The Good Guys

TigerBlog has watched 10 episodes of the current season of "Homeland," and he has no idea what he thinks.

Does he like it? He's not sure. Were this Season 1 instead of Season 6, would TB have stayed with it?

How long do you go with a show that you loved at one point, that at one point was producing the highest-quality television ever?

The highest rated episode ever of "Homeland" was the last episode of Season 3. That's the one that included a certain scene in a certain Iranian public square.

Ratings for this season are pretty much half what they were that season, though they're pretty much in line with where they were for Season 1, which is as good a season as any show has ever had.

TigerBlog has read that there will be a Season 7 and a Season 8. He'll watch them, hoping the show regains its magic.

This season has had some interesting developments. It certainly has some intrigue and some "hmm, is that really how it works" moments.

It's just that it lacks the tempo of the first two seasons. Plus, TB hates what the show has done to Quinn, turning him from a complex morality-challenged good guy into a cartoon character.

And, he doesn't get the whole Dar Adal thing. There's something about the plot line that just doesn't work.

Lastly, there's Carrie and Saul. She's too driven by her passion for the CIA to ever have accepted any other kind of life, like the one she seemed to drift into, and he's way too smart ever to be used the way he's been used.

But hey, TB keeps watching. As long as there's a "Homeland," he'll probably be glued to it.

If nothing else, it's the only show he still watches the old-fashioned way. You know, at a specific time on a specific day. He'd much prefer to be able to watch an entire season in three or four days, but that's not how Showtime releases the show.

There are two more Sundays of this season of "Homeland." The best part, TB supposes, is that even after 10 episodes, he has no idea where the show is going.

His advice for the next two seasons - have a better defined bad guy.

As for good guys, goprincetontigers.com had a few stories yesterday about some of the Tiger good guys.

One is Steven Cook, of the men's basketball team. You can read about him HERE.

TigerBlog can sum it up: Cook is amazing.

From the story:
Beginning Friday, Cook will take part in a weekend of events around the Final Four in recognition of his place on the Good Works Team, which he earned through volunteer efforts, including fundraising for a Sudanese hospital and interning at an anti-poverty organization in Chicago, his academic accomplishments, including becoming the Princeton men's basketball program's first CoSIDA Academic All-America since 1998, and his athletic achievements following a season that saw Cook named to the first-team All-Ivy League and the Ivy League All-Tournament Team while leading Princeton in scoring on the way to the outright Ivy League title, the inaugural Ivy League Tournament championship, and an NCAA first-round game against Notre Dame that came down to the final seconds.

Yeah, that's a pretty impressive resume.

By the way, Cook finished his career with 1,148 points, 15th-best all-time at Princeton. His teammate and fellow senior, Spencer Weiz, finished in 12th place, with 1,241 points. That's two of the top 15 scorers in program history.

They also rank fifth (Weisz) and ninth (Cook) in career three-pointers made. Weisz had 209, while Cook had 156. That's, let's see, 365 three-pointers between them.

Extra credit if you can name the four players who have made more three-pointers in their career at Princeton than Weisz. The answer will be at the end.

Add their point totals together, and you get 2,389. That's 114 shy of the total that Bill Bradley had by himself, in three seasons, without a three-point shot. That's extraordinary.

If you saw Bradley play, did you sense when he graduated that he was putting up numbers that nobody would ever approach?

As for the other good guys, Princeton had two baseball players - Zack Belski and Chad Powers - among the 30 nominees in all of Division I for the 2017 Senior Class Award.

You can read about them HERE.

Belski and Powers helped Princeton to the 2016 Ivy title and NCAA tournament. They start their defense of that title this weekend, when the Tigers open Ivy League play at home against Yale Saturday and Brown Sunday.

And the answer to the question?

That would be Brian Earl (281), Douglas Davis (276), Sean Jackson (235) and Gabe Lewullis (212).