Blog 4K — The Best Of TigerBlog

Okay, what's so special about today?

If you were paying attention, TigerBlog twice mentioned that today would be a special day here. 

For starters it's February 29, a date that only comes along once every four years. Today may or may not still be Sadie Hawkins Day. It depends who you ask.

Traditionally, today would be a day where women were allowed to ask men to dance, or to get married. Today, though, such tradition is irrelevant, as women can do that any day they want.

As everyone knows, there's only one of these Feb. 29s every four years. The reason? It takes the Earth 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds to make one complete revolution around the sun.

Did you know that there is no Feb. 29 in years that are divisible by 100, unless they're also divisible by 400? That's why there was a Feb. 29 in 2000, though there won't be one in 2100. 

Do you know anyone who was born on Feb. 29? TigerBlog doesn't.

He assumes that everyone who was born on Feb. 29 makes the same "today is my 10th birthday" if they're 40 joke. That's okay. If you only get to have one of every four birthdays on your actual birthday, you get to make that joke.

To Frederic, from the "Pirates of Penzance," it was no joke. He was to be an apprentice until his 21st birthday, and when he thinks he's reached it and is free, he finds out he was actually born on Feb. 29, which meant that he had 63 more years to go. Don't worry, it worked out just fine for Frederic and Mabel. That's how it works in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

TigerBlog has always wondered why they decided to make February have a 29th. Now that he thinks about it, why does February have only 28 days in the first place.

Who decided that? What did they have against February. 

For TigerBlog, today is special for more than just the fact that it's Feb. 29. Today is the 4,000th edition of the blog.

Yes. That's 4,000 separate TigerBlog entries. TB would guess he's written probably 3,900 of them, with a few guest blogs and, back when this first started, some in-game stuff and small notices mixed in.

To celebrate, TigerBlog thought it would be good to go back through all 4,000 entries and choose the ones that stood out the most, either for good or for heartbreak.

These are in chronological order. Enjoy:

Feb. 11, 2009 - Sweating Out The Anthem
TigerBlog Jr. was 11 years old when he played the national anthem before a Princeton-Cornell men's basketball game at Jadwin Gym. His father was very, very nervous.

Aug. 6, 2010 - Dinner With Yav
There was only one Harvey Yavener. 

May 20, 2011 - The Circle Game
A childhood spent at Princeton.

Nov. 14, 2011 - Saturday With William
TigerBlog brought a young friend to a full Saturday of games at Princeton.

April 30, 2012 - Together In Victory
Less than a year after losing his wife to cancer, Chris Bates led the men's lacrosse team to an Ivy League championship, something he shared with his son Nick.

Aug. 9. 2012 - A Medal For Matheson
Diana Matheson's goal gave Canada a hard-earned bronze medal at the 2012 Olympics in women's soccer. 

Feb. 15, 2013 - Crushed Again
The Oscar Pistorius case left TigerBlog feeling empty.

April 14, 2014 - From the House On Gordon Street
Gary Walters was celebrated in style as his tenure as AD neared an end.

Jan. 28, 2015 - Rest In Peace, Bob Callahan
There has never been a better person than Bob Callahan, the legendary men's squash coach, who passed away in 2015. TigerBlog had visited with his shortly before his passing and wrote about that time in this entry. 

March 23, 2015 - 31-Obama
The Princeton women's basketball team improved its record to 31-0 with its first NCAA tournament win in program history.

June 6, 2016 - Leaving Lafayette
The amazing town of Lafayette, La., which hosted Princeton in the NCAA baseball regional.

Nov. 3, 2016 - Zip It
TigerBlog overcomes his fear of heights to zipline from Spain to Portugal.

March 27, 2017 - Statting with Zack
TigerBlog has written extensively about the DiGregorio family, especially Derek (the middle child who is now 26 and continues his amazing fight against Ataxia-Telangiectasia) and Digger (who tragically passed away in 2021 from pancreatic cancer. This entry is about happier days.

Nov. 20, 2017 - Make That 13
The women's soccer team took down mighty North Carolina in the NCAA tournament Sweet 16 in one of the greatest wins in Princeton Athletics history.

Dec. 21, 2017 - Miss TigerBlog ’22
TigerBlog will never forget the nerves as he waited to hear if his daughter would be admitted to Princeton. Spoiler alert - she was. 

Nov. 5, 2018 - Thoughts On A Great Football Game
The 2018 Princeton-Dartmouth football game is as good as any game TB has seen in all his years here.

March 6, 2019 - B-P-29
TigerBlog had the unique chance to enter his daughter's first college stat. 

Feb. 26, 2020 - Happy Anniversary
Reflecting on the first quarter-century as a Princeton employee. 

Sept. 20, 2021 - Remembering John Schroeder, 20 Years After 9/11
A tribute to the Princeton men's lacrosse player who was killed on Sept. 11, 2001

Oct. 14, 2021 - Goodbye Digger
The heartbreaking death of Steve DiGregorio.

