Back To Minnesota

TigerBlog was the official stats person for the women's lacrosse game Saturday, a dramatic 15-14 win by Princeton over Stony Brook in a game that the Tigers trailed 14-10 with about 10 minutes to go.

Kyla Sears won the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week award after a six-goal, two-assist performance that included a goal and both assists during the winning 5-0 run.

TB parked his car by Jadwin Gym, where he was headed after the lacrosse game to write his stories and then do radio for men's basketball.

His halftime guest, by the way, was John Thompson III, who took the Tigers to three Ivy League titles in four years as head coach and then led Georgetown to the Final Four. Now an ESPN commentator, Thompson took awhile to get from where he was sitting to courtside to talk to TB, since basically everyone in the building wanted to say hi to him.

He's a well-loved figure at Princeton, starting with his days as a player in the 1980s and continuing as an assistant coach under Pete Carril and then Bill Carmody, whom he called the coach with the best basketball mind he's ever seen.

He took over the Tigers in September of 2000, after Carmody left for Northwestern. And after Joe Scott had left for Air Force. And Chris Young signed a professional baseball contract. And Spencer Gloger went back to UCLA. And his other projected starters were unavailable.

Undeterred, Thompson rebuilt the team on the fly and led it to the most unlikely Ivy League men's basketball championship that TB has seen here, and one of the most special. It was tremendous to watch it from TigerBlog's perspective as the men's basketball contact, to see a coach and a team grow together and take a big leap to a championship like that, culminating with a 68-52 win over Penn on the final night of the regular season that clinched the title.

If there's one thing about that season that still annoys TigerBlog 18 years later, it's that Nate Walton definitely should have been the Ivy League Player of the Year, though perhaps you had to watch him play every night to fully grasp his impact.

Anyway, where was TB going with all this? Oh yeah.

So when the women's lacrosse game was over Saturday, he walked back to Jadwin Gym. As he did so, he watched the women's hockey game on his phone.

Princeton was at Cornell for the ECAC semifinals, and the game was in overtime as TB walked back. It was in the second overtime that Cornell finally scored, winning the game 3-2 to advance to the final against Clarkson, who would beat the Big Red 4-1.

It was a day of OT for Princeton hockey, five of them in all, as the men would later that night play a three-overtime classic against Brown.

If there was a lot of drama to the game, there was no drama to the NCAA selections when they rolled out Sunday night. In hockey, you are what your Pairwise ranking says you are, and Princeton's said it was No. 7.

And so it was that Princeton got an at-large bid, drawing a date at No. 2 Minnesota Saturday at 4 Central time. It's a well-earned bid for the Tigers, who have had an extraordinary season.

It's the third NCAA tournament appearance for Princeton in women's hockey, and it's the third time the team will play Minnesota at Minnesota. It's also the second time in four years, so the current seniors know what to expect.

The Golden Gophers were the top-ranked team in the country until they lost to Wisconsin in the WCHA championship game this weekend. Minnesota is 30-5-1 on the year.

Of course, Princeton opened its season with two games at Wisconsin back in October, losing 4-3 and 3-0. The Tigers, one of three ECAC teams in the eight-team field along with Clarkson and Cornell, finished second in the league during the regular season and had a 20-game unbeaten streak at one point.

Princeton has a great mix of veteran players and dynamic rookies, and freshman Sarah Fillier has already established herself as one of the very best players in the country. The Tigers are 0-2 in their NCAA games at Minnesota, falling 4-0 in 2006 and then 6-2 in 2016.

Even if Princeton is a bit of an underdog, it's still special to be playing this time of year. It was the goal of every team when the season began five months ago, and it's something only eight teams in the country can say they're doing.

And Princeton is one of those eight.

Deservedly so. The Pairwise rankings may make the NCAA selection show an afterthought, but they certainly never lie.