A Frozen Weekend

TigerBlog spent a lot of cold winters before he ever heard the term "polar vortex." That term first was throw around, what, two years ago?

He'd seen a lot of frigid, snowy, windy days too before yesterday and never once heard anyone talk about a "bomb cyclone."

Are these real terms? How come TigerBlog hadn't heard of them before? Is someone making up terms for extreme weather? Can TigerBlog try?

This weekend, there will be a, well, how about a "frozen weekend?"

At no point will the temperature be above 20. It will, however, be below zero. In fact, according to the hourly forecast for the next 48 hours, it's going to mostly be in single digits.

The weather around here has been awful the last few weeks. TigerBlog hates it.

TB read earlier in the week that it was actually colder in Jacksonville, Florida, than it was in Anchorage, Alaska.

There are people who prefer cold weather to hot weather of course. Why, is the question. 

The University was closed yesterday due to the storm. The awful weather this weekend won't stop Princeton teams from having some big games though.

If you're looking for home events, there's women's hockey tonight at 6 against Cornell and tomorrow afternoon at 3 against Colgate. Both opponents, by the way, are ranked in the top five nationally.

There's also home squash against Virginia Sunday, with the men at 11 and the women at 1:30.

It'll be minus-11 in West Lafayette for a low this weekend. The Princeton wrestling team will be there Sunday for matches against Purdue and Michigan. Is there another Terminal Technique video in the future?

There's men's track and field and men's swimming and diving at Navy tomorrow. It's hardly much warmer there.

The men's volleyball team is the one team that is experiencing warmth, with matches in Santa Barbara this weekend that include one against No. 2 Long Beach State tonight.

The men's hockey team, fresh off tying No. 1 St. Cloud twice, is at Cornell tonight and Colgate tomorrow. It's way, way, way too early to look at the ECAC standings, unless you did, in which case you see that Cornell is in third and Colgate is in fourth.

And then there's basketball.

It'll be Princeton at Penn in basketball twice, with the men's game tonight at 7 and the women tomorrow at 1.

The temperature won't be that much lower than it was the last time the teams were in the Palestra, last March, for the first Ivy League tournament. Princeton won the men's championship over Yale, while the women lost to Penn in the final.

There's an Ivy League women's basketball team that is receiving votes in the top 25 poll, and shockingly it's not Princeton or Penn. Or even Harvard.

It's Brown, which is 11-1. Top 25 votes aside, Princeton has to be feeling pretty good about where it is heading into the Ivy season. Princeton has great balance, defends extremely well and has top-of-the-line players who are playing at an extraordinarily high level.

Penn is 6-4 overall and the winner of four straight. The Quakers, like Princeton, have had better defense and better results go hand-in-hand.

Princeton and Penn have both played Georgia Tech, St. Joe's and Lafayette, and the results have been eerily similar. Not that comparative scores tell you much.

This has become a great rivalry in the last few years, as the teams have finished 1-2 in the standings four straight times. Will the game tomorrow be the first of two or three between them this year?

As for the men, they also played three times last year, as Princeton rallied past the Quakers in the Ivy semifinal on Penn's home court. Penn has the best overall record in the league at 9-5; Princeton is 7-7 and playing the best it has all season.

The Tigers also have a 16-game Ivy League regular-season winning streak, or an 18-game streak if you count the Ivy tournament. Going back a little further, Princeton has won 26 of its last 27 games against Ivy League teams.

Princeton hasn't played since Christmas Day. In Hawaii.

If you really want to feel cold, then you should watch the latest episode of "Hard Cuts." You can see it HERE.

Somewhere, at least, it's warm.

In the meantime, enjoy your frozen weekend.