Dec. 2, 2021 - I Can Do Anything
After nearly two years, TigerBlog was finally able to see his book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton.

May 23, 2022 - A Men's Lacrosse Reunions Party On Long Island
Matt Madalon led Princeton back to Championship Weekend.

May 25, 2022 - The Persistent One
The emotions of seeing his daughter graduate from Princeton were overwhelming.

Aug. 16, 2022 - Rest In Peace, Coach
The passing of Pete Carril.

March 18, 2023 - Double The Madness
The Princeton women's basketball team followed up the men's NCAA opening round win with an extraordinary one of their own. 

March 25, 2023 - How Sweet It Was
Princeton's men's basketball team and its run to the NCAA tournament Sweet 16.

Jan. 20, 2024 - Drilling Down
Making the best of a root canal.

 

This And That

Coming tomorrow, a special edition TigerBlog. 

For today ...

*

The women's lacrosse team plays its home opener tonight at 7 on Sherrerd Field. Admission is free.

In its most recent game, Princeton defeated Penn State 18-13 and did so in amazing fashion. Penn State's Kristin O'Neill scored with 5:14 to go in the third quarter to make it a 13-9 game — in favor of the Nittany Lions.

You can do the math to figure out what happened the rest of the way. Or TigerBlog can do it for you: Princeton outscored Penn State 9-0 the rest of the way, which was basically a perfect 20-minute span.

It's hard to imagine scripting it any better. From down 13-9, Princeton scored once in the third quarter and then eight more times in the fourth. Sophie Whiteway scored the third quarter goal, with 4:27 to go in the period. 

From there, it was Sam DeVito, Ella Sloan, Whiteway, Jami MacDonald, Sloan, McKenzie Blake, MacDonald and Kari Buonanno. Those eight goals came in just over 12 minutes. 

Princeton goalie Amelia Hughes, in the first three quarters, allowed 13 goals and made six saves. In the fourth quarter, she allowed no goals and made four saves.

Princeton comes into tonight at 1-1 after dropping its opener at Virginia and is ranked 23rd. Rutgers, ranked 22nd, is 4-0, with wins over Manhattan, Georgetown, Monmouth and Army.

*

The Ivy League men's swimming and diving championships begin today at Harvard and run through Saturday. 

Princeton's men are hoping to reverse their finish of the last six years, when they finished second to the host Crimson. As TB said yesterday, since the Ivy League adopted the championship meet format in 1997, only Princeton and Harvard has won the title. 

Back when it was a dual meet format, you have to go back to Penn in 1971 to find a year when neither Princeton nor Harvard won at least a share of the championship. 

That's domination.

* 

The men's lacrosse team flies out tomorrow night to Raleigh-Durham for a pair of games this weekend. Penn, presumably, is doing the same thing. Maybe they'll be on the same flight? 

Penn begins the weekend at Duke — now ranked No. 1 — Friday night at 6, followed by Princeton at North Carolina Friday night at 8. Both games are on the ACC Network.

Princeton then is at Duke Sunday at noon, while Penn is at UNC, also at noon. Maybe they're also on the same flight back?

Princeton freshman Nate Kabiri, by the way, has been as advertised. The No. 3 incoming recruit according to Inside Lacrosse, Kabiri has become the first Princeton freshman ever with at least three goals in each of his first three games and is the fastest Princeton freshman ever to 10 goals, which he has done in three games. 

Kabiri scored four times in the loss at Maryland and had a possible fifth goal disallowed. 

*

Another team that's heading to North Carolina is the Princeton baseball team, who has three against the Tar Heels this weekend. The weather forecast shows a chance of rain for 10 of the next 12 days in Chapel Hill, though pretty much every day it says "light rain," so hopefully the baseball games will get in as scheduled.

If you're heading that way, you have baseball Friday at 3, Saturday at 1 and Sunday at noon, which means you can see both baseball and lacrosse Friday and baseball Saturday and then have to choose between the two Sunday.

The baseball team, the Ivy League runner-up last year, won one of three games last week at UNC-Wilmington. 

UNC is 5-2 and ranked 17th this week.

*

The women's hockey team is at Clarkson this weekend in a best-of-three ECAC playoff quarterfinal series. Game 1 is Friday at 6, and Game 2 Saturday and if necessary Game 3 Sunday will be 3 pm starts.

Sarah Fillier had her third hat trick of the season as the Tigers rolled past Dartmouth 5-1 in the opening round single game last weekend. Fillier, a 2022 Olympic gold medalist with Canada, has nine goals and two assists in her last four games. 

* 

Did TigerBlog mention that tomorrow is a special edition?

No. 25 And No. 25

MEN'S TRACK AND FIELD HEPS STORY
WOMEN'S SWIMMING AND DIVING IVY CHAMPIONSHIPS STORY
WOMEN'S TRACK AND FIELD HEPS STORY

So TigerBlog was out to eat the other night when he got up to use the restroom.

When he went to wash his hands, he saw that 1) there was only one sink and 2) that there was an older man using it. And using it. And using it. This man was scrubbing his hands quite thoroughly.

