A Crossover Weekend

TigerBlog was in a store the other day when he saw a man wearing a sweatshirt that said "Union" and had a basketball on it.

If you know much about Princeton men's basketball, you know there's a strong connection to Union. TB could see that the sweatshirt the man was wearing suggested it might be a bit older, and so he thought there was a chance he might have played there. Either that, or maybe his son did?

Of course TB asked him. Did you play there? The response he got was "yeah, about 50 years ago." To that, TB said "then you must know Gary Walters and Bill Carmody."

At that point, the man's face lit up. It was clear he liked the idea that someone could talk about mid-1970s Union College men's basketball.

He went on to say that Gary had been his coach at Union and that he was a teammate of Carmody, who was two years behind him.

He introduced himself as "Ryan." When TB relayed the story to Gary, it turns out his name was "Rein," and he drew two exclamation points from Gary. Small world, right?

The Princeton basketball connection, of course, is that Gary was a basketball player at Princeton who then coached at Union, where his players included Rein and Carmody, one of whom would go on to be Princeton's top assistant under Pete Carril and then head coach for four years, hired by then-Director of Athletics Walters.

Carmody would go on to coach at Northwestern, where he would hire as an assistant coach a former player of his own at Princeton, Mitch Henderson, who of course is now the head coach of the Tigers. The lineage of the Tiger men's basketball coaching position from Cappy Cappon through Mitch Henderson is one of the more uniquely Princetonian parts of the school's athletic history. 

Henderson's team started its 2021-22 season with an easy win over Rutgers-Camden Tuesday night. The challenges get stronger quickly, as the Tigers leave this morning for Asheville, North Carolina, where they will play South Carolina tomorrow night at 9:30 (on ESPNEWS) and then either Minnesota or Western Kentucky Sunday at 5 or 7:30 on either ESPNU or ESPN2.

The men's basketball team then comes back home Wednesday to take on Marist before heading out for two road games of varying lengths. The first is to Oregon State on the 21st. The second is closer than even the ride to the airport for the Oregon State game, as the Tigers will be at Monmouth on the 24th.

This will be an extremely busy weekend for Princeton Athletics, beyond just watching the men's basketball team on television. Tomorrow alone features NCAA postseason events (women's soccer at home against Vermont at 6; men's and women's cross country regionals at Lehigh afternoon) and home events in women's hockey and women's volleyball with a short drive to Delaware for women's basketball if you want to see that game.

By the end of the weekend, there will be, among other events, a huge football game against Yale (Saturday at 1, matching two of the Ivy League's two 4-1 teams), a home women's basketball game (Sunday at 1 against Boston University, swimming and diving (women home tomorrow, men home Saturday), men's hockey against LIU (Saturday at 6, after the teams play at LIU tomorrow) and the final regular season game for the outright champion and NCAA-bound men's soccer team (against Yale, Saturday at 4).

The women's soccer team, by the way, will be making its 14th NCAA appearance. The Tigers are 14-2-1 on the season as they take on the America East tournament champion Catamounts, a team with whom they share one common opponent (Dartmouth, whom Princeton defeated 3-0 and whom Vermont lost to 2-1). 

When TB talks about "crossover season,"  he's talking about weekends like this one. It's a challenge for the behind the scenes people who have to make sure every event is covered, and that's not always easy.

At the same time, there's nobody around here complaining about it. This is way better than last fall, and it's not even close.