Congrats On Becoming Head Coach

Welcome to TigerBlog Tuesday Trivia, an alliterative start to your day.

Bella Alarie had 20 points and 15 rebounds in the Princeton women's basketball team's 82-77 loss to Kentucky in the first round of the 2019 NCAA tournament. Question: Who is the only other Princeton women's basketball player ever to have at least 20 points and 10 rebounds in an NCAA game.

You have four paragraphs to think about it.  

So, what do you want to talk about for your three paragraphs? There's a field hockey scrimmage today at 5 on Bedford Field against St. Joe's, if you want to watch a Princeton team play. If you want to watch a Princeton athlete play in Denmark, you can watch Sarah Fillier in the IIHF Women's World Championship starting Thursday and leading up to the championship game Sept. 4. 

That championship game is almost surely going to be between the U.S. and Canada, just as 19 of the previous 20 in this event have been (the only exception was the game between the U.S. and Finland in 2019, won by the U.S.). In the first 20 tournaments, Canada has won 11 championships and the U.S. has won nine. The two have also won every gold medal in Olympic women's hockey history, and Fillier (and fellow Princeton women's player Claire Thompson) won gold this past winter.

Also, in other news from another tournament where it was essentially preordained that the U.S. and Canada would meet in the final, the U.S. won the U21 men's lacrosse World Championship 12-10 Saturday in Limerick, Ireland. That's nine such tournaments, nine wins for the U.S. The final matched Princeton teammates Alex Slusher (U.S.) and Sam English (Canada).

Meanwhile, the men's basketball team is spending the week in Spain. It's great to see that teams are starting to make the international trips again, though TB does feel badly for the athletes who missed out on them during the pandemic. It seems a bit fitting that Princeton is doing this trip in Spain, the homeland of Pete Carril's father. Carril, who passed away last week, embraced his Spanish heritage and spoke of it often. One of his favorite sayings was this: "What good is being Spanish if you can't chase after windmills."

Okay, there's your four paragraphs. Did you get the answer?

Hint - she just became a college head coach.

The answer is Annie Tarakchian, has been named the head coach at Cal Tech. 

Tarakchian had 20 and 10 against West Virginia in a 74-66 NCAA tournament loss in 2016. That wasn't even Tarakchian's best NCAA game, as she had 19 points and 17 rebounds in an 80-70 win over Wisconsin-Green Bay in the 2015 opening round. That win pushed Princeton's record to 31-0, as you might recall.

Until the Tigers knocked off Kentucky this year, that was the only NCAA win in program history.

The fans at Jadwin Gym loved Tarakchian during her time at Princeton, and not only because of her on-court production. She was also someone who played hard but also played with great joy, as her omnipresent smile would indicate. 

Tarakchian finished her Princeton career with 928 points and 729 rebounds and was a two-time All-Ivy League selection, including first-team in 2014-15. Since then, she played professionally in Europe, winning championships in Belgium and Switzerland, and then earned her Master's degree while serving as an assistant coach at Cal Lutheran.

Now she takes over as a head coach. The team she inherits has never in its history had a winning record, but she is coming into the program at a good time.

The Beavers went 11-14 last year, which was a program-record for wins. They also reached the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference tournament for the first time.

In addition, the team had no seniors. It's top two scorers were a junior who averaged 18.8 and a freshman who averaged 14.3.

Clearly, Cal Tech women's basketball is on the way up. Now it has Annie Tarakchian in charge.

The Beavers just gained a bunch of fans in New Jersey.