Saturday Hoops

Back when TigerBlog was the Princeton men's basketball contact, one of the best parts of any year was seeing the schedule for the first time. 

This would be in the fall, well before the season began. Where was the team traveling? Anyplace good? Flights? Warm weather? 

It was with the Princeton men's basketball team that TB got to travel from here to there and pretty much everywhere around the country. He really appreciates the stops he made along the way in those years, places he might never have had the chance to see.

To name a few: El Paso, Texas. East Lansing, Michigan. Lawrence, Kansas. New Orleans (twice). Honolulu. Green Bay. Milwaukee. Champaign, Illinois. Fresno. Ames, Iowa (twice). Muncie, Indiana.

This was back when this time of year was dominated by holiday tournaments that no longer exist, usually four-team events both before and after Christmas. It was always a big deal to win the first game and avoid the dreaded "consolation" game, something Princeton was very good at doing. 

Ah, those were the days. All-tournament teams. MVPs. It reminds TigerBlog of one of his favorite Pete Carril moments, after one of those events. 

TB asked Carril what he thought about one of his players who had made the all-tournament team. Carril's response: "So did the guy he was guarding." 

Even all these years later, TB still laughed out loud as he typed that.

For all of those experiences, he can't imagine what the Vermont women's basketball team members thought when the 2024-25 schedule came across their phones. A trip to Minneapolis for the second game of the year? That was nothing compared to what was to follow. 

Vermont made the 4,256-mile trip to Anchorage, Alaska, for games Nov. 22 and 23. Next up? Two more games five and six days later in Cancun. Distance from Burlington? This one was only 3,656 miles. 

Or did the team go straight from Anchorage to Cancun? That's 5,775 miles. 

That is an incredible 10-day stretch for any team. Has any college basketball team ever had a four-game stretch with the first two in Alaska and the next two in Mexico? 

Vermont's next game is also on the road, though this trip is nothing quite like the other two. In fact, it's in Jadwin Gym, where the Catamounts will tip off at noon tomorrow against Princeton. 

It's a big Saturday tomorrow for Princeton Basketball, with the women's game at home and the men's game at the Prudential Center in Newark against Rutgers, also at noon tomorrow. It's a return to the court for the teams after first semester exams after they last played on Dec. 10 (the men) and Dec. 11 (the women).

The Vermont women will come to Jadwin on short rest, after they played yesterday at Buffalo, where they dropped a tough 70-68 decision to a Bulls team that is now 10-0. 

The Catamounts are 5-8 on the year with all the travel and the tough opponents. Their record the last three years combined was 70-30 (that's around a 70 percent winning percentage, right?) with an NCAA tournament appearance two years ago and a run to the WNIT semifinals last year. 

Princeton defeated Vermont 67-47 a year ago in Burlington. The leading scorer in that game was Madison St. Rose, who put up 23.

St. Rose, of course, is out injured. Without her, Princeton has gone 4-2, with wins over Rutgers, Seton Hall, Temple and Rhode Island and losses at Portland (who is still unbeaten) and Utah. 

As for the Princeton-Rutgers men's game, as TB wrote Monday, this is a chance for the Tigers to go up against the phenomenal Scarlet Knights duo of Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey, who rank first and third in Division I in points per game among freshman, with more than 40 per game between them. 

What does Harper have in common with Bill Bradley, at least through 11 career games (as opposed to the 83 Bradley played)? They both have a career-low of 14 points. Harper has had at least 20 points nine times in those 11 games, with games of 36 against Notre Dame and 37 against Alabama in back-to-back outings. 

Rutgers also has former Tiger Zach Martini, a key member of Princeton's Sweet 16 team of two years ago. 

Whether you're in Jadwin or Newark, or in front of your TV or computer, make sure you take advantage of your Saturday hoops. 

The wrapping presents can wait until later.

To The Playoffs

So, it's finals week at Princeton. 

Christmas is next week. The schedule across all eight teams is light. Things are slow in the Ivy League right now, right?

Yeah, no.

TigerBlog has to say that he was not expecting the announcement yesterday of a major change in Ivy League policy. Beginning in 2025, the Ivy football champion will play in the FCS playoffs. 

If you haven't seen the release, you can read it HERE.

This is the first sentence: Following a year-long process initiated by the Ivy League's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), the Ivy League Council of Presidents has approved a proposal to participate in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoffs beginning next season.

Yale's Mason Shipp caught 39 passes 431 yards and two touchdowns, both of which came against Brown, this past season. That's not an All-Ivy League resume, but it is a solid senior season, obviously.

More than that, though, Shipp will be remembered for his role in what is among the top three changes that TigerBlog has witnessed in all his time in the league (along with freshman eligibility in football and the adoption of Ivy League tournaments in most team sports but especially basketball).

"It's a monumental day in the Ivy League and a special day to be an Ivy League student-athlete," said Mason Shipp, a senior football student-athlete at Yale who serves as the Ivy League SAAC chair and penned the proposal. "Thank you to the Presidents for listening and responding to the voices of your students. For the future generations that are fortunate enough to represent the Ivy League in the FCS playoffs, go win us some hardware!"

The vote of the Ivy presidents to adopt the proposal that Shipp put forward reminds TB of another athlete, Curt Flood, a pretty good Major League Baseball player in the 1950s and 1960s. Back then, the Major Leagues operated under the Reserve Clause, which meant that the players were obligated to their teams until they were traded or released. 

It was Flood who refused to accept a 1969 trade, leading to a series of legal dominoes that ended with the first free agency four years later. Extra credit goes to those who knew that the first Major League free agent was pitcher Andy Messersmith.

So what does this mean for Ivy football? 

It's certainly a game-changing move. If you go back to 1945, you'll see the first Ivy Group agreement, one that was amended in September 1952. This is from the Daily Princetonian in 1952:

A new Presidents' Agreement governing football has been signed by the Presidents of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale. It revises the original agreement of November 1945 and formulates an association "to be known as the 'Ivy Group.'" Among the points changed is the rule regarding the abolition of spring football practice, football clinics and post-season games.

With that as a background, the Ivy League first contested an official football championship in 1956. The Division I-AA tournament — the forerunner to the FCS tournament — began in 1978, when Florida A&M was the first winner. Either North Dakota State or South Dakota State has won 11 of the last 13 championships, and one of them is guaranteed to be in this year's championship game, since they play Saturday in the semifinals (Montana and South Dakota play in the other). 

There have been two finalists from teams currently in the Patriot League, Lehigh in 1979 and Colgate in 2003. Lehigh was this year's Patriot League representative, and the Mountain Hawks won their first round game against Richmond before falling to Idaho. 

Have there been Ivy League teams since 1978 who would have made strong runs through the tournament? Probably. Were Princeton teams among them? Certainly — especially 2018. 

The Ivy League is still working out all of the tiebreakers to determine who would get its automatic bid in the event of multiple champions. The last two years have seen back-to-back tri-champions; there have been five teams who have won at least a share of the title in the last four years (including Princeton in 2021). 

In other words, it's obviously a league of great balance and competitiveness. Having its champion advance to the NCAA playoffs will make it even more so, with so much to play for each week. You don't want to leave things up to the tiebreakers, right? 

The biggest part of the story to TB, though, goes beyond anything that happens on the football field. It's that the Ivy League allowed its Student Athlete Advisory Committee to initiate a major policy change. 

It's a sign that the league puts on the value of intercollegiate athletics and how they are an important part of the experience — and the education — of those who compete here.

This was extraordinarily good news on so many levels.

First-Team All-American

Beth Yeager began her season as an American Olympian and ended it as a first-team All-American. 

When the NFHCA announced its All-American teams yesterday, there was Yeager, not shockingly as a first-team selection. TigerBlog then went to make a graphic for the honor, his original version brought back a suggestion from Gracie McGowan, Yeager's teammate and the Princeton field hockey social media leader: Why not use a picture of Beth with an American flag?

Now that was a great idea. 

There have been 28 Ivy League field hockey players who have earned first-team All-American honors at least once. 

Of those 28, how many played at Princeton? The answer is 23. That's pretty impressive. 

In other words, Princeton field hockey has produced 82 percent of the Ivy League's first-team All-Americans. It's fitting for a program that has won more than half of the league's championships, including the most recent one, in which Princeton went 7-0 to win the title for the 28th time. 

Are there any other sports in which one school has produced 82 percent of the Ivy League's first-team All-Americans? For that matter, how many teams in any league have done so.

TigerBlog would ask ChatGPT, except the last time he did, the answer was "Jarron Rosa," a reference that would make you chuckle if you'd read what TB wrote about it last week. In fact, he'd like to see ChatGPT answer "Jarron Rosa" to every question he ever asks it. 

The list of those 28 first-team All-Americans in Ivy field hockey history consists of anyone who has been honored even once. There are only three Ivy players who have been first-team All-American three times, and all three of those are Princetonians. 

That list would be four, all Princetonians, had Martha Russo not destroyed her knee twice in the early 1980s. She'd already been a two-time first-team All-American by that point and would have been a lock for her senior year, which would have been after she played in the 1984 Summer Olympic Games. 

