Score Update

Okay, so stay with TigerBlog on this one.

He was trying to find out if there had ever been an 80-37 game in Ivy League women's basketball before this weekend. As he went through the year-by-year results of each team, he got all the way through five schools without seeing one. 

Then, the sixth, was Brown. It listed an 80-37 game from Dec. 18, 1977 — against Princeton. Interesting. Princeton's was the first record book TB checked, and it listed no such score. 

Now confused, he went back to the Princeton record book and saw that it listed that game as 80-57. Who was right? Princeton or Brown? Maybe it was 80-47 and both schools got it wrong? 

To find out, he went to the Daily Princetonian archives. He wasn't sure there was even going to be an issue that late in December, but lo and behold, there it was, a Dec. 19, 1977 edition. 

Of course, as always happens when he goes through the archives, TB got immediately distracted. The first story listed the hiring of the new football coach. Since it was 1977, TB knew that the new coach was Frank Navarro. 

What he didn't know, until he read the Prince story, was that Navarro was a controversial hire and that then-Director of Athletics Royce Flippin went against the wishes of the search committee to bring him on. The story mentioned that seven of the 11 members of the committee were against Navarro, including the two 1978 captains, Bob Ehrlich and Greg Bauman. Ehrlich, of course, went on to become the Governor of Maryland.

For his part, Navarro coached Princeton for seven seasons, finishing with a record of 29-35-3. Also, that was great reporting in the student paper by Nancy David.

Before he could refocus on 80-37, he was further distracted by the next story, which was Princeton's 68-57 win over Rutgers in men's basketball. It turned out to be Pete Carril's 200th career win, on a night when Frank Sowinski scored 26 and Tom Young came off the bench to score 16 points on 8 for 10 shooting. 

Young also had this to say, at least as quoted in the Prince, about his Rutgers counterpart: "He looks awesome from the stands, but he's not so good on the floor; he's not that fast."

That player, by the way, was James Bailey, who would be the No. 6 pick of the 1979 NBA Draft and who would average 8.8 points and five rebounds per game during his nine NBA seasons.

There was actually no mention of the women's basketball game in the Dec. 19 Prince, so TB had to check the next day. There it was. Princeton 80, Brown 37. How about that?

The Princeton women were competing at Brown's tournament, and had defeated Rhode Island 74-50 the night before. Here is how the Prince wrote it up:

Whatever their deficiencies as opponents, Brown's women's basketball players proved to be perfect hostesses for their Princeton counterparts at the Brown Invitational Tournament last weekend. The Bruins kept their guests happy by rolling over and playing dead Saturday night in Providence, while the Tigers (4-0) laughed their way to an 80-37 victory and the tournament championship. 

Now that is writing.

Anyway, TB went back to the Princeton archives and changed the final to 80-37. It's a score update, of sorts. It also made him wonder how many other such errors there are that have been unnoticed through the years. His best guess is "a few, but hardly any."

And that's that for today.

Wait. No it isn't. 

Why did he care about an 80-37 basketball game? It's because there were two of them this weekend in Ivy League women's hoops. 

The first was Princeton's win Friday night by that score, again at Brown. Columbia then matched that score Saturday night at Dartmouth. That's fairly wild, no? 

This weekend began without any team having clinched an Ivy tournament spot. It ended with all four women's spots secure. 

Your four women's teams at Jadwin in three weeks will be Princeton, Columbia, Penn and Harvard, in some order. With two games to go, here is the remaining schedule for the four:

Princeton — home against Harvard, at Penn
Columbia — at Brown, home against Cornell
Penn — at Dartmouth, home against Princeton
Harvard — at Princeton, home against Dartmouth

It's still mathematically possible for there to be a four-way tie for first, though that is very unlikely. Princeton and Columbia are currently tied for first at 10-2 each, followed by Penn and Harvard at 8-4. Yale, in fifth, is 5-7. 

Should Princeton or Columbia win one more game, then Penn and Harvard will be unable to get a share of the championship. Should Princeton and Columbia finish in a two-way tie, then they would be co-champs, regardless of the tournament, which will only decide the league's automatic NCAA bid.

You can get Ivy tournament tickets HERE.