The Answer Is Tim Hill

TigerBlog's statement from yesterday that there was no chance that there could ever be a Michael Jordan-type Ivy League athlete from another school who would be so mesmerizing that TB wouldn't be able to root against him or her, even when that athlete played against Princeton, drew two interesting emails.

The first was this: "Who, then, would be your favorite all-time Ivy League athlete from another school since you've been at Princeton?" That's a good question.

The second was this: "Understandable about not letting an athlete from another Ivy school get you to root against Princeton. But what about Brian Earl? A favorite Princeton athlete who now coaches against Princeton."

Also a good question.

The answer to the first is easy. Connor Fletcher, currently a senior at Cornell on the men's lacrosse team.

TB was Connor's first lacrosse coach, back when he and Connor's dad Dan coached together in Lower Bucks Lacrosse, when TigerBlog Jr. was Connor's teammate. That would have been when Connor was in third grade and TBJ was in fourth.

The team back then was called the Barrage, named by TBJ after his favorite Major League Lacrosse team at the time. The Barrage was TBJ's favorite because it had Princeton alums Ryan Boyle and Matt Striebel, by the way.

TigerBlog couldn't help but think back to that when he saw that the actual Barrage had drafted Fletcher earlier this week. In fact, TB texted Dan Fletcher to remind him that it was the second time Connor had been selected by a team called the Barrage.

What? You're saying that Fletcher doesn't count because he's not just someone TB didn't know who played for another team?

Okay, how about Tim Hill, who played basketball at Harvard during the late 1990s and was a four-time All-Ivy selection, including first-team his senior year. Hill went 1-7 in his eight career games against Princeton, all of which TB saw in person, but he played really hard for every minute he was out there, which was usually every minute of the game.

TB went back and looked up the eight box scores from when Hill played against Princeton. One of the box scores, from Hill's freshman year, was cut off where the minutes would have been listed.

Of the other seven games, he averaged exactly 40 minutes per game. That's 280 minutes in seven games, plus however many he played in the other game his freshman year, with no fewer than 37 in any of those games. How many players have ever played more career minutes against Princeton?

He went all 45 of the one win Harvard had against Princeton in his career, when he scored 27 points, with only one made three-pointer (on two attempts) and 10 for 12 foul shooting. That was Hill in a nutshell. He was small (TB remembers that he was less than six-feet tall) but he loved to shoot floaters in the lane and draw contact.

He was easy to root for - even if TB never rooted for him. He can still, more than 20 years later, remember how annoyed he was that Princeton lost that game at Harvard that night.

If you remember the 1999 Ivy men's basketball season, that was the year that Princeton had the wild comeback win at the Palestra, winning 50-49 after being behind 29-3 at one point and 40-13 with 16 minutes left in the game. Penn, though, won the league title because the Tigers lost twice to other teams, once to Yale in a very strange game in which there was confusion as to whether a shot was a two or a three by the Bulldogs in the final seconds of the second OT in the game after the Penn comeback and then the one at Harvard.

As for that game at Harvard that night, Brian Earl also played all 45 minutes, as did Gabe Lewullis.

And yes, Brian Earl is an all-time favorite Princeton athlete for TigerBlog (as is Lewullis).

Rooting against Earl is not easy, but TB manages to find a away to do so when he's coaching against the Tigers.

He will say that's the closest he's ever come to rooting for someone else against Princeton.