Instead she'd never play an organized sport again. Her "replacement sport" became art, and today is she is a well-respected and well-known sculptor in Colorado. 

The first two who did in fact earn three first-team All-American honors were Katie Reinprect and Kat Sharkey, teammates on Princeton's 2012 NCAA championship team. Yeager became the third with yesterday's announcement.

Should Yeager repeat the honor next year, she would become the first ever four-time Ivy League first-team All-American in field hockey. It got TB to thinking about any Princeton athletes who would have been named first-team All-American four times. 

He limited this to sports where the honor is voted on, not won by finishes in what could be considered individual sports — such as in swimming and driving, track and field, fencing, golf and squash. 

So is there anyone in "team" sports (understanding that the individual sports are very much team sports on the collegiate level)? If there is someone, TB didn't find that person.

If Yeager does manage to be a four-time first-team All-American, she will be truly deserving. You only need to watch her for a few seconds to see just how skilled she is, and if you watch her for 60 minutes, you'll see how fit she is. She elevates everyone around her, even as she is the focal point of every opponent. 

If you've never seen field hockey, you need to see her play next year. She will give you a quick education on what a fairly perfect player in the sport looks like. 

When TB first saw the All-American list, he was confident that Yeager would be first team after the season she had. It wasn't a lock just because she was an Olympian though — there were five U.S. Olympians who played college field hockey this year and not all of them were first-team All-American. 

At the same time, TB was disappointed that Princeton sophomore Ella Cashman was not named to any of the three teams. Cashman played at an All-American level all season, and even with Yeager's greatness, Princeton would not have had the season it did had Cashman not made the jump she did from freshman year to this year. 

Cashman has two more chances to be honored. Yeager has one more to make history.

Playing Foosball With Momo

TigerBlog has a Foosball strategy: Always keep your left hand on the back line.

Use your right hand for the other three lines. Just keep your left hand on your goalie. That way, no matter what happens you're always ready for wherever the ball comes from as you defend your net. 

It had been a very, very long time since TB had actually had to use that strategy. He can't remember the last time he played the game — until yesterday, that is.

He found himself in Yeh College for the first time, the guest of Momo Wolapaye, the Director of Student Life for Whitman College. Momo had invited TB to join him for lunch one day, and "one day" became yesterday.

There aren't many bigger Princeton sports fans than Momo Wolapaye. He's a Princeton Athletic Fellow for the football and men's basketball teams, and he's probably at some point seen every team play. 

TB and Momo ate in the Yeh cafeteria. TB has always loved eating in dining halls, where 1) there is a huge selection, 2) you can eat as much as you like, 3) you don't have to make it and 4) you don't have to clean it up. 

As TB sat there, it dawned on him that, while he has lived his entire life in a 50 mile or so radius of the Princeton campus, it was a much different road for Momo. How many Princeton sports fans grew up in Liberia, left the country and was a refugee around Africa during the Liberian civil war, went to college in Iowa, went to grad school in Ohio and worked at Dartmouth before he came to Princeton?

This week is, of course, final exam week at Princeton. The cafeteria was filled with students who were studying, eating, preparing. 

TigerBlog saw a lot of familiar faces. There were two groups of men's lacrosse players. There were athletes from many other teams, identifiable by their shirts, coats or backpacks. It's always good to see them on the "student" side of "student-athlete," since it reinforces that Princeton Athletics is first and foremost and educational venture.

He also saw Keyan Vojdani, a freshman who covered field hockey for the Daily Princetonian and is now covering men's hockey. This was one of those situations where it takes a second to realize who that person is because you're seeing that person completely out of any context you've ever had. 

TB wished Keyan luck on his finals. When you first go through it, as he is as a freshman, it can be a bit overwhleming, though he seemed fine. In fact, he seemed fine even though he said he had one in three hours. 

TB also saw Claire Pinciaro, Assistant Dean of Student Life at Yeh. Claire was also a second-team All-Ivy League goalkeeper for Princeton in 2012, when she helped the women's soccer team to the Ivy title and an NCAA tournament win.

Mostly, though, he spoke with Momo, someone he's seen at countless games but never really had a chance to really get to know. TB can tell you that Momo is exactly the kind of person you want in his role. He's someone who is definitely committed to the student experience and to doing whatever he can to make that experience the best it can be. 

Momo gave TB a tour of the new buildings, since it was TB's first time inside them. When they finished eating, TB asked if he had to get back to work immediately, and TB then asked him if he wanted to play Foosball, after they had walked past the table on their way towards the cafeteria. 

And so, for the first time in who knows how long, TB has his left hand on the goalie and moved his right hand to the other three positions. The game was played to three, and, well, TB won 3-0. 

In the interest of full disclosure, all three of his goals were just luck. 

Anyway, this wasn't about winning or losing. This was about spending an hour or so with one of the brightest stars on the Princeton campus (Momo, not TB). 

Princeton is a very big place. There are a lot of different departments and offices and silos. The chance to reach out and connect outside of your building and your silo should always be taken advantage of if possible. 

TB enjoyed his lunch yesterday, and for more reasons than he didn't have to make it or clean it up. When he left, he thanked his host, wished him a happy holiday season — and told him that they should have lunch again. 

He'll make sure he follows up on that.

A Weekend Off

Remember last week, when TigerBlog mentioned the billboard he saw from the law firm, saying to call them if "Grandma got run over by a reindeer?"

Well, this week on 295 TB saw another holiday-themed message. This wasn't a billboard but one of those messages that implores you to drive safely.

This one said: "Texting and Driving? That automatically puts you on the naughty list."

That's not bad. This is, after all the time of year when parents can get little kids to do almost anything by simply pointing out that "Santa is watching" and that they're going to end up on the naughty list. 

Anyway, so what did you do this weekend? 

TigerBlog knows what you didn't do. You didn't watch any Princeton teams play.

Because of first semester exams, this is essentially the midpoint of a 10-day stretch with no Princeton Athletic events. This past weekend was, in fact, the first weekend since Aug. 23 without any Princeton team who was competing. 

There were teams who are going to be playing against Princeton soon who did compete.

One of those was the Rutgers men's basketball team, who beat Seton Hall 66-63 on freshman Dylan Harper's buzzer-beating three-pointer. Harper and fellow five-star Ace Bailey combined for 45 of Rutgers' 66 points. 

For the season, those two are averaging 41.4 points per game, so the game Saturday against the Pirates wasn't all that out of the ordinary. The two are both projected as top five NBA draft picks this coming year, if they leave after one year.

Their next game will be Saturday at noon at the Prudential Center in Newark. The opponent? Princeton.

Tickets can be purchased HERE.

Of course, if you're a Princeton fan, you're as interested in seeing No. 99 for the Scarlet Knights play as much as you are the two freshmen. That No. 99 is Zach Martini, the Princeton alum and a key figure on the Tigers' 2023 Sweet 16 team. 

Martini is averaging 4.5 points per game for Rutgers. He is 16 for 32 from the field, of which 10 of 24 is from three-point range, which makes Martini 6 for 8 on two-point shots. 

Rutgers is currently 3-0 against New Jersey opponents, having defeated St. Peter's and Monmouth in addition to Seton Hall. Princeton is 1-0 against the Garden State, with a win of its own over Monmouth.

By the way, Harper was named the MVP of the game against Seton Hall and as such was given the Joe Calabrese Trophy. Joe Calabrese was a longtime New Jersey sportswriter who covered a lot of college sports, including at Princeton.

TigerBlog spent quite a few hours driving to and from Princeton games with Joe Calabrese when he'd cover the Tigers on the road. He was part of something of a golden age in New Jersey college sportswriting, not to mention an extraordinarily nice person. He'd be thrilled to know that his name is on a trophy for that game.

Princeton and Rutgers first played basketball against each other in 1917, and Princeton holds a 76-45 edge in the series. That first game, by the way, was 48 years after Rutgers and Princeton played in the first college football game ever. 

The game Saturday will be the fifth between the teams to be played at a neutral site. One of those was last year, when Princeton defeated Rutgers at the Cure Arena in Trenton. Another was the heartbreaking 54-53 Tiger loss in the 1976 NCAA tournament in Providence, in a year when the Scarlet Knights were unbeaten and reached the Final Four. 

The teams also played at Madison Square Garden in 1972 and 2000. 

And then there will be the game Saturday in Newark. It's a chance to see an old friend and the two new superstars — and to do so in a beautiful arena. What could be better than that, especially after all this time away?

Until then, it's still first semester exams. 

From there, it'll be June before there's another Tiger-less weekend.

The Great Jarron Rosa And More

So what would you like to talk about today, with first semester exams underway and no games for more than a week? 

*

What was the response of Jon Mozes to TigerBlog's mentioning the line that Mozes used after Parker Hill's late blocked shot against Rhode Island Wednesday night? 

If you forgot, Mozes said "Usually rams are good at climbing hills." The timing was perfect. 

With a day to consider the comment, Mozes had this to say:

Honestly, it was some of my best work. Ever.

