27 Smiths

TigerBlog added the men's lacrosse freshmen to the roster on the webpage yesterday.

One of the freshmen is named Jake Stevens, and as part of the process of adding his bio and headshot, TB had to do a search in the content management system for his entry. There's a database that is used, and it keeps a record of every athlete who has had a bio on goprincetontigers.com.

When TB entered "Stevens" and hit return, he laughed at what came up.

There were three possible entries with the last name Stevens: Jake, Cheryl and Liz. Why'd he laugh? There was a lot of randomness to it.

Jake is the current freshman. Cheryl is a former women's basketball player. Liz was a track and field athlete who was also one of the greatest student workers in Office of Athletic Communications history.

TigerBlog wasn't sure how far the database of athletes that is stored on the back end of goprincetontigers.com goes. It didn't go all the way back to the first bios that were created for the website in the late 1990s. In fact, as near has he can tell, it begins with members of the Class of 2006.

That seems sort of random, but okay. 

With that in mind, it got TB thinking about how many of each last name there were. If you figure "Smith" and "Jones" might be the biggies, well, there were 27 Smiths but only five Jones. Or Joneses.

What last names might also have been well-represented? There have been six Donovans, of which four are sisters who all have played field hockey here.

Davis? There were 15. Anderson? There were 12. Ryan? Only four? TigerBlog would have thought more.

Oh, Johnson. There were 23 of them. Of those 23, by the way, there are currently four on the football team. 

TigerBlog could have done this all day. He's easily amused.

Besides, what else was there to do? There were no Princeton athletic events yesterday, and there are none today.

In fact, in the month of September, there are only five days with no athletic events at all, and three of them are this week, since there weren't any on Monday. The other two were also Mondays, the third and 17th.

It'll pick up again tomorrow, with the start of a very busy weekend.

There are actually three Ivy League games tomorrow night, with one at home, women's volleyball against Brown (and then Yale Saturday).

As for the away games tomorrow, there will be football at Columbia in the Ivy opener for both (at 6, on ESPNU) and field hockey at Yale, also at 6. TigeBlog Jr., by the way, will be the PA announcer for Princeton-Yale field hockey in New Haven.

As for the weekend, there are all kinds of events at home.

The men's water polo team plays three games, against MIT and Brown Saturday and then Harvard Sunday. The field hockey team is home Sunday against Boston University, and there's a women's golf invitational Saturday and Sunday.

The whole schedule is HERE.

There's also a home soccer doubleheader against Dartmouth, with the men at 1 and the women at 4.

This is Week 1 of Ivy men's soccer and Week 2 of Ivy women's soccer. The Princeton men enter with a record of 4-4, and seven of those eight games have been decided by one goal.

In fact, neither team has had more than a one-goal lead at any point of Princeton's last five games. The Tigers have won and lost games on very late goals, including two wins in overtime.

The first Ivy game is against the defending champion Big Green, who are 2-4-2 this year after a 12-3-2 year that included a 6-0-1 run in the league.

Don't let the 2-4-2 fool you; Dartmouth has played a tough schedule. Both teams will be playing with an understanding of the importance of getting off to a good start in the league, with only seven league games to determine a champion.

As for the women, Princeton is one of three teams who won their league opener last week, along with Dartmouth and Columbia. Penn and Harvard tied.

Princeton is the defending champion in women's soccer, and as you're probably aware, the Tigers reached the NCAA quarterfinals a year ago as well. Princeton has played some very good teams in some very tough games so far, and the opportunity for another NCAA run is something that the Tigers would love to get.

Princeton currently has an RPI of 21. There's an automatic bid to the tournament for the team that wins the league.

With so few games in the league, every one of them is huge. Even for Week 1 and Week 2, these games are big for the Princeton men and women.

And they're free. And the weather should be perfect.