The First Busy Weekend

TigerBlog's former colleague David Rosenfeld emailed him early yesterday with the link to the "cautiously optimistic" headline that TB mentioned yesterday.

It was from the preview story of the 2005 football game against San Diego. The headline was "Tigers Cautiously Optimistic As Home Schedule Opens."

There was reason for the optimism - Princeton won the game 20-17. You of course remember who San Diego's coach was, right?

Jay McCareins had a great game in that win, by the way, intercepting three passes and returning one 99 yards for a touchdown. The headline after the game on goprincetontigers.com was "Football Team Jaywalks To 20-17 Win Over San Diego."

The question TB still has is what it said before it was changed to "cautiously optimistic." It had to be something that got Gary Walters to think it needed to be changed, but how bad could it have been?

What did it say? "Princeton Guarantees Win Over San Diego?"

Oh, and San Diego's coach back then? It was Jim Harbaugh, now at Michigan. 

The best headline that TigerBlog has written for goprincetontigers.com was in 2002, when Ryan Boyle scored with four seconds left to beat Georgetown 14-13 and send the men's lacrosse team to the Final Four. TB's headline? "Final 0:04."

That's pretty good.

On the other hand, he spelled "quarterfinals" wrong in the second paragraph. What exactly are the "quarterffinals" anyway?

Back in his newspaper days, TigerBlog occasionally had to work on the desk, which included copy editing and writing headlines. The challenge then was to fit the headline over the right number of columns, which wasn't always easy.

TB's favorite? He remembers three.

The first was when Lenny Dykstra, then with the Phillies, has to leave a road trip to return to Philadelphia to have emergency surgery. TB's headline was "Dykstra's Appendix Out At Home."

He also wrote "Eagles Kicking Circus Auditions Two New Clowns" after the Eagles were struggling to find a kicker and had two try out but signed neither. He also wrote "Nice Day Brings No Rain, No Thunder" after a Trenton Thunder game had to be cancelled due to issues with the field.

Meanwhile, back in present day, or at least yesterday, there was the debut of "Beyond The Stripes," the video series from Princeton Athletics this year that will feature a different Tiger athlete each Thursday. The first episode featured John Lovett, the football quarterback who was the Bushnell Cup winner in 2016 and then missed 2017 due to injury.

You can see it HERE.

The college football season is underway, but Princeton doesn't open until two weeks from tomorrow, in Indianapolis against Butler. This is, though, the first relatively busy weekend for Princeton Athletics of 2018-19, including the first home events of the year, a pair of women's soccer games.

The women's soccer team, already 2-0-0, hosts a pair of 3-0-1 teams, St. Joe's tonight and North Carolina State Sunday. Both games start at 7, and there is no admission fee for either.

North Carolina State, whom Princeton defeated twice last year, including in the second round of the NCAA tournament, is at Penn tonight.

Princeton has a team that will be playing at Penn today also. The field hockey team opens its season at 11 this morning against second-ranked North Carolina on Penn's Ellen Vagelos Field and then is back there Sunday at 11 to take on No. 14 Wake Forest.

In fact, Princeton's first four opponents are all ranked in the top 14 right now. Princeton itself is ranked 10th in the preseason.

The women's volleyball team is at Colgate for its opener, or openers. The Tigers, who have won three straight Ivy titles, will take on Northwestern and Stephen F. Austin today and the host Raiders tomorrow.

Finally, TigerBlog would like to mention the rather intriguing matchup for the other Princeton team who competes this weekend, the men's water polo team. The Tigers are at, of all places, Navy, for Dusty Litvak's debut as Princeton head coach.

The Tigers take on Johns Hopkins and Wagner tomorrow, and then there is the game Sunday morning against the host Midshipmen.

Navy, of course, is now coached by longtime Princeton coach Luis Nicolao, who is in his first year at his alma mater. Litvak took over for Luis as the men's head coach, while Derek Ellingson will be the women's head coach, as both will be the other's assistant.

It'll be an intriguing matchup for the Tigers against their old coach. It'll probably be a bit bittersweet for Luis as well, since he recruited all of the current players and coached most of them.

The Princeton vs. Luis matchup is a highlight for the weekend, but there are interesting games all around.

It's the first busy weekend of the academic year. There will be many more to follow.