Take A Bow, Tigers

The big run had long been over. 

There was still time for a little run. In the end, while that little run might not have changed the outcome, it did speak volumes about the Princeton baseball team.

Princeton, after three grueling games in three days, went into yesterday's final round of the first Ivy League baseball tournament having played its way back through losers' bracket. Waiting there for the Tigers was Penn, who had played twice, both wins, once Friday and once Sunday.

To win, and receive the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, Princeton needed to sweep the Quakers. 

Of course, in all of college sports, there might be nothing tougher than coming back through the losers' bracket of a four-team baseball tournament. To win it, you have to play five games. The team that comes through the winner's bracket can do it in three.

Last year, there were 16 NCAA Division I tournament baseball regionals with four teams each. That meant that 32 teams lost their first game of the tournament.

How many of those 32 made it back through the losers' bracket to win the regional and advance to the Super Regional? Zero.

Why is that? 

It's simple. Pitching. There are a lot of innings to cover in a very short time, and you either have to go way deeper in your staff than your opponent does or you have to throw pitchers on short rest.

Looking back at the regionals last year, only five teams that lost their first game made it all the way back to the last round. Of those five, only one — Vanderbilt — forced the if-necessary Game 7. Vandy, a team with great pitching depth, lost the final game 7-6 to Oregon State.

The other teams that lost their opener and made it to the last day? They lost the first game of the last round with these scores: 22-6, 13-4, 15-9 and 11-4. 

In other words, the odds were not with Princeton.

The Tigers fell behind early and saw it get away quickly. It was 1-0 after the second inning, but Penn exploded from there, with four in the third, eight in the fourth and three in the fifth. Suddenly it was 16-0 Quakers, and the Tigers' chance to extend to the season one more game was clearly gone.

Even with all that, though, a funny thing happened from there. First, Princeton shut out the Quakers the rest of the way. And second, Princeton put up two of its own in the bottom of the fifth, getting an RBI single from Eric Marasheski and an RBI on a fielder's choice for Scott Bandura. 

It was 16-2 heading to the bottom of the ninth. TigerBlog had a sense that somehow, Princeton would get another run, that this Princeton team would not go quietly.

And that's what happened. Fittingly, it came on a home run. Matt Scannell came up with two outs and nobody on, and he drilled one over the centerfield fence. It extended Princeton's school record for home runs in a season to 66.

And so what if the season ended one batter later, with the final 16-3?

This is a Princeton team that went 7-33 last year and then turned that around to go 24-23. That 17-game turnaround in victories, by the way, is the most in Division I baseball this season.

This is a Princeton team that went from 3-18 and last in the Ivy League a year ago to playing on the final day of the first league tournament to get to the NCAAs.

To get there, Princeton had to fight and battle every step of the way this weekend. There were two marathons, including the epic 13-11 win over Columbia Saturday and then the 10-3 win over Harvard Sunday that kept it going one more day. Unfortunately, as happens in these tournaments, it left Princeton with its pitching staff basically on fumes. 

And what happens when your pitchers are tired? They don't get rocked all over the field. More than that, they lose the strike zone. Against Penn yesterday, Princeton pitchers walked 14 and hit seven. That's how it works.  

But this is a team that never gave up. It's a team that went down swinging all the way to the final inning.

Congratulations to Penn on winning. 

And congratulations to Princeton for what it did this weekend, and this entire season. 

Take a bow, Tigers.