Tigers Host Tigers

The third most common nickname among American four-year college teams is Tigers.

What are the first two? TigerBlog gives you a few paragraphs to think about it. 

There are in fact 72 schools whose nickname is Tigers. The first of all of them was, of course, Princeton, who came dangerously close to being called the "Lions" after the Class of 1879 gift of two Lions "to guard Nassau Hall."

Lions, though, would give way to Tigers soon enough. It actually sort of started on Thanksgiving Day 1876, when Princeton and Yale played football. It was on that day that the team wore uniforms for the first time, all black ones with a "P" on the chest.

Eventually, the team added orange stripes on the sleeves. Orange became the color of choice in honor of William of Orange of the House of Nassau, who was an 18th century English king. 

In 1882, after one of those games with the black jerseys with orange stripes, a newspaper story credited Princeton with "fighting like Tigers," and it stuck.

Meanwhile, back in the present day, you'd think that with so many teams who are nicknamed Tigers that there'd be a lot of Tiger vs. Tiger games. In reality, there are hardly any.

One of those games is tonight, though, when the Tigers (Princeton) play host to the Tigers (LSU) in women''s soccer. Gametime is 7. Admission is free.

LSU, from the SEC, comes in with a record of 4-0-2. The game tonight will be the first of two in New Jersey for the Tigers, who also play at Rutgers Sunday. Rutgers is the only team to have beaten Princeton so far this year. 

The Tigers (the LSU ones) have already played two games in California, three in Louisiana and one in Mississippi. They were an NCAA tournament team a year ago. 

LSU has never played an Ivy League team before or played a game in the state of New Jersey before.

As for the Tigers (the Princeton ones), prior to tonight, the only other time Princeton played a team from the SEC was in 2004, when the Tigers (assume TB means Princeton's the rest of the way) knocked off Vanderbilt 3-0 in a game played at Penn. For the record, Emily Behncke had two of the Princeton goals that day, while the third came from Esmeralda Negron.

That win improved Princeton's record to 3-0 on the season. The Tigers would finish 19-3 and reach the NCAA Final Four that year, an accomplishment that was a first — and remains an only — for an Ivy women's soccer team.

The 2004 season opened, by the way, with Texas A&M, who is now in the SEC but back then was still in the Big 12. Princeton won that game 2-1 on goals by Diana Matheson and Negron in the first six minutes. 

Princeton is also home Sunday (at 1) against George Mason, a team that Princeton doesn't have a lot of history with but what history does exist includes something huge. Tonight's game will be the eighth between them, and George Mason (they're the Patriots) has a 4-3 edge, though Princeton won 3-1 last year in the only game they've played against each other in the last 20 years. 

The first game in the series was a huge moment in program history, as it was the first NCAA tournament game Princeton ever played in women's soccer. The Tigers would win that one 1-0.

If you're wondering who scored the first NCAA tournament goal in Princeton women's soccer history, the answer is Kerry Shaw, who headed in a cross from Kathy DeBoer with 11 minutes to play.

Princeton will play Thursday (at Hofstra) and Sunday (home against Delaware) next week as well. After that is the Ivy opener on Sept. 24 at Yale. 

Also, the answer to the question of the most common nicknames? Hawks is second. And No. 1?

Eagles. 

TB wouldn't have guessed that. He'd have figured Lions or Bulldogs, which happen to be four and five on the list.

And as a reminder, it's Tigers vs. Tigers at 7 tonight on Sherrerd Field.