By the way, Jon Mozes is a very humble person, so don't ascribe anything boastful to what he said. He also has a very good sense of humor. 

*

Xaivian Lee's triple-double against Saint Joseph's included the 16th time a Princeton player has reached double figures in assists (Lee had 10 in that game). Those first 15 double-figure assist nights were accomplished by only six players. Can you name them? The answer is below.

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Bill Belichick, as you may have heard, is now the head football coach at the University of North Carolina. While it may seem like an odd move for the longtime NFL coach, it certainly will be shining a spotlight on Tar Heel football as it moves forward.

Before the story became official, TigerBlog saw a headline in the New York Post sports section that said: "Bill Belichick would be the 'worst college coach I could imagine': ex-NFLer Ross Tucker."

Here is a quote from Tucker, who was speaking on a radio station:

“I mean the idea of the guy that I was around, recruiting, or like going into the living room of a 17-year-old — I want this to happen so bad I can taste it. I mean, if they do it, they’ve gotta have cameras everywhere. The guy, when I was in New England, was like 100 percent negative reinforcement. I would love to just see how quickly those kids go into the transfer portal.”

Ross Tucker, of course, is a Princeton alum, Class of 2001, who then played seven seasons in the National Football League as an offensive lineman. Today he is a hugely successful sports media personality, and he is a huge presence in any room he is in, literally and figuratively. 

*

Speaking of Xaivian Lee, he is currently averaging 15.8 points, 6.0 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game. Who was the last Princeton men's basketball player to achieve those numbers? 

It wasn't Jarron Rosa, TB is pretty sure. For starters, Princeton has never had a Jarron Rosa. So who is he? Well, ol' Jarron is the person that ChatGPT suggested is the answer to TB's question. Here is what it had to say:

The last Princeton University men's basketball player to average at least 15.8 points, 5.6 assists, and 6.0 rebounds per game was Jarron Rosa. He accomplished this remarkable feat during the 2000-2001 season. Rosa was known for his all-around game, combining scoring, playmaking, and rebounding to make a significant impact on the court. He was one of the best players in the Ivy League during his time at Princeton and remains one of the program's standout performers in terms of versatility and production.

TB even did a search for "Jarron Rosa Basketball" and it turned up nothing. If you go back to the 2001-01 Princeton season, you'll find that — despite the fact that the Tigers won the Ivy title — that no player averaged 15.8 points OR 5.6 assists OR 6.0 rebounds. Oh well.

The actual answer is "nobody." Who came closest? Tosan Evbuomwan, who averaged 15.1 points, 6.3 rebounds and 5.0 assists for the Sweet Sixteen team of two years ago.

*

And the answer is: Billy Ryan (five), Kit Mueller (four), John Thompson III (two), T.J. Bray (two), Spencer Weisz (one), John Lewis (one).  

*

Have a great weekend — and if you're a Princeton student, study well.

Usually Rams Are Good At Climbing Hills

TigerBlog is glad he left the ESPN+ broadcast of the women's basketball game against Rhode Island on until the final buzzer last night.

Why's that? Well, had he turned it off before the final minute, he would have missed this gem by play-by-play man Jon Mozes, after Parker Hill emphatically blocked a shot:

"Usually Rams are good at climbing hills." 

TB will have to ask Mozes if he had that planned the whole time or if that just came out, spur of the moment. Dei Lynam, who was doing the game with Mozes, sighed and said "oh, if only I had thought of that."

Hmmm. TigerBlog has done hundreds of games on the radio in his career. He's trying to remember if he ever said anything like that. He must have, maybe even accidentally.

Oh, it was the perfect delivery. Great work, Jon.  

By the way, TigerBlog went onto youtube to try to find a video of a ram as it ran up a hill. Guess what he found instead? Yup, videos of pickup trucks that were driving up steep hills.

Like the Princeton men the night before against Monmouth, the Princeton women bounced back from some well-played, hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful outings over the weekend to get a 66-54 win over Rhode Island. 

Also like the Princeton men, the Princeton women can take the momentum of a win into what is now a long break due to first semester exams. Next up for both teams will be games Dec. 21, which is a week from Saturday, when the women will be at Jadwin against Vermont and the men will be at the Prudential Center in Newark against Rutgers. 

Fadima Tall was the ESPN+ Player of the Game last night, after she had a 13-point, seven-rebound, five-assist effort. For Tall, the 13 points tied her career high, something she's now done three times, including in back-to-back games. 

The sophomore averaged 3.3 points per game in the first 18 games of her career, which consisted of 15 games last year and the first three this year. Since then? She has put up 72 more points in the last seven games. That's an average of 10.3 per game.

Ashley Chea also continues to make a jump in her own sophomore year. Chea, who had an 18-point, six-assist night against the Rams, has 80 points in the six games since Madison St. Rose was injured, an average of 13.3 per game. She also had her first 20-point game in the win over Rutgers.

Chea averaged six points per game a year ago, when she played in all 30 games. She averaged 11.3 per game for the first four this season. 

Another sophomore is Skye Belker, who averaged 8.5 per game last year and who is now averaging 13.5 per game this year. Belker shot just under 30 percent from three-point range last year; she's at 43.5 percent so far this season. 

Tabitha Amanze is a junior, but her entire freshman season was wiped out by injury. She didn't have any double figure scoring games a year ago or in the first four games this year. 

Since then? She's had four double figure games in the last six, including a career-high 14 last night. Those 14 points came in only 14 minutes.

It's great to see progress like that. 

And with the final buzzer came the start of exam break. If you look at the composite schedule on the webpage, you'll see that there are a lot of empty boxes in the coming days. 

It's fascinating to TB that there are no longer any students at Princeton who ever had first semester exams in the New Year. After all, that was the University policy for, well, TB has no idea how long. 

Relegated to the history of Princeton University is the post-holiday exam period. It was always a long two weeks in January with no sports, and now it feels like nostalgia. 

At least both basketball teams went into exams with wins. It certainly makes the studying easier. 

An NCAA Title, A Home WBB Game — And Bones Writes Another Great Story

There have been 43 NCAA women's soccer tournaments to date. The University of North Carolina has won 22 of them. 

TigerBlog, being the math guy he is, knew instantly that such numbers mean that the Tar Heels have won more than half of the titles. The most recent one came Monday night, when UNC beat Wake Forest in the championship game, 1-0.

You have to feel for Wake. The Demon Deacons were making their second appearance in the NCAA final, and who was waiting there for them? Their biggest nemesis. 

The win improved UNC to 36-2-3 all-time in the series, outscoring Wake 121-15 in that time. That's a rough one. 

UNC is now 153-18-5 in the NCAA tournament (if you're wondering about the five ties, NCAA games that go to penalty kicks are entered as ties officially in the all-time records). Of course, one of those 18 losses came in 2017 to your very own Princeton Tigers, who knocked off UNC 2-1 in overtime on an Abby Givens goal.

Princeton was represented on the current UNC team, as Tiger alum Aria Nagai started all 27 games this year for the Heels as a grad student, finishing with three goals and three assists. She was a three-time All-Ivy League selection at Princeton, including a first-team honor as a senior in 2023. She was also a two-time CSC Academic All-District selection.

Her Princeton coaches were there Monday night to cheer her on:

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Another current Princeton alum who is in her grad season is Kaitlyn Chen, who has started all eight games for UConn as its point guard. Chen, who was the Ivy League tournament Most Outstanding Player three times, is second on the team in assists as the Huskies have won all eight games. 

Could she make it a second Princeton alum with an NCAA title this academic year? 

Chen's former team is home tonight at 7 against Rhode Island. The Rams are an uncharacteristic 4-7 on the year, though they are one year removed from a 21-14 season that took them to the Atlantic 10 final, with a win at home against Princeton early that season. 

Princeton is back on Carril Court after a western swing that saw the Tigers lose at Portland and Utah, though both games could have gone either way. Those two teams, by the way, are now 17-2 between them on the year. 

Today is Dec. 11. When is the next time Princeton will play an away game?

That would be Jan. 20, when the Tigers are at Columbia. 

Between now and then, there will be seven straight home games, beginning with the game tonight and continuing after exams with games against Vermont (Dec. 21) and Middle Tennessee (Dec. 29) before the New Year. After that will be the first three Ivy games, against Cornell, Harvard and Dartmouth. 

Meanwhile, speaking of women's basketball, there is the matter of the Time Magazine story for its 2024 Athlete of the Year. The winner? Who else could it have been other than Caitlin Clark. 

You can read the story HERE.

TigerBlog would have read the story no matter what. When he saw that it was written by Sean Gregory, he was definitely going to read every word — which he did.

Sean Gregory — "Bones," as he was known as a Princeton basketball player on the great teams of the mid- to late-1990s — is a phenomenal writer. 

As you probably know, TigerBlog likes to write long feature pieces. In an impatient world like this one, the audience of readers who have the attention span to go through the whole story can be somewhat limited, though it is definitely worth it.

The story that Sean has written has a notation that it would take 34 minutes to read. It's time well spent. 