TB waited his turn. And waited. And waited.

Finally, he said to the man: "What are you, going into surgery or something?" The man, fortunately, laughed at that. 

When TB relayed the story to a friend of his after the fact, the response he got was "You learned well from Coach Carril." 

Egads. He was right. TB might have even said "Yo" before the rest.

Anyway, moving along, it was a two-Ivy League title weekend for Princeton, with championships in women's swimming and diving and men's indoor track and field. That brings the total number of titles for 2023-24 to seven, with six in the Ivy League (men's cross country, men's fencing, men's squash, women's fencing, women's swimming and diving and men's indoor track and field) and one non-Ivy (men's water polo).

Princeton went wire-to-wire in both this past weekend, finishing with comfortable-and somewhat-dominating championships. It's one thing to be the favorite. It's another to actually go out and get it done. 

In men's track and field, Princeton put up 168 points, 53 better than second place Cornell. For the Tigers, it was the ninth-straight indoor Heps title and 25th overall. 

In women's swimming and diving, Princeton won for the second straight time and, coincidentally, the 25th time overall. The Tigers finished with 1,403 points, ahead of Harvard, with 1,317.5.

Both teams have first-year head coaches, sort of. For the men's track and field team, that means Jason Vigilante, the longtime men's cross country head coach who has taken over for Fred Samara as the head coach of men's track and field as well.  

Fred, by the way, was in attendance at Heps at Harvard. His muscle memory probably triggered the "third weekend of February; time to get to Heps" reflex.

The women's swimming and diving team is coached by Abby Brethauer, who was previously an assistant coach with the men's program.

You know what is a good word to have before your time in a swim meet or track and field meet, especially a championship one? How about "record?" 

As in: "Sabrina Johnston won the 100 freestyle in a pool-record and NCAA B qualifying time of 48.28." Or "Nicholas Bendtsten excelled this weekend, securing two separate first place finishes. He dominated the men's 3000m with a time of 7:54.81, setting an Ivy League Record and the fastest time at an Ivy League Championship since 1983."

Princeton had a few others whose marks were in the same sentence of some combination of "-record." Another one was this: "Tessa Mudd finished first in the pole vault and reclaimed her Ivy League Record with a PR jump of 4.39m (14'4.25). Two weeks prior to the indoor championship meet, Anastasia Retsa of Harvard took the indoor Ivy record from Mudd. On her final attempt, Mudd had to clear this bar to win the competition, and in doing so, she took back the Ivy record and qualified for the NCAA championship. This mark ranks the sophomore at 13th in the nation and won her the most outstanding field performer of the meet."

The women's team finished second overall, falling to Penn in the final event in what was an extraordinarily close team race. Had Princeton finished one spot behind Penn in the 4x200 relay, then the teams would have tied. 

The men's swimming and diving championships are this weekend at Harvard, beginning tomorrow and running through Saturday. 

That's a lot of history. Harvard has won the last six. Princeton has been second each time. 

TB will leave you with this for today: The last time neither Princeton nor Harvard won at least a share of the Ivy League title was, if you can believe this, 1971. That's nineteen-seventy-one. Since the league went to a championship meet format in 1997, only Princeton or Harvard has won — tying once.

A Men's Hoops Sweep On The Road

You know what's next to impossible to do? 

Not find out the score of a game you want to watch after the fact. TigerBlog tried it twice this weekend and went 0 for 2. 

The first time was Friday night, when he didn't want to know the result of the Princeton-Harvard men's basketball game. The second time was Saturday night later, when he didn't want to know the result of the Princeton-Dartmouth men's basketball game. 

He was busy, and he figured he'd watch them later. He went 0.5 for 2.

It started to go off the rails Friday night, when he got a text message from his colleague Elliott Carr. It turned out that Xaivian Lee had 22 points in the first half against the Crimson, and Elliott wanted to know the last time a Princeton men's player had a 40-point game.

The answer, of course, is Bill Bradley. He's the only Princeton men's basketball player ever with at least 40 in a game, and he did it 11 times. On the women's side Bella Alarie did it twice. 

Knowing that Lee had 22 at the break, TB figured Princeton was doing well. When he finally was able to log on to watch the game, he picked it up at halftime, with the Tigers ahead 43-31.

The benefit of watching the game from that point is that you can fast forward through the media timeouts. That certainly speeds things up. 

It didn't take TB very long to watch the final 20 minutes. Lee finished with 27, and the Tigers won 66-53. 

The next night? 

TigerBlog was going to write the story about the Ivy League women's swimming and diving championships while he watched the Princeton-Dartmouth game. So what happened? 

Instead of doing directly to the women's swimming and diving results link, he instead went to the Ivy League website. And there staring him in the face were the results of Saturday's men's basketball games.

Oh well. If you missed it, Princeton defeated Dartmouth 68-56. Also, the Princeton women won the swimming and diving championship, and TB will have more on that tomorrow.

