swansea.

You can read it HERE. It's very good.

Bradley has had quite a life. He's coached in the World Cup as the head coach for the U.S. men's national team, and won the group stage, by the way. He has coached in Egypt, Norway and France. He became the first American ever to be a head coach for an English Premier League  team, something that will always be on his resume.

Bradley's resume also includes a time as the head coach here at Princeton. Bradley, a 1980 grad, is the deepest thinker for a coach that TigerBlog has ever met, and he says that with great respect.

Bradley is also the brother of Princeton baseball coach Scott Bradley. Has Princeton had any other sibling teams who have been head coaches here? TB can't think of one off the top of his head, though he's probably overlooking someone obvious.

The baseball season starts soon, and Princeton baseball and softball are the both the defending Ivy champs. TigerBlog went with the baseball team to Lafayette, Louisiana, for the NCAA regional. That was a great trip.

At about 5 yesterday afternoon, TigerBlog was in his office when there was a commotion in the outer office.

From TB's desk, he can't see around the corner into the main area. When people come in, they're usually here to see the IT guy, Bryan Fitzwater, whose office is next to TB's. When they come in, TB can usually see their shadows or hear them but not see their faces.

Yesterday TB assumed it was someone looking for Fitz. Instead, it was a Princeton baseball player, in full uniform, looking for the Zanfrini Room, which is two floors up. Seeing a baseball player in full uniform, holding a bat, was not near the top of the list of things TB would have guessed as to who was standing there.

Grant, by the way, wasn't the only one to call TB's attention to the piece that Bob Bradley wrote. Current head coach Jim Barlow, who played for Bradley and was his replacement here, emailed TB the link.

Barlow is still going strong in the Dillon ping pong tournament. So is his assistant coach, Steve Totten. Mollie is the Jadwin winner, awaiting the Dillon winner in the championship match.

And there you have it.

What did the Allman Brothers say? Oh yeah.

"Trying to make a living and doing the best I can."

That was it.

And that's it for today.

A Hockey Resurgence Continues

Being a high school junior, Miss TigerBlog is very much in the middle of her college search.

This past Saturday, it took her and her father to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. TigerBlog had never been there before, and he liked it, except for the pictures of Bill Belichik everywhere.

TigerBlog has been to a lot of Division III schools in his life, and Wesleyan's athletic facilities are way up there. In fact, TB would love Princeton to have the setup that Wesleyan does, though on a larger scale.

If you walk into the main athletic building from the back, parking lot side, the first thing you'll see on your right is a glass facade above the basketball court. Through the double doors is the hockey rink.

They're both very nice places to watch a game. And they're right next to each other.

The rest of the building houses an indoor track with a large infield that can be used for a practice facility for most outdoor team sports, a pool, squash courts, meeting rooms, locker rooms, a large workout area - all surrounded by pictures from three centuries of Wesleyan athletics, from the 1800s through the current teams.

It's a pretty impressive setup. It probably wouldn't be easy for Princeton to build the same type of facility, since it would need to be gigantic from the standpoint of the basketball and hockey venues alone. Still, it would be great.

At one point, TigerBlog was sitting by himself on the bleachers in the back of the indoor track when the Colby men's hockey team came in to warm up. Colby would be taking on Wesleyan in another 90 minutes or so.

One of the Colby players was stretching out on the floor in front of him, and TigerBlog asked him how long the ride was from the school in Maine to Wesleyan. Turns out it's about 4.5 hours.

It also turns out that the player TB randomly spoke with was a transfer to Colby at the start of the semester. He had played at his old school - Quinnipiac - last semester, which means he played against Princeton twice, not that long ago.

Princeton, TigerBlog reminded him, beat Quinnipiac twice this year. And a lot of other really good teams.

If you haven't been paying attention to Princeton men's hockey this year, then you're really missing out on something special. TigerBlog would also throw in words like amazing and incredible.

Princeton had a record of 34-106-16 in the last five full seasons, including a 5-22-3 season a year ago that saw the team finish last in the 12-team ECAC. Picked to finish last again this year, Princeton got off to an 0-6-1 start, which meant that the Tigers were 34-112-17 in their previous 163 games, for a winning percentage of .261. They were also the only winless team in Division I men's hockey at Thanksgiving.

Since then? It's been a completely different team.

This past weekend was another great one for Princeton hockey. The Tigers took out No. 18 St. Lawrence - who came to Baker Rink tied for first in the ECAC - by a 3-1 score Friday night and then came back to beat Clarkson 3-2 Saturday night in overtime after trailing 2-0 midway through the third period.

So what does it all mean?

Princeton has followed up that 34-112-17 stretch and 0-6-1 start to this season by going 11-5-2 in the last 18 games. Think about that. Princeton has gone from a .261 winning percentage to a .667 winning percentage.

And it happened quickly. TigerBlog would say things turned on a dime, but maybe not. This is Year 3 for Ron Fogarty. He has really good young players. He has his system in place. He has the goalie. Maybe it's better to say that it finally clicked.

