The Rest Of The Weekend

The weekend in Princeton Athletics was more than just what TigerBlog brought you yesterday, which was the unbelievable performances of the two hockey teams.

To recap, the Princeton women won their first ECAC championship, beating No. 7 Clarkson in the semifinals and then No. 1 Cornell in overtime in the final. The men swept Dartmouth in the opening round of the ECAC playoffs, going 2-0 in Hanover this weekend after winning two league games this regular season.

The women are now in the NCAA tournament at Northeastern, the third seed, in the eight-team NCAA tournament. This is Princeton's fourth NCAA tournament appearance - and second straight and third in four years. It's already something different, since the first three NCAA appearances were all against Minnesota at Minnesota.

The game at Northeastern will be Saturday at 1. The winner of that game gets the winner of Clarkson and second-seeded Wisconsin in the semifinals on March 20.

Cornell is the No. 1 overall seed.

The Cornell men are currently ranked No. 1 in the country. That'll be the next test for the Princeton men, who are in Ithaca for another best-of-three starting Friday night.

While hockey was a huge part of the story this weekend, there was so much more, including:

* five NCAA wrestling qualifiers from the EIWA meet, with individual championships from Patrick Glory (125) and Matthew Kolodzik (149). That win puts Kolodzik into his fourth NCAA meet.

The other three NCAA automatic qualifiers are Quincy Monday, who was the runner-up at 157, Patrick Brucki, who took third at 197 and Grant Cuomo, who was sixth at 165. Princeton is hoping to add an at-large bid or two when those are announced Wednesday.

Princeton finished fifth as a team.

* a history-making two days for the women's basketball team, which finished off a perfect 14-0 run through the Ivy League and won every game by at least 14 points, something no other Princeton women's basketball team has ever done.

Beyond just that, Princeton's game Friday night at Columbia (a 77-52 win) saw two major milestones, as Bella Alarie broke the 30-year-old school record for career points and Carlie Littlefield reached the 1,000-point mark.

Alarie chased down Sandi Bittler Leland's former record of 1,683 and finished the weekend with 1,703. As for Littlefield, she became the 26th Tiger women's basketball player to get to 1,000.

The game reminded TB of the fact that twice before Princeton has had two women's basketball players reach 1,000 points in the same game. First it was Kate Thirolf and Maggie Langlas, and then it was Allison Cahill and Maureen Lane.

This wasn't two 1,000-point scorers, but it was very similar. And very, very historic.

* the men's lacrosse team recaptured the Meistrell Cup with a 16-11 win over Rutgers on Sherrerd Field. Leading the way was freshman face-off man Tyler Sandoval, who won 17 of 29 with 10 ground balls and a goal.
Most importantly, he sparked a 6-0 Princeton run in the third quarter that turned a 6-6 tie into a 12-6 game in less than four minutes by winning the face-off after each of those goals.

* Princeton had four individual fencing champions and two runner-ups at the NCAA regionals. The winners were Julian Knodt (men's foil), May Tieu (women's foil), Daniel Koak (men's saber) and Alexis Anglade (women's saber).

Bids to the NCAA championships will be announced today.