Fortuitous

When TigerBlog saw that Jami MacDonald had scored six goals in the women's lacrosse team's win over Rutgers Wednesday night, his first thoughts were 1) close and 2) she'll get there.

TB is referring to the Princeton record for goals in a game by a member of the MacDonald family. Jami's older brother Mikey, the 2015 Roper Trophy winner, had a seven-goal game in the Ivy League tournament semifinal against Cornell in 2013.

Has Princeton ever had two siblings who each scored at least six goals in a game? TB can't think of any off the top of his head (apologies for possibly overlooking the obvious).

Of course, the game Wednesday night was Jami's third of her career. Her total through three games is nine goals; Mikey had four through his first three games, back in 2012. 

When TB went back to look up the numbers, he ran across this, after Mikey's first game:

Mike MacDonald paused for a moment as he searched for the word to describe the second of the three goals he scored in his first collegiate lacrosse game. "It was fortuitous," MacDonald said. In fact it was, as MacDonald returned to his hockey-playing roots in Canada to slap the ball into the net.

Fortuitous. Nice.

Will this be a fortuitous weekend for Princeton Athletics? That remains to be seen. There are certainly any number of opportunities for, well, fortuitousness.

For starters, this is the final weekend of the Ivy League basketball regular season. What is known is that Princeton's men's and women's teams will both be in the Ivy League tournament next weekend, an event which as you may have heard will be held in Jadwin Gym (for ticket information, click HERE).

The men will be joined by Penn, Yale and either Brown or Cornell. The women will be joined by Columbia, Penn and Harvard.

Of course, the order of finish is still TBD. Will it be fortuitous for the Princeton teams, both of whom could win Ivy League championships this weekend?

The women's matchups are these (the men are the same but at opposite sites): Princeton at Penn (that's tonight at 7), Brown at Yale, Cornell at Columbia and Dartmouth at Harvard). The men's game between the Tigers and the Quakers is in Jadwin Gym tomorrow at noon.

There are endless scenarios related to seedings, but the bottom line for both the Princeton men and women: win this weekend, and you get at least a share of the Ivy League championship. Of course, the same is true of the Penn men, Yale men and Columbia women.

Regardless of whether there's an outright champion on the men's side, this will be the fifth time that the league champion has a 10-4 record (the winner of the Princeton-Penn game is guaranteed that). The other four times were consecutively from 1984-87.

TigerBlog, by the way, still hasn't come up with a great answer as to why there were four perfect Ivy seasons in the first 35 years of league play and then 10 since, in the last 31. He'll give it more thought.

Remember, no matter what happens in the tournament next weekend, this weekend will decide the official Ivy League champions.

Another team with a big game this weekend is Mikey MacDonald's former team. The men's lacrosse team hosts Georgetown tomorrow at 1, which means that you can watch the men's basketball game and then get to Sherrerd Field for the second half.

Georgetown is the most dangerous kind of opponent. The team is loaded with talent but brings an 0-3 record into the game, with losses to No. 15 Johns Hopkins, No. 10 Penn and No. 2 Notre Dame. On the right day, Georgetown could be the best team in the country.

Princeton comes in after stewing for a week after its 11-5 loss to Maryland last Saturday. That game never got into any kind of rhythm offensively for Princeton, who managed only one first half goal and who played man-down for 5:30 of the third quarter.

The Tigers didn't drop far in the rankings, going from fourth to fifth as Maryland leap-frogged them. Princeton is looking to do what it did a year ago, which is to say go from two opening wins on Saturday and Tuesday to a loss to Maryland the next Saturday and then a win over Georgetown the Saturday after that. 

The season ended, fortuitiously, in the national semifinals.