It's one thing for a team to know that it's better by seeing how much better everything is in practice or how much more competitive the games are. It's not until they actually start to see it turn into wins, though, that a team can really grow in confidence.

And Princeton has gotten wins against some of the best teams in college hockey. What is it? Seven wins over ranked teams already? 

That's where Princeton is now.

Suddenly, Princeton is at .500, with an overall record of 11-11-3. The Tigers are in eighth place in the ECAC, one point ahead of Dartmouth and only one point behind Yale.

The top eight teams in the league get home ice in the playoffs, with a bye into the quarterfinals for the top four and then the right to host the opening round best-of-threes for fifth through eight places.

The idea that Princeton is in the hunt with two weekends left would probably have been unthinkable to any objective observer of ECAC hockey. And yet here Princeton is, right there, with a trip to RPI and Union and then home games with Brown and Yale to be played.

Union is currently in first. Princeton is one point back of Yale, as TB said, and the Tigers are ahead of RPI and Brown.

When you're where Princeton is, no team is unbeatable, and no team is a guaranteed win. It makes every night exciting, and that's certainly what Princeton hockey has become.

Just like that.

Gotta Love It

For Valentine's Day, here's a question to start things off:

Why do you love someone with all your heart? How was it that the heart beat out all of the other organs to be the symbol of love?

TigerBlog looked in a few different places for an answer, and actually he found a few. It either dates to ancient Greece or Egypt or Europe in the 1250s, and there are also a few different explanations about why the familiar heart-shaped symbol of love emerged, as opposed to the actual shape of a human heart.

It probably wouldn't have made as much sense to say that you love someone with all of your brain. The brain is the center of logic, and love isn't always logical. Maybe it's rarely logical.

The heart seems more of a natural. It is much less logical and much more mystical, with the flow of blood in and then sent back out, to touch every cell of the body. The brain may have a mind of its own; the entire body will always follow the heart.

Maybe that's it. That's pretty good. Maybe TB should be in the greeting card business.

As for the holiday itself, it's apparently named after a pair of third-century AD Roman priests, who later became saints and were honored with a religious holiday, though there is nothing that suggests either priest was heavily invested in promoting love. It wasn't until Chaucer in the 14th century that there were romantic poems about "Valentines."

At least that's what it says on Wikipedia.

Somewhere along the line, Valentine's Day evolved to what it is today, a slightly over-commercialized holiday loved mostly by greeting card companies, chocolatiers, stuffed animal designer, florists and restaurants.

You know. A day for love.

Whether you're a romantic like TigerBlog or a cynic like, uh, TigerBlog, if you're a Princeton fan, you had to love a few things from this past weekend.

First, there was the performance of the fencing teams at the Ivy League championships, where the women won outright and the men finished in a three-way tie for first. If you want to see happy people, click HERE to see the recap on goprincetontigers.com.

Once you're there, scroll down to see the video of the winning point from Katharine Holmes.

The Ivy fencing championships bring all of the men's and women's teams together for head-to-head matches over two days. It's actually a great idea, though there aren't too many other sports in which it would work.

Columbia came into the event ranked No. 1 in both men's and women's fencing. That's in the country, not just the Ivy League.

The Princeton men had wrapped up at least a share of the league title after Penn beat Columbia and Princeton beat Penn. The Lions made it a three-way championship with a 15-12 win over Princeton.

The women's side was more dramatic. Princeton and Columbia were both undefeated heading into their match, the final one of the day. Then that match came down to the last individual match, where Princeton just happened to have Holmes, a 2016 Olympian.

Holmes won that one and every other one she fenced, going a perfect 18-0 individually. The championship was Princeton's seventh in the last eight years in women's fencing.

The wrestling team didn't win an Ivy League title, falling to Cornell in Ithaca Saturday in a matchup of league unbeatens on the final day of the regular season. Still, if you don't understand where Princeton wrestling was and what Chris Ayres and his staff have done to bring the program to where it is, you're missing the big picture.

Ayres has done as good a rebuilding job of a program as any coach Princeton has ever had. Ever. One day, that championship will be his.

The women's basketball team swept Cornell and Columbia, improving to 5-2 in the league and pretty much solidifying itself in the Ivy tournament race. Right now, the standings are this: Penn 7-0, Harvard 6-2, Princeton 5-2, Brown 5-3, Cornell in fifth at 3-5.

There are all kinds of things that can happen still, obviously, but it's looking like the divide between the top four and the fifth place team is taking shape.

Interestingly for Princeton, it has a game at the Palestra against Penn on Tuesday, March 7, a few days before the start of the Ivy tournament. It's possible that game could be mean nothing for both, something for one and nothing for the other, or something for both.

Lastly, there is the men's hockey team. If Chris Ayres has done a great rebuilding job for wrestling, Ron Fogarty is trying to do likewise with men's hockey - and is probably ahead of schedule.

