A Wow In Women's Water Polo

Maybe the Princeton women's water polo team felt at home playing at the University of the Pacific, which is also the Tigers and also has orange and black as its colors, in this weekend's NCAA tournament.

The Tigers — the Princeton ones — certainly didn't find the moment too big. Not in the least.

Princeton took down California 11-9 Friday night in the NCAA quarterfinals, becoming the first non-West Coast school to reach the Final Four since Michigan did so in 2016. It was also Princeton's first Final Four trip in women's water polo.

Going one step further would have been great, but then again, in women's water polo this year, nobody was able to take that step. Princeton fell 18-8 in the semifinals to USC, one of two teams that dominated everyone else all year.

In fact, USC and Stanford, who met yesterday in the final, were perfect against every other team in the country. 

So yes, the Tigers fell short of an NCAA title, but what they did was amazing. These Tigers finished at 30-4, regained the CWPA championship and then made a real statement about how good they are with the win at Pacific. 

In fact, what the women's water polo team did this weekend will be remembered as one of the very best moments of this academic year in Princeton Athletics. 

Not all great runs end with the championship, after all. 

The Princeton softball team didn't win the Ivy League tournament title, but the Tigers did show what they were made of nonetheless.

Princeton lost the first game of the weekend, to Columbia. Losing the first game of a double-elimination tournament does not make for an easy road back. 

Despite that, Princeton came back to knock off Yale and Columbia Friday to set up a showdown against Harvard, the team with whom it tied in the regular season for the Ivy League title. 

The task for Princeton was to win twice Saturday, and oh did the Tigers come close. They won Game 1 6-0, setting up the "if necessary" game. And that game was dramatic and tense, as a Princeton rally fell just short in a 3-2 loss. 

Again, you don't always win the championship, but you can always do everything you can as a team to extend your season as far as possible.

The Ivy League baseball tournament will be held at Penn this coming weekend. The Quakers swept Columbia in a doubleheader Saturday while Harvard split with Yale, and those results meant two things: 1) Columbia was officially the fourth team in the Ivy tournament along with Penn, Harvard and Princeton and 2) Penn took a one-game lead over Harvard into the final day of the regulars season.

Because Harvard had taken two of three from Penn during the season, a Harvard win and Penn loss Sunday would have sent the baseball tournament to Cambridge. Instead, the Quakers won their game 10-4, clinching the outright title and the hosting rights, even though Harvard beat Yale as well. 

The matchups for the first round of the tournament will be Penn-Columbia and Princeton-Harvard. Like softball, this one is also double elimination, though it's spread over four days instead of three. First pitch is Friday in Philadelphia.

The baseball championship that Penn won was the 30th the league awarded this year and left only the three rowing titles, which were going to be decided yesterday. One of the reasons TigerBlog wanted to see Penn win was because it denied Harvard an 11th Ivy title. Princeton came into the weekend with 11. 

That number grew to an insurmountable 12 when the women's open rowers won the Ivy League first varsity 8 race by 1.5 seconds over Penn. The final total was 13, as the men's lightweights followed with an Ivy title of their own about an hour later.

The heavyweight men didn't win, but they did have a great showing, finishing in second. 

Again, not all great efforts end in championships. Some do. Some don't. You cherish the ones that do, and you respect the ones who also gave everything they had.