Catching Up

Did you miss TigerBlog during the long Thanksgiving weekend?

Hopefully you had a great holiday. How many days in a row can you eat turkey? And what percentage of people love green bean casserole? 

These four days annually mark the only four consecutive days that TB doesn't write here. He has some stuff to catch up on:

1) TigerBlog has been a lifelong Giants fan (the football variety), but that is over now for good. His affection for the team took a huge hit when the team let go of Marc Ross, the former Princeton wide receiver who played a major role in building two Super Bowl champions. 

When the Giants took on Jason Garrett, a former Princeton quarterback and Bushnell Cup winner, TB figured he would give them another chance. That's gone now too, after Garrett was let go, as if anything that was going wrong there was his fault. 

So now the Giants no longer exist to TB. He's now firmly on the Jets bandwagon. He figures if he does this, he can never be accused of jumping on a winner. It's either the Jets or the Eagles, his son's favorite team. The Eagles of course lost yesterday to the Giants. Note: Philadelphia would have won had any of Princeton's top three wide receivers been the target of those two late passes that were dropped.

2) Chris Sailer's retirement announcement last week and James Johnson's epic reaction to being named first-team All-Ivy League in football prevented TB from mentioning Princeton's 81-80 win over Oregon State in men's basketball.

That's a pretty good win for the Tigers. Oregon State, as you might remember, was one game away from the Final Four last season. Even if the Beavers are struggling so far this year, that's still a really good effort to go on the road like that and beat a Power Five team, the second such team Princeton has knocked off so far this year (South Carolina was the other; Princeton took Minnesota to two OTs).

The Tigers did lose to Monmouth in the middle of the week, but Monmouth turned around and defeated previously unbeaten Cincinnati on the road. Princeton rebounded to knock off Fairleigh Dickinson 89-78 at Jadwin.

Princeton scored 89 points, of which 81 came from four players. Three of the four Tigers in double figures were Jaelin Llewellyn (15), Ryan Langborg (18) and Tosan Evbuomwan (career-high 19). 

The other was Ethan Wright, who continued his hot streak with a 29-point, 10-rebound effort against the Knights in a game in which he shot 7 for 12 from three-point range. He was already the reigning Ivy League Player of the Week after going for 24 points (then a career high) and 10 rebounds at Oregon State. 

For his part, Wright had six career double figure scoring games two games into this, his senior season. He now has five straight, averaging 18 during that stretch.

3) Women's basketball player A: 17.5 points per game, .474 from the field, .356 from three-point range. Women's basketball player B: 17.7 points per game, .500 from the field, .407 from three-point range.

Who are they? Player A was Bella Alarie's senior year at Princeton. Player B is Abby Meyers through six games this year. For now it's just something to keep an eye on as the season goes forward, but Meyers is a lot of fun to watch.

4) Congratulations to the men's water polo team, who extended Princeton's outstanding fall with a 17-8 win over Fordham in the opening round of the NCAA tournament Saturday. The Tigers' reward is a trip to No. 1 UCLA for the next round, which will be Thursday night at 6 Eastern time.

Princeton is 26-7 overall this year and has played very competitively with some of the top teams in California. TigerBlog's next feature story will be a men's water polo one, coming to goprincetontigers.com in advance of the game.

5) Tomorrow is TAGD, which stands for Tiger Athletics Give Day (as you probably already know). It's an annual event that has resulted in so much generous support from Princeton's athletic friends and alums, and it's done so much to give the current generation the best possible experience.

There will be a lot of TAGD information on the webpage and social media. TigerBlog thanks you in advance for your support, as always.