TigerBlog will revisit that tomorrow.

For now, Happy Valentine's Day. Make sure you get the flowers/candy/stuffed animal/etc. today.

And make sure you tell them you love them tomorrow too.

A Pretty Good Weekend For Princeton Men's Hoops

It was a very good weekend for the Princeton men's basketball team, to say the least.

TigerBlog would like to stat out back when there were about four minutes left on the countdown clock pregame Friday night at Jadwin Gym.

TigerBlog stood near Princeton's team room. Both Princeton and Cornell had already gone past him, out onto the court, and now TigerBlog, who had radio to do in a few moments, was waiting for Princeton's newest cheerleader, though he'll get back to her shortly.

As he was stood there, he saw a familiar face turn the corner as he was headed to the court. A very familiar face. 

"How do you like my tie," he said to TigerBlog. "It's red."

The familiar face was that of Brian Earl, who came to Princeton in 1995 and now, 22 years later, is in his first year as the head coach at Cornell. The game Friday night was his first back at Jadwin with his new team.

The list of Princeton athletes that TB has met in all his time here that he likes more than Brian Earl is not very long.

About two hours later, Brian had TigerBlog very antsy. His Cornell team had been down 10 at the break and then up five in the second. Princeton would regain the lead, but Cornell would never give up. By the final five minutes or so, all TB wanted was the game to be over and to get out of there - with a win.

Princeton would go 6 for 6 from the foul line in the final 37 seconds, all on one-and-ones, and it would basically need all of those in what became a 69-60 win. If Princeton had missed any of them, it would have been dicier. If Princeton had missed all of them, Cornell probably would have won.

Devin Cannady, the leading free-throw shooter in the Ivy League, made four of them. For the year, Cannady has missed only four of 55 foul shots.

The other two were made by Aaron Young, who prior to that had attempted only four foul shots on the year. Young played two minutes in the game, and he came off the bench only in the final seconds of the second half.

Princeton head coach Mitch Henderson inserted Young because he knew Cornell had to foul, and he knew Young would make them. And that's exactly what happened. It is of such moves, by the way, that championships are won.

At some point during the radio broadcast, TigerBlog mentioned the list of future head coaches that Earl either played or coached under at Princeton - Pete Carril, Bill Carmody, John Thompson, Joe Scott, Howard Levy, Sydney Johnson, Mitch Henderson. It's quite a remarkable list. How many other head coaches in Division I have played or coached under that many others?

TigerBlog watched Brian from across the court during the game, to see his reactions. He usually didn't have any. He stood there, arms folded, with a look that said "you can't tell what the score is by looking at me" and "whatever just happened is exactly what I thought was going to happen."

And of which of those others did it most remind TB? John Thompson. It was right out of his playbook.

Speaking of Thompson, Friday night's game marked the Princeton cheerleading debut of Morgan Thompson, John's daughter and a current freshman.

As for Princeton, the win over Cornell was followed up by an easy-turned-really-hard 61-59 win Saturday night over Columbia. Princeton led by 20 at 46-26 early in the second half and then survived, for the second straight Saturday night, a three-pointer at the buzzer that had a chance that would have turned a win into a loss.

The standings, though, do not reflect "almosts" and "maybes." They reflect only wins and losses, and right now, Princeton stands at 8-0 in the league. Every other team has at least two losses, after Harvard beat Yale Saturday night.

The wins this weekend gave Princeton something rare and not very easy to do. The Tigers won Friday, Saturday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday - five wins, eight days, three on the road.

Not every Princeton team has had the opportunity to do that, since Princeton has often played Penn not on a Tuesday in midseason but on a Saturday to start the league season.

Princeton did play its first game against Penn on a Tuesday in mid-year every year from 1997 through 2011. Only three times in that stretch did Princeton go 5-0 in that stretch - 1997, 1998 and 2011. In none of those years did Princeton win three on the road.

Next up for the Tigers is two consecutive road weekends, at Yale and Brown this weekend and at Columbia and Cornell the following weekend.

Of course, this year is a different animal in Ivy basketball because of the tournament. Goal No. 1, though, is to be No. 1 and win the league championship, which will be decided in the regular season.

There is still a long way to go for Princeton to get that goal. These past five games, though, were a huge hurdle.

Wins at Dartmouth (after a 20-day layoff), at Harvard (first since 2010), at Penn (90th anniversary of the Palestra), home against Cornell (down five in the second half) and home against Columbia (20-point lead vanished).

That wasn't easy.

It was very impressive.

Old Friends, And Sadness After Eight Years

The snow that arrived here yesterday was expected to drop a foot or so by the time it was done.

Instead, it was more like three or four, which was just fine with TigerBlog. The wind was pretty intense, more so than the snow itself.

It didn't turn out to be much, just a normal snowfall for the middle of winter. There was really only one interesting thing about the storm.

It came about 12 hours after the temperature was in the mid-60s here. It hardly seemed possible being outside Wednesday afternoon that snow was on the way.

