Minutewomen

TigerBlog is reasonably sure that he's watched more of the Winter Olympics than you have.

He's watched a lot of it. Actually, he's watched some of it twice, since NBC Sports Network had programming during the day yesterday that NBC reran on the main network in its exact form a few hours later. It was a bit odd to do that, actually.

Anyway, other than alpine skiing, TB prefers the sports that are a bit more offbeat, as opposed to, say, figure skating. What has stood out to him?

Last week he mentioned that he really liked the cross country skiing sprint. He also thought the men's 15K biathlon mass start was great, with the little oval near the shooting spot where skiers had to go around once for every time they missed a shot, and then the end, which was a photo finish between France's Martin Fourcade and Germany's Simon Schempp. In fact, they finished with identical times.

Over the course of 15 kilometers, or just short of 10 miles, and Fourcade and Schempp got to the finish line at the same time. And that doesn't even include the penalty laps.

At first, it looked like Fourcade had lost, since he slammed his pole to the ground. Instead, he was the winner, unlike four years ago, when he lost in similar fashion - though he did win two other golds back then.

The team cross country relay was impressive, or at least the anchor leg by Norway's Johannes Klaebo, who obliterated the best skiers in the world and didn't even look like he was out of breath when he was done.

TB liked the speed skating team pursuit - that's three skaters per country, starting on opposite sides of the oval. The third skater across is the one whose time counts.

And there was the big air snowboarding. Did you see this one? It's held at the same spot as the ski jumping, with the same landing area. It's the steepest drop ever, followed by a liftoff and then some flips and twists and all.

That's impressive enough. What's even more impressive is the woman who was standing at the top with a walkie-talkie to tell the competitors when to go, and the two people with cameras who were stationed along the downslope. TB thinks they should get whatever is better than a gold medal for doing that.

TB wouldn't have done it. Not that high up, and in freezing and windy conditions? Yikes.

TigerBlog's Olympic viewing Sunday afternoon was interrupted by the fact that the Princeton-Columbia women's basketball game was being replayed on SportsNet NY, so he figured he'd check it out, even though he knew who it was going to end up.

Princeton won the game 74-46, this after beating Penn 60-40 Tuesday night and Cornell 72-40 Friday night. Bella Alarie picked up yet another Ivy Player of the Week award along the way.

Princeton just completed a five-games-in-eight-days run, one that head coach Courtney Banghart had not experienced before. Princeton went 5-0 in those games, holding four of the opponents to 47 points or fewer. The average margin of victory was 26.4, and no game was closer than 19.

That run leaves Princeton at 19-4 overall and 9-1 in the league, with four regular season games left - at Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend and home with Brown and Yale next weekend. Yale is the only Ivy team to whom Princeton has lost.

Any three wins in that stretch means at least a share of the Ivy title and clinches the top seed in the upcoming Ivy tournament. 

If you want a really impressive number for Princeton, it's this: 31.1. If you want another, it's this: 28.9.

Those numbers are Alarie's minutes played in all games and in the conference only. She leads the team in both categories.

Think about that. Princeton has no player who is playing at least 29 minutes per game in its Ivy League games. That's a by-product of the fact that Princeton has not played a game - nine wins or one loss - that hasn't been decided by double figures.

It also tells you a few things.

One, Princeton has great depth. Two, nobody's stats are being padded with an eye on postseason honors or anything.

Third, and probably most importantly, Princeton figures have somewhat fresher legs for the stretch drive here. If you look at the Ivy League stats, there are 10 players in the league who average at least 32.4 minutes, and that doesn't count Penn's Michelle Nwokedi and Anna Ross, who average 32.3 each.

Don't sell short the importance of being rested this late into the long season. Hey, Princeton just finished playing those five games in eight days and were like Klaebo as he came into the cross country stadium for the last time.

What? That didn't work?

This guy was skiing back and forth with one of the OAR guys (Olympic Athletes from Russia; why not just call them Russia?) and then in a blink was gone. Like, on skis.

Yeah. You had to see it.

TigerBlog did. Like he said, he's watched more of this stuff than you have.