For the Tigers, it was a very, very successful weekend in the Ivy League race. Princeton went on the road and got two big wins, and it also got the result it needed Friday night in Ithaca, when Cornell defeated Yale.

Yale bounced back Saturday to win at Columbia. Harvard rebounded to beat Penn. The biggest news came Saturday night in Ithaca, when Brown held off Cornell for the first win this season by another team against either Princeton, Yale or Cornell.

When it all played out, Princeton, Yale and Cornell were all 9-2 in the league, and all three clinched spots in the upcoming Ivy League tournament. Harvard and Brown were both 5-6, followed by Columbia at 4-7. Those three will compete for the final spot in the ILT. Penn (2-9) and Dartmouth (1-10) have been mathematically eliminated. 

Princeton, by the way, is 21-3 overall. When was the last time Princeton was 21-3 or better after 24 games? That was 1997-98, when the Tigers went 27-2 for the year. 

There are two weekends left in the Ivy League season, with two games for each team this weekend and then one the final weekend. 

Princeton hosts doubleheaders this coming weekend, with the women at home against Harvard at 5 Friday and then the men against Columbia at 8 and then the women against Dartmouth Saturday at 4 and the men against Cornell at 7. 

The teams both finish their seasons against Penn on March 9, with the women at home at 2 and the men at the Palestra at 6. TB will have more on the women later in the week. 

Remember last year at this time? Princeton lost a game at home against Yale and then won six straight, the final two of the regular season and then two each in the Ivy tournament and NCAA tournament to reach the Sweet 16.

What do the next few weeks hold?  

For the men, the game against Cornell is the last of the regular season between the top three teams. Columbia Friday night is a game the Lions desperately need. 

Every game is big. Every possession is to be valued. It's the way it's supposed to be this time of year.

Road Hoops

Welcome to the final weekend of February.

Of course, this being a leap year, you get an extra day to enjoy the shortest month of the year. That would be Feb. 29, which is this coming Thursday. 

Teaser: This coming Thursday will also have a special edition of TigerBlog. You'll have to wait six days to find out what it is. 

Meanwhile, this pushes March 1 back to this coming Friday. Does that mean that next weekend is when madness begins? 

Technically, while it will be March in a few days, it won't be March Madness for a few more weeks. It'll be Ivy Madness before that, at Columbia March 15-17, which is three weekends from now. 

Regardless of whether it's an official "madness," it's clear that the college basketball season has entered its critical stage. For Princeton Basketball, this is the best time of the year, with big every game a big one. 

This weekend is no exception. There are three Princeton games, and all three are important in the big picture of the Ivy League race. 

They also have one other thing in common. All three are on the road.

There have been a few weekends like this, when there were Ivy League regular season basketball games and nobody was playing in Jadwin Gym. What TigerBlog cannot remember is a time where the Princeton men and women were both on the road but at different league venues.

This weekend, the men are at Harvard and Dartmouth tonight and tomorrow, and the women are at Columbia tomorrow afternoon.

TigerBlog starts with the men.

There's another huge game for the Princeton men tonight that's also on the road, though it doesn't involve the Tigers. This one takes place in Ithaca, where Cornell will host Yale.

Those two are currently tied for first in the league at 8-1, while Princeton checks in at 7-2. Right now, those three teams is 20-0 against the rest of the league. In head-to-head matchups between the three, the home team has won each time.

Down the road, and back at home, Princeton still has a game against Cornell next Saturday in Jadwin Gym. 

For Princeton, it would be best if both of those streaks continued. Should that happen, then Princeton would be back in control for at least a share of the Ivy League championship and the top seed in the Ivy tournament. 

Why? Because if the top three go 2-2 against each other and 10-0 against everyone, the seedings would then be based on who has the highest NET ranking, which Princeton has by a large margin right now. 

While Princeton fans may keep an eye on the score from Ithaca, Princeton's players can't afford to do that. There's a three-game drop from Princeton to the current fourth-place tie at 4-5 between Columbia and Harvard. As you know, the top four get into the league tournament.

Should it come down to a tie between Harvard and Columbia, the Crimson hold the tiebreaker by virtue of having swept the Lions. Brown is only a game back of them, at 3-6. 

A win tonight for Princeton, by the way, cements a spot in the Ivy tournament.

The Princeton women are already in the Ivy tournament. So, too, is Columbia. Those two meet tomorrow at 2 at a sold-out Levien Gym in New York City. 

For Princeton, it'll be good prep for what to expect at the tournament.

Princeton is 10-0 in the league. Columbia is 9-1, with an 80-65 loss at Jadwin earlier this season. Harvard is 7-3, with a record of 7-0 against the rest of the league and 0-3 against Princeton and Columbia. 

Harvard will be in Jadwin Gym next weekend as well, since after a weekend with no hoops, there will be two doubleheaders next weekend. 

What will the races look like by then? A lot can change this weekend, in all kinds of different directions. That's how it is this time of year. 

What is it they say? February goes out on the road. March comes in at home. 

