Starting At 13

TigerBlog has never, ever had a cup of coffee.

He's told you that before. He knows that the overwhelming majority of people his age can't function until they've had their morning coffee, but he just never got into drinking it.

He's not 100 percent sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the smell?

As TB understands it, Wawa is a big coffee spot for people in the morning. Wawa, by the way, is the name for a convenience store, often accompanied by a gas station. These stores are found almost exclusively in the Mid-Atlantic states, and there are 800 of them in all.

The name comes from a municipality outside Philadelphia that was the site of the original dairy farm to which the company can trace its roots.

TigerBlog read a great story about coffee buying at Wawa yesterday. There was a third-grade teacher in South Jersey who makes a point each week of buying coffee for a stranger at her local Wawa, and when she stumbled on a guy who didn't have any cash last Friday, she immediately jumped in to pay for him.

And who was the guy?

Keith Urban, the country music superstar.

My favorite story of the day is how my 3rd grade teacher thought @KeithUrban was down on his luck and couldn’t pay for his wawa snacks so she bought them for him. What an angel. pic.twitter.com/mJccVOQWtp

— Olivia Rose Prouse (@liverdiverz) August 4, 2018

Now that's a cute story.

TigerBlog used to drink a lot of soda, but he's given that up now. These days, his beverage of choice is Hint flavored water. It comes in all kinds of flavors - his favorites are black cherry, cherry and peach.

Where is TigerBlog going with all this? He has no idea.

It's August, after all.

TigerBlog really had no idea what to write about until early afternoon yesterday, when he saw the United Soccer Coaches' Division I women's soccer preseason poll had come out. That gave him some actual Princeton stuff worth discussing.

Princeton is ranked 13th in the preseason, which is a great starting point obviously. Just as obviously, much of that is based on where Princeton finished last year, in the NCAA quarterfinals.

Princeton is the only Ivy League school that is ranked. In fact, Princeton is the only school among ranked teams and those receiving votes, which totals a list of 43 schools.

Does this mean Princeton will soar to the Ivy title without a sweat? Of course not.

Mostly what it means is that Princeton had a great 2017, heading into 2018. And that's clearly the case.

Princeton won the Ivy League championship and then three NCAA tournament games, including the win over North Carolina in the Round of 16 that set up a quarterfinal date at UCLA, where the Tigers would fall 3-1.

Do you watch "PTI" on ESPN? You know the show. On a side note, it's the sports talk commentary show that is by far the best, for a number of reasons.

Anyway, they often have a "Fill in the Blank" segment. Applying that to Princeton women's soccer, you have these two examples:

"The win over North Carolina in the 2017 NCAA Sweet 16 was the ___________________ win in program history."

"The win over Washington in the 2004 NCAA quarterfinal was the ___________________ win in program history."

TigerBlog would go with "best" for the first one and "biggest" for the second.

The one in 2004 was the biggest in that in put Princeton into the Final Four (still the only such appearance by an Ivy school) and also led directly to the construction of Roberts Stadium.

The one last year was the best, because of who North Carolina is in the sport. The Tar Heels have won 21 NCAA titles and have dominated women's soccer to a greater degree than UConn has dominated women's basketball.

Princeton began the 2005 season ranked 21st but did not repeat its success of the previous year, due largely to the graduation of a huge senior class. The 2005 Tigers went 5-2 in the league and had the league's Player of the Year (Emily Behncke), but the team did not win the league or get to the NCAA tournament.

The 2018 Tigers do not have the graduation losses that the 2005 team had to deal with (of the 44 goals Princeton scored last year, Princeton returns players who accounted for 37 of them), but there will still be plenty of challenges. Princeton is chasing its third Ivy title in four years, and only Princeton or Harvard has won the league championships since 2010.

Opening day for the women's soccer team, and for Princeton Athletics in 2018-19, is a little more than two weeks away. The first Ivy game is Sept. 22 at Yale, by which time Princeton will have played eight non-league games, including a rematch of the NCAA second-round game against North Carolina State, which will be on Myslik Field on Sept. 2.

Starting at 13 is nice. It's a statement about where the program is and the respect the Tigers have earned.

In the end, of course, it's not about where you start.