It's February

TigerBlog was talking to a friend yesterday who said that it felt like spring would be here soon.

That made TB laugh a bit. 

He pointed out that it was still January and that the temperature was tryng its best to reach double figures. Still, he's okay with the idea that spring isn't that far away.

And hey, it's February 1st.

You know what that means. The shortest, and busiest, month of the year is here.

Tomorrow, of course, would be Groundhog Day, and as TB has said many, many times, 1) the movie is great and 2) if it's six more weeks of winter then that takes you to March 16, which is still before the official start of spring. 

If it's not exactly spring, it is Day 1 of spring sports practices. For that matter, it's Week 1 for the college lacrosse season, which actually has genuine regular season games this weekend.

In fact, it's opening day today, with the first Division I game of the year to be played, somewhat historically, when Vermont is at Utah in the debut for the Utes.

There are 10 more men's games tomorrow, while opening day for women's lacrosse is a week away and opening day for the Princeton men and women is two weeks away.

Two weeks? Amazing.

In the meantime, this weekend features 37 Princeton athletic events. That's insane. There are 19 alone tomorrow. Nineteen? Seriously. Nineteen, in one day.

HERE. You can count them for yourselves. 

And it's not even the busy part of the month yet.

If you're in the Princeton area, there aren't many of those events that are on campus, but the ones that are will be pretty good ones.

There are four home squash matches as the men's and women's teams host Harvard tomorrow and Dartmouth Sunday. The highlight is the matchup between the top two women's teams, unbeaten Princeton and unbeaten Harvard.

The 20th-ranked wrestling team has a busy weekend, with three matches, including the first two in the league, both of which are tomorrow. The wrestling weekend begins at 1 tomorrow at Dillon Gym against Harvard, and then it'll be Princeton-Brown at 5.

Those two matches are followed Sunday by a match at Rutgers in another Top 20 date for the Tigers, as the Scarlet Knights are at No. 18 this week. Rutgers, by the way, may be ranked 18th in Division I, but that only leaves Princeton's local rival as the eighth-highest ranked Big Ten team.

There are actually 10 Big Ten teams in the top 25, which makes that league 40 percent of the national rankings. There are four ECAC teams in the women's hockey top 10, which is the same 40 percent. 

The highest ranked of those four teams is fourth-ranked Princeton, followed by No. 5 Clarkson, No. 6 Cornell and No. 10 Colgate.

Princeton went 2-0-2 against Cornell and Colgate, but it still has two games against Clarkson, including one tomorrow afternoon (3), after the Tigers host St. Lawrence tonight (6). Princeton has a two-point lead over Cornell and a three-point lead over Clarkson as the weekend begins.

If you're in New York City today, you might want to head up to Morningside Heights and see the Princeton-Columbia basketball doubleheader.

If you look at the rest of Division I, every team in every league other than the Big West has played at least six conference games, and the Big West teams have played five. The average at this point for Division I is eight conference games. There are teams that have already played 10.

The Ivy League? Every team has played two, except for the Princeton and Penn women, who have played one each.

In fact, the Princeton women have not played a game since Jan. 5. Think about that. That's four weeks already. It seems like even longer.

The Princeton women get back on the court at 4 this afternoon at Columbia, followed by the men's game at 7. Tomorrow the teams are in Ithaca to take on Cornell, with the women at 5 and the men at 7:30ish.

The men's team played Division III Wesley College last Sunday to shake off the post-exam rust. The women's team did not, so it'll be interesting to see the first seven minutes or so of that game to see how long it takes the Tigers to get their legs back.

As a subplot, the Columbia women are coached by former Courtney Banghart assistant coach Meg Griffith.

The basketball games this weekend start the sprint through the league schedule, one that will be over in a blink. All of the events in general start the month of February, which packs a lot into just 28 days.

Oh, and the Super Bowl Sunday? Two predicitons: 1) TB will go with New England 35, Los Angeles 17, and 2) the commercials will again be overdone and not funny.