TigerBlog remembers a lot of other times when it went from snow to sunny and warm the next day, though maybe not in the 60s. He cannot ever remember a time when it went from sunny and that warm to snow in that short of a time, except for the time he came back from Hawaii and then it snowed the next day, but that wasn't really the same thing.

That's enough about the weather today.

This a big weekend for Princeton basketball, both on the court and with some interesting storylines involving old friends. That's not really what TB wants to talk about today either, but he will for a little while. Then he'll get to his main point for today, and this weekend.

Princeton plays Cornell tonight and Columbia tomorrow, with the men at home and the women on the road.

That means that tonight will mark the first return to Jadwin Gym for Cornell head coach Brian Earl, and just typing those words is sort of weird for TB. Brian Earl was part of one of the greatest eras in Princeton men's basketball, along with current Tiger head coach Mitch Henderson, for whom Earl was an assistant coach for five years, after having been an assistant under Sydney Johnson at Princeton for five years before that.

Earl is still Princeton's all-time leader in career three-pointers made with 281 and is the seventh all-time leading scorer in program history with 1,428 points. TigerBlog did not have to look either of those numbers up.

TB will be shocked if there isn't a huge ovation for Brian at Jadwin Gym tonight.

As for the games, Princeton is the lone unbeaten in the league at 6-0, but the Tigers will be playing their fourth and fifth games in eight days. Yale is right behind at 5-1, followed by Harvard and Columbia at 4-2 and then Cornell and Brown at 2-4.

On the women's side, the game tomorrow night in New York City will match Princeton and another old friend, Columbia head coach Meg Griffith, who is in her first year with the Lions. Meg coached under Courtney Banghart at Princeton for five Ivy titles and six NCAA tournament appearances.

Like Brian Earl, Meg has her team playing a bit ahead of schedule in Year 1. A year after going 1-13 in the league, Columbia is now 2-4 in the league and actually 12-7 overall, after going 12-17 last year.

Penn is the lone Ivy unbeaten at 5-0, followed by Harvard and Brown at 4-2 and Princeton at 3-2 after a huge sweep last week at home against Dartmouth and Harvard. Cornell is right behind Princeton at 3-3, and this will be Princeton's first trip on the road in the league.

Again, the top four make it to the Ivy League tournament.

And so now TB gets to what he really wanted to talk about today. Actually, the theme is "old friends," but this one didn't have a happy ending.

Not at all.

Sunday will be the eighth anniversary of the plane crash outside of Buffalo that took the lives of 50 people - 49 on the plane, one on the ground. One of the people on the plane was Lorin Maurer, who was Princeton's athletic friends group coordinator at the time.

She was just past her 30th birthday when she died.

With each passing year, there are fewer and fewer people at Princeton who knew Lorin or worked with her. It's interesting how much of the department has turned over. By TB's quick count, there are 16 head coaches here, for instance, who never worked with Lorin.

Oh, some of her best friends are still here. Kellie Staples from external affairs. Kelly Widener from compliance. Chris Brock from finance and administration. Jon Kurian from the business office. There are others too.

TigerBlog was Lorin's friend. He wasn't as close to her as some of the others in the department, but he was her friend. 

Every year at this time, TigerBlog remembers his old friend. He remembers the last time he saw her.

It was after a meeting in Jadwin. Lorin had to get on the road, to get to the airport for her flight, as she was heading to her boyfriend's brother's wedding in Buffalo.

As she headed to the parking lot, she walked past TB's old office on the Jadwin balcony. The door was open, as always, and she stopped when she walked by, paused and smiled. She didn't say a word. TB can still see her.

The next morning, TigerBlog awoke to the news. It was stunning. Numbing. Thinking back, it still is.

TB says the same things each time he writes about Lorin. She was nice, friendly, funny. She was happy. She smiled a lot. She laughed a lot. She worked hard in a job that can be thankless and endless. She had recently found love in her life. 

TigerBlog has written about Lorin for the anniversary of her death each year since it happened. He does so to remind people who she was, what kind of person she was, because Lorin deserves to have people know that.

He does it to say that Lorin Maurer is still remembered, by anyone who knew her, and certainly by TigerBlog. She'll always be a part of Princeton Athletics.

Now, eight years later, there's the same sadness as that awful morning when TB heard the news, the news that his friend had died.

Some old friends from Jadwin Gym you get to see again, like Brian Earl and Meg Griffith.

Others, like Lorin Maurer, you don't.

Lorin, gone way too soon, at the age of 30, with so much life in her and so much life ahead of her.

Lorin, who will never be forgotten. 

Beach Day, Snow Day

So yesterday's high in Princeton was in the 60s.

It was a day for a walk on a New Jersey beach, soaking in the sunshine of a rare February day where shorts and a sweatshirt would work.

And today? The forecast is for five to eight inches of snow here in Princeton. It's also a day for walking on a beach, a beach in the Caribbean that is.

