NCAA Today

The Princeton men's basketball team plays its first-round NCAA tournament game today at 4:10 Eastern when the 15th-seeded Tigers take on second-seeded Arizona in Sacramento. 

The 10th-seeded women play tomorrow, at 10 at night, when they play seventh-seeded North Carolina State in Salt Lake City.

By the way, the basketball Tigers are not the only Tigers who compete in the NCAAs today. Princeton has four, and possibly five, wrestlers who chase their own dreams when the NCAA championships begin in Tulsa. 

TigerBlog starts with basketball.

There are two separate experiences to be had at the NCAA basketball tournament, and both of them create memories for a lifetime.

First, there is all the off-court stuff, beginning with the Selection Show and continuing all week before the ball is tossed up. There is the travel. There are the practices. There are the interviews. There is checking out the venue.

That's the part that the Princeton men's and women's teams have been taking in the last few days, ever since both teams won the championship at the Ivy League tournament over the weekend.

We're here in Salt Lake City and ready to work! #GetStops 🐯🏀 | @MarchMadnessWBB pic.twitter.com/SaS7ScsH8V

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) March 15, 2023

Second, there is the chance to make history, the chance to do something that is talked about forever. Ask anyone who was with Princeton in Indianapolis 27 years ago, when the Tigers knocked off UCLA. Or in Providence in 1989 when the Tigers almost took down Georgetown.

Ask the 16th-seeded UMBC guys who actually did beat a No. 1 seed, Virginia.

No matter what the outcome, when the game begins, you have no way of knowing if you're going to be part of that "One Shining Moment" when it's all over. 

All of that is why it doesn't matter what any "expert" says about who has a chance and who doesn't. It doesn't matter what the seed is. It doesn't matter who has the better pro prospects.

It's all about what happens in those 40 minutes. And the way to pull off a major upset? Well, you could shoot 15 for 20 from three-point range, but that's unlikely. The actual way to make it happen is not to play a perfect game yourself. It's to get the other team to be completely imperfect, first physically and then mentally. First take them out of their game. Then get in their heads.

Wait? We thought this would be easy. Why isn't it?

TigerBlog always laughs when people say Princeton was nearly perfect against UCLA. Actually Princeton shot 37 percent for the game and 29.6 percent from three. What Princeton did was force UCLA into similar numbers and completely take UCLA out of its preferred tempo.

Also, it was 7-0 Bruins at the first media timeout. It all was happening easily for UCLA. Then it was a 19-18 game at the half. By the second half, you could feel the tension on the part of UCLA while Princeton was just doing what it always did, which is to say execute offensively and play as hard as possible. 

That's how you win.

Can Princeton beat Arizona? Of course. Is it easy. No. It's impossible, though, if you don't believe.

As TB mentioned, Princeton Wrestling is also competing on its biggest stage. A year ago, Princeton had two NCAA runners up, both of whom are back for one more shot at winning it all. 

You can read TB's colleague Andrew Borders' excellent feature story on one of them, Quincy Monday, HERE.

Monday is the fifth seed at 165 this time around. His first-round opponent today will be Andrew Sparks in one of two Princeton-Minnesota matchups, as Travis Stefanik at 285 will wrestle Gopher Garrett Joles in a preliminary matchup, with the winner then to take on top seed Mason Parris of Michigan.

The other runner up last year was Pat Glory at 125. Glory is the second seed now, and his first match today is against Reece Witcraft of Oklahoma State. Should Glory advance, he'd have an Ivy League opponent in the Round of 16, either Cornell's Brett Ungar (whom Glory defeated in the EIWA final) or Penn's Ryan Miller.

Princeton will also be represented by Luke Stout, the 23rd seed at 197 who wrestles Cornell's 10th-seeded Jacob Cardenas, who defeated Stout in the EIWA semis.

The fifth Princeton wrestler in Tulsa is Nate Duggan, the first alternate at 184.

You can get the results HERE.

And with that, it's time to go. 

History is waiting to be made by someone today. It might as well be someone from Princeton.