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Whenever TigerBlog thinks back on all the years he's spent with Princeton Athletics, among his favorite times were when he was the men's basketball contact and the team would go on December trips to in-season tournaments.

The first one TB went to was in 1989, when Princeton traveled to East Lansing to play in Michigan State's Oldsmobile Spartan Classic, in what was then the brand-new Breslin Center. Princeton defeated Arkansas-Little Rock 59-56 in the first round and then lost in the final to Michigan State 51-49.

Bill Carmody, then Princeton's top assistant under Pete Carril and later the head coach, told TB before the Michigan State game that if Princeton got outrebounded by 15 or fewer it would win the game. Princeton was outrebounded by 16 - and lost by two.

TB even went back to the box score to make sure he was remembering it correctly. In fact he was - Michigan State had a 27-11 edge in rebounds.

From there through the next 10 years, TB would see Princeton play all over the country, and often win these events, most of which no longer exist.

There were trips for tournaments to, among other places, Wisconsin (twice), Iowa (twice), Illinois, Indiana, Texas, California, North Carolina, Louisiana and even Hawaii. That was the best one, as the Tigers won three games in three days in Honolulu in December 1998, knocking off Florida State, Texas and UNC Charlotte.

They were always a lot of fun, even if Princeton didn't win. TB usually flew with Tom McCarthy, then the radio voice of the Tigers. To give you a sense of how long ago this was, Tom's son Patrick is now the voice of Princeton on the radio.

The tournaments always gave a chance to see a place you'd probably never go to, and to see what game nights were like on all different levels.

It was during the trip to Michigan State that then-Spartan coach Jud Heathcote, who coached Magic Johnson to the 1979 NCAA title, slipped into his stand-up comedy act at a pre-tournament reception, including making some pretty good fun of Carril. Then again, there was another trip where, in the postgame press conference, Carril was asked to say something about one of his players who made the all-tournament team. All Carril said was this: "So did the guy he was guarding."

As TB said, most of those tournaments have gone by the wayside. There are different kinds of events these days, most of which are at exotic locales, as opposed to on different campuses.

The Princeton women's team is currently in a state where TB never got to see the men's team - Missouri. He did fly to Missouri (Kansas City to be exact) and then drove to Lawrence, Kansas, to see Princeton play the University of Kansas in the 1999-2000 season, a game in which Princeton lost 82-67 despite 20 points from Chris Young, who was the best player on the floor, as opposed to any of the four future NBA Jayhawks.

The current Tiger women are 9-1 as they prepare to take on Missouri tonight and St. Louis Friday night.

Missouri is 3-8, but don't be fooled by that in the least. These Tigers went 24-11 a year ago and defeated Drake in the first round of the NCAA tournament before falling to Iowa in the second round, and they've played a very tough schedule this year to date.

In its last game, Missouri fell 79-72 to 18th-ranked Missouri State.

St. Louis is 7-3, with one of those losses to Missouri.

As for Princeton, its most recent game was a 72-55 win over Penn State Saturday in a game the Tigers controlled throughout. Princeton was led by a career-high 25 points from Carlie Littlefield and 23 from Bella Alarie, who played for the first time after missing three games due to injury.

Alarie now has exactly 1,400 points for her career, which leaves her 283 points away from Sandi Bittler Leland's career record of 1,683. With 17 regular season games left - the trip to Missouri, a Dec. 29 home game against New Hampshire and then 14 Ivy games - she'd need to average 16.64 per game to get there.

Here's a stat that usually will result in a win, by the way: Alarie and Littlefield combined to shoot 17 for 26, and 7 for 9 from three, against Penn State.

Throw in an eight-minute scoreless stretch in the second quarter, and the fact that Princeton held Penn State's Kamaria McDaniel to three points on 1 for 7 shooting with eight turnovers (she had 40 in her previous game against Pitt), and that winning formula becomes even more dramatic.

Princeton now has a chance to play twice in Missouri. It's not an in-season tournament like the ones in the 1990s, but it's the same basic idea: have fun, play some interesting opponents, see a little bit more of the country.