Congratulations Times Three

The NCAA men's water polo quarterfinals will be held today at the University of California.

Princeton, off its overtime win in the play-in game against Fordham last weekend, will take on top-seeded USC at 8 Eastern. You can watch the game HERE.

While the Tigers were getting ready for the Trojans, there was some interesting news yesterday morning out of Hamilton, N.Y.

Nicki Moore, Colgate's Director of Athletics, has been hired at Cornell to replace Andy Noel. Merrily Dean Baker probably never considered that there would be a time when five of the Ivy League's ADs and the league executive director would be women when she was hired as Princeton's first woman athletic administrator back in 1970.

TigerBlog wishes Moore, whom he has never met, all the best in Ithaca. He does know that she is inheriting a great Associate AD for Communications in Jeremy Hartigan. 

For TB, he was more taken by the second line of the release on the Colgate website than the first, which announced that Moore was leaving. This was the second line: 

Deputy Athletics Director Yariv Amir '01, who has built a wealth of experience during nearly 21 years of athletics administration at Colgate as well as Princeton, will serve as Colgate's Interim Vice President and Director of Athletics. A national search for Colgate's next athletics director will begin shortly in the new year.

Yariv, you might recall, started in Princeton's Office of Athletic Communications before becoming the marketing director in the earliest days of videostreaming. A rower at Colgate, Yariv has been back at his alma mater since 2014. 

Speaking of people who deserve congratulations, there are two Tigers whom TB would like to recognize.

First there is Liam Johnson, the linebacker on the football team. Earlier this week, Johnson was named a finalist for the Bushnell Cup as the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year.

As TB mentioned last week when the All-Ivy team was released, Johnson and his brothers Tom and James have become the first three brothers to become first-team All-Ivy football players at Princeton. Liam's selection as a finalist is a first for the family.

TB went back and looked at the defensive stats for Princeton football the last few seasons. If you go back to 2016, Luke Catarius led the team in tackles. Since then, one of the Johnson brothers has done so every year except one, and each brother has done so at least once.

The one exception, by the way, was the 2021 season, when Jeremiah Tyler was first and James Johnson was second. For the record, it was Tom in 2017 and 2018, James in 2019, Tyler in 2021 and now Liam this year.

The record for tackles in a season by a Johnson brother? That would be Tom in 2017, with 95. Liam had 90 this year, the second-best.

TB sends his congratulations to Liam on being a finalist, along with Harvard's Truman Jones. On the offensive side, the finalists are Harvard running back Adrian Borguet and Yale quarterback Nolan Grooms. 

The winners of the Bushnell Cups will be announced Monday, Dec. 12, in New York City. Three days later, the NFCHA will announce the field hockey All-American teams. 

Beth Yeager was a first-team All-American last year, when she became the first freshman to earn the award. She's also been a two-time Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year and two-time first-team All-Ivy selection, as well as a member of the U.S. Women's National Team.

She added another honor yesterday, when she was named the Mid-Atlantic Region Player of the Year. There are five regions in total.

Being a regional Player of the Year is a lofty accomplishment, but Yeager is clearly deserving. The most amazing thing about Yeager is that she led the Ivy League in goals and points, but she's probably a better player outside the circle than inside. 

It's impossible to count the number of shots the other team never got because of Yeager's ability to take the ball away (without fouling) and head the other way. Princeton, by the way, went 7-0 in the Ivy League and returned to the NCAA tournament this season.

Congratulations to Yeager as well.

And that's three congratulations in one day, which isn't too bad, right?