A Streak Ender

TigerBlog saw the story on the website this week about the Ivy League football television schedule.

If you missed it, there will be six league games that will be broadcast on one of the ESPN networks, and Princeton will be in three of them. This doesn't count the ESPN+ games, where you can see all of the Ivy League games and most of the non-conference games (TB isn't sure about the game at San Diego).

Princeton's games at home against Columbia (Sept. 29) and at Dartmouth (Nov. 3) will be moved to Friday nights and seen on ESPNU. The home game against Yale (Nov. 11) will be on an ESPN network to be determined.  

The announcement of the football television schedule immediately made TB think of two things. 

First, there was his 10-minute or so walk back to the parking lot after Princeton's loss to Penn in the Ivy League baseball tournament championship round. TB, who was wearing his Princeton gear, was walking with a man he'd never met before, and of course they got to talking about the game.

The stranger asked TB if he was a Princeton alum, and TB said that actually, no, he was a Penn alum but he'd spent the last 34 years with the Tigers. Then TB asked the stranger if he was a Penn grad, to which the stranger said no.

When TB asked him what his connection to Penn one, the stranger said "I'm the head football coach."

Oh yeah. That's right. TB knew he looked familiar. It was Ray Priore.

TB, of course, told Priore that he had to be one of a very, very small group of Penn alums who were not happy with the ending of last year's Princeton-Penn game. Priore laughed. 

By the way, during his walk with Priore, TB mentioned that he was friends with Priore's college roommate, whose son played lacrosse growing up and in high school with TB's son. It was a very nice, pleasant conversation. Priore seems like a pretty good guy. When they parted, they shook hands, and TB said that he'd see him again in November and that he'll be the Penn guy rooting against him.  

The other thing that TB thought of when he saw the story was "c'mon, it's only the beginning of June. This athletic year isn't even over yet."

Yes, it is June. Princeton's football game at San Diego to open the 2023 season kicks off on Sept. 16. That's 14 weeks from Saturday. 

Is it really time to think about football? 

As TB said, his conversation with Priore came after the Quakers won the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament by taking the first Ivy tournament. TB was at the men's lacrosse championships as the baseball selections were announced and Penn was matched with Auburn, and his longtime friend and Penn colleague Mike Mahoney said something along the lines of "more Tiger hunting," something that turned out to be prescient.

TB watched a lot of the NCAA baseball regionals this weekend, and some of the games were just epic. Maybe the best was Rider's 11-10 win over Coastal Carolina in the first round, a game followed by another great one, Rider's 2-1 loss to Duke in the next game.

Penn also played two some great games, first with more Tiger hunting, taking down the Auburn Tigers 6-3 in 11 innings by bunting the home team crazy to get the winning runs. After that, Penn advanced to the regional final by beating Samford 5-4. 

If you missed that game, you missed a crazy, crazy ending as the Bulldogs tried to rally from 5-0 down. It was just your basic 6-3-5 put out at third base that withstood a video review. 

TigerBlog wrote this after the Ivy tournament, but it's nearly impossible to lose the first game of a four-team double-elimination baseball and come all the way back through. Of the 32 teams who lost their opener a year ago, none advanced to the Super Regionals.

This time around, 30 of the 32 teams who lost their opener were eliminated before the final day, which was yesterday The only two who reached yesterday were Coastal Carolina, who came all the way back from the Rider loss, and Southern Mississippi, who came all the way back to play Penn yesterday. 

Unfortunately for the Quakers, Southern Miss ended the long streak of teams who lost their first game. The final was 11-7 in favor of the Golden Eagles, whose season keeps going in hopes of joining Mississippi State and Ole Miss to become the third straight College World Series champ from the state of Mississippi.

For Penn? It was a trip back to Philadelphia, and the knowledge that the team had left the Ivy League and all Penn fans — and even one ex-patriot alum — proud of the effort.