Venue Shopping

If you want to see something that will make you smile, then check out what Princeton head women's basketball coach Carla Berube tweeted:

Holiday card 2019? pic.twitter.com/chtTpmXj3F

— Coach Berube (@Coach_Berube) October 15, 2019

It's almost like it's staged. And with all the chaos around her, the girl is locked in on the camera and smiling. Can't ask for more than that.

How could that not make you go "awwww?"

In other recent Twitter finds, there was this, from college basketball guru Ken Pomeroy:

College basketball venues by name...
Centers: 146
Arenas: 101
Coliseums: 25
Gym/Gymnasiums: 19
Pavilions: 14
Halls: 11
Fieldhouses: 10
Domes: 6
Complexes: 6
Courts: 4
Forums: 3
Stadiums: 2
Spectrums: 2

— Ken Pomeroy (@kenpomeroy) October 15, 2019

 
There are 146 centers? And only 19 gymnasiums? TigerBlog would not have guessed that.

In the Ivy League, you have this:

Brown - Center
Columbia - Gymnasium
Cornell - Arena
Dartmouth - Arena
Harvard - Pavillion
Penn - other
Princeton - Gymnasium
Yale - Gymnasium

Maybe that's why TB thought there would be more Gyms than there are. There are three among eight Ivy League teams.

If you add up the numbers, then it comes to 349 venues. If TigerBlog is correct, there are 351 Division I college basketball teams. Penn has the Palestra obviously. What's the other one that doesn't end in any of the ones above?

Want a hint? Neither the Princeton men's nor women's team has ever played there. In fact, neither team has ever played this school, home, away or neutral.

If you do the math, then 41.8 percent of the Division I facilities are "centers," while in the Ivy League it's 12.5 percent. On the other hand, only 12 percent of Division I facilities are "gymnasiums," while in the Ivy League, that number is 37.5 percent.

TigerBlog's favorite non-Ivy League college venue is an Arena - Mackey Arena, at Purdue. TB, who has been to about 25 Power Five Conference basketball venues, went to a game at Mackey once and was just mesmerized by the atmosphere there.

It you're not paying attention to the calendar, it's almost basketball season. In fact, Berube's Princeton debut is fewer than three weeks away, as the Tigers head to Rider on Nov. 5. The men open that same night, at Duquesne.

By then the women's and men's hockey teams will have already played regular season games.

That's also a busy week, what with the 150th anniversary of the first college football game (it was Princeton-Rutgers) on Nov. 6 and then Princeton-Dartmouth at Yankee Stadium that Saturday, Nov. 9.

Busy, indeed. It's called crossover season, and it can get really, really busy.

Oh, and the answer to the trivia question? Have you heard of the Walter Pyramid? It's on the campus of Long Beach State University and the home of the 49ers men's and women's basketball teams. 

This weekend is still reserved only for fall events, and it's busy enough as is.

The football team reaches the midway point of its season when it travels to Brown for a game Saturday that kicks off at 12:30 and can be seen on ESPN+. Forecast for the game? Sunny and 61, or, in a word, perfect.

The field hockey team will also be in Providence Saturday to also take on Brown. That game starts at noon.

Princeton, ranked eighth this week, has a two-game weekend, with a game Sunday at 1 at Boston University. The Tigers enter the weekend as one of Ivy unbeatens, along with No. 14 Harvard, whom Princeton plays in Cambridge next Saturday.

The women's volleyball team is on its Dartmouth/Harvard trip this weekend. The current Ivy standings have Cornell at 5-0, followed by Princeton and Yale at 4-1. There's a long way to go there.

Closer to home, there's a soccer doubleheader against Columbia, with the men at 4 and the women at 7. Both teams, the defending league champs, are looking to get back into the Ivy race for this year.

There's also cross country, with the Princeton Invitational for both teams here in advance of the Ivy League Heptagonal championships at Van Cortlandt Park in New York on Nov. 1.

The men's and women's tennis teams compete in Philadelphia. The full schedule is HERE.