The 142nd Meeting

If you'd like an example of how TigerBlog would use the imaginary database of all things Princeton Athletics should one actually ever exist, he has one for you.

Princeton hosts Yale in football tomorrow (1 p.m. kickoff on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium), and both teams come into the game with a record of 7-1. In fact, they're both 4-1 in the league, each with a loss to Dartmouth and perfect records against everyone else.

This got TB to wondering how often Princeton and Yale have met when the teams both have either one loss or no losses?

The teams always play the second to last week of the season - or used to play the last game of the season in the 1800s and into the 1930s, when Yale replaced its season finale with a different team. As a result of when they've always played, they always have most of their season under their belts by then, so it's not like they were 2-0 against 1-1 or something like that.

If TB had that perfect database, he'd simply be able to enter something like "hey, what years did Princeton and Yale play when both had either no losses or one loss" and the answer would be right there.

Instead, he had to do what he did yesterday - take the year-by-year results of each and compare them.

The answer is that the last time this happened was 2006, when Jeff Terrell rallied Princeton from a 28-14 deficit for a 34-31 win. TB was at that game, and it's one of the best Ivy League games he's ever seen.

Before that? You have to go back to 1960. That makes this something of a rarity.

This is the 142nd meeting between Princeton and Yale. It's the second most played rivalry in college football, trailing only Lafayette and Lehigh, who will play next week for the 155th time.

Princeton and Yale have, rather extraordinarily, played every year since 1876 except for three times during the two World Wars - 1917, 1918 and 1944.

The 2019 version should be a pretty good one. Yale lost to Dartmouth in Week 4 and have won four straight since, including a season-turning two-touchdown rally in the final two minutes against Richmond the week after the Dartmouth game.

Yale has scored 46, 45 and 59 points in the last three weeks. That's a lot of offense.

Princeton is playing for the first time since its 17-game winning streak ended last week at Yankee Stadium against Dartmouth 27-10. The Big Green are home against Cornell tomorrow, where a win would clinch at least a share of the league title.

A loss, though, would open the door for the winner of the Princeton-Yale game to get right back into the league race. Next Saturday's Week 10 schedule has Harvard at Yale, Dartmouth at Brown and Princeton at Penn.

The football game is a big one. There are other big events this weekend as well.

The men's hockey team plays its home openers, tonight against RPI and tomorrow against Union. The women's basketball team has two games, tonight at Seton Hall at 7:30 and then Sunday at 1 at home against Florida-Gulf Coast, a team that went 28-5 a year ago, won the Atlantic Sun regular season and tournament titles and almost knocked off fourth-seeded Miami in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

There is also the first round of the NCAA field hockey tournament today, as Princeton takes on Syracuse at UConn at 2:30. The other game in Storrs features the home team against Fairfield at noon today, with the winners to meet for a spot in the Final Four Sunday at 1.

Then there's the women's volleyball team.

The Tigers suddenly find themselves in an interesting situation after the news that Penn's women had cancelled the last weekend of their season.

Princeton is at Brown tonight and Yale tomorrow night. Princeton enters the weekend 11-1 in the league, ahead of 10-2 Yale and 9-3 Cornell. Everyone else has been mathematically eliminated.

Should Princeton win its last two, then it'll be the champion no matter what. Yale will not be playing Penn tonight, which means the Bulldogs are off until they take on the Tigers tomorrow, which requires Princeton to travel to Providence, play the Bears, travel to New Haven and then play Yale, who will not have traveled at all or played until tomorrow.

Depending on what happens, there's also the chance that Yale could replace the Penn match with one against Brown Sunday.

No matter what, Princeton has reached the last weekend of the season exactly where teams want to be - knowing that if it wins out, it's headed to the NCAA tournament.

There are also other events. You can see the complete schedule HERE.