Tigers In The WNBA

If you want to know what the hardest class TigerBlog took in college was, he might have to say it was astronomy.

Now that wouldn't seem like it would be that difficult, but the professor - who was one of the best one TB had in his four years at Penn - made it challenging and tough, but also really, really interesting and informative.

What more could you ask for from an elective?

His tests were the most unique tests TB ever took. There would be seven sections with three questions each, and you had to answer any five of the seven sections. The only catch was that the three questions in each section were unrelated, so it wasn't like you could jump on the section on a certain topic you felt good about or avoid one where you didn't have as much confidence.

Anyway, TigerBlog still remembers a lot of what he learned in that class. The most fascinating was the concept that when you look up and see stars, most of those stars don't exist anymore. It's just that they were so far away from Earth that it's taken the light this long to get here.

He also remembered that on Venus, it was 700 degrees and rained sulfuric acid. Now that hardly seems conducive to life, right?

That was the first thing TB thought of when he saw the story yesterday that astronomers may have discovered life on Venus. Okay, that's a bit overstated. They may have discovered traces of mircobial organisms in the atmosphere of the planet. 

Speaking of planets, TB is halfway through the 10-episode first season of "Away," which stars Hilary Swank as the commander of the first manned trip to Mars. It's pretty good, not great, but certainly entertaining.

For matters back here on Earth, TigerBlog really wanted to see the Atlanta Dream knock off the Washington Mystics in the WNBA season finale Sunday evening.

Atlanta, which features Princeton alum Blake Dietrick, had already been eliminated, but another Princeton alum, Bella Alarie, had helped the Dallas Wings to a win Sunday afternoon, which meant that the Wings would have taken the last playoff spot had Atlanta beaten Washington. Instead, Washington gets the last spot.

That's an awful situation for a team to be in, by the way. TB has seen it from Princeton teams before.

You need to win to either get a share of the Ivy League title or to get into the Ivy tournament, but you also need some other team to lose. It's a helpless feeling, caused by a game or two earlier in the year that didn't go your way.

The first one TB could think of came from the final day of the 2018 men's lacrosse season. Princeton needed to beat Cornell (it did, 14-8) and then have Dartmouth upset Brown in a game that started after the Princeton-Cornell one ended to get into the Ivy tournament. The first time TB checked the score of that game, it was 1-1. The next time it was 13-1 Brown. The final was 20-6. It was helpless.

There are others. Fortunately, Princeton is on the other end of that more often than not, when it was the team someone else needed to lose, only Princeton won. For instance, there was the field hockey regular season finale a year ago, when Harvard needed Princeton to lose to Penn to get a share of the championship, but Princeton beat the Quakers.

Anyway, you get the point.

As for Dietrick and Alarie, both of them showed that they clearly belong in the WNBA during the abbreviated bubble season of 2020. 

Dietrick made a huge jump this year, going from averaging 1.02 points per game during her first 46 career games to averaging six a game this year for Atlanta in 22 games. She had 15 points, five assists, three steals and two rebounds in the second-to-last game of the year making all three of her threes as well. 

She went from shooting 30 percent from three-point range in her first three seasons to 45 percent (26 for 58) this year, which ranked eighth in the league. She also averaged 21 minutes per game after averaging 6.7 prior to this year. 

As for Alarie, she averaged 14 minutes per game as a rookie. She also showed the versatility that made her so dangerous at Princeton (a three-time Ivy League Player of the Year), with her ability to play inside and outside, rebound and block shots (she was 12th in the league as a rookie).

No, there wouldn't be any playoffs for either this year. 

Yes, it was a great experience for both.