At least this year, that's the way it is.

A Thursday Catch-Up

TigerBlog had lunch with Craig Sachson yesterday, and that alone was enough to make yesterday an excellent day. 

It's been nearly five years since Craig left Princeton and the world of college athletics, one he'd been in for more than 20 years. He started as an intern at Princeton when TB called him out of the blue at the Trenton Times, where Craig had been working and where TB had first become impressed with his work.

At the time, Craig knew nothing about what athletic communications was. In his years at Princeton (and two at Cornell) he became one of the very, very best to ever do it.

TB was saddened when Craig left athletics. He understood it. Craig has two kids who somehow now are in 10th and sixth grade, and it's not always easy to be a parent when you have so many nights and weekends that require you to work. 

Like anyone who comes back after some time away, he was struck by how different the campus looks, especially the parts right around Jadwin Gym, and how many people who used to work here don't anymore. 

When you're here all the time, it's a gradual process, to the point that it's not something you necessarily notice. When you go away for five years, it's radical.

Anyway, having him back at Princeton was nice, even if only for a day. 

*

The ECAC women's hockey playoffs come to Baker Rink this weekend as Princeton hosts Dartmouth in the opening round. Gametime Saturday is 3 pm.

In past years, the top eight teams in the regular season all advanced directly to the quarterfinals, while the other teams didn't make the tournament. This year, all 12 league teams are still competing, with the top four in the quarterfinals and the others in the opening round.

Princeton is the No. 7 seed, taking on the No. 10 seed Big Green. It's not best of three; instead, the winner of this game will advance to the quarterfinals, which will be best of three. The matchups for the quarters will be determined by the winners of this weekend's games, with the lowest remaining seed to play the No. 1 seed and so on.

All three games next weekend will be on the home ice of the higher seed, which makes this the final Baker Rink appearance of the Tiger seniors, including Olympic gold medalist Sarah Fillier, the nation's leader in goals per game.

*

Speaking of Princeton women athletes who've won Olympic gold and then come back to compete for the Tigers, the other one won the championship at the World Aquatics Championships recently. Not shockingly, that Princetonian — Ashleigh Johnson — was named the top goalie of the tournament.

Johnson has already won two Olympic gold medals and has been named the top player in the world on more than one occasion. She made 12 saves in the final, which the U.S. won 8-7 over Hungary.

Princeton had two representatives on the team, along with Jovana Sekulic, who is taking the year off from school in hopes of being in the Olympics as well. Sekulic scored four goals in the tournament.

*

How often does Princeton play the No. 1 team in the country? It depends on the sport. 

This weekend, the Princeton women's tennis team will be in Stillwater, taking on No. 1 Oklahoma State. The match in Oklahoma is the first of six non-league matches before the Ivy League opener at home against Penn on March 30.

Between now and then? It looks like this: Old Dominion at home (March 1), at Penn State (March 3), vs. Navy and Duke in Orlando March 11-13 and then Maryland at home March 20. 

*

This weekend is also opening weekend for Princeton baseball and softball. 

The baseball team will be at UNC-Wilmington tomorrow through Sunday, while the softball team has five games at the Charleston Cougar Classic in South Carolina.

Your weather forecasts: Wilmington will have temps in the 60s, with the only chance of rain early Friday. Charleston will be the same, with temps about five degrees higher per day. 

If you are planning ahead, the baseball team will be at North Carolina next weekend, with games Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The men's lacrosse team will be in the area as well, at North Carolina Friday night and Duke Sunday afternoon. Of course, before then, it's Princeton at Maryland this Saturday. 

On Your Marks ...

When TigerBlog heard that Kate Joyce was taking photos for Princeton Athletics, he thought that could possibly make for a good feature story.

When he heard the rest of it from her, and saw some of her photos, he was pretty much amazed.

Joyce, a senior, is a two-time All-American javelin thrower for Princeton. If you want to know why she won't be a three-time All-American, you'll have to read the story, which you can do so HERE.

If you do read it, you'll learn all about her story, which is fascinating. Here are a few teasers:

* she was very late coming to the javelin. TigerBlog, in fact, considered referring to her as the Roy Hobbs of javelin throwing

* she finished sixth at the NCAA championships as a sophomore

* the story mentions snowy egrets and gray treefrogs

* the word "mangled" makes an appearance. It's a word that has only previously been used twice in the entire history of the blog, and both times it was in reference to a headline that appeared in the New York Daily News after the 1995 Princeton-Columbia football game at Palmer Stadium: "Title Hopes, Quarterback Left Mangled In New Jersey"

If that doesn't get your attention, then just read it anyway. You'll see one of the best things about Princeton Athletics — each athlete took a different path to get here and then a different path once here. As such, they all take something unique from the experience, even as they are part of a larger team structure that shares common goals and outcomes. 

You can learn a lot from such things, and those lessons last forever.

In Joyce's case, that is certainly true. Even if it hasn't played out the way she would have wanted, she still has gotten so much out of her time at Princeton and with the women's track and field team that, in a weird way, it's likely that she wouldn't change a thing if she could.

