They Roared

The Giants, it turns out, reached the 30-point mark for the first time in 37 games when they got to 31 against the Panthers yesterday.

Then it all turned out to be all for nothing, as Graham Gano drilled a 63-yard field goal as time expired, giving his team 33.

Princeton, on the other hand, has reached the 30-point mark every game so far this season - in the first half alone. In fact, Princeton has played eight halves this year and has scored at least 30 in five of them.

TigerBlog last week talked about the No. 42. He figured he'd be starting out this week with the number 733 - but that's going to have to wait a day.

Usually, Mondays this time of year here feature something about that weekend's football game. TigerBlog will get to that this week as well, except he'll be doing it tomorrow.

Today? The number is 79. Yes, 79. And not 80.

TigerBlog will get to that shortly. Today, though, TigerBlog starts with the women of Princeton.

If you pay attention at all to Princeton information, then you know this past weekend was the "She Roars" event, which brought 5,000 women alums back to campus for a series of celebrations, discussions and lectures.

If you haven't been to the Princeton social media feeds, it's definitely worth checking out. The featured guests were Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, both Princeton alums (as is fellow Justice Samuel Alito), who spoke in Jadwin Gym Friday night.

There were many other highlights, and they have been chronicled in depth on the University's Twitter, Instagram and webpage.

As for athletics, Princeton's Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan hosted a roundtable entitled "Be a TIGER: Optimize Performance and Wellness." Joining Mollie in the discussion Saturday morning were women's open rowing coach Lori Dauphiny, women's hockey coach Cara Morey and women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer.

The focus of the talk was, as the title suggested, advances in performance training, including the use of technology and analytics to enhance performance. There was also a large chunk of time devoted to the importance of building strong team cultures.

Oh, and in the beginning, Mollie talked about the overwhelming success Princeton's women's athletes have had since the earliest days of competition back in the early 1970s. TigerBlog ran through it last Thursday, with some facts and figures to document that success and then a timeline. You can see it HERE if you missed it.

There was also a well-attended reception after the women's soccer game on Sherrerd Field.

And now, there's the number 79, which ironically is connected to a group of women who left campus for the weekend. Still, while they weren't at Princeton, they still did a lot of roaring.

The Princeton field hockey team had itself a huge weekend. It started Friday, when the Tigers were at Columbia for a 4-0 win.

That victory improved the Tigers to 3-0 in the Ivy League, having outscored its opponents 12-0. That's pretty good.

After that the weekend continued with a trip to UConn for a game yesterday. UConn, of course, is no average field hockey team.

No, UConn is the defending NCAA champion, and until a week ago, the Huskies were cruising with a 33-game winning streak, one that was snapped in a 4-2 loss to Maryland in a rematch of last year's NCAA final.

The game yesterday was Senior Day for UConn, whose current seniors have been to the Final Four each of their first three seasons. And their record since they'd arrived in Storrs heading into the game? UConn was 79-4.

That number has stayed at 79, after Princeton stunned the Huskies 5-2. This win was not a fluke either.

It's the most goals that UConn has given up in a game in five years. Princeton outshot UConn 17-8, and the Tigers had a 10-5 edge in corners. Clara Roth scored seven minutes into the game, and the game stayed 1-0 until halftime. The second half, then, would feature six goals.

UConn would trail 3-1 before scoring to make it a 3-2 game with 20 minutes left. With the game at its crucial point, Ali McCarthy built the lead back to two 20 seconds after the UConn goal and then scored again a little more than three minutes later.

Princeton is 10-3 on the season, and five of those wins have come over teams whose RPI was in the top 15 a week ago. Princeton is 2-2 against the top five (the Tigers are fourth), with wins over No. 3 Duke and No. 5 UConn and one-goal losses to No. 1 North Carolina and No. 2 Maryland.

Ahead for Princeton are its last five Ivy games, which means two more Top 20 RPI games - against No. 10 Harvard and No. 20 Penn. Harvard is 3-0 in the league (with a win over Penn) and 11-1 overall.

Princeton will play one league game a week now, each of the next four Saturdays, beginning this Saturday at home against Brown. Harvard is at Princeton the following week, with a trip to Cornell and a home game against Penn to finish the regular season.

The NCAA tournament will come up after that.

There's a long way to go for the Tigers, who chase another Ivy title and another run deep into November.

This weekend, when all the roaring Tigers were not on campus, was a great one along that road.