Tackling the Caitlin Clark subject is not easy, because of all of the obvious storylines that followed her around during her last two years at Iowa and then her rookie year with the Indiana Fever in the WNBA. Gregory does a great job of presenting all of the sides to her story, without pushing an agenda in any way. 

TB was in Indianapolis in the summer, and he bought a Caitlin Clark jersey in the team store in the Gainbridge Fieldhouse. He wrote about this earlier, but the saleswoman said that upwards of 80 percent of everything sold in that store, which includes the NBA's Indiana Pacers as well as the Fever, was Caitlin Clark stuff.

TB also wrote that the only athlete he can think of who transcended their sport the way that Clark did was Tiger Woods. It is incredible what she has done. It's also a statement on contemporary society the reactions she's drawn. 

And so, to sum up for your Wednesday: 

* congratulations to Aria Nagai
* go UConn
* check out the women's basketball game tonight at 7
* read Sean's story

And there you have it.

Hi Rip

Remember Nutmeg, the dog TigerBlog saw in the lobby of the hotel before the Princeton field hockey team played at Harvard this past season? 

Here he is. What a great face, right? TB doesn't need that good of a reason to bring back Nutmeg.

What did people do before they could simply take a picture on a phone and have it immediately? Or a video for that matter? 

For those too young to know this, there was a time when you had to have an actual camera and load it with actual film and then take it to an actual photo shop (not PhotoShop). They used to have one-hour photo places, though the majority of places you'd take your film to be processed used to take a few days. 

Can you imagine that, young people? You'd take a picture and then you couldn't see it for several days? Or longer, actually, since there were 24 or 36 pictures on a roll of film and you had to take all the pictures before any could be developed.

On the one hand, it's been a great addition to life to be able to immediately document moments that are gone in a blink. On the other hand, how many times do you see something interesting happening and instead of enjoying the moment, every observer has a phone out, filming?

TB will leave it to the philosophers and poets to decipher that.

Meanwhile, TB offers you a picture of another dog, one he saw yesterday: 

And what is this guy's name? It's "Rip." This was the conversation that TB and the owner had:

The Owner: "This is Rip."
TigerBlog: "Rip? Like the guy ..."
The Owner: "... the guy from Yellowstone, yes."

If you have watched the show, then you can understand why someone would want to name a dog Rip. TB did suggest to the woman who was walking the dog that her Rip needed to get a doggie-sized cowboy hat and dark shades to complete the look.

If you haven't been watching Yellowstone, you need to go back and binge. And, if you didn't already know, the character of Beth is played by Kelly Reilly, who is married to former Princeton men's lacrosse player Kyle Baugher, Class of 2002. 

And, given that tonight is the last night in the calendar year of 2024 that there are two home Princeton events and that after tonight there will only be three more events in the next 19 days, you'll have plenty of time to catch up on Yellowstone.

There are two games tonight at Princeton, as the women's hockey team hosts LIU at 6 and the men's basketball team hosts Monmouth at 7. 

As TB wrote yesterday, the two Princeton hockey teams are on a good roll. So too is the women's team at LIU.

The Princeton women have won four straight and seven of eight. The LIU women are 10-5-2 and are 5-0-1 in their last six and 7-1-1 in their last nine, with the only loss during that time a 1-0 setback to the same Quinnipiac team Princeton beat 2-1 in overtime this weekend. 

Monmouth comes to Jadwin Gym tonight with a record of 1-9. Against whom is the lone win? How about Seton Hall? 

The Princeton men's basketball team is back from South Carolina after its 69-63 loss at Furman Saturday. Despite the loss, it was still a big week for Xaivian Lee, who had the first official triple-double in Princeton men's basketball history in the win over Saint Joseph's a week ago tonight with an 18-point, 13-rebound 10-assist outing and who averaged 17.0 points, 10.0 rebounds, 7.5 assists and 1.5 steals for the two games. 

As a result? He was the Ivy League Player of the Week. 

TB's natural curiosity led him to wonder who the last Princeton player was to average those numbers across two games. For the first time in his entire life, therefore, he consulted ChatGPT, and this is what he found out:

The last time a Princeton men's basketball player averaged 17.0 points, 10.0 rebounds, 7.5 assists, and 1.5 steals across two games was Tosan Evbuomwan during the 2022-2023 season. In back-to-back games on March 18 and 19, 2023, in the NIT Tournament, Evbuomwan put up impressive all-around numbers in wins over Kent State and UNC Greensboro.

This performance helped highlight Evbuomwan's versatility and his pivotal role in Princeton's success that season. He was a dynamic force, contributing not just as a scorer, but also as a playmaker and defender. Would you like to dive deeper into those games or discuss another player from Princeton's history?

Well, that's certainly not what TB was expecting. He really, really, really doesn't want to get too into the AI world and would never use it to write anything, but maybe, just maybe, this will help with research. Hey, it took TB a long time until he got his own smartphone — and now he's going around taking pictures of dogs.

Is that progress?

Tis The Princeton Hockey Season

Your week on TigerBlog starts with great moments in advertising.

TigerBlog was driving down the highway the other day when he saw an epic billboard. It had a picture of a guy dressed up like Santa Claus, with huge letters that spelled out the following: 

"Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer? Call The Law Office Of So-and-So and So-and-So." 

Now that's funny. 

Tis the season and all. What kind of season will this end up being for Princeton Hockey? Well, it was a pretty good weekend for the Tiger men and women.

The two combined for a 3-0 weekend, with a huge overtime win for the women over No. 7 Quinnipiac and a sweep of Union and RPI for the men. 

How did the game against Quinnipiac go? Here's the first sentence from the story on goprincetontigers.com, by TB's colleague Chas Dorman:

The nation's No. 2-ranked offense (Princeton) and No. 2-ranked defense (Quinnipiac) did battle at Hobey Baker Rink in a crucial ECAC contest, and ultimately Princeton had Sarah Paul and the Bobcats didn't in a 2-1 overtime win for the Tigers.

Paul, if you haven't figured it out, scored both Princeton goals in the game. 

Princeton has the nation's top power play unit, and Paul's first goal of the game added to that. It came with 13:33 left in the third period, after Quinnipiac had gone up 1-0 with a goal in the second. 

Paul's second won it 2:06 into the overtime, with her goal set up beautifully by Jane Kuehl, who pounced on a loose puck, carried it around the goalie and fed it to the backside to a wide-open Paul.

2:54 (OT) TIGERS WIN!

Sarah Paul Times Two!

Her 2nd of the day picks up another Top-10 win for Princeton!@ecachockey | @NCAAIceHockey | @IvyLeague pic.twitter.com/jAMB4QQojq

— Princeton Women's Ice Hockey (@PWIH) December 7, 2024

The women have now won four straight and seven of their last eight. In addition to the win over Quinnipiac, Princeton also owns an 8-1 win over Boston University, who was ranked No. 13 at the time, and a 4-3 win over No. 5 Colgate.

Princeton has one more game left in the calendar year, and that's tomorrow at 6 against LIU at Hobey Baker Rink, before first semester exams begin. After that, the next game isn't until Jan. 4 — and the next home game isn't until Jan. 24. 

As for the men, it was only 10 days ago that Princeton was 1-4-1 after being swept at Colgate and Cornell. Since then? Princeton is 4-0, first with a sweep of then-No. 12 Ohio State last weekend and then an ECAC sweep of Union (2-1) and RPI (6-2) this past weekend.

All four games were at Baker Rink.

TB wrote this last Thursday: 

It'll be interesting to see how much momentum and confidence the Tigers take into those games after taking down the Buckeyes. 

As it turned out, the answer was "a lot."

All three goals Friday night came in the second period, the two from Princeton by Luc Pelletier and Noah de la Durantaye. Arthur Smith did the rest, making 27 saves. 

He made 24 more Saturday night, when Princeton found itself with much more margin of error, as five different Tigers had multiple-point nights. 

Getting back to Smith, he has been in goal for all four Princeton wins in a nine-day stretch. His numbers for those games? How about 118 saves and four goals against?

Is that good? It certainly sounds good. 

Suddenly, Princeton finds itself in fifth place in the ECAC standings, tied with Cornell and just two points out of fourth.

Like the women, the men now have a big break, first for exams and then for Christmas. In fact, it'll be 21 days between games for the men, who play again at Army on Dec. 28.

Hey, if you're not going to play for three weeks — if you're studying for exams for the first half of that time — you might as well be able to enjoy how things went going to the break. 

For Princeton's two hockey teams, that's certainly the case. 

And if Grandma got run over by a reindeer? You know whom to call. 

West Coast Weekend

Apparently, people seemed to enjoy the Fun Fact Thursday that TigerBlog presented yesterday.

He'll have to do it again at some point. Here's another fact, though it's not quite as much fun as the ones yesterday, which is why TB held it until today:

The Ivy League held four conference tournaments this fall, in field hockey, men's soccer, women's soccer and women's volleyball. Princeton won two of them (men's soccer, women's soccer) and was the runner-up in the other two. 

