Two Places At Once

TigerBlog is still holding out hope that sometime in the next 24 hours, human cloning becomes very mainstream.

That way, he can be in Providence and Baltimore tomorrow.

Why those two places?

The Princeton football team plays at Brown tomorrow, with kickoff at 12:30. The National Lacrosse Hall of Fame induction ceremony begins in Baltimore at 6, and three of TigerBlog's all-time favorite lacrosse players - Princeton alums Rachael Becker DeCecco, Ryan Boyle and Matt Striebel - are being inducted.

He looked at flights from Providence to Baltimore. There's one at 4, but he'd never make that with a 12:30 kickoff. Then there's another at 5:50, but that gets into Baltimore at 7:20. And that's at the airport.

Plus, if he drove to Providence, what would he do with his car? He'd have to fly back and get it.

He will be at Brown Stadium for the football game tomorrow, and his best wishes and congratulations to Rachael, Ryan and Matt will have to do.

TigerBlog's counterpart at Brown is Chris Humm, who has been there even longer than TB has been here, which goes back a ways. How far back does he go? TigerBlog met Bernie Buonanno, the father of freshman women's lacrosse player Kari Buonanno, and Bernie said that he was a lacrosse player at Brown who graduated in 1986 - and Chris Humm was  already there.

Anyway, ou can ask anyone who has ever covered a football game at Brown what stands out the most, and they'll mention either the 114 steps up from the field to the press box or, more likely, the thing that the facility has always featured:

The best chocolate chip cookies you'll ever eat.

Humm - the Hummer to everyone who knows him - emailed TigerBlog during the week to remind him about the 114 steps and the cookies.

TB and the Hummer go way, way back, all the way to TB's days in the newspaper business. There are few people TB has met in this business that he likes more than the Hummer, who is the only grandfather that TB knows who works in athletic communications.

He and the Hummer go further back than Princeton head football coach Bob Surace and Brown head football coach James Perry do. TB isn't sure where Surace and Perry first crossed paths, but he knows that Perry was one of the first people Surace brought with him to Princeton when he became head coach in 2010.

Perry, in fact, was the offensive coordinator at Princeton for seven seasons, including the Ivy League championship seasons of 2013 and 2016. Then he left for Bryant to become head coach, where he was 12-10 in two years, before taking over Brown this year.

If you listened to the "First in Football" podcast, you heard Surace talk about how close he and Perry are, how close their families have been and how he likes "to look at the scores and see that his friends have won," except of course when he plays against them. That was the case last week, when Surace and Princeton defeated his former teammate and very close friend John Garrett, the head coach of Lafayette, 28-3.

That win was the 14th straight for the Tigers. It also was the final non-league game of the year. All that's left are six straight Ivy games, as Surace chases a fourth Ivy title in seven years.

The first of those six tests is the one at Brown.

The Perry who poses the most immediate issue is E.J. Perry, the nephew of the head coach. He is the Ivy League leader in total offense, by a wide margin (56 yards per game) over Princeton's Kevin Davidson second-best Ivy League total, and Perry ranks fifth in the FCS as well. In addition to being a threat throwing the ball, Perry also is the Bears' leading rusher.

Perry, by the way, is a junior transfer from Boston College. Davidson started against the Bears last year in the only start of his career prior to this year. Perry started against the Tigers last year too - the Clemson Tigers, the ones who won the national championship.

Perry will be the biggest test for the Princeton defense to date. The Tigers so far have been incredible on defense, with balance, depth, play-makers, aggression, focus and pretty much everything else that goes into making a cohesive unit.

Plus they look like they're having fun while they're doing it.

So it'll be Princeton at Brown. TB is looking forward to it.

And again, congratulations to the three Hall of Famers. TB won't be able to be at their induction, but he did get to see them play a lot while they were here.

They've deserved every honor they've gotten.