As a javelin thrower, Joyce wouldn't have been competing at Ivy League Heps this weekend anyway. The javelin is not an indoor event, for obvious reasons.

The rest of the Princeton men and women will be at Harvard Saturday and Sunday for the Indoor Heps championships. It's a weekend in which three Ivy League championships are on the line, with the two at indoor track and field and also women's swimming and diving, which begins tonight and runs (swims?) through Saturday at Brown.

There are two events tonight, in fact, at the swimming championships — the 200 yard medley relay and the 800 yard freestyle relay. The meet ends Saturday with another relay, the 400 free relay, which is the 20th and final event of the program.

If you think that championship meets like this are just about who has the best runners, throwers, jumpers, divers and swimmers, there's a lot more to it. In fact, the strategy that goes into figuring out who will be in which events, where to get the most points, where to possibly leave yourself a little short for a bigger payoff later, is very difficult and very scientific. 

If you thought there was no such thing as X's and O's in these sports, ask a coach about what goes into it. There's a lot more to it than just "okay, you swim here, you run there."

The women's indoor track and field team has finished second each of the last two seasons. Princeton is the defending champion in both men's indoor track and field and women's swimming and diving. Both teams will try to win again, this time with different head coaches — Jason Vigilante and Abby Brethauer.

The men's indoor track and field team has won 24 Ivy titles. The women's swimming and diving team has won 25. 

The men's swimming and diving championships are next weekend, at Harvard.

If you've never been to one of these meets, you're missing out on something special. They are, at first glance, apparently organized chaos, but they are incredibly intense and dramatic. 

For more information on the Heps event, click HERE.

For more information on women's swimming and diving, click HERE.

Influential

Because the Silver Waves Media Group's listing of the 100 Most Influential People in women's college basketball was done in alphabetical order by first name, the person directly ahead of Carla Berube was ... ?

Think about it for a few paragraphs.

It reminded TigerBlog of his college yearbook, in which the person ahead of him was Laurene Powell. Perhaps you recognize her more as Laurene Powell Jobs.

Berube, Princeton's head coach, was named to the list, and deservedly so. Is 95-15 a good overall record? How about 50-2 in the Ivy League? How about wins in two consecutive NCAA tournaments? 

Factor in all of her success at Tufts before coming to Princeton in 2019-20 and her UConn playing days, and she's clearly building a Hall of Fame resume. 

The person named on the list before her? Caitlin Clark, who would be No. 1 if the list had been done in order. 

Also, the person who is seven places ahead is former Tiger head coach and current North Carolina head coach Courtney Banghart, who is also president of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association. 

Missing from the list? Mel Greenberg. No discussion of making an impact on women's college basketball is complete without mentioning Mel, who has done more on the media side to grow the game than any other individual anywhere ever. 

Berube, of course, has more important things to worry about these days than individual accolades. Knowing her the way TB does, he knows she wouldn't care about individual accolades even if she wasn't in the middle of an Ivy League championship race and bid for another NCAA trip.

Princeton went on the road last weekend and swept Brown and Yale, running its record to 20-3 overall and 10-0 in the Ivy League. Before TB gets into the upcoming games, there is a matter of just how Princeton swept those games.

First, Friday night in Providence, the Tigers allowed 33 points in the final five quarters combined. That's an average of not a lot of points per quarter.

Princeton broke open a tight game against Brown for a 74-62 win, outscoring the Bears 19-8 in the fourth quarter. The final score Saturday night in New Haven was 70-25. 

Princeton did not allow Yale to reach double figures in any quarter. The Bulldogs score by quarters was eight, seven, six, four. 

TigerBlog wishes there was an easy way to see how many women's games have been played this year where a team held its opponent in single digits in all four quarters.

By the way, when TB did some research on Ivy women's basketball, he found out that Princeton actually ranks second in the league in scoring defense (56.4 points per game). Who is first? Dartmouth, at 55.4. Despite that, the Big Green are tied for seventh in the league at 1-9, 7-15 overall.

Princeton, at 10-0, has a one-game lead on Columbia, who is 9-1 after its win at Harvard Sunday afternoon. The Lions have one more regular season game on their home court, and it's sort of a big one, as the Tigers will be there Saturday at 2. The math on this one is obvious.

There's only one game this weekend for the women's teams, which means that Princeton and Columbia have no other opponent to prepare for as well. Of course, these are two teams that already know each other very well. 

This is Game 2 between them this year. If there is to be a Game 3, it'll also be at Columbia. The Tigers and Lions have clinched spots in the Ivy League tournament, which begins March 15 at Columbia's Levien Gym.

Harvard is 7-3 and in third place. The Crimson are 7-0 against the rest of the league and 0-3 against Princeton and Columbia, with a game at Princeton March 1 still to go.

