Falling Back On A Big Fall

TigerBlog owns a watch. He just never wears it.

He tells time the way most people do these days. He looks on his phone.

At first, when it came time to change the clocks, TigerBlog had no idea if his phone was automatically correcting the time or not. It took a few years before he was sure it was.

These days, when it comes time to change the time, that means adjusting the microwave and the stove. And if you still have an actual clock that hangs on the wall, then you have to take it down, change the hands and then try to hang it back up on the hook or the nail. That's the toughest part.

Oh, and the car. That's another one. TigerBlog can never remember exactly how to change the time in the car. It's a twice-yearly pain.

So now it's no longer Daylight Savings Time. You gained an hour of sleep Saturday night into Sunday, which makes TB wonder why it doesn't start on a Sunday night into Monday, when people can really use an extra hour.

And if you have little kids, well, nobody told them they were supposed to sleep later. They woke up at the same time they always do, only it's an hour earlier.

In a rarity, TigerBlog was wearing shorts all day on the day that the clocks were turned back. It's usually a dreary sign that summer is long gone - the fact that it is now going to get dark around 5 and even earlier for the next few weeks. Winter is on the horizon.

Spring ahead is out there. This weekend was to fall back.

Princeton is falling back on a pretty good fall, and this past weekend saw two more teams win outright Ivy League championships. A third got a weekend sweep and now heads into the final weekend of the regular season knowing that another sweep would mean at least a share of the championship.

A fourth team continues to quietly rise from what could have been a disastrous season. Playing for championships is one thing. Everyone can get motivated by that. Playing for pride is a lot tougher.

Princeton's first Ivy championship of the fall was in men's cross country. The second was in field hockey, who earned at least a share of the title last weekend and needed a win at Penn Saturday to clinch the outright championship.

Princeton trailed 1-0 early in the game before rallying to win 2-1. The result was Princeton's 25th Ivy League championship (that's a lot).

The NCAA tournament starts for the Tigers Saturday at Virginia. As you recall, Princeton was a Final Four team a year ago - and the 2012 NCAA champ.

The third Ivy title came from the women's soccer team. Princeton will find its NCAA tournament opponent this afternoon at 4:30 on ncaa.com.

Princeton is very likely to play at home in the tournament. The Tigers were also very likely to be in even had they not won the league championship, something that looked like a real possibility after the loss to Columbia on Oct. 14.

Instead, the Tigers won out and then got some help when Columbia tripped up against Yale two weeks ago, putting the teams in a tie for first. Princeton then knocked off Penn 1-0 Saturday afternoon to clinch at least a tie, and when Columbia and Harvard ended up scoreless, that became an outright championship.

The women's volleyball team had a rough weekend in mid-October also, getting swept at Columbia and Cornell. Then there was a home loss against Yale last weekend, one that left the Tigers a game back of the Bulldogs.

This weekend, Princeton avenged that weekend sweep by sweeping past Columbia and Cornell. Yale's split this weekend, with a loss to Harvard Friday, leaves Princeton and Yale at 9-3 each heading into the final weekend, with Harvard and Penn still mathematically alive at 7-5 (there can't be a four-way tie because Harvard plays Penn Saturday).

Princeton is at Harvard Friday and Dartmouth Saturday. Wins in both mean at least a tie for a third-straight Ivy League championship. Yale is at Columbia and Cornell this coming weekend, meaning the Bulldogs will be without their good-luck PA announcer. 

Dartmouth has already clinched a share of the men's soccer championship. Princeton? The Tigers will not be the champs, but guess what?

Princeton is in third place.

The Tigers were 2-6-2 back on Oct. 7, after a loss at Brown. Princeton was also 0-2-0 in the Ivy League, beaten up by injuries and playing an incredibly young team. More than that, it seemed like every game was more flukish, more demoralizing than the one before it, with brutal loss after brutal loss.

If any team could have been forgiven for mailing it in, that would have been the Princeton men's soccer team.

Since then? Princeton is 4-0-2 and is now back at .500 at 6-6-4 overall, 2-2-2 in the league, after a 2-1 win over Penn in overtime Saturday night. Should Princeton beat Yale next weekend in the season finale, it would finish above .500 in both. That would be impressive.

The football team had a tough loss at Penn Saturday. The Tigers are still mathematically alive to be part of a bizarre tie at 4-3 in the league, but TB will get into that more later.

And one more thing for today: Happy birthday MotherBlog, who would have been 78 years old today. She left this world a long time ago, but she hasn't been forgotten.