The Year In Review

There are only two days left in this decade, and once Wednesday rolls around, bringing with it the year 2020, then for the first time in 20 years TigerBlog will know exactly what to call the decade he is in.

It'll be "the 20s" again.

This decade? What was it? The 10s? That never sounded right. The last one? TB has no idea. The aughts?

The last 20s weren't just "the 20s." They were "The Roaring 20s," complete with prohibition, flappers, gangsters, Babe Ruth, cars and talkies.

Hey, there's even a Wikipedia page devoted to it.

The last year of the 2010s, if that's what they were, saw Princeton teams win 12 championships, with 10 Ivy titles and two non-Ivy titles. For the record, the winners were: men's indoor track and field, women's basketball, women's hockey, women's open rowing, women's lacrosse, men's golf, men's outdoor track and field, women's tennis, men's volleyball, women's lightweight rowing, field hockey and women's volleyball.

As TigerBlog has said many times before, Princeton Athletics has been fortunate to have so many highlights every year, and even better is that you never know which teams are going to be the ones that rise up in any given year. Also as TB has said, none of this is ever taken for granted by anyone at Princeton Athletics.

What was the biggest highlight of 2019?

That's always a fun exercise. And of course there is no single right answer.

For 2019, you'd have to put the field hockey team's run to the NCAA championship game as No. 1. Well, you wouldn't have to, but TigerBlog will.

What else?

The men's volleyball team's run to the EIVA regular season championship gave Princeton the host role in the EIVA tournament, which the Tigers won with a dramatic five-set win over Penn State. That put Princeton into the NCAA tournament, where the Tigers won their first round match before falling to Pepperdine. That would be No. 2.

The men's golf team won what had to be the most amazing Ivy League tournament ever, as the top five teams were separated by 10 shots. It was even tighter at the very top, where Princeton, Columbia and Yale finished 1-2-3, with Princeton at 875, Columbia at 876 and Yale at 877. That's three teams, with two strokes between first and third.

Call that three.

Next up? The men's track and field team won the indoor and outdoor Heps titles, giving the Tigers another "triple-crown," the ninth in program history. That's fourth.

Fifth? Michael Sowers erased the 25-year-old school record for career points in men's lacrosse in the final game of his junior year. He enters his senior year with 255, after Kevin Lowe held the record of 247 since 1994. Sowers also has the first, second and third best single-season totals in program history, including his record of 90 in 2019.

Sixth? The football team stretched its winning streak to 17 straight games, which made it the fourth-longest streak in program history and second longest since the start of the 1900s. Also in 2019, Kevin Davidson set the Ivy League record for touchdown passes in a game with seven against Bucknell, and Andrew Griffin tied the league record with four TD receptions in the same game.

Seventh? The women's lacrosse team won its sixth straight Ivy League title and fifth Ivy tournament title before reaching the NCAA quarterfinals.

Eighth? The women's basketball team went 26-4 in the calendar year of 2019. The Tigers lost their Ivy opener against Penn in early January and tied the Quakers at 12-2 for the league title before winning the Ivy tournament. This season Princeton is 12-1 and ranked in the top 25 nationally, as well as in the top 10 in RPI.

Ninth? The women's tennis team was a perfect 7-0 in the Ivy League for the second straight year, and the Tigers then won their second-ever NCAA tournament match, defeating Northwestern.

Tenth? The women's hockey team won the Ivy title and received an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

That's a pretty strong top 10 (with apologies to the other championship teams, all of whom could have been in the top 10).

There will be more in the way of "a look back" today and tomorrow on goprincetontigers.com and here tomorrow.

Finally, TB would be remiss if he mentioned the greatest moments in Princeton Athletics in 2019 and didn't mention what was actually his No. 1 moment. It came back on March 2, on a day when TB got to see something that, after 30 years of watching other people's kids wear these uniforms, still amazes him that he got to see - his daughter play lacrosse for Princeton.

With apologies, that's his No. 1, of this year or any other.