Second Cousin, One Hip Removed

TigerBlog has never understood the whole first-cousin, second-cousin thing, not to mention the whole "once-removed" piece.

He has a cousin Linda, who is his mother's first cousin. Linda's mother and MotherBlog's mother were sisters.

As an aside, neither Linda's mother (Ruthie) nor MB's mother (Judy) stood more than five-feet tall.

Anyway, what does that make Linda to TigerBlog? Second cousins? And where does that leave Nicole and Jill, Linda's two daughters? Third cousins? Second cousins once removed?

Linda recently had hip replacement surgery. She's struggling a bit but making progress.

It took her awhile until she shared with TB one piece of news about the surgery. As it turns out, her surgeon ran track at Princeton.

The doctor's name is Peter Sculco, Class of 2004. He was a middle distance runner here.

Small world, no?

So that's his cousin Linda. TB believes she's his second cousin, one hip removed. By a Princeton guy.

It's a summer Friday again. It's also August 2nd.

This means, of course, that opening day for Princeton athletics for the 2019-20 academic year is not that far away.

In fact, it's just four weeks from today, Aug. 30. It'll be the women's soccer team at St. Joe's.

If you care about such things, this will be TB's 31st year covering Princeton athletics. That's a long time.

It dawned on him the other day that in all the time he's been here, he's never once applied for another job. Maybe it's because about 75 percent of his wardrobe says "Princeton" on it somewhere?

The summer is certainly flying along. Think about it. Opening day for the women's basketball season is three months from Monday.

Princeton, who has won two straight Ivy titles and seven in the last 10 years, starts the 2019-20 season at home against Rider on Nov. 5.

The first thing TB did when he saw the story about the women's basketball schedule was to see if the Tigers play more than one game in January this year. If you remember, Princeton played once in January last season, losing to Penn, and then had to wait four weeks to play again, by which time it was February.

Of course, it worked out pretty well for the Tigers, who went on to beat Penn in the second regular season matchup, tie the Quakers for the league championship and then beat them in the Ivy tournament championship game to reach the NCAA tournament.

The answer to the question about January is that Princeton will be doubling its total number of games in the month, from one last year to two this year. That's because Jan. 31 falls on a Friday.

It'll be Princeton at Penn on Jan. 11 and then at Dartmouth 20 days later. It's actually one fewer week off than last year.

This year, of course, will be Year 1 for head coach Carla Berube, who had such overwhelming success at Tufts before coming here. It'll also be Year 4 for Bella Alarie, and, well, you just don't want to miss out on anything when she plays.

Alarie will be chasing the school record for career points as she heads down the path of her senior year. If she matches last year's total of 525 (which she did despite missing nine games to start the year due to an injury), she'll finish with 1,826; the current record is 1,683, and this will be the 30th anniversary of when it was set, by Sandi Bittler Leland.

Among the non-league highlights for the women's team will be two trips to the Midwest, including games at Iowa State and Iowa that will be a homecoming for junior guard and 2019 first-team All-Ivy League selection Carlie Littlefield, who comes from Waukee, Iowa.

Littlefield's hometown is about an hour from Ames (Iowa State) and a little more than two hours from Iowa City (Iowa).

The other Midwest trip is to Missouri, who won a game in the NCAA tournament last season, and St. Louis. That's in mid-December.

In all there are eight teams on the schedule from the postseason last year. It's a pretty good mix of games, and there are 13 games in Jadwin Gym. You can see the whole thing HERE.

In the meantime, enjoy your summer weekend.

There aren't that many of them left.