The fun fact is this: Only one other Ivy school qualified for all four tournaments. Can you name the school? 

TB will give you a few paragraphs to do so. 

In the meantime, it's the dawn for a busy weekend, especially for Princeton teams on the West Coast.

*

The men's water polo team is at No. 4 Stanford today at 5 Eastern in the NCAA tournament quarterfinals. The entire quarterfinal round will be held there today, beginning with No. 1 UCLA and Salem (W.Va.) and followed by No. 2 Southern Cal and California Baptist and No. 3 Fordham and Long Beach State. 

The semifinals are tomorrow, with the winner of the Princeton-Stanford game to take on the UCLA-Salem winner at 5 Eastern. The final will be Sunday at 6 Eastern.

Stanford is led by Riley Pittman and Soren Jensen, who are tied for the team lead with 87 points each. Princeton's leading scorer is senior Roko Pozaric, who has 115 points on 73 goals and 42 assists. 

Pittman, by the way, appears to be a fairly menacing-looking player, at least according to the first action picture on his bio page, which you can see HERE.

Pozaric (from Croatia) and Pittman and Jensen (both from California) will meet in the same pool after growing up about 7,000 miles apart. That's a fun fact, actually. TB should have thought of that yesterday. 

Stanford allows only 8.84 goals per game. Princeton averages better than 16. In fact, Princeton is 23-5 when reaching double figures and 0-3 when it does not. 

*

If you're on the West Coast but a bit too far north to see the water polo tournament, then you can go see Princeton at Portland women's basketball game, with tip-off at 9 Eastern. 

Princeton and Portland have never met — though Sandi Leland, Princeton's second all-time leading scorer does live in Portland. The Tigers have won three straight games, defeating Rutgers, Seton Hall and Temple since the wildly unfortunate injury to leading scorer Madison St. Rose. 

How is Portland doing? Well, the Pilots, who have played in the last two NCAA tournaments, are currently 8-0, with all eight wins by double figures. That's impressive stuff. 

Princeton is at Utah at 4 Sunday. That's Mountain Time, so not quite West Coast. Utah is 7-2 entering the weekend, with losses to Northwestern and Mississippi State.

*

What else is going on this weekend? All kinds of things, including on the Princeton campus, where there are men's hockey games against Union tonight and RPI tomorrow (both at 7), as well as the Big Al Invitational men's and women's swimming and diving meet. 

The Big Al Invitational continues to honor the memory of Alan Ebersole, a Princeton swimmer who passed away in an accident in Florida in October 2004. TB never met Ebersole, but he remembers the outpouring of grief at his loss and the way the Princeton swimming community rallied around the Ebersole family. Having this event, which has grown into one of the best early-season meets in the country, has to be very special to everyone who knew him. 

HERE is the complete Princeton Athletics schedule for the weekend.

*

The answer to TB's question? It's Brown, who qualified for all four Ivy tournaments this fall. While TB is on the subject of Ivy fall tournaments, he'd like to give a shoutout to the league staff for undertaking all of these events and having them be so well done. 

Here's a picture of Rachel Schermick of the Ivy office at the women's volleyball tournament with TB. For whatever reason, Rachel is the Ivy contact for the sports TB covers, and TB can vouch for what a good job she does, especially with social media content around the tournaments that the athletes really enjoy.

The entire Ivy communications and event staff has made these tournaments what they have quickly become. It reminds TB of when the Office of Athletic Communications consisted of people hired mostly for their ability to do publications and then quickly had shift to learn social media when it first came around. 

Well done, Ivy office. 

Fun Fact Thursday

In honor of Xaivian Lee's triple-double against Saint Joseph's Tuesday night, welcome to TigerBlog's Thursday of Fun Facts.

Lee's triple-double consisted of 18 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists. As TB watched the end of the game on TV, knowing how close Lee was to the triple-double, he kept audibly groaning when Lee would go to the basket rather than dish. 

He does acknowledge, of course, that Lee needed to do that to win the game, which is what Princeton did, by a 77-69 count. In fact, it ended up being the best of all worlds: Lee got his history-making achievement and Princeton got a big win. 

Lee was extraordinary all night. He is an amazing player, one who obviously makes everyone around him better — and that is the best thing you can say about any player in any sport. He also has an innate ability to take over games at crunch time, which is what he did against the Hawks.  

It really was inevitable that he'd get one at some point of his career. In fact, if you had to guess, do you think he'll have one for his career or he'll get at least one more? 

TB would go with the latter.

Fun Fact No. 1 for today: It is the first documented triple-double ever by a Princeton men's basketball player. As TB wrote yesterday, assists were not kept as an official stat until 1974, which means that there were some great Princeton players who never really had a chance at the achievement. 

And so that brings TB to the second Fun Fact for today.

Bill Bradley played in 83 basketball games at Princeton. Do you know how many times he had a double-double? The answer is 60. 

That equates to a double-double in 72 percent of the games he played as a Tiger. Perhaps one day TB will go back and watch the video of all 83 of those games and see how many triple-doubles, if any, Bradley would have had.

Shifting gears, here is Fun Fact No. 3 for today: Princeton has 38 varsity teams, and exactly half of them — 19 — have won their most recent conference title. 

Think about that. Let that sink in. TB's thought when he first saw that was "yikes."

Fun Fact No. 4: Princeton won five Ivy League championships (field hockey, women's soccer, men's and women's cross country, women's volleyball) and one non-Ivy title (men's water polo) this fall. No other league school won more than one. 

That total of six championships, by the way, doesn't include the Ivy League tournament championship won by the men's soccer team. 

Fun Fact No. 5: Messages from the human brain travel on nerves at speeds up to 200 miles per hour. That has nothing to do with Princeton Athletics — or does it? Remember when Pete Carril always said the biggest thing a player needs to do is "see it." 

Seeing it is a direct result of messages from the human brain. And they need to move at that speed, or faster, to make a player pass like current head coach Mitch Henderson did. 

Also, it reminds TB of something he heard Carril once yell in a practice at one of his best players when that player was a freshman: "Ya gotta see it. What's that matter? Can't see it? I had a guy once who couldn't see it. Had to get rid of him. Couldn't do much with him."

TB will not be revealing the identity of the player at whom Carril yelled. Just know that yes, he could definitely see it.

What's the next fun fact. Hmmmm. 

Fun Fact No. 6: The men's water polo team is in California now getting ready for its NCAA quarterfinal matchup tomorrow against fourth-seeded Stanford, the host school for the tournament. Princeton and Stanford will play in the second match of the day in Palo Alto, with start time at 5 pm Eastern. 

The winner of that match gets the winner of No. 1 UCLA and Salem (from West Virginia) in Saturday's semifinals. The final will be Sunday. 

Fun Fact No. 7: The Princeton men's hockey team was the College Hockey News Team of the Week this week after its 3-1, 3-1 sweep of then-No. 12 Ohio State last weekend. 

The Tigers are back on the ice at Hobey Baker Rink this weekend against Union and RPI, with face-off both nights at 7. It'll be interesting to see how much momentum and confidence the Tigers take into those games after taking down the Buckeyes. 

Fun Fact No. 8: Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserable contains a sentence that is 823 words long.

Do you hear the people sing? 

Hey, this was fun. 

A Lot Can Happen In A Day

OFFICIAL TAGD WEBSITE

And that's a wrap for TAGD 2024.

The 11th annual Tiger Athletics Give Day went on for 24 hours yesterday. Once again, the support given to Princeton Athletics and its 38 varsity teams was overwhelming, and TigerBlog joins all of his colleagues to offer his thanks. 

It was a day of celebration and a day of outreach. TAGD, as it always does, showcased the great loyalty that defines Princeton Athletics and the unbreakable connection that exists between those who coach and play here now and those who have done so in the past. 

If you followed the day on social media, you saw what an amazing day it was. Did you see this video, produced by Drew Miller of the multimedia team?

A Lot Can Happen In 24 Hours.

The generous support of @PVCTIGERS on #TAGD is what makes the memories and moments possible for our Tigers.

Thank You, Tiger Nation!

🔗: https://t.co/PAecT8sMit pic.twitter.com/skATBgmq0w

— Princeton Tigers (@PUTIGERS) December 3, 2024

That was a lot for one day, right? If you recall that day, it was well-chronicled as one of the busiest Princeton Athletics has ever had, especially with hosting two Ivy League tournaments. The way that Drew captured it gives a pretty good idea of everything that can happen in a day.

It was entitled "A Lot Can Happen In A Day." The same was true of yesterday. A lot happened in one day.

There were all kinds of posts yesterday, from professionally produced videos to others that were filmed on iPhones. There were pictures of all kinds, some with the Tiger himself as he made an appearance at Cannon Club during lunch. 

One of the people who took a lead in churning out content was Gracie McGowan, a senior who just completed her field hockey career. Gracie, who is a veteran in social media in addition to her sport, sent TB a schedule of what to post and when, along with what caption was necessary. 

