A Championship Weekend

If you went to goprincetontigers.com yesterday afternoon, then you saw the same word in three of the first four stories in the rotator: Champion.

Well, technically it said "championship" in one of them, but hey, the point is the same.

The fourth story? That was about an upcoming NCAA tournament appearance by one of the champions. That makes for a pretty good weekend. The top four stories all had celebration photos, or "jubo," as it's known in the Office of Athletic Communications (that's short for jubilation).

The three championships came in men's volleyball, women's golf and women's tennis. TigerBlog will start with women's tennis.

Princeton went into the weekend tied with Penn for first place at 4-1 each but with a win over Penn, meaning the Tigers had the tiebreaker for the automatic NCAA bid. Because of that, a sweep over Cornell and Columbia meant no worse than a share of the league title and a trip to the postseason.

The Tigers got their sweep, and a bit of help too. Columbia knocked off Penn Friday. The Tigers took down Cornell Friday and Columbia Sunday, and just like that, they were the outright champs.

For head coach Laura Granville, this is nothing new. In fact, Princeton has won three straight Ivy titles, and before that, there were another three straight sandwiched around one year without a championship. That's six in seven years. 

How many Princeton coaches have ever won six Ivy League titles out of seven? TB would love to tell you he's researched that, but he hasn't – yet. He'll get back to you on that. Promise.

Off the top of his head, he can think of a few. Chris Sailer. Bill Tierney. Fred Samara. Cindy Cohen. Susan Teeter. Rob Orr. Lori Dauphiny. There are others. Beth Bozman and Kristen Holmes-Winn in field hockey for two. 

You know who never has? Anyone who ever coached football or basketball at Princeton. This isn't easy to do. 

The women's tennis team will find out its NCAA opponent one week from today.

The women's golf team took the "champion" thing to another level, with the team and individual champion at the Ivy League tournament. The Tigers started yesterday's final round two strokes behind Columbia but ended up winning by three, shooting a combined 300 yesterday to the Lions' 305.

For the women's golf team, that's three Ivy titles in four years. 

In addition to the team title, Princeton also had the individual champ, Yanjun Liu, who shot 71-72-73 on the par 72 course to win by five shots. 

Liu is Princeton's 11th Ivy League individual champion and second freshman, joining former Tiger great Avery Kiser, who won as a freshman in 2002 and then again as a sophomore and junior before finishing fourth as a senior.

The NCAA regional bids will be announced Wednesday at 4 on the Golf Channel.

And then there's the men's volleyball team.   

Princeton followed up its improbable win over second-ranked Penn State by taking down NJIT in the EIVA championship match Saturday night. The win vaults Princeton into the NCAA tournament, where the Tigers will take on North Greenville Sunday at 8 pm Eastern time at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion. The winner of that match takes on the defending NCAA champion, Hawaii, in the quarterfinals.

At one point this year Princeton was 5-12, and the tournament the team was most worried about reaching was the league tournament. Since then Princeton has ripped off 10 straight, including the amazing win over Penn State in five sets Thursday night.

Princeton then dropped Set No. 1 to NJIT Saturday night before winning the next three. Princeton sophomore Ben Harrington added tournament MVP honors to his EIVA Newcomer of the Year Award.

If you're wondering about North Greenville, its nickname is the Crusaders, it's the champion of the Conference Carolinas and its head coach is someone who appears to be hard to root against if you do what TB has done all these years. This is from his bio on the North Greenville website:

Battenfield earned a Ph.D. degree in sport management at Florida State University in August, 2004 and his dissertation is entitled “An Ethnographic Study of the Culture of Communication in the Sports Information Office in a Division I-A Athletic Program.” His research interests include the culture of communication in college sports, sports public relations and media, qualitative inquiry in sport management, ambush marketing in the Olympic Games and communication and marketing in intercollegiate athletics.

How great does that sound?

Also, North Greenville is located in South Carolina. And in what town? 

Tigerville. It'll be the guys from Tigerville against the Tigers.