Double The Madness

This was double the Madness, and TigerBlog isn't really sure quite what he means by that.

Was it "double the Madness," as in Princeton's women followed up the men's win Thursday over Arizona with one of their own, taking down North Carolina State 64-63?

Or was it "double the Madness," as in "this was twice as much Madness as the day before."

Maybe it's a New Jersey thing. You have the two Princeton wins, and you can throw in FDU's win over Purdue, marking only the second time a 16 has beaten a 1 on the men's side? 

Is it triple the madness?

The 15th-seeded Princeton men's team came from 12 back in the second half to beat Arizona, the second seed, 59-55 Thursday, and if you thought that game and the FDU game were wild, then you should have been glued to the women's game Friday night.

For TigerBlog's money, this was the second-most improbable win he's ever seen in a basketball game (it's going to be really hard to top the comeback the men had against Penn in 1999 at the Palestra and all). That game aside, the women's win over North Carolina State was ridiculous, and it was accomplished for one reason — effort. 

Princeton came from eight down, at 63-55, with 5:44 to go. So what, you say? A lot of teams do that. 

Yes, they do. They don't do them the way Princeton did. This was a one in a, hmm, one in a million? No. One in a thousand? Hard to say. 

How about a one in 24? Or should that be "1 for 24?"

After a 10-0 run to start the third quarter that turned a 41-35 Princeton deficit into a 45-41 lead, the Tigers suddenly went cold from the field. Forget that. Cold doesn't begin to describe it. Princeton went the kind of cold you see in war movies. 

First, Princeton missed 14 shots in a row. That's right. That's 14 straight. Finally, the Tigers ended that streak — only to miss their next nine. That's a 1 for 24 stretch.

You had a 1 for 24 stretch and you won an NCAA tournament game against a team that reached the Elite Eight a year ago? 

Wait, there's more. The same basket that was locked on the inside for Princeton was welcoming in every shot NC State tossed up in the first half. 

In fact, the Wolfpack, after missing their first seven, made 17 of their final 22 of the first half. That's a .773 shooting percentage by a team that shot 43 percent for the season, against a team that held its opponents to 37 percent for the season.

So make that "you had a 1 for 24 stretch and the other team had a 17 for 22 stretch and you won an NCAA tournament game?" The odds of that are a lot greater than 1 in 24.

So there was Princeton, down 63-55 with 5:44 to go. What happened after that was extraordinary. What happened after that is the kind of thing that you don't see too often.

Princeton appeared to be running on fumes. The shots it missed were good ones. There were layups. There were open threes. It didn't matter who it was, where it was. Nothing was falling. The team seemed beaten.

And then it all flipped on a dime. Princeton summoned another wind and upped its defensive intensity by a factor of a lot. Nothing was allowed for NC State. From 63-55, Princeton forced 0 for 5 shooting and five NC State turnovers.

For all that, it wouldn't have mattered had the offense not gotten restarted.

First Grace Stone nailed a three, making it a 63-58 game. The Kaitlyn Chen did the same. Suddenly it was 63-61, with less than a minute to go. Could Princeton finish it off? Yes. How? By getting a steal from Stone with 11 seconds to go and then, out of a timeout, a perfect screen from Madison St. Rose freed up Stone for another three, a no-doubt-about-it three, a one-for-the-history-books three.

Would NC State spoil it by scoring in its last possession, with 4.7 to go. Uh, no. Princeton didn't even let the Wolfpack get a shot off.

Stone and Chen had 22 each. Julia Cunningham had 14, with eight assists.

The most important player, though, had to be Ellie Mitchell. She simply willed the team to find more energy, to keep upping the defensive intensity, to track down every loose ball. Her final stat line: four points, 11 rebounds, four blocked shots, five steals. What you can't measure if the impact she had on everyone else.

For Princeton, that's two straight NCAA tournament first-round wins. It's also the first time an Ivy League school has won NCAA tournament games in the men's and women's fields in the same year. 

The men will take on Missouri later today (6:10) in Sacramento. The women will play Utah tomorrow on the Utes' home court; Utah defeated Gardner Webb 103-77 in the first round.

John Mack, the Ford Family Director of Athletics, was in California Thursday and then went to Utah for the women's game. Now he's back to Sacramento for the men and then back to Utah for the women. 

Hey, double the Madness requires that.