A Super Saturday On The Way

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Ross Tucker, the Princeton alum and current football media star, tweeted something interesting yesterday.

Ross, a TigerBlog favorite, was a longtime NFL offensive lineman. He mentioned that his last snap was in 2007, and yet he had been a teammate of both starting quarterbacks in last night's Monday Night Football game - New England's Tom Brady and Buffalo's Derek Anderson.

That's interesting, especially since it's 11 years later. There can't be many players who last played in 2007 who were teammates with two current NFL starters.

In other NFL news, the Giants are the worst team in the league and TigerBlog is fine with that. Oh, and it's not Eli Manning's fault, so don't blame him. Maybe the team needs to see what it has with rookie Kyle Lauletta, but it's hardly Eli's fault that the team is awful.

And Taysom Hill continues to be the most exciting player in the league. And Pat Mahomes is really, really good. Will it be a Chiefs-Rams Super Bowl?

That's your NFL update.

Speaking of football, you're probably already aware that their is a huge game coming up on Powers Field this Saturday.

It'll be 7-0 Princeton and 7-0 Dartmouth in football, with kickoff at 1. The game features the only two people in Ivy football history to win championships as both players and head coaches - Princeton's Bob Surace and Dartmouth's Buddy Teevens.

As TB said, it's a huge game Saturday at Princeton.

It's just that it's not the only huge game at Princeton Saturday. In fact, there are a lot of them, as it turns out.

The day starts with field hockey, where Princeton hosts Penn, hoping for a win and a Harvard loss to Columbia to get a share of the league championship. Harvard, regardless, will have the league's automatic NCAA tournament bid after its win over Princeton, but the Tigers - with wins over teams like UConn, Penn State and Duke - is a near lock for an at-large bid. 

The football game will not decide the league champion, at least not right away. The winner of that game will still have two more to go, so the loser is not eliminated.

There is a championship game of sorts that will be taking place Saturday evening, as the second game of a soccer doubleheader with Penn in which both ends will have major championship implications.

The women's game starts at 7, and when it's over, the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament will belong to one of the two teams. Penn is currently 5-0-1 in the league and has clinched at least a share of the league title, but Princeton is 4-1-1, which makes the math relatively simple here.

Princeton can obviously tie Penn with a win, which would leave both at 5-1-1. If that were to happen, Princeton would get the league's automatic bid to the tournament by virtue of having defeated Penn.

On the other hand, a Penn win or tie means an outright title - and the NCAA bid - for the Quakers.

By the way, Penn and Princeton rank 1-2 in the Ivy League in scoring offense and scoring defense. The Quakers have allowed just four goals all year, including just one goal in the last 10 games. In fact, Penn gave up two goals in a 4-2 win over Navy and two in all of its other games combined, including one in the Ivy League (against Yale).

That's the challenge for Princeton. Win and advance. Lose or tie? Then it's hope for an at-large bid that, with an RPI that will be around 30, is very much up in the air.

The men's soccer race is a week behind the women's, which means that there are two games to go. Princeton sits alone in first place with 13 points at 4-0-1, after huge wins against Columbia and Cornell, including 2-0 over the then-22nd-ranked Big Red in Ithaca this past Saturday.

Columbia right now has 12 points at 4-1-0, followed by Cornell at 3-2-0 (nine points) and Dartmouth at 2-1-1 (eight points). The other four have been mathematically eliminated.

Princeton plays Penn at 4 Saturday and then travels to Yale next Saturday. The simplest formula for the Tigers is to win both, and they will definitely win the championship.

There are all kinds of other combinations that get Princeton to the finish line, including going 1-1 in the last two if Cornell beats Columbia in their season finale. On the other hand, two Columbia wins (the Lions are at Harvard this weekend) would mean Princeton would have to win its last two to win the championship.

So that's your Saturday menu of on-campus Ivy events. Four of them, with all four directly impacting championships or postseason.

Yeah, maybe TigerBlog will have a little more on this as the week goes along.