A Fun Few Days Of Field Hockey

TigerBlog starts out today with a question.

When you order take out, they give you the same credit card receipt as if you sat in the restaurant and ate there. Knowing that, when you get take out, do you leave a tip? If you do, how much?

TB isn't sure about this one. He's never been sure.

Apparently, neither is anyone else. He did a search for "do you leave a tip with takeout" and got a lot of different answers.

He did find one survey that suggested that only 13 percent of people leave a tip when they buy takeout.

His sense is that if you pay cash for something and there's a tip jar near the register, then you're likely to throw a dollar or two into it. This, of course, requires that the people behind the counter see you do it, since you need to feel like they understand that you tipped them or else what was the point? A credit card though? Yeah, he's not sure.

Of course, when it comes to tipping etiquette, nothing really sums the entire situation up quite like THIS.

For the record, in his entire professional career, TigerBlog has never once received a tip for anything he's done.

Well, when he first wrote about Princeton rowing for the newspaper, then-head coach Dan Roock gave him a Princeton rowing hat, which was his first-ever piece of Tiger gear. Does that count as a tip?

If anyone deserves a tip this week, it's the Princeton field hockey team. DISCLAIMER - That's speaking rhetorically (or is it metaphorically?), understanding full well that NCAA rules prevent actual tips from being awarded.

The Tigers had themselves quite a week.

It began with a 1-0 win over No. 11 Delaware Tuesday night. Hannah Davey scored the only goal in that one with 2:09 to go - and that would be the least dramatic of the Tigers' three games.

Next up was an Ivy League game against Yale Friday afternoon. This time, instead of having the first goal with 2:09 left, the first goal came 2:16 in, and it came from the Bulldogs.

So did the second one, which came less than three minutes later. Stunningly, it was 2-0 Yale early in the first quarter.

Princeton came back though, scoring the next three, including the first two of the career of sophomore Claire Donovan, but Yale wouldn't go away, tying it at 3-3 with a little more than six minutes left to force overtime.

If you remember the Princeton-Yale game of two years ago, it was also a game where Yale led only to have Princeton come back and win it late. That time, it was Ryan McCarthy, who scored on a penalty corner with 0:00 on the clock.

This time it was another McCarthy, Ryan's sister Ali, who scored the game-winner, this time in overtime.

Is that enough drama for the week? Nope. It was just betting started for the Tigers.

After the Yale game, Princeton hopped on a bus and drove to North Carolina to take on No. 2 Duke Sunday afternoon. How'd that one go?

Well, Ali McCarthy scored the first goal. Then Duke scored the next four, making it a 4-1 game late in the second quarter.

Did Princeton say "hey, they're ranked second, we got two good wins this week, we're done?"

Nope.

First McCarthy scored again, making it 4-2 at halftime, and then Marykate Neff made it 4-3 in the third.

It stayed that way until, of course, the final minute, because what would a Princeton game be without very late game drama. In fact, there were just 43 seconds left when Clara Roth tied it, forcing the overtime again.

And, again, the Tigers would score the winner, this time from Davey, the hero from Delaware. Princeton 5, Duke 4.

Of Princeton's last 15 games, there have been 14 decided by one goal. That's extraordinary.

Princeton has now played 11 games this year (10 against ranked teams) and had five go to overtime.

The rest of the regular season now features five Ivy games and Boston University. Princeton and Harvard are the two ranked Ivy teams, and they met last year in the regular season (Harvard won) and NCAA quarterfinals (Princeton won). That game is Oct. 26 in Cambridge, which means that both teams have two other Ivy opponents to worry about first.

In Princeton's case, that means Columbia home Saturday and then a trip to Brown and BU the following weekend.