Rooting Interest

TigerBlog watched three games on TV this weekend.

The last was the Super Bowl, obviously, won by the Kansas City Chiefs 31-20 over the San Francisco 49ers. TB was rooting for Kansas City, mostly because of Princeton's John Lovett, who has spent the year on injured reserve with the Chiefs.

Lovett led Princeton to wins in the last 13 games in which he played and an 18-1 record as the starting quarterback his final two seasons as he led the Tigers to Ivy titles in 2016 and 2018. That 2018 season saw Princeton go a perfect 10-0.

To that he can add a Super Bowl championship. Yes, he was on IR, but still, he was a part of it in his way and he certainly got to enjoy the experience.

There are just some players whom winning seems to follow. Lovett is one of those.

Lovett was a quarterback at Princeton - a two-time Bushnell Cup winner - but he's a tight end/fullback/special teams player with the Chiefs. It'll be interesting to see what his role is with the team next year, but TB has a sense he will make a real impact. TB compared him to Taysom Hill of the Saints while Lovett was still at Princeton, and he sees no reason why he should change his mind.

By the way, the best Super Bowl commercial in years was the Bill Murray "Groundhog Day" one. 

So, the other two games TB watched?

One was Saturday, when he watched Duke-Air Force men's lacrosse. Yes, lacrosse season officially began this weekend.

Air Force defeated Duke 14-13 in something of an upset, and who doesn't want to see a good upset? Of course, with Duke, this type of result is nothing new - Duke is used to losing in February and ending up in the Final Four late in May anyway.

And as much as you want to root for the underdog, if you look strictly at your own self-interest, how are you supposed to know which team you should be rooting for so early in the season?

What if it comes down to Air Force and Princeton for the final at-large spot? Certainly the win over Duke will help the Air Force cause.

So yes, it made for a really entertaining game (and it's always great to be back in lacrosse season), but in the end, would it have helped Princeton if Duke had won? Maybe that's a stretch - but on Feb. 1, who knew?

The same thing was essentially true with the first game of the weekend that he watched. That was Friday afternoon, when he watched Penn-Harvard men's basketball.

That was also a great game. Harvard fought hard to force overtime, and Penn was able to pull it out.

Again, as a Princeton fan, which team should you have been rooting for in that one?

Again, who knows? You would need to know how the rest of the year will play out to be 100 percent sure.

On the other hand, just worry about the things you can control, right? And the Princeton men's basketball team did exactly that this weekend, sweeping Dartmouth and Harvard at home.

Suddenly a team that started its season at 1-7 is over .500 at 9-8. More important, Princeton is 4-0 in the Ivy League, with a sweep of Penn before exam break.

Right now Princeton and Yale are both 4-0, with three teams (Harvard, Penn and Brown) at 2-2. Cornell and Columbia, whom Princeton plays this week on the road, are both 1-3, and Dartmouth is now 0-4.

Princeton got to 4-0 this weekend by establishing its will against Dartmouth, winning 66-44 with a balanced offense, good shooting (53.8 percent for the night) and a smothering defense (Dartmouth shot 36.5 percent).

Then, Saturday night, Princeton toughed one out against Harvard 70-69, winning the kind of close game you need to win to have to make a run at a championship.

Princeton led most of the way, but Harvard wouldn't quit. Instead, the Crimson took the lead when Noah Kirkwood made two foul shots with 15 seconds left, only to have Richmond Aririguzoh fight his way past two blocked shots to eventually get fouled and then knock down the tying and winning foul shots with four seconds left.

It was a great night at Jadwin, with a large crowd that was into the game and two of the top teams in the league in a matchup that went to the wire.

And it went Princeton's way.

For this one it was easy to figure out which team to root for, right?