A Few Things For Thursday

A few items for your Thursday: 

* The roster for the Dream Bowl was announced by the Ivy League yesterday. In case you don't know, the Dream Bowl is a football game that will be played on Jan. 22 (Jan. 21, 11 pm Eastern time) between a team of Ivy League senior all stars and a Japanese team in Tokyo's National Stadium, which was part of the new Olympic venues.

The game is a distant relative of the Ivy Epson Bowl, which had a similar format back in the 1990s.

Princeton will have seven representatives on the Ivy League team: Michael Azevedo, Dawson De Iullis, Ike Hall, Will Powers, Connor Scaglione, James Stagg and C.J. Wall. 

There is more to this trip than just the football game. This is from the official release:

The Ivy League delegation will arrive in Tokyo on January 15 and balance its time between preparation for the game along with several Japanese cultural and educational events, including a planned visit to the U.S. Embassy, interaction with Ivy League alumni, discussions with Japanese students and social exchanges with the Japanese team. The league’s group will be joined by two professors from Ivy League institutions to further the educational experience of the travel party.  

* TigerBlog received a ton of feedback from his entry yesterday about the retirement of Bill Tierney.

One of the people who got in touch with him was former Tiger Mark Schwartz, a member of the Class of 2006. Here's what Schwartz had to say:

One of Coach T’s leadership qualities that I don’t think many people other than those within the program understand is that he is a master of making everyone believe that they are critical to the outcome, whether it’s the first guy (e.g., Boyle) or the last guy (e.g., me 😊). I was talking to someone on Saturday after the announcement who said that Coach T was the greatest lacrosse coach ever; I told that person that is obviously the case, but he is also the best leader I have ever been around.

What he said is so true. TB responded to Mark that he knew exactly what he meant, since Tierney had a way of making TB feel like he had to fill his own role to the standard of everyone else or else the team would suffer.

To everyone else who reached out, TB appreciates the feedback. And to those who didn't but read it, hopefully you learned something about Bill Tierney the man, in addition to Bill Tierney the lacrosse coach.

* On the subject of former Princeton coaches, TigerBlog has wanted to share this about former water polo coach Luis Nicolao. 

Luis, who was extremely well-liked during his 20 years at Princeton, is now the head men's coach at the Naval Academy. He's also an Academy graduate, Class of 1992.

TB saw a headline in late December about an owner who dove into an icy lake to rescue his dog. It seemed like a heartwarming piece, so TB clicked on it. 

And, lo and behold — the owner was Luis Nicolao. TB's jaw dropped.

Anyway, it is a great story. You can read it and see the video HERE. 

TB has no way to track how many times the links he puts here are actually clicked on, but this time it's mandatory. You won't regret it at all.

And to TB's friend Luis — well done. That was a great save, and one lucky dog.

* There's a women's basketball game tonight at 6 at Jadwin between Princeton and Hartford in the Tigers' final non-league game of the year. It's also the first of three home games in five days for the Tigers, who will host Brown Saturday at 2 and then Penn Monday at 2.

It'll be a very busy stretch for TB's Office of Athletic Communications contact Warren Croxton, who is the women's basketball contact. 

The women had two games at home last weekend. Still, Warren found time to make his way over to Baker Rink and came away with this piece of photographic perfection:

It sure doesn’t seem like the Flyers are winning this any time soon, but this is a cool consolation prize. #Hobey100 pic.twitter.com/l3zyl7YwDN

— Warren Croxton (@WarrenCroxton) January 7, 2023