Go Canada

So here's something that TigerBlog is having trouble understanding. 

Twice in the last week or so, his blog has had the wrong date on an entry. What TB does is write during the day and set the post to go live after midnight, so it's on the correct day. There should be one entry per day.

He's done it this way for a very, very long time, more than a decade. It's never come up with the wrong date stamped on it until last week, and then again yesterday. He's fixed it both times, but he can't figure out why it's done this. If you go to read here and see the wrong date, it's still a new entry. The other thing is that both times the wrong day came up, the entry under it had no date selected. Oh well. TB will figure it out. He's just giving you a heads up.

As for his day yesterday, TigerBlog was doing his introduction to his women's basketball podcast when he momentarily forgot which podcast it was.

It was a busy day yesterday, with the podcast overlap season officially here. TB spoke with Erik Peters of the men's lacrosse team at 10, women's basketball head coach Carla Berube at 11, head men's lacrosse coach Matt Madalon at 11:30 and then Paige Morton of the women's basketball team at 2:45. Today's lineup includes women's lacrosse head coach Chris Sailer and player Olivia Pugh.

That's a lot of talking.

By the way, Morton talked about the videos she makes that chronicle her team's experiences, which are called "Princeton Diaries." You can see them on her YouTube channel HERE. They're very clever.

The women's basketball team is home this weekend, Friday night at 7 against Brown and Saturday night at 6 against Yale. 

The lacrosse teams open their seasons this weekend, with the men at home Saturday at 1 against Monmouth and the women at Virginia Sunday at noon. The men are then home again Tuesday at 5 against Binghamton, and that is followed by this stretch for the Tigers: at No. 1 Maryland, at No. 3 Georgetown, home with No. 8 Rutgers, home with No. 10 Penn, at No. 7 Yale. Those rankings are based on this week's USILA poll.

This season, of course, is the final one for Sailer, who has won 418 games, 15 Ivy League titles and three NCAA titles in her 36 years with the Tigers. It's also the last season for the nine seniors on the women's team, a group that includes five players who will be starting for their fourth season: goalie Sam Fish, defenders Pugh, Marge Donovan, Mary Murphy and attacker Kyla Sears. 

TB has been putting together season previews for both lacrosse teams, and so it was understandable why he stumbled for a second before he remembered he was talking women's basketball with Carla Berube. She thought it was funny.

She also said that there is no way in the world you would ever get her to try bobsled - like Princeton's Charlie Volker – or skeleton - like Princeton's Nathan Crumpton. She and TB also spoke about the women's hockey gold medal game, which faces off at 11:10 Eastern time tonight (or 12:10 pm Thursday in China).

This puts TB in position of either staying up until 1 or so when the game ends and then writing about it or waiting to write about for Friday, by which time it will be more than a day later. What should he do? 

Also, what if he tries to stay up to write about the game but falls asleep before he has a chance to write about it? Then what? He'll have to have a backup plan.

Meanwhile, he and Berube talked about rooting for Canada or the United States in the hockey game tonight. TB told Berube that he was definitely rooting for Canada, whose team features Princeton alum Claire Thompson and current Princeton women's hockey player Sarah Fillier.

Thompson (12) and Fillier (11) rank fifth and sixth in the Olympics in points. Thompson leads in plus/minus at +22, three ahead of anyone else. Fillier is second in the tournament in goals, with eight, one behind teammate Brianne Jenner. 

Both Princetonians have had great tournaments. Their team is also unbeaten, with a 4-2 win over the U.S. in the round-robin portion of the event. As TB said yesterday, they're both already assured of Olympic medals.

It was pretty clear from Day 1, or even from four years ago, that the 2022 final would be between the U.S. and Canada. Now it's here. TB is rooting for Princeton, which means rooting for Canada.