Gracie produced video salutes from many of her teammates, all of which spoke to a different part of the TFH experience. Here's an example, with senior Lily Webb:

Our next Golden Moment is our Senior Day win against Dartmouth that secured us the Ivy League Regular Season Title! #tfh #TAGD

More info: https://t.co/MPfUEyMAH5 pic.twitter.com/qaJZoctuII

— Princeton FH (@TigerFH) December 3, 2024

TB could offer up all kinds of examples across every sport. The theme was "Golden Moments," and TB even included the Ithaca hotel "Cayuga Blu" as part of the men's lacrosse moments, in conjunction with last year's second-straight Ivy League tournament championship (by the way, the 2025 Princeton men's lacrosse schedule has been released).

There will be follow ups as well, with thank yous and final totals and the winners of each bracket. There have already been thank-yous, including from the athletes, many of whom reached out directly to existing members of the Friends' Groups.

It was, after all, a day of celebration — and again, to everyone who generously donated, know that your kindness is greatly appreciated. 

Of course, since a lot can happen in a day, TAGD was not the only news of the day in Princeton Athletics. There was also Xaivian Lee. 

The Princeton men's basketball team played at Saint Joseph's last night, and it was clear early on that Lee, the junior guard, was chasing history. What kind? In the entire history of Princeton men's basketball, there had never been a triple-double. 

Would Lee change that last night? 

By halftime he had six points, seven assists and eight rebounds. He reached double figures in points and rebounds early in the second half. All that was left was assists. He had eight of them with 17:33 left. 

So now there were two pieces of drama. Would Princeton pull out what was a back-and-forth game down the stretch? And would Lee get his two assists?

For 15 minutes or so, he was stuck on eight assists. Oh sure, he started scoring, hitting a big three, getting free in the lane, helping Princeton build a slight lead. But the assists. Would they happen?

Well, with just over two minutes to go, Lee picked up assist No. 9, on Philip Byriel's sixth three-pointer of the night, making it 71-65 Tigers. 

After the Hawks answered to make it 71-67, Lee brought the ball into the lane, looked all the world like he was going to the hoop and instead found Caden Pierce, whose reverse layup did indeed go down. Assist No. 10.

History.

Okay, it's very likely that there would have been a triple-double had assists been officially kept before 1974. Bill Bradley probably would have a bunch by himself. 

But the reality is that no Tiger man had done so since 1974, and that's 50 years — and a ton of great players. 

In the end, Princeton got itself a huge win, taking down the Hawks 77-69. 

Lee finished with 18 points, 13 rebounds and the 10 assists. 

Yup. A lot happened yesterday.

TAGD 11

TAGD WEBSITE

TigerBlog had lunch with his kids the other day.

It's a bit of a rarity these days, what with both of them out in the world, making their own ways. It's always something he enjoys very much. 

There was a time that doesn't seem all that long ago when his two little children were regulars on the Princeton campus, at games and camps and preschool and who can remember what else? 

Well, TB can remember. How he could he forget? They were among the absolute best times of his entire life.

Today they're both in their 20s, with TigerBlog Jr. not all that far away from 30. How did that happen? If you've been reading TB since he first began doing this back in 2009, you're probably shaking your own head at that as well.

Miss TigerBlog, as you probably know, went from growing up on the Princeton campus to being a student on the same campus. She graduated in 2022 with a degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and as a four-time letterwinner for the women's lacrosse team. MTB ’22.

Today? She works in aerospace engineering while working on her master's degree in the same field. TB is impressed with his daughter. 

Why bring this up today? 

Because it's Tiger Athletics Give Day, that's why. 

What does one have to do with the other? That's simple. 

It's TB's belief that his daughter would not have been able to plow through the grueling major she chose the way she did without the balance that being a varsity athlete brought. That experience has left her with valuable life-lessons — and when TB says "life-lessons," he's not using that as a throwaway term but in a real, tangible, visible way — that she is applying now and will forever.

To have a life-changing experience like that is an immeasurable asset. Forget the championships (and Princeton won the Ivy women's lacrosse championship each of her years). It's that experience that is the biggest part of what Princeton Athletics is all about.

And that experience is what an investment in TAGD is all about. 

Giving financial support is always about what you are investing in and believing in the positives that your investment will bring. In this case, you can be 100 percent certain that your investment is having a big impact. 

TigerBlog is partial to his daughter's experience, of course. You can pick any team you want, though. Pick any player at random you want.

They all benefit from what happens today. And that benefit is then paid off in a big way by their lifetime contributions to society. 

Princeton Athletics has produced aerospace engineers, and so much more. There are doctors, lawyers, educators, coaches, business professionals, military leaders. They all draw every day on what they learned as Princeton athletes. 

TAGD began in 2014 as a way of celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first Princeton intercollegiate athletic event, a 27-16 win over Williams in a baseball game on Nov. 22, 1864. Full disclosure: TB forgot that this past Nov. 22 was the 160th anniversary.

As TB thinks back to the planning for that first TAGD, he remembers tons of ideas that were thrown around, any number of different names that were considered. Who would have guessed where it would have gone from there. 

Where has it gone? 

TAGD has grown from Year 1, when nobody in those meetings had any idea of what to expect, to now, where it is a wildly successful annual event that has helped provide the kind of experience that Princeton Athletics prides itself on being able to provide, for every athlete who comes through every program. 

As always, TAGD's rules are the same this year. Only gifts that are given from now through midnight tonight will count towards the challenges of total donors and total dollars. 

Today is a day of fun for all of those involved. There will be social media posts and friendly competition between the various Friends' Groups. There will be phone banks and outreach directly from the athletes. There will be celebrations of Princeton teams, past and present. 

Underneath it all, though, will be the real benefit of TAGD. 

Pick the team. Pick the athlete. Go back and look to those athletes from 2014, when TAGD first started, and see what they're doing today. Look ahead to what they'll be doing 10 more years from now, 20 more years from now. 

That's what your gift is supporting.

Big Weekend At Baker

Tomorrow will be the 11th edition of TAGD, the 24-hour Tiger Athletics Give Day fundraising challenge that has been so overwhelming well-received and successful in its first full decade. TigerBlog will have much more on TAGD tomorrow.

For now, HERE is the link to the TAGD website. Keep in mind that only gifts received in the 24 hours beginning at 12:01 am tomorrow will count in the various challenges. 

So how was your Thanksgiving weekend? TigerBlog hopes it was full of family, friends, fun and food. Oh, and football.

TigerBlog watched a lot of football the last four days. He saw some astonishing things, such as an NFL coach and quarterback who both failed to call timeout until it was way too late. Now the coach has taken that timeout with him as he begins unemployment. 

There was the craziness of an eight-overtime game between Georgia and Georgia Tech, a game that TB watched all the way until the end and still isn't sure which team he wanted to see win (Georgia finally did 44-42). It was wildly dramatic stuff, though TB did come away wondering what's wrong with a tie after a certain number of OTs? Football, it seems, still hasn't figured out the perfect way to conduct overtime.

There were four separate Saturday college rivalry games that ended up with "flag planting" controversies. If you're keeping score, those four were: Arizona State-Arizona, North Carolina State-North Carolina, Florida-Florida State and of course Michigan-Ohio State.

In all four games, the visitor won the game and attempted to gather at midfield to "plant" its flag in the home team's logo. All four times, the home team objected — strenuously. The result? Ugliness. 

It was not a great weekend to be an Ohio State fan. The Buckeyes came into Michigan game ranked No. 2 in the country with only a close loss to No. 1 Oregon. There weren't too many who thought the Wolverines could extend their winning streak in the series to four games, and yet that's what happened. Michigan, 6-5 heading into the game, wiped out Ohio State's offense in the second half, shutting the Bucks out for the final two quarters and not even allowing a first down for the final 20 minutes to win 13-10.

If that wasn't enough, the OSU men's hockey team game into its two-game weekend series at Princeton ranked 12th nationally with a 9-2-1 record. Both of those losses, by the way, were to Michigan State, the top-ranked team in the country. 

Ohio State also brought a top 10 scoring offense to Baker Rink. So what happened? 

Arthur Smith happened, that's what. The sophomore goalie had a huge weekend, stopping 66 of 68 shots he saw over two games. The result was a pair of Princeton wins, both by 3-1 counts. 

Oh, and by the way, TB watched the ESPN+ broadcast and the announcers — Cody Chrusciel and Sean Kase — were excellent. What sport can't Cody do well? 

It wasn't just the Arthur Smith show of course,. Princeton went up 3-0 Friday night before a late Ohio State goal, and freshman Jake Manfre figured in each of the three Tiger goals, with two power-play goals and an assist. 

Manfre added another assist Saturday night, giving him two goals and two assists for the weekend after he had one goal and one assist for the first six games. 

The second game was scoreless after two periods before David Ma put Princeton on top 13 seconds into the third. It became a 2-0 game when Alex Konovalov scored his first career goal (you could see his beaming smile through his facemask afterwards), but the key moment came when Ohio State went man-up for seven straight minutes, the first five non-releasable. 

