More For Super Saturday

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How was your Halloween, that most Princetonian of all holidays?

You know. Orange and black.

Princeton has been dressed in orange and black since the 1880s. Halloween in its current form doesn't date back much further than that.

Halloween itself is considered to have evolved from religious holidays in Ireland and Scotland dating back centuries. It wasn't until after the mass immigration of the Irish and Scottish in the 1800s that it came to this country, and by the early 20th century it pretty much looked like it does today. Or yesterday.

At least that's what it said on Wikipedia.

TigerBlog made it through Halloween without having a single piece of candy. That's because he's not capable of having a single piece. If he had one, he'd have to have about 100 or so, and he knows he shouldn't have 100 mini-Kit Kat bars, so he didn't start at all.

Maybe one day, when he's the old guy always walking his dog by his beach house as he said yesterday, he can add in sitting on his porch on Halloween and giving out candy to the kids who come by.

With Halloween over, it is now November. You can tell by the 70 degree weather in Princeton today, by the way.

It'll be even warmer tomorrow, with a chance of a thunderstorm. Then the forecast for Saturday is a high of 59, with morning clouds giving way to sun.

In other words, perfect weather for the Super Saturday around here. Hey, if you're a fall sport, your hope is to be playing big games into November, and that's certainly going to be the case around here.

To review, there are five games on Princeton's campus Saturday, one women's hockey game against Harvard at 3 and then four other games that will directly impact Ivy League championships and/or NCAA tournament spots and seeds.

Going chronologically, you have:

* field hockey at noon against Penn (free)
* football at 1 against Dartmouth (tickets required, click the link above)
* men's soccer at 4 against Penn (free)
* women's soccer at 7 against Penn (free)

By the time Saturday ends, three of those teams can be Ivy champs (or two eliminated and one needing help next week), with two headed to the NCAA tournament (or one eliminated with the other needing help to get in) and the third pretty much a lock (though without a championship), while the fourth could have taken a giant leap in the direction of its own championship (or needing help that might not come).

In other words, these games are all huge. And there aren't too many Saturdays that come along like this one.

TigerBlog ran through all of the scenarios Monday, but he can give you a quick refresher:

* field hockey - needs a win over Penn and a Harvard loss to Columbia to get a share of the title. Actually, Penn is in the same situation as Princeton, since both are 5-1 in the league, a game behind 6-0 Harvard, who has already beaten Penn and Princeton and has the automatic NCAA bid. Princeton is about as sure a thing as there is for an at-large bid and still has a good chance at hosting for the first two rounds next weekend.

* men's soccer - a Princeton win over Penn and a Columbia loss at Harvard means that Princeton would clinch the outright Ivy title and the NCAA tournament bid. A Princeton win over Penn and a Columbia tie at Harvard clinches at least a share of the title and the automatic bid, since Columbia could still tie Princeton in the standings but Princeton has defeated Columbia. Any other scenario for this weekend means the championship and automatic bid won't be decided until next week. Oh, and Cornell and Dartmouth are still mathematically alive for the outright title and NCAA automatic bid.

* women's soccer - this one is the easiest. A Penn win or tie and Penn wins the outright title and the league's automatic bid. A Princeton win and the teams share the championship

* football - and then there's football. There are still three weeks left in the Ivy League football season, so nobody can clinch a championship yet. Then again, this is a game between 7-0 Princeton and 7-0 Dartmouth, both of whom have dominated the league this season (obviously) except for close wins against Harvard for each. It's the first time since 1993 that Princeton has played a game this late in the season when it's been unbeaten, and the only other time that the Ivy League has seen such a game since then was back in 2001, when Harvard beat Penn.

So you have all of that down?

TigerBlog, as you may have expected, will have much more on the football showdown tomorrow.

For now, you can get back to your Halloween candy. Enjoy a Three Musketeers for TigerBlog.