Should Have Gone With The Omelette, Home Fries and Toast

TigerBlog went to a diner yesterday for lunch with his friend Corey.

If his math is right, he's coming up on 47 or so years that he and Corey have been friends. That's a long time.

Corey could be the happiest person TB has ever met. He and TB tell the same stories that they told decades ago, and they still laugh at them like it was yesterday.

Corey is a Rutgers grad. He was a sax player in the band for the Scarlet Knights.

TB looks at his kids and wonders which of their current friends they will be friends with when they're in their 50s. He's not sure why his friendship with Corey has endured all this time, just that it has, and it will forever. There's something quite comforting about that.

Anyway, as far as lunch yesterday goes, sometimes when TB is in a restaurant, he'll look around and see what everyone else is eating, to see if something looks good. In a diner, he likes to get breakfast food, even if it's in the afternoon or evening.

He was going to get an omelette, probably the one with lox and onion. Or the Spanish omelette. Or the Western one.

That's when the people at the next table got their food. And one of them got the salad that TB usually gets when he has lunch with Corey, and it looked really good.

TB ordered the salad, and it was really good. Just as he started to eat, though, there were two guys at the counter behind him - and they both got omelettes. With toast and home fries.

Regrets? Maybe a few. Very few things are better than an omelette, toast and home fries in a diner.

If TB really wanted to put in the effort, he would connect that with Princeton Athletics. It's a busy weekend, though, so he'll just get to the events coming up.

At home this weekend would be the men's hockey team, tonight and tomorrow night at 7, against Yale and Brown. And women's basketball, home Sunday against Georgia Tech at 1.

The men's basketball team is on the road, Saturday at 7 at St. Joe's.

There are also a few championship events involving Princeton teams.

The women's volleyball team will take on Yale tomorrow night, at 7, in New Haven, where the winner will earn the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Princeton and Yale are the league co-champions, and they split their two matches during the regular season.

Princeton is looking for its second-straight trip to the NCAA tournament. The Tigers have now won three straight Ivy titles.

TigerBlog went to the women's volleyball page on goprincetontigers.com and learned that Princeton's NCAA appearance a year ago was the first in nine years. He also saw a headline that said that Maggie O'Connell had made history while being named the Ivy League Player of the Year.

What kind of history? She's the sixth Princeton player to win Ivy Player of the Year and the second to have won that award and Ivy Rookie of the Year in her career as well. O'Connell, a sophomore, is also the first underclassman from Princeton to win Player of the Year.

If TigerBlog Jr. had chosen the Ivy Player of the Year, he would have gone with O'Connell. And he should know. As Yale's PA announcer, he saw every team play. And he'll be there tomorrow night, behind the mic for the championship match.

HERE is the women's volleyball match preview story. 

The men's cross country team runs in the NCAA championships in Louisville tomorrow as well. The Tigers have had quite a season, running together for the first two weeks before Heps at the Princeton Invitational and then overpowering the league to win the Ivy title.

Then, it was on to the NCAA regional last weekend, where Princeton against ran away from the competition to finish first, winning by an astonishing 52 points. All five of Princeton's scorers were in the top 10 at Heps and in the top 25 at the regional. That left all five of them as All-Ivy and All-Region.

So what's the team's ceiling in the finals?

Princeton's best finish ever was 11th, back in 2012. Can this team beat that finish? Well, the Tigers are ranked 28th nationally, but that poll doesn't really reflect where the team is now. Princeton wasn't even ranked for most of the year, for that matter.

Keep in mind, Princeton's full team together has not lost a race this year.

HERE is the full preview.

The women's soccer team plays in the second round of the NCAA tournament today in Cary, N.C., at 2:30 against North Carolina State, a team the Tigers defeated 2-0 back in early September. Princeton was very impressive in its NCAA opener, a 4-0 win over Monmouth.

N.C. State outshot Princeton 15-9 in the first game, but it was the Tigers who converted two chances. What does any of that mean for this game? Not one thing.

Princeton is the fourth seed in the region and ranked 13th nationally. North Carolina State is ranked 21st. It figures to be a good game.

For the winner, there is probably a third-round date Sunday with North Carolina, who plays Colorado in the other game.

Princeton is 15-2-0 on the year. N.C. State is 15-5-1.

More information is right HERE.

The men's water polo team plays in the Northeast Water Polo Conference Tournament this weekend at Harvard. The Tigers are the top seed in the event.

That preview is HERE.

At stake for the winner is an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

In non-championship events, the football team is at Dartmouth as Chad Kanoff chases some major Princeton passing records and the Tigers attempt to keep the Big Green from having a shot at the Ivy crown. Dartmouth would get a share with a win and a Yale loss to Harvard. Columbia could get a share too with a win over Brown and a Yale loss.

For all of Kanoff's numbers - and Jesper Horsted's and Stephen Carlson's and everything else about the game - click HERE.