Would the Buckeyes take advantage? Actually, OSU would score one goal, which was the same as the Tigers, as Brendan Gorman scored shorthanded. 

All in all, it was a great performance by a Princeton team in its first season under head coach Ben Syer, who is looking to establish his style, his culture, his way of doing things. The best way to measure progress is by wins, and the Princeton team that might have been a bit uncertain Friday pregame was an obviously much more confident one by Saturday postgame. 

These are the kinds of moments that define programs, especially rebuilding ones. It's one thing to see your team is getting better in practice. It's another to do so against a team like Ohio State. 

And that was the weekend in men's hockey. 

And remember — tomorrow is TAGD. Don't make your gift until after midnight tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving

The Princeton men's basketball team will be in Jadwin Gym today at 4 to take on Nazareth, which makes the trip down from Rochester for the game. 

If you think Princeton has been busy of late, with three games in four days at the Myrtle Beach Invitational, consider what the Golden Flyers' schedule has been this week: win over RIT this past Thursday, loss to Rochester Saturday, a home game against Oswego State last night and then the five hour ride to New Jersey for the game tonight. 

There isn't much that is going on with Princeton Athletics the next few days, which is a stark contrast to how things have been around here the last few weeks. There's only one fall team that is still competing, and that's men's water polo, who is a week away from the NCAA tournament at Stanford. 

In fact, there is the men's basketball game tonight and then two home men's hockey games against Ohio State, Friday at 7 and Saturday at 4, and that'll be the entire home schedule for this weekend. Ohio State, which brings a 9-2-1 record to New Jersey, is ranked 12th by the U.S. College Hockey Online poll and 11th in the more important Pairwise ratings. 

Of course, if you're an Ohio State sports fan, it's likely that the hockey games are not your No. 1 focus this weekend, since, you know, it's Ohio State-Michigan football at the Horseshoe Saturday. Also, if you look at the Ohio State schedule, you'll notice that coming up on Jan. 3, the Buckeyes will take on the Wolverines at Wrigley Field.

The only other team Princeton who will be playing this weekend will be the women's hockey team, which is at Boston University this afternoon at 2 and then at Stonehill Friday (5) and Saturday (1). BU is ranked sixth in the women's Pairwise.

Why is there so little on the schedule?

Well, as you know, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

TigerBlog has included these thoughts on the holiday almost every year, and he offers them again:

As holidays go, you can't do much better than Thanksgiving. It's got it all, really: a huge meal (with turkey, no less), football, family, history (dates back to 1621), start of a four-day weekend for most people, leftovers. It's even a secular holiday, so every American can dive right in, regardless of religion.
 
The Lions and the Cowboys, obviously, always play at home on Thanksgiving, and the NFL has now added a third game (maybe a little too much). Beyond watching football, how many out there have played their own Thanksgiving football games, all of which, by the way, are named "the Turkey Bowl?"

The holiday may lag behind Christmas in terms of great Hollywood movies, and "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" is no match for "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." Still, there are some great moments in movies and TV shows around Thanksgiving.

Rocky and Adrian had their first date on Thanksgiving – "To you it's Thanksgiving; to me it's Thursday," Rocky said romantically – as did Meadow and Jackie Jr. on "The Sopranos" (it didn't quite work out as well as it did for Rocky and Adrian). "Everybody Loves Raymond" had two pretty good Thanksgiving episodes, the one where Marie makes a low-fat dinner and the one where Debra makes fish instead of turkey. As an aside, TigerBlog's Aunt Regina once made Cornish game hens instead of turkey, so he knows how they all felt. And of course, there was the Thanksgiving episode of "Cheers," which has the big food fight at the end.

The Woody Allen movie "Hannah and Her Sisters" starts and ends on two different Thanksgivings. "Miracle on 34th Street" is a Christmas movie, but it does start with the Thanksgiving parade in New York City.

And of course, there is the best of all Thanksgiving movies: "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." It'll make you laugh a lot and cry a little, and it ends on Thanksgiving.

TB wishes everyone a great holiday and hopes that maybe you take a few minutes to think about what you really are thankful for these days.

Bodies Of Water

 

Quick question: Who is the only unbeaten team in college men's water polo this season? 

Hint - the team is the No. 3 seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament, which begins Friday, Dec. 6, with four matches at Stanford. The second of those four matches, by the way, will see Princeton take on the fourth seeded host team.

If you watched the NCAA Selection Show yesterday, then you saw the answer. TigerBlog was a bit surprised to see it.

The answer? Fordham, who brings a 31-0 record into the postseason. The third-seeded Rams will be taking on Long Beach State in the opening round.

A long time ago, like 88 years ago, Fordham football had an offensive line nicknamed "The Seven Blocks Of Granite." Most of those seven men went into coaching after they were done playing, including the most famous of the group, Vince Lombardi.

When TB thinks of Fordham athletics, he always thinks of the Seven Blocks first. Then he thought about the 31-0 team this year and thought — that would be a terrible nickname for water polo. Blocks of granite? 

Yes, there are seven players in the pool at any given time, so that part works. The other part? 

This is a sport that requires a lot of treading water. Blocks of granite wouldn't be great at that. How about the Seven Balloons of granite? No, no. Blocks of balloons? Let TB work on it.

Fordham defeated Princeton 12-9 back on Sept. 27. Since Fordham and Princeton are on opposite sides of the draw, TB is now rooting for a Rams-Tigers rematch in the championship game. 

Fordham improved to 31-0 by beating Luis Nicolao and Navy in the final of the Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference final 18-11. Princeton also won its league title Sunday as well, taking the Northeast Water Polo Conference title match.

Brown took down Harvard 11-9 in the semifinals to reach the final for the first time since 2016. That would be as far as the Bears would get, though, because Princeton is playing on another level right now.

The final score of the championship game was 17-6, and it earned the Tigers their own automatic NCAA bid. This was the fourth straight league title for Princeton, by the way. 

Including the semifinal win over Iona, Princeton outscored its two NWPC opponents by a combined 39-17. The Tigers bring an eight-match winning streak to California, and none of those eight wins has been closer than four goals.

TB watched the Selection Show yesterday. It was hosted by Jeremiah Johnson, which was a familiar name. From where? It was the title of a Robert Redford movie in the 1970s.

This was the perfect Selection Show. The entire thing took six minutes, and there was no need to come up with any kind of filler or anything like. Ironically, the shows for sports that are done on ncaa.com are much tighter and way better for the teams involved than the ones that are stretched out for network television. 

UCLA is the No. 1 seed in the tournament. USC, who beat UCLA in the final of their conference tournament, was the No. 2 seed, followed by Fordham and Stanford. To give you a sense of what kind of accomplishment it is for Fordham to have gotten this seed, consider that, in a tournament that began 55 years ago, the other three seeds have combined for 33 national titles.

The bracket has UCLA against Salem (West Virginia), who is making its first NCAA appearance. The winner of that match will take on the winner of the Princeton-Stanford match that follows. 

The other side has USC against California Baptist and Fordham against Long Beach State. The entire tournament will be held in three days, from Dec. 6-8.

Princeton defeated Long Beach State 14-12 during the regular season. It also has two losses to UCLA, one in overtime and one by two goals. Princeton also lost 10-7 to USC, meaning that Stanford is the only seeded team the Tigers haven't played this year. 

Princeton reached the NCAA semifinals a year ago, taking down UC-Irvine 12-7 in the quarterfinals before falling 17-13 to UCLA.

Meanwhile, back at the nickname ... hmmm ... hey, TB's got it:

Bodies of Water. The Seven Bodies of Water. 

Perfect.

"I Couldn't Be Prouder To Be A Princeton Tiger"

John Volker ran 75 yards for a touchdown to start his Senior Day and ran six yards for a first down to seal a victory on his Senior Day. 

It happened Saturday afternoon on Powers Field, where Princeton defeated Penn 20-17 to wrap up the 2024 season. Volker finished with 130 yards on 15 carries, and then, once it was over, it was time for him to be interviewed on the ESPN+ broadcast.

Or at least after he could be tracked down. He was celebrating, posing for pictures and clearly taking in the moment. 

Finally, there he was, his Princeton football uniform with a headset instead of a helmet. And what did he say? 

"I Couldn't Be Prouder To Be A Princeton Tiger."

House Call.@JohnVolker3 | #JUICE 🍊🥤 pic.twitter.com/OXvp41SV1C

— Princeton Football (@PrincetonFTBL) November 23, 2024

Wow. That came straight from his heart.

Can anything ever be more genuine and more perfect at the end of a season? When you're standing there knowing that you've played the last game you'll ever play for your college team and you're walking off your home field a winner, does the record really matter at that point?  

Besides, more than any other sport, football is the one where you can forget what brought you to this point on the final day of the season, largely because each game is its own mini-season. In Princeton's case this season, that meant one more chance to win a mini-season Saturday against the Quakers.

There were four Ivy League football games Saturday, three of which had a direct impact on who would win the championship. The fourth was Penn-Princeton, though you couldn't tell that by watching. 

That's not how it works in football. There's no playing out the string. It's probably the physicality involved, or the fact that there's so many more practice days than game day.