By the way, have you ever been to a beach during a snowstorm? It's a very strange sight to say the least.

TigerBlog is no fan of winter weather. Maybe the snow will look pretty while it falls, but it'll be ugly and dirty and inconvenient in no time.

On the other hand, this has been a relatively snow-free winter, so far at least. TigerBlog hopes that today's storm either fizzles out or is the only bad one of the season.

Princeton is still a week away from the first outdoor events on the campus this calendar year. That would be the lacrosse doubleheader next Saturday, with the women's game against Temple at noon and the men's game against NJIT at 3.

TigerBlog is pretty sure that there's a rule somewhere that says that the pictures from the first lacrosse games of the year have to have snow int he background.

Is it nuts that Princeton is a week away from lacrosse games? If you think that's nuts, there have already been games played, including a big game between Navy and Johns Hopkins Tuesday, and that by the time Princeton's teams play, basically the rest of Division I will already have played, many of them more than one game.

Ah, but this is still the winter season, and this is a big weekend for Princeton, in terms of both bulk and quality. Bulk, as in 33 different events between tomorrow and Sunday, which is a lot.

And quality, as in some huge events. There will be Ivy League championships decided in three sports, for instance.

The men's and women's fencing championships will be held Saturday and Sunday at Penn. Columbia is ranked No. 1 in both, but Princeton is as much a favorite on either side. A year ago, there was a three-way tie for both the men and the women, and Princeton got a share of both.

Also crowing an Ivy champ this weekend will be the sport of wrestling.

Princeton, you might remember, struggled for years to win a league match, let alone contend for a league title. Those days ended when Chris Ayres became head coach and began to rebuild the program, and now for the second straight year, the Tigers will wrestle Cornell with the championship on the line.

This is nothing new for the Big Red, who have won 14 straight Ivy titles. Princeton and Cornell head into the final weekend of the regular season at 3-0 each in the league, with no other team above .500. The Tigers are at Columbia Saturday at 6 and then Cornell Sunday at 3; Cornell hosts Penn Saturday.

Regardless of what happens Saturday, the winner of Princeton-Cornell will be assured of no worse than a share of the championship. If they both win Saturday, then Sunday becomes winner-take-all, just like it did a year ago between Princeton and Cornell on the final day of the regular season.

Oh, and if you're wondering when Princeton's last Ivy wrestling title was, it was in 1986.

The ECAC hockey races are winding down, and home ice is on the minds of both Princeton teams as February moves along.

The women are sort of tied for fourth place right now with Quinnipiac with two weekends and four games left for each team in the league. Sort of tied, in that Princeton won both games during the season against the Bobcats, which gives the Tigers the tiebreaker.

Princeton and Quinnipiac have 24 points each, three back of third-place Cornell. Clarkson and St. Lawrence are well ahead of Cornell, and Princeton and Quinnipiac, who are travel partners, will be heading north to take on the top two teams this weekend before finishing at home against RPI and Union, who are in eighth and 12th.

The top four teams will get home ice. The top eight reach the playoffs. Colgate, by the way, is lingering in the hunt for fourth with 23 points.

As for the men, all 12 teams reach the ECAC playoffs, with the top four to get a first-round bye and then next four to host first round series. There are three weeks left in the regular season, and Princeton sits just one point out of eighth place.

Princeton is currently in ninth, one point back of Dartmouth and one ahead of Colgate. There are all kinds of possibilities, but it's likely that one of those three will get home ice and the other two will be on the road.

For Princeton, the last three weekends are like this: home with St. Lawrence and Clarkson, at RPI and Union and home with Brown and Yale. Each point along the way will be crucial.

TigerBlog will say this: If Princeton can manage to get home ice this season, after an 0-6-1 start and a 12th-place finish a year ago, that would be an amazing accomplishment, the kind that would have to vault Princeton's Ron Fogarty to the top of the Coach of the Year charts.

So that's some of what's going on this weekend.

For all of it, click HERE.

As for the weather, TigerBlog can't remember too many little stretches like this. Heavy snow today, apparently.

And yesterday? TigerBlog walked outside in the middle of the afternoon, felt a sunny warmth he hadn't felt in awhile and remembered what he loved about it in the first place. Hopefully it'll be back soon.

Always Special

TigerBlog's favorite piece of Penn apparel was also the first one he ever got.

It was a long-sleeve t-shirt, with a Penn "P" on the front, with Snoopy asleep on top of it, as if the top of the "P" was his doghouse. Above that, it said "University" and underneath it said "Pennsylvania."

The shirt was in Navy blue, with red letters, and TigerBlog wore it pretty much his entire time at Penn. Now, as he thinks back, he can't remember too much other "Penn" gear that he ever had, though he can still see that old t-shirt with Snoopy on a makeshift bed.

He bought it in the old University bookstore, and he remembers exactly when and why. It was his freshman year, and he needed something "Penn" to wear to the men's basketball game against Princeton.

