The First Weekend Of October

Georgetown's women's soccer team has played 10 games and won five of them. 

Is the Georgetown women's soccer team undefeated? Is this a trick question?

Yes, the Hoyas are unbeaten. They have no losses. They do have five ties to go along with their five wins, which makes their record a very unique 5-0-5 heading into today's game at home against DePaul.

If you look at the English Premier League standings (or should that be table), you'll see that a 5-0-5 record would belong to a .500 team, since it lists wins, draws and losses. If you look at the current table, you'll see both Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspurs listed as 3-0-3, which means three wins, three losses and no draws.

Liverpool, if you're wondering, is the lone unbeaten team in the EPL.

Meanwhile, back at Division I college women's soccer, there is only one unbeaten, untied team, and that's top-ranked Florida State. Georgetown, at 5-0-5, is ranked 23rd. Hofstra, at 9-1-0, is ranked 11th. That's in the United Soccer Coaches' poll, by the way.

Princeton is in the "others receiving votes" category after having been ranked earlier this season. The Tigers are 8-1-1 after a 6-1 pasting of Bucknell Tuesday night behind two goals each from Gabi Juarez and Amy Paternoster, with the tie against Georgetown and a 2-0 loss to Hofstra on Sept. 16.

Since then, the Tigers have been rolling. In fact, in three games since the loss, Princeton has defeated Delaware, Yale and Bucknell by a combined 14-1. 

Being ranked now would be nice. It's not essential, though, for what Princeton is trying to accomplish. It starts with an Ivy League championship, and that's not something that's going to be easy to do, not in the league this year.

Harvard is currently unbeaten at 7-0-1 and ranked 20th. Brown, the defending champion, is 6-3-0. Penn is 5-2-2. Those three, along with Princeton, are ranked in the top 75 in Division I RPI right now. 

No Ivy team is ranked in the bottom 100. Every game in the league is a challenge, especially on the road.

Princeton's next one is at Dartmouth Saturday. The Big Green are 4-3-1 after falling to Brown in their own Ivy opener last weekend. 

Princeton has seven regular season games remaining, and six of those are in the Ivy League. The remaining non-league game is Tuesday, Oct. 19, at Lehigh. The next two weekends feature the long rides to Dartmouth first and then to Brown.

The Princeton-Dartmouth women's game Saturday begins at 1 and is the opening game of a doubleheader that features Princeton-Dartmouth men at 5. Because the men's NCAA tournament begins a week after the women's tournament, the Ivy League season also begins a week later for the men. That means this is opening weekend for men's Ivy games.

Princeton is 3-4-0 after a 1-0 loss to St. John's Tuesday night. Dartmouth enters the game at a very uncharacteristic 0-6-0, but keep this in mind: Dartmouth has played both the No. 1 team in the country (Georgetown) and the No. 2 team in the country (Washington). 

Oh, and Georgetown is unbeaten in men's soccer as well, though this time it's a perfect 7-0-0 record.

The doubleheader, as TB said, is in Hanover. The first October weekend does offer some good events on the Princeton campus as well, with the women's volleyball team home tomorrow and Saturday against Dartmouth and Harvard. The Tigers are 1-0 in the Ivy League after defeating Penn last weekend.

There is home men's water polo against Brown and Harvard Saturday at 10 and 5, so you can go to those before and after the football game against Columbia at 1. The men's water polo also hosts MIT Sunday at 11 a.m.

Meanwhile, the field hockey team is home twice this weekend, against Yale tomorrow at 5 and UConn Sunday at noon.

Yale comes in at 4-3, having won three of its last four, including a 2-1 win over Brown in the Ivy League opener last week. UConn is ranked 16th, one spot ahead of Princeton.

Princeton's dynamic freshman Beth Yeager leads the Ivy League in goals, assists and points and is in the top six in Division I in all three.

The full schedule for Princeton athletic events is HERE.