In the end, Princeton and Penn played a championship-level game, in intensity and drama at least.  

Volker's big day was a huge part of the win, of course. On this day, though, it was the Princeton defense that was the difference maker.

Consider these two stats: 1) Princeton's defense had allowed 40.3 points per game for the last four games and 2) Penn had averaged scoring 44.7 points per game for its last three.

It was a 17-10 Penn lead at the half, but the second half was a thing of defensive beauty for Princeton. For the final 30 minutes of the game, and the season for that matter, Princeton allowed zero points, forced four turnovers, scored a touchdown of its own (a Caden Wright fumble return) and allowed 108 yards of Quaker offense. 

Penn's first half drive chart went punt, punt, touchdown, touchdown, field goal. Penn's second half drive chart went punt, fumble, fumble, punt, interception, turnover on downs, fumble. 

That's great defense. And it's really great defense considering it came against an offense that was on fire the last three weeks.

The last day of the Ivy football season saw chaos break out, as Yale's 34-29 win over Harvard came shortly after both Dartmouth (over Brown) and Columbia (over Cornell) had finished off their own wins. The result? A three-way tie for first at 5-2 between Harvard, Columbia and Dartmouth. 

It's the second straight year that the league has had tri-champions. For the entire history of the league prior to that, it had only happened three times in all. 

It wasn't the 2024 season that Princeton would have wanted, but it ended on a high note. And there was something tangible at stake, since the win pushed the Tigers into a three-way tie for sixth, as opposed to finishing eighth, which would have been the case with a loss.

It is amazing what a win can do for you. When the Tigers left the field Saturday afternoon, they did so in a good place. They did so knowing that they hadn't quit, on the season or on themselves. They knew they had accomplished something together that they will remember long after they forget what place the standings said. 

They were able to walk away, knowing that Volker had had spoken for all of them: 

"I couldn't be prouder to be a Princeton Tiger."

Talking Tournaments

You can't make too many betters saves than Princeton men's soccer goalkeeper Andrew Samuels did last night against Akron in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. 

Only one snuck by Samuels, and only one was good enough for Akron, who defeated Princeton 1-0 on a night that featured snow flurries in Ohio.

Still, Samuels was amazing. he turned away shot after shot from the powerful Akron offense, robbing the Zips time and again. The shots came mostly from within a five-yard radius or so, and they came with great velocity. And frequency. 

Samuels, a sophomore, did not play in any games last year. He played in 12 this season, starting eight — and he'd never made more six in a game. In fact, he made 26 in those 12 games, an average of 2.2 per game. 

Last night? He made nine. And not one of them was routine.

If you can make a better save than the ones Samuels did, though, it's possible that Giuliano Fravolini Whitchurch had in the second half to keep it a one-goal game. Samuels first got his hand on a shot, but the rebound seemed like it had about a 100 percent chance of heading into the net. 

Instead, Whitchurch, the Princeton defender, changed direction and doubled back to the goal, just in time to somehow, pretty much miraculously, keep the ball in play. The play was reviewed, and the great play by Whitchurch was confirmed. 

By the way, the men's soccer game ended about 60 seconds before tip-off of the men's basketball game in Myrtle Beach against Wright State. 

Princeton's postseason run ended with the loss. So did the NCAA singles run for men's tennis player Paul Inchauspe, but not before he became the fifth Princetonian to earn All-American honors. 

Inchauspe reached the Round of 16 in the new-look NCAA singles tournament, which for the first time is being played in the fall. To get there, Inchauspe defeated the No. 1 seed, Sebastian Gornzy of Texas, in the second round before falling yesterday to Florida State's Corey Craig in three sets.

In the "small world" category, by the way, Craig and Akron's Emil Jaaskelainen, the leading scorer in the country who was shut out by Samuels, were both at the same school last year — Boston University.

Speaking of tournaments, there are two that get underway on the Princeton campus today, and both have the same prize for the ultimate winner: an NCAA tournament bid. 

The Northeast Water Polo Conference has its tournament in DeNunzio Pool beginning today and running through Sunday's final. Princeton is the top seed, and as such it has a first-round bye into tomorrow's semis.

The games today begin at 1 with fourth-seeded Iona and fifth-seeded MIT, followed by No. 2 Harvard and No. 7 Connecticut College and lastly No. 3 Brown against No. 6 LIU. Princeton will play tomorrow at noon against the Iona/MIT winner, and the other semifinal will match the other two winners, at 2. 

The championship game is at 1 Sunday. 

Princeton is ranked sixth nationally. The Tigers have had great success in California against the country's top teams and would love to get another shot in the NCAA tournament. 

Meanwhile, the Ivy League women's volleyball tournament also will be at Princeton starting today, this time in Dillon Gym. It begins at 4 with top-seeded Princeton against No. 4 Brown, followed at 7 by No. 2 Yale and No. 3 Cornell.

Just a week ago it looked like this tournament was heading to New Haven, until Cornell came back from two sets down to take down Yale 3-2. That outcome, coupled with Princeton's 10-game Ivy winning streak to end the league schedule, made the Bulldogs and Tigers co-champs and, with the tiebreaker in Princeton's favor by virtue of its sweep of third-place Cornell, brought the tournament here. 

Princeton will bring the conference Player of the Year into both tournaments, with Roko Pozaric in men's water polo and Kamryn Chaney in women's volleyball. 

There are other events going on this weekend as well, including the final football game of the season as the Tigers host Penn tomorrow at 1. 

The complete schedule is HERE.

The Tigers And The Zips

As facility photos go, it's hard to imagine there are too many better than the one on the Akron athletics website of its soccer facility, FirstEnergy Stadium.

The picture shows the field during a game, and that by itself shows a relatively full house. Had that been all there is to it, then it still would have been a great shot.

That isn't all there is to it, though. There is also the sky.

One half of the sky is blue, or at least the fading blue of twilight. The other half is overcast, with the orange of the sun as it blends into the darkness of the clouds. 

The contrast of the serenity of the sky and the tumultuous action on the field is what makes the picture great. 

There's no way to tell who the opponent was that evening the photo was taken. Tonight? The opponent on that same field will be Princeton.

It'll be the opening round of the NCAA men's soccer tournament tonight at 6 (ESPN+), as the Tigers take on the host Zips. For the winner there is a date Sunday at Indiana. 

Why is Akron the Zips, by the way? As you probably know, Akron is famously known as the Rubber Capital of the World, and it's been the home of companies like Firestone, Goodyear and B.F. Goodrich. 

It was B.F. Goodrich that, shortly after 1900, began manufacturing rubber shoes that became quite popular and were known as "Zippers." Around that time, the university began to look for a mascot and nickname, and a student named Margaret Hamlin came up with the winning entry: Zippers — winning her the $10 first prize.

Once zippers replaced buttons on the majority of pants, though, the nickname was shortened to "Zips."

And so it'll be the Tigers and the Zips. They've played three times before, though not in the last 19 years. The most notable note from those three games is probably the fact that in Princeton's 2-0 win over Akron in 1987, current head coach Jim Barlow had an assist on the first goal. 

Akron is, of course, a longtime soccer powerhouse, with one NCAA title (2010) and three NCAA runner-up finishes (most recently in 2018). The game tonight marks the 36th time the Zips have reached the NCAA tournament. 

Princeton, for its part, is making its 12th NCAA appearance. The Tigers reached the 1993 Final Four. 

Akron earned an at-large bid after winning the Big East Conference Midwest Division during the regular season with a 7-0-1 record. The Zips, by the way, are an affiliate member of the Big East for men's soccer but a full-time member of the Mid-American Conference for everything else.

Most recently, Akron fell to Georgetown in the Big East tournament semifinals 2-1 in OT. The Zips rank sixth in Division I in scoring offense (2.47 goals per game) and fifth in Division I in goal differential. 

The main man for Akron is Emil Jaaskelainen, from Bolton, England. Jaaskelainen, a grad transfer from LIU who was a two-time NEC Player of the Year, leads Division I in goals per game with 1.21 per game, which would rank 151st out of 203 Division I teams. 

If any team has a reason to be brimming with confidence, it's Princeton. The Tigers earned their spot in the NCAA tournament by winning the Ivy League's automatic bid this past weekend at the league tournament, taking down Cornell (3-2) and Penn (3-1). Both of those teams earned at-large bids as well in the three-bid Ivy.

Princeton played with skill and toughness in the Ivy tournament, but it was more than just that. Princeton also played like a team that believed in each other and itself, one that came from 2-0 down against Cornell to win in OT and did so without ever looking fazed in any ways. 

The final against Penn came eight days after Princeton lost to the Quakers at home and yet looked so comfortable and in control the entire time, building a 3-0 lead before a late Penn goal. Oh, and this Penn team is the No. 6 overall seed in the NCAA tournament. 

Again, kickoff in Ohio will be at 6. It'll be chilly there (temps in the 30s) but that's a small price to pay to be able to play this deep into November. 

Princeton has earned this chance. Now it will look to make the most of it.