He can't remember what actually happened to that shirt over time. He doesn't remember when he and Snoopy parted ways, and these days he doesn't have any gear from his alma mater.

TigerBlog never would have guessed when he went to his first Princeton-Penn men's basketball game that, several decades later, he'd have enough Princeton stuff to wear something different every day for more than a month and nothing that said "Penn" on it.

Of course, for that matter, he would never in a million years have guessed back then that, fast-forwarding to 2017, the most comfortable sweatshirt he would own would say "Denver Lacrosse" on it.

TigerBlog sat behind the basket at that first Princeton-Penn game, on the side closest to the front entrance. Penn won.

As a Penn undergrad, TigerBlog was quickly conditioned to hate Princeton, and especially its famous coach, Pete Carril. In fact, in keeping with the "years later" theme, TigerBlog once had this exchange with Carril on a pregame Princeton radio interview:
TigerBlog: "Hey coach, this is where we met."
Pete Carril: "Yeah? I don't remember."
TigerBlog: "You were coaching, and I was chanting "sit down Pete" with the rest of the Penn fans."

TB can still see the look that Carril gave him.

Some of the best sporting events TigerBlog has ever seen are Princeton-Penn men's basketball games, especially at the Palestra, possibly because it took TB back to his college roots.

For years and years, the Princeton-at-Penn men's basketball game was the annual sporting event that TigerBlog looked forward to the most. The Palestra would be packed, as would Jadwin when the game was at Princeton. The two schools dominated Ivy League men's basketball for five decades, and from 1963-2007, either Princeton or Penn went to the NCAA tournament all but three times.

Ivy League basketball has changed in the last 10 years, as three other teams - Cornell, Harvard and Yale - have all made NCAA appearances. Still, for TigerBlog and countless others, the Princeton-Penn men's basketball rivalry will always, always be special.

In all of Ivy League athletic history, nothing measures up to Princeton-Penn men's basketball. Maybe Harvard-Yale football, but TB thinks the basketball rivalry eclipses the football one, mostly because the one has often stood in the way of the other on the way to national glory.

Penn's 1979 Final Four team had a pair of one-point wins over Princeton. On the other hand, Princeton's 1996 team, the one that beat UCLA in the NCAA tournament in a win that really helped push Carril over the top for the Naismith Hall of Fame, never would have had that chance had it not been for an OT win over the Quakers five days earlier in an Ivy playoff game after the two tied for the league title. There are a ton of other stories just like that one.

The latest edition of the rivalry was played out last night, in West Philly, as part of the 90th anniversary celebration of the old building. If you've never been there, you definitely need to go to a game there someday.

The game last night will not be remembered as a Palestra classic. Instead, it was what you might have expected when the only undefeated team in the league played the only winless team in the league.

Yes, usually the records don't matter in games like this. But Princeton did everything it needed to do, especially in the middle of a stretch that would see the Tigers play five games in eight days, including three in five on the road.

Princeton got out early on the Quakers, built the lead to double figures in the first half and never looked back. The final was 64-49 Princeton, led by a 22-point night from Spencer Weisz, the reigning Ivy Player of the Week.

Princeton didn't get caught up in a physical, emotional game. It was exactly the performance Princeton needed heading into two more games this weekend, at home against Cornell and Columbia.

About the only issue in the second half was whether or not Penn was going to make the kind of run it did in the first meeting between the teams, back in early January at Jadwin Gym. In that game, a 26-5 Penn run in the second half erased all of a 21-point lead and forced Princeton to execute big in the final few minutes, which the Tigers did, for a 61-52 win.

This time, there would be no big run from Penn. In the first game, Princeton's cause wasn't helped by a 3 for 19 night from three-point range. Last night, that number was 14 for 29. When the Tigers shoot 14 for 29 from three, it's going to be really hard for someone to beat them.

So that's the first trip of the year for the Tigers to the Palestra. With the Ivy tournament in its first year, Princeton, barring something really unforeseen, will be back in the old building next month.

Right now, Princeton is 6-0, one game up on Yale and two up on both Harvard and Columbia. The Tigers are also four games up on Brown and Cornell, who are tied for fifth, meaning Princeton is in a really good place to at least get to the Ivy tournament.

For now, Princeton's sights are set higher, on the regular season championship for one. Regardless of where this season goes, there are lots of big games left to be played.

As for Princeton-Penn, it'll always be a big game. For proof, TB refers you to the attendance for the game last night, which was 6,215, which was more than twice as much as any other Ivy game played so far this year.

Princeton at Penn. Maybe it's not always for the championship, and maybe it doesn't always go down to the wire.

But it's always special. And it always will be.

Three Road Games, Five Days

TigerBlog Jr. and his Sacred Heart men's lacrosse teammates had a scrimmage last week at Fairfield.

As with any other trip from Princeton to Fairfield, it's impossible to know how long it's going to take. TigerBlog, encountering a rare traffic-free trip, arrived very early.

