Tuesday Night Tip-Off

TigerBlog was reading his friend Bruce Wood's BGA Alert blog yesterday morning when he was struck by the news that former Penn coach Jerry Berndt had passed away.

Berndt coached Penn from 1981 through 1985, taking a team that had been 1-18 in the two years before he arrived and then winning one game his first year and then four Ivy titles in his last four years. He came to Penn from DePauw and then coached at Rice and Temple after leaving the Quakers. Berndt was 84 years old at the time of his death.

Berndt was the winning coach in one of the best football games TB has ever seen, the 1983 Princeton-Penn game, which the Quakers won 28-27 after a late two-point conversion attempt ended with a sack of Doug Butler by Penn's Dave Smith. That game included a 95-yard touchdown pass from Butler to Derek Graham, a play TB once wrote an entire feature about, including how the Penn defensive back who chased Graham down the Franklin Field sideline for the final 65 yards burned his cleats after the game.

TigerBlog cannot tell you how many people he's interviewed in his life, but the number has to be pretty high. What he can tell you is who the first person he ever interviewed was, and the answer is Jerry Berndt. Before TB wrote one word for publication, he was a student broadcaster for Penn radio, and he had the job of doing pregame interviews with Berndt each week.

TB can tell you that Berndt was a very kind man who knew he was dealing with someone with no experience, someone who was very intimidated from sitting in the head football coach's office. Berndt was very friendly and welcoming, and at the end of the season he wrote TB a thank-you note for his efforts, something that TB has never forgotten.

TB sends his sincere condolences to Berndt's family and former players.

On the subject of football coaches and the BGA Alert blog, Bruce also wrote this yesterday: "Am I the only one who has the feeling the Deion Sanders experiment at Colorado is a high-risk, high-reward deal?"

The answer to that is "no." Make that a resounding no. It's either genius or disaster, and there will be no middle ground, just like there's no middle ground on the reaction to Coach Prime's introduction to his new team, where he said he was bringing his "luggage" and the returning players could simply enter the portal if they wanted.

It's certainly something to keep an eye on. TB's first thought was, in typical athletic communications fashion, that he wondered what the Colorado football contact is in for with the new administration.

In World Cup news, two things from yesterday: 1) penalty kicks are a horrible way to decide a game and 2) Brazil's third goal against South Korea might have been the prettiest goal every scored in a soccer game. 

Richarlison is just toying with them out there 😤🔥 pic.twitter.com/eEbUu4eWTW

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) December 5, 2022

Segueing to basketball, the Princeton men are home tonight (some days the segues are very direct) against Lafayette, with tip in Jadwin at 7.

The Tigers are coming in hot, with six straight wins after an 0-2 start. Lafayette is 1-8 on  the season, with its win over Central Connecticut and losses to Penn and Cornell among Ivy opponents and to UMBC and Drexel, opponents the Tigers have already beaten.

Lafayette is no longer coached by Fran O'Hanlon, one of TB's favorite opposing coaches ever. O'Hanlon retired last year after 27 years as the head coach in Easton.

His replacement's name is a familiar one in basketball circles, and even more familiar in Ivy basketball circles when his first name is shortened: Mike Jordan. You remember him as the Ivy League Player of the Year at Penn as a senior in 2000.

There's another familiar name on the Lafayette roster: Kreitz, as in Gavin Kreitz. Yes, his dad is Garett Kreitz, another former Quaker guard.

For Princeton, its hardly Nostalgia Night. It's a chance to keep building momentum as the season goes along. The Tigers come in off a convincing 83-63 win over Drexel Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia in a game Princeton controlled from start to finish. 

Princeton had five players in double figures, with 19 from Matt Allocco to tie his career high and a 16-point, 13-rebound afternoon from Tosan Evbuomwan. Don't be shocked in Evbuomwan goes for a triple-double at some point this season.

So it's the Tigers and the Leopards tonight, tip at 7 in Jadwin and on ESPN+.