With four games to go, Brown is 5-5, followed by 4-6 Penn, 3-7 Yale and then 1-7 Cornell and Dartmouth. Brown got a huge win Saturday in Providence 61-59, putting the Bears a game up with four to go. Had Brown lost, it would have been swept by the Quakers this season, which would have given Penn the first tiebreaker edge for the fourth Ivy tournament spot should it come to that.

Happy Presidents' Day

Today is Presidents' Day.

As you probably know, there have been two U.S. Presidents who have graduated from Princeton — James Madison and Woodrow Wilson. Some others have come close, such as Adlai Stevenson, who twice lost to Dwight Eisenhower, and Bill Bradley, whose timing was just a bit off.

And then there is Princeton grad Aaron Burr, Class of 1772. His father, also Aaron Burr, was Princeton's second president, taking over the College of New Jersey in 1747 when it had eight students. In fact, it was Burr Sr. who was college president when the school moved from Newark to Princeton in 1755.

Back in the election of 1800, which actually spilled over into 1801. Back then, the candidate who got the most electoral votes was the President and the one who got the second-most was the Vice President. 

Thomas Jefferson ran as the Presidential candidate, with Burr as the Vice Presidential candidate, for the Democrat-Republican party. The Federalist candidate was John Adams, who was the incumbent at the time. Jefferson and Burr ended up with the same number of electoral votes, which sent the election to the House of Representatives. 

It took 36 ballots for Jefferson to win, and Burr became Vice President. It didn't go so well for Burr after that, as he 1) was dumped by Jefferson in 1804, 2) lost the New York governor's race by a large margin and 3) ended up killing Alexander Hamilton in a famous duel. 

Burr had some other misadventures, including one exile. He died in 1836 at the age of 80, and he is buried in ... Princeton Cemetery, the same final resting place of a former President, Grover Cleveland.

So there's some Presidents' Day trivia for you.

As of Presidents' Day 2024, here are the Ivy League's men's basketball standings:

1. Cornell/Yale 8-1
3. Princeton 7-2
4. Columbia/Harvard 4-5
6. Brown 3-6
7. Penn/Dartmouth 1-8

Here's an interesting stat for you:

The top three are 19-0 against the other five teams.

Here's another interesting fact for you:

The home team has won every game so far between the top three.

So where does that leave things? 

The Ivy League tournament will bring the top four teams to Columbia the third weekend in March, which is not that far away. Between now and then, Princeton has five remaining regular season games, including a March 2 home game against Cornell.

The Big Red, by the way, host Yale this coming Friday night. If you're a Princeton fan, you're rooting for Cornell — and not just because Brian Earl is its coach.

The Tigers lost at Cornell and at Yale but then defeated the Bulldogs Saturday night 73-62 (at home of course) in a game they absolutely had to have to remain in the running for the league title. If Princeton wins out and Cornell beats Yale, then Princeton is guaranteed no worse than a share. If Yale beats Cornell, then Princeton would still need Yale to lose to someone else to have a shot at a championship.

As for the tournament, should Columbia get the No. 4 spot, then you'd have two really interesting matchups in the semifinal, one between teams that have dominated the rest of the league all season and another between the regular season champ and a fourth place team on its home floor.

The game Saturday night at Jadwin drew another huge crowd. Princeton got double digit scoring from four players, led by another incredible performance from Xavian Lee: 19 points, seven rebounds, five assists. The others in double figures were Matt Allocco (18), Caden Pierce (11) and Zach Martini (10).

The most impressive number was zero, as in the number of points Yale center Danny Wolf scored. Wolf had pummeled Princeton for 21points and 12 rebounds in the first game between the teams, and he also had a 25/10 showing against Cornell a week earlier.

This time, Princeton hounded him wherever he went. Despite having a huge height advantage, Wolf was held to 0 for 8 shooting and zero points in his 36 minutes. In nine other games this season in which he played at least 35 minutes, Wolf had averaged 21.7 points.

Princeton also rallied past Brown 72-63 Friday night, using a 20-6 second half run to do so. This weekend's schedule has the Tigers are Harvard and Dartmouth. A win over Harvard Friday night will clinch a spot in the Ivy tournament for the Tigers.

The Weekend In Hoops

Princeton and Penn have played a total of 249 games in men's basketball since they first got together on Valentines' Day 1903.

Penn holds a slim lead in the series, 126-123. If you're TigerBlog, you look at that number and marvel. 

Why? Because you have to factor in two numbers: with Mitch, and without Mitch. 

In games in which Mitch Henderson has either played or coached, Princeton is 26-8 against the Quakers. In all other games, Princeton is 97-118. 

That's a .765 winning percentage with Mitch Henderson and a .451 winning percentage without him. It becomes even more amazing when you add in the fact that he was 0-4 against Penn as a player to start his career. That means he's 26-4 since, or, wait for it, a .878 winning percentage.

When TigerBlog was doing Princeton's men's basketball media guide back when that was a thing, he used to update the numbers in the rivalry and think that the Tigers would never catch up. And now? They are just three back of the Quakers. 

Of course, past performance doesn't guarantee future success, as they say. That's why nothing in sports can ever be taken for granted. 

