TigerBlog saw something that pretty much screamed "end of March" yesterday.
There were two men who were working on some landscaping. Behind them was a small snow drift that still hasn't disappeared.
It's springtime, at least by the calendar. Maybe, as TB has suggested before, that should change. Perhaps spring shouldn't officially begin until May 1.
This was a typically cold March, one that also included a good helping of snow a few weeks ago that is still lingering, in the Jadwin parking lot, around the outside of Sherrerd Field and in a few other pockets.
TigerBlog was wondering what would come first - April, or the disappearance of the last of the snow. It looks like the snow will win.
The challenge this weekend isn't snow. It's rain.
The forecast for today is for a lot of rain. The forecast for tomorrow is either for more rain or for wet grass.
The Princeton Athletics schedule has already been adjusted due to the coming rains, as often happens this time of year.
It's supposed to be opening weekend for Ivy League baseball and softball, two sports in which Princeton is the defending league champ. The Tigers are hosting Brown and Yale in both sports, but there have already been changes to the original schedule.
Now it will be the baseball team against Brown Sunday and Yale Monday. It'll be softball against Brown tomorrow and Yale Sunday.
TigerBlog is a big fan of the "rained-out Saturday, pushed back to Monday baseball doubleheaders."
The weather can be confounding when it comes to baseball and softball. TigerBlog remembers it from when he was in Louisiana with the baseball team last year for the NCAA regional, where it basically rained non-stop the entire time. He's still not sure how they ever got the baseball games in with all the thunderstorms, though they did leave him plenty of time to eat, which was good.
TB had never been to a regional before and wanted to go to see what it was all about. He'd love to go again, this time with really good weather to go along with the rest of the experience.
If you want to talk about weather that is really messing with spring sports, TigerBlog will point you to Massachusetts, where a foot of snow is expected tomorrow. A foot of snow? April 1st? Has to be an April Fools' joke, right?
TB saw that the Navy men's lacrosse game at Holy Cross has already been rescheduled due to the coming snow.
Speaking of Navy lacrosse, TigerBlog got an email yesterday morning from Jim O'Brien, a captain of the 2006 Ivy champion men's lacrosse team. TB mentioned yesterday that he could still see Jason Doneger's potentially game-tying shot clang off the pipe in the 2004 NCAA semifinals at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.
O'Brien pointed out that it was a Peter Trombino shot that was saved in the final seconds, as Navy held on 8-7. TB was pretty sure Doneger hit the pipe in the fourth quarter too, and so he looked it up.
Turns out they were both correct.
Doneger's shot actually came earlier in the fourth quarter and rocketed all the way back to midfield. Trombino's shot was in the final seconds of the game.
The current Tigers will host Brown tomorrow in a game that matches teams who between them average nearly 30 goals per game. They are third (Brown) and fifth (Princeton) in scoring offense in Division I and first (Princeton) and eighth (Brown) in team shooting percentage.
Of course, games that have the potential to be major shootouts will often end up, like Princeton-Navy, in the 8-7 range. Regardless of whether it's high scoring or not, the game is a huge one as the Ivy League race begins to heat up.
Yale, who beat Princeton 16-13 a week ago, is 2-0 in the league and playing at Penn, who is 1-1. Princeton, also 1-1, takes on 1-0 Brown. Dartmouth and Cornell play each other, looking for their first league win.
Princeton's women are home Sunday, taking on Delaware. After that game, the 7-1 Tigers will have only two more home regular season games, which, actually, is one more than the men will have after playing Brown tomorrow.
There are 33 total events scheduled between today and Monday, and almost all of them are on the road. Besides baseball, softball and the two lacrosse games, there is also home rowing, with the men's heavyweights against Navy and the men's lightweights against Columbia, both tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
It's a great idea to play Dartmouth in football at Yankee Stadium in 2019. Congratulations to AD Marcoux and Coach Surace for making it happen. A lot of different parties needed to work together on this project.
I hope that the Yankee Stadium development, as festive and appropriate as it is, does not mean Princeton has abandoned the idea of playing Rutgers in 2019 as well. If we were to schedule a game on August 31, 2019 against the Scarlet Knights, it would serve as the kickoff celebration for the entire sesquicentennial season. The entire college sports community would focus on Princeton-Rutgers and the role these two athletic programs played in developing college football.
I presume that one or both of Ms. Marcoux or Mr. Surace is lukewarm on the idea or it would have been announced already. Please allow me to ask them to reconsider on behalf of all the future athletic directors and football coaches, players and staff who would love to play Rutgers in a nationally televised game with a President or Heisman Trophy winner in attendance.
Never again in Princeton football history will we be asked -- Rutgers is literally begging us to play this game -- to participate in a party like this until and unless we upgrade to FBS football, which I don't see happening. So this is our once-in-forever opportunity.
Let's do this for the players, coaches and staff in 2019, the ones in 2069, and all the ones in between who will never have this chance.
Post a Comment