Bouncing Around

Are you bouncing off the walls during the quarantine period?

Today TigerBlog will be bouncing around a bit. Here he goes:

* Yesterday's entry talked about TB's favorite Ivy League athlete from another school that he's seen (but not rooted for, of course) in the time he's been at Princeton.

He wrote about Harvard men's basketball player Tim Hill, and he got some pretty good feedback about some others. Peter Cordrey, whose son Emmet was a men's lacrosse player who graduated in 2019, suggested his daughter Kyla, who played field hockey at Harvard. TB is guessing Peter, himself a Princeton alum and one of the top goalies in the history of the men's lacrosse team, probably rooted for Harvard in the games against the Tigers.

TB also got another person who said Jay Fiedler. TB hadn't thought of Fieldler actually, but he would probably have been 1A had TB remembered.

Fiedler was the quarterback at Dartmouth in the early 1990s. He was the Big Green quarterback for what has to be one of the five craziest games TB has ever seen, the 1993 Princeton-Dartmouth game on the final day of the season.

Both teams went into the game 5-1 in the league, a game behind unbeaten Penn, who was playing Cornell. To get a share of the title, the teams both needed a win and a Penn loss against Cornell.

The game in Hanover was close throughout, and Penn was actually behind Cornell, who was 3-3 in the league, for most of the game in Ithaca. This was also in the pre-overtime days, so a tie between Princeton and Dartmouth would eliminate both teams.

And, of course, the teams would end up tied 22-22 in the final few minutes of the fourth quarter. As a result, both teams had to take chances they never would have in a game with overtime, or if a tie hadn't meant their championship hopes vanished. Picture teams going for it on fourth-and-long in their own territory in a 22-22 game late in the fourth quarter.

Dartmouth, who added to the fun by not having a placekicker (not a good kicker, but no kicker at all), eventually won 28-22. Fiedler threw for something like 220 yards in the fourth quarter, and Keith Elias ran for 188 yards on 38 carries. Both went on to long NFL careers.

* Speaking of people who are hard to root against but whom TB will find a way to do just that, Harvard hired TB's former colleague at Princeton Erin McDermott as its new Director of Athletics. Erin will take over for Bob Scalise, who is retiring after 20 years as Harvard's AD.

Erin will come to Cambridge from the University of Chicago, where she was the Director of Athletics for the last seven years. She came to Princeton as an intern and left 13 years later as the No. 2 person in the department.

Now she takes over at Harvard. TB wishes his friend and former colleague the very best - except when the Crimson are playing Princeton.

* Today is the 50th anniversary of when the New York Knicks won the 1970 NBA championship, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers 113-99 in Game 7 at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks would add a second championship in 1973 and have not won another since.

In other words, it seems the Knicks can't win without Bill Bradley.

The seventh game of the 1970 NBA finals was the famous "Willis Reed" game, when the injured Knicks big man and captain came out of the locker room just before tip off and then made two medium-range jump (or hobble) shots and then came out of the game. New York's starting five that day consisted of players from Grambling (Reed), Tennessee State (Dick Barnett), Southern Illinois (Walt Frazier), Detroit-Mercy (Dave DeBusschere) and Princeton (Bradley).

Four of those five (all but Barnett) are in the Naismith Hall of Fame.

Frazier had the monster game that night, with 36 points, 19 assists and seven rebounds. Bradley had 17 points, five assists and four rebounds in the win.

* TigerBlog isn't sure why, but he's always like Joe Maddon, the Major League manager. Maybe it's because he's someone in sports who is older than TB? Maybe it's the glasses? Maybe it's because he's usually been associated with underdogs.

Whatever it is, TB has always been a fan.

Maddon was part of a Zoom call with the Princeton baseball team earlier this week. Included on the call was Princeton alum (and World Series champion) Chris Young.

Here's his tweet about his experience:

This week we had Los Angeles @Angels manager Joe Maddon @MaddHalos and former Princeton Tiger Chris Young ‘02 who talked to the team about leadership, the importance of self discipline and self awareness. Thank you both for taking the time to help the Tigers get better! pic.twitter.com/vNcHFa4Jxr

— Princeton Baseball (@PUTigerBaseball) May 6, 2020

* Finally, Happy Mothers' Day to all the Princeton Athletic moms out there, and all the moms, Princeton or not.