Two Questions

 TigerBlog starts your Tuesday with two questions: 

1) When was the last time a Princeton men's basketball player had at least 26 points and 15 rebounds in a game before Caden Pierce put up those numbers Friday night in a 74-67 win at Hofstra? 

Pierce, not shockingly, was named the Ivy League Player of the Week. He is currently third in Division I in rebounding at 15.0 per game, and the 6-6 Pierce trails only a pair of 6-11 big men — North Carolina's Armando Bacot and Penn State's Qudus Wahab.

2) When was the last time the Ivy League had four teams win games in an NCAA tournament?

The answer to No. 2 is easy. Or at least recent. It was in 2022, when four teams won games in the opening round of the NCAA men's lacrosse tournament. You may remember Princeton was one of those four, and the Tigers ended up in the Final Four.

Why ask? This past weekend, the Ivy League had four teams compete in the NCAA women's soccer opening round — and all four won. That's an extraordinary statement on the quality of the sport in the league. 

Actually, the four wins might not be the most impressive part. The fact that all four played at home might be even more amazing.

It's been a little more than a week since the four teams — Princeton, Harvard, Brown and Columbia — played in the Ivy League tournament. TB can't even remember who won (Columbia, he thinks), because all four were guaranteed NCAA spots anyway. And to be among the 32 teams who played at home? 

Of those 32 teams, by the way, the record was 30-2, with home losses by only UCLA (to UC-Irvine) and Tennessee (over Xavier). The brackets were seeded 1-8; can you imagine a men's basketball tournament where 30 of the top 32 seeds reached the Round of 32? 

If TigerBlog may digress, UCLA women's soccer has now gone first round loss as a No. 1 seed, NCAA title, first round loss as a No. 1 seed in the last three tournaments. You'd take that for your team, right? Maybe Purdue men's basketball can do something like that this year. 

Back in the Ivy League, Princeton took down Michigan 1-0 Friday night on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium to get the Ivy party started. Harvard knocked off Maine and Brown knocked off Quinnipiac Saturday, and Columbia made it four for the league by beating Rutgers Sunday.

Princeton's goal came in the 80th minute, when Lexi Hiltunen pounced on a loose ball in the box and tucked inside the near post. If you saw the highlight, then you saw the great crowd reaction from the fans behind the goal. 

All four teams are on the road for the second (and possibly third) round this weekend, with Harvard-Michigan State at Stanford, Brown-Mississippi State at BYU, Columbia at Clemson and Princeton at Texas Tech.

If that last matchup sounds familiar, Princeton played in Lubbock in the 2018 NCAA tournament. For Princeton, the win over Michigan marked the fifth time in its last six NCAA trips that it has won at least one game; the lone exception was its first round game at Texas Tech.

The Princeton-Texas Tech game will be Friday at 7 Eastern, after the North Carolina-Alabama game starts the doubleheader. Those winners meet Sunday for a spot in the quarterfinals.

As for Question No. 1, TigerBlog is pretty sure the answer is Bob Roma, who had 29 points and 18 rebounds in a 67-65 loss at Seton Hall on Dec. 6, 1978. 

Roma almost won the game for the Tigers at the very end, as he was fouled going to the basket in the final seconds, only to see his shot roll out (there was no three-point shot yet). He then went to the foul line with one second remaining, making the first and missing the second intentionally before Seton Hall controlled it as the buzzer sounded.

Seton Hall's leading scorer that night was Dan Callandrillo, whose name should be familiar to basketball fans from that era. Callandrillo, who scored 21 against the Tigers that night, was one of the great scorers in Big East history, finishing his career with 1,985 points and winning Big East Player of the Year as a senior in 1981-82 after averaging 25.9 points per game, against without the three-point shot.

Oh, and the coaching matchup that night?

It was Pete Carril and Bill Raftery.