Princeton Pros

TigerBlog took a stroll down the "Princeton Pros Weekly" page yesterday.

There's a lot of great stuff there. If you haven't seen it, you can find it HERE.

Where to start?

The NFL preseason is moving along, which means that Jesper Horsted (Chicago), Caraun Reid (Carolina) and Stephen Carlson (Cleveland) are working towards roster spot and playing time. One former Tiger who also was in an NFL camp was former captain Graham Adomitis, who was with the Colts until he was released earlier this week.

While Adomitis did not make the team's final roster, that he was in camp at all was a testament to just how hard he had worked to turn himself into an NFL-level player. Hopefully he'll get another shot at it.

here's this clip of Bella Alarie with the Dallas Wings of the WNBA:

1. Slip the screen
2. Score the bucket@bella_alarie #TakeFlight pic.twitter.com/mnduMZxjCi

— Dallas Wings (@DallasWings) August 15, 2021

That's nothing Princeton fans haven't seen many times before from Alaire. Get the rebound at one end. Score in transition at the other end. How many times did she do that in her time as a Tiger?

Only one person who has ever played basketball at Princeton scored more points than Alarie did, and that was Bill Bradley. Alarie is Princeton's women's career leader with 1,703, while Bradley scored 2,503 (that's 800 more points, which if further confirmation that Bradley's Princeton accomplishments are in all likelihood unbreakable and get more impressive the more time goes by).

Alarie's Dallas Wings are currently in eight place in the WNBA standings. There will be eight teams who reach the postseason. To give you a sense of how tight things are with a month left in the regular season, the Wings are two games out of fifth and one game out of 10th. 

One league that reached the end of its regular season this past weekend is the Premier Lacrosse League. Princeton is represented by five players in the league, all five of whom are thinking championship in what is a very wide-open field.

The No. 1 seed in the PLL playoffs gets a bye to the semifinal round, and that turned out to be the Waterdogs, who feature two Princeton alums. One of those two is Michael Sowers, who scored twice in the season opener before being cross checked in the back of the head. He has, unfortunately, not been able to play since. 

The Waterdogs do have Zach Currier (11 goals, 11 assists, 51 ground balls, seven caused turnovers), which means they have the best all-around player in the league (you can possibly debate this) and the world's most tenacious player (you cannot possibly debate this). As TB has said many times before, you can't help but love Currier when he's on your team and can't help but hate him when he isn't. He does so many things well (scoring, assists, everything), and he is nonstop tireless effort. He way more often than not comes away with every loose ball, and he hounds opponents who have the ball every step of the way.

Currier was the only PLL player to reach double figures in goals and assists and have at least 50 ground balls. Or, if that doesn't work for you, he was also the only player in the league with double figures in goals and assists and at least seven caused turnovers.

The Waterdogs will play the winner of the Whipsnakes-Redwoods quarterfinal game in the semifinals on Sunday, Aug. 5. The Whipsnakes feature Princeton Director of Operations Chris Aslanian, who had five goals and an assist in the regular season.

The playoffs start with tomorrow night with the game between the Archers and Chaos, with the winner to play the winner of the Cannons and Atlas. The Archers feature Princeton alums Tom Schreiber and Ryan Ambler, who between them have 27 goals and 15 assists. Schreiber, with 14 goals and 13 assists, ranks eighth in the league in points with 27.

TigerBlog is rooting for as much Princeton in the championship game as possible. He'll be there, at Audi Field in Washington on Sept. 19, as his son bought him tickets for the game as a birthday present.

It will put TB into somewhat rare company, he presumes, of people who have attended an NCAA championship game (TB's been to a ton of those) as well as championship games in Major League Lacrosse and now the PLL. 

As he said, he's rooting for Princeton.