Winning

If you're on campus today, you have a chance to watch baseball and softball without having to move around much.

Both teams are home today, the baseball team at 3 against Seton Hall and the softball team at 4 against Lehigh. Given the proximity of the two fields now, watching both is easy.

The softball team will be home again this weekend, when it plays three against Columbia. The baseball team will be close by, though not quite close enough to see from the softball field, as the Tigers will play their weekend series at Penn.

Both teams are very much in the hunt for the league title and the four Ivy tournament spots. The softball team is currently 7-2 in the league and tied for first with Harvard. The baseball team is also tied for first, though at 4-2, that tie is a five-way tie, with Penn, Yale, Columbia and Harvard.

Obviously all league games are big. 

Getting to the postseason is something that Princeton did a lot of last month. Actually, winning in general was. Here's something you as a Princeton fan will like to get your Wednesday started:

This. Was. March.

National Champs ✅
Sweet Sixteen ✅
Conference Titles ✅
All-Americans ✅#PrincetonPros ✅
Playoff Wins ✅
No-Hitters ✅
Hole-In-One ✅

What a month for Princeton Athletics!

🧡🖤🏆🥇🥈🐯 pic.twitter.com/Me5jnEatqE

— Princeton Tigers (@PUTIGERS) April 4, 2023

That's a lot of winning for one month, and it doesn't even cover everything that happened for the Tigers in March. It was already April when TigerBlog walked out of the Caldwell Field House Saturday afternoon as members of the women's rugby team were heading inside.

"How'd you do?" he asked.

And then they got to say the words that they have worked so hard to say:

"We won."

Another player chimed in that well, they had gone 1-2 on the day, but TB cut her off. 

"You won," he said.

Princeton, in its first year of varsity women's rugby, had defeated Navy 17-14 at the West Chester Sevens event earlier in the day. It's clearly a learning process for the program, which will certainly get there under head coach Josie Ziluca. 

When TB saw the women's rugby players, he was just leaving after Princeton's 16-12 win over Brown in men's lacrosse. Coulter Mackesy was the Ivy League men's lacrosse Player of the Week for the second straight week after his three-goal, three-assist performance in the game.

That outing followed the one a week earlier, in which Mackesy had career highs with eight goals and 10 points in a 23-10 win over Yale. Mackesy, who has scored at least three goals in seven of Princeton's eight games, is getting the recognition he deserves, with the two Ivy honors and with being named to the Tewaaraton Award watchlist.

Mackesy is the one who has earned all the big awards of late, but a special recognition needs to go to junior defenseman Colin Freer. It was Freer who restarted the Princeton chapter of "Best Buddies," and he is now the campus president of the organization.

The "Best Buddies" program brings together people of all ages with and without intellectual disabilities. Under Freer's leadership, the Brown game was a "Best Buddies" outing. 

One of those participants is Bret Fleming, a 40-year-old Best Buddies Global Ambassador who sang the national anthem. Fleming did a great job, even keeping it going despite issues with the field microphone. By the end, most of the crowd was singing along with him. 

The men's lacrosse team is home Saturday against Syracuse, with the face-off at noon. The women's team will take on Columbia at 3:30 in the second game of the doubleheader on Sherrerd Field.

Before that game, the Princeton women have a game this afternoon at 4 at St. Joe's. The Hawks and the Tigers have some similar numbers, with save percentages, team shooting percentages, similar records, similar draw controls per game. 

Also, St. Joe's is a great place to watch a game. If you're going to be near Philadelphia, you should stop by.

The Princeton women have entered the stage of the season where there will be little rest. There are the two games this week and then a similar schedule each of the next two weeks, with games against Loyola and Brown next Wednesday and Saturday and then Penn and Dartmouth the Saturday after that. The regular season ends with a game at home against Harvard on April 30, with the Ivy tournament the weekend after that at the home of the No. 1 seed (the men's tournament will be at Yale). 

Reminder — TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. The daily entries will be posted here for the near future as well before being completely moved to the main website. All archives will still be available.