And what do you do when you get to Fairfield University two hours before a lacrosse scrimmage? Right. You go find the men's basketball coach to say hello.

The men's basketball coach at Fairfield is, of course, Sydney Johnson. Among his other claims to fame, Sydney is the only men's basketball player ever to be the Ivy League Player of the Year (in 1997) and coach a team to an Ivy League championship (Princeton in 2011).

In fact, there are only, if TB is correct, four other people who have ever won the Ivy League Player of the Year award in men's basketball and gone on to be a head coach in the Ivy League. TB will give you a few paragraphs to figure it out.

In the meantime, back at Fairfield, TigerBlog pulled into the parking lot next to the lacrosse stadium and then looked up where the basketball office was. The answer turned out be in the Walsh Athletic Center. TB was about to look on the campus map when he noticed a giant building next to the lacrosse field with the words "Walsh Athletic Center" on the side.

TigerBlog walked into the building and up to the second floor. When he walked into the men's basketball office, the first face he saw was familiar. As it turned it out, it belonged to Kyle Koncz, a former Princeton player who is now the Stags' Director of Basketball Operations.

After saying hi to Kyle, TB went into the back, where he found Sydney as he watched some video. Fairfield had a game that night against Niagara.

Oh, and the answer to the question - Armond Hill (1975 Ivy Player of the Year at Princeton, Columbia head coach), Craig Robinson (1982 and1983 POY at Princeton, head coach at Brown), Jerome Allen (1993 and 1994 POY and then head coach, both at Penn), Brian Earl (1999 POY at Princeton, head coach at Cornell).

Anyway, it's hard to believe that it has been six years since Sydney left here and six years since TB had seen him. Six years. It seems like so long and a blink of eye, all at the same time.

TigerBlog was the men's basketball contact during Sydney's career here, and TB saw pretty much every game he played here.

It was Sydney who hit the huge three-pointer from the corner to give Princeton the lead in the final minute of overtime against Penn in the 1996 Ivy playoff game. Without that, there wouldn't have been an NCAA win over UCLA.

As Princeton head coach, Sydney led Princeton to the 2011 Ivy title and NCAA tournament, where the Tigers lost by a basket to Kentucky.

TigerBlog has said this before, but the player now who most reminds him of Sydney is Spencer Weisz, who had a huge weekend for the Tigers in their return from first semester exams. Weisz - like Johnson, he can do everything well and, despite not being known as a scorer, is over 1,000 points for his career - earned Ivy League and goprincetontigers.com Player of the Week honors after putting up a career high 26 Friday night against Dartmouth and then 13 more Saturday at Harvard. He had eight rebounds in each game.

The game Friday night was dangerous for all kinds of reasons.

First, Princeton hadn't played in 20 days. Second, it was playing a team that at the time was winless in the league (the Green would beat Penn Saturday night). Third, the game was at Dartmouth's Leede Arena, which, as TB can tell you, is never an easy place to win.

Princeton gutted that one out 69-64 after trailing most of the game, including by 10 in the first half. The entire second half was a grind, as neither team ever had more than a six-point lead after the break.

With that win in the bank, it was time for the two-hour ride to Cambridge, where Princeton hadn't won since 2010. That streak ended, but it wasn't easy.

In the end, it was 57-56 Princeton, as Steven Cook's offensive rebound off a missed foul shot and subsequent layup in the final seconds gave the Tigers the winning points. The game was a great one, an intense one, and both teams made all kinds of big plays down the stretch before Cook won it.

Princeton had very little time to celebrate, as its busiest stretch of the year continues tonight in Philadelphia, where the Tigers will take on the Penn at 7, and then this weekend with two games at home, including Brian Earl's homecoming with the Big Red.

Cook, by the way, sits at 999 career points heading into the game tonight.

Right now, the Ivy standings have Princeton on top at 5-0, followed by 5-1 Yale and Harvard and Columbia at 4-2 each. Brown and Cornell are both 2-4, followed by 1-5 Dartmouth and 0-5 Penn.

Princeton is almost surely going to be back at the Palestra in a little more than four weeks for the first Ivy tournament. The Tigers want to get there as the top seed and regular-season champ.

Each game is big towards that goal. Playing three road games in five days isn't easy.

And if you're thinking about the records, yes, that makes the game tonight 5-0 against 0-5.

And no, it will not be easy in any way for Princeton.

Milestones For Luis And Courtney

TigerBlog forgot to mention his Super Bowl prediction Friday, so he'll put it here instead.

New England 34, Atlanta 28 in overtime.

Hey, how about that? He hit it right on the nose.

Actually, his pregame prediction would have been 35-24 Atlanta, with the logic that it would be high-scoring and that Atlanta would win. That didn't turn out exactly right, though it seemed like it for awhile.

The Super Bowl was unquestionably a great game, no matter which team you wanted to see win. It was an epic comeback by New England, and Tom Brady was at his absolute most astonishing for the fourth quarter and overtime.

And after New England scored that touchdown late in the fourth, was there any doubt that the Pats would get the two-point conversion? At that point, Atlanta's only chance was to win the coin toss for the OT, since there was absolutely no way New England wasn't marching down the field for the winning TD if it got the ball first, which is exactly what happened.

As with any great comeback, the team that lost had to help it along, and Atlanta did just that, with some head-shaking calls when it could have put the game away. Still, sometimes you just have to shake your head and marvel at greatness, even if you'd never in a million years root for Brady or his coach.

As a result, Atlanta still hasn't won a Super Bowl. Still, to the fans of the Falcons, don't fret - there will always be more sunsets to watch and songs to sing.

TigerBlog asked his son for his pregame prediction, and his response was "any team but New England." Good answer. New England is hard to root for, after all.

The second-best game of the NFL season was the one that wasn't played, and that was the would-have-been AFC championship game between New England and Oakland, had Raider quarterback Derek Carr not broken his foot late in the season.

You know who would have really loved to see that game? Princeton water polo coach Luis Nicolao. Luis is, you guessed it, a Raiders fan.

Luis has been the men's and women's water polo coach at Princeton since 1998. That's a pretty busy schedule. Nearly 20 years of coaching two college teams, one season after another. That's recruiting two full teams as well, by the way.

The current women's season has just begun, and the Tigers have someone on their team who is as much a must-see athlete as there is in college sports right now. That's any sport. Any conference. Any level.

That person is, of course, Ashleigh Johnson, the Olympic gold medalist who is back in goal for the Tigers this spring. Princeton began its season Saturday, winning twice, and then added a third win yesterday.

The second win Saturday was win No. 800 for Nicolao, who now has 421 wins with the women and 380 with the men. That's a lot of wins, and not a lot of losses - his record between the two is now 801-302.

If you're a regular Princeton sports fan, you probably haven't been to too many water polo matches, though you probably rooted for Johnson big-time in the Olympics last summer. Because of that, you probably don't know much about Luis Nicolao, so TigerBlog will tell you.

One, Luis is a graduate of the Naval Academy. Two, he has a very low center of gravity literally and figuratively. He is a very, very strong man, someone who always has the best interests of his players, his program and Princeton Athletics in mind.

He's humble and dedicated, and he's pretty much universally liked at Princeton. He has coached a few hundred athletes here, and his alums are, like their former coach, extremely loyal. In short Luis is just a good guy, someone Princeton has been lucky to have as its water polo coach all these years.

He's a regular visitor in TB's office, and his visits are always welcome. They're a reminder of one of the very best things about working in Princeton Athletics, and that's being at a place where people like Luis Nicolao walk in, talk for a few minutes, share a few laughs and generally make the day a little better.

Luis now has 801 wins, or 600 more than Courtney Banghart, who also reached a major milestone this weekend (and who, by the way, is a fan of the Patriots and especially Brady).

It was a big weekend for the women's basketball team, who beat Dartmouth and Harvard to get over .500 in the Ivy League race and vault itself back into the thick of the race for the Ivy tournament. There was also a big alumni reunion Saturday night - this is another program that breeds loyalty.

In recent years, it's also breeded success. As in six NCAA tournament appearances in the last seven years, with five Ivy League championships mixed in, not to mention the first at-large bid in Ivy basketball history.

This run by Princeton has showcased that Courtney Banghart is one of the greatest coaches the Ivy League has ever seen. That's not just in basketball, by the way. She is one of those rare coaches who is a force, one who can transform a program not just through its on-court success but also for what it does to the profile of the sport itself.

TigerBlog has said this a million times, but it's worth repeating. Pre-Courtney? Women's basketball crowds were much smaller and had little appeal to men and boys. The last few years? The crowds are large, and the gender breakdown is probably close to 50-50.

Let TB focus on the on-court success for a moment though.

The win over Dartmouth was No. 200 for Banghart, who has spent her entire career at Princeton (though like Nicolao, she's had chances to move to other schools, only to turn them down to stay here). Courtney was already the all-time leader in wins by a Princeton women's basketball coach, having surpassed the old record of 163, set by Joan Kowalik.

So yes, No. 200 is a big milestone.

But how about a little bit more perspective? How about these two nuggets.

First, Courtney's record is now 201-82, which is a .710 winning percentage (Luis is at .726). On the other hand, Courtney was 16-37 before the Tigers won the final five games of her second season, after going 7-23 her first year (2007-08) and then 9-14 to start Year 2.

Since then, her record is 185-45, which means Banghart has won more than eight of every 10 games since the 2008-09 season reached its last five games. That's .804 to be exact.

The other nugget?

Here's the list of Princeton basketball coaches who have ever reached 200 wins:
1. Pete Carril (514)
2. Cappy Cappon (250)
3. Courtney Banghart (201)

That's it. And really, not much more needs to be said.

So congratulations to Luis Nicolao and Courtney Banghart. They're now 1,002-384.

That's a lot of winning for two coaches.