Mitch added another win against the Quakers last Saturday night in Jadwin, as the Tigers won 77-70 in front of a sell-out crowd. It was a fun night in the building, which came alive at all the right times and helped Princeton through any times where Penn might have been on the verge of taking control.

Princeton has at least one more game against the Quakers this season as the teams end their regular seasons against each other on March 9 at the Palestra. The Ivy League tournament will begin the following weekend.

Between now and then, there are much more pressing matters to keep Princeton focused. There is the matter of this weekend, when the Tigers host Brown (tonight at 7) and Yale (tomorrow at 8). 

The top four teams will clinch spots in the Ivy tournament at Columbia, which is now just four weeks away. Princeton cannot clinch a spot this weekend no matter what, but this weekend's results will have a big impact in a few areas.

First of all, Princeton can become the No. 1 team by winning its remaining games and having Cornell defeat Yale. Should that happen, Princeton would be assured of at least a share of the title and also the top seed, no matter what else occurs.

Second, Princeton can continue to put distance between itself and the teams that are chasing the Tigers for Ivy tournament spots by winning this weekend at home. 

Right now, Yale is 7-0, followed by 6-1 Cornell and 5-2 Princeton. In games between those three, the home team has won each time. Those three also enter this weekend a combined 15-0 against the rest of the league.

Harvard and Columbia are both 3-4 and tied for fourth, followed by Brown at 2-5 and Penn and Dartmouth at 1-6 each. Obviously every win is huge for every team, and Brown needs all the wins it can get, especially this weekend. 

Also, the team that breaks through against one of the top three will have a huge advantage as the race for fourth moves along. 

In other words, both games this weekend are big. Besides, every Princeton home game this year has  been an event. 

Then there is the women's side. 

Princeton is currently 8-0 as it heads to 4-4 Brown (tonight at 7) and 3-5 Yale (tomorrow at 6). Wins in both of those games will clinch an Ivy tournament spot for the women.

If you're looking ahead, the next game for the Tigers will be Saturday the 24th at 2 pm at Columbia, who is 6-1. It could be the first of two more meetings between the teams, and the only place Princeton can play Columbia again this year is on Columbia's home court.

The rest of the women's standings have Harvard at 6-2, followed by Brown and then 3-5 Yale and Penn, 1-7 Cornell and 0-8 Dartmouth.

February is past its midway point. March, and all that is mad about it, is right around the corner. 

Every weekend from here on out will be an exciting one. 

Guest TigerBlog - Karim Elbarbary And The Championship Emotions

TigerBlog has tried basically every form of exercise there is at some point during his lifetime.

His least favorite is easily running. His favorite? Bicycling and his years in lunchtime basketball are close to the top, but he'd have to say it's the 15 years or so he spent playing squash, mostly against his former colleague and longtime friend Craig Sachson. That was before he had surgery on both knees and shoulder tendinitis, of course.

TB has always had a great appreciation for the sport, especially when it's played at a level that only remotely resembles the game he used to play. He was also very close with legendary coach Bob Callahan, who tragically passed away in 2015 at the age of 59 due to brain cancer. If you never knew Bob, that's your loss, since he was as fine a gentleman as has ever lived.

Princeton's men's team won an Ivy League championship this past Saturday in a thrilling 5-4 comeback win against Penn. The clinching point came in the fifth game of the No. 1 match, and it was delivered by senior Karim Elbarbary. 

After the match, TB reached out to Elbarbary, whom he's never met, to congratulate him and to ask him about the emotions of the day. Here is what Elbarbary had to say:

In our recent match against Penn, the odds were stacked against us as we trailed 4-1 after five matches. The pressure was tangible, setting the tone even before I stepped onto the court. Adding to the intensity, Princeton hadn't clinched an Ivy title in a staggering 11 years. We had fans and alumni fly in from all over with hopes of witnessing this long-awaited moment. Some of these alumni had trained on these courts at Jadwin during their undergraduate years at Princeton, in some cases decades ago. I could see it in their eyes how much it meant to them seeing a final Ivy title enter our home we call Jadwin, as this would be Princeton Squash’s last-ever match on these courts.

 

The turning point arrived when my teammate secured the eighth match, leveling the score at 4-4. Suddenly, over a decade of anticipation boiled down to my impending match. The crowds grew, eyes fixated on the court with eager anticipation. The fourth game saw a surge of spectators flooding in as they realized this final game would be the decider to the title, creating an atmosphere that disoriented my focus.

 

Amidst the vast crowd, I could only lock eyes with my coaches and teammates outside. Their expressions conveyed years of dedication, emphasizing the gravity of the moment. The pressure intensified, the fear of disappointment loomed, and the responsibility on my shoulders weighed more than the intense 60 minutes of squash leading up to that point.

 

Unfortunately, the fourth game slipped away at the last moment, tying the score at 2-2. Playing the deciding game is stressful on its own, but with a decade-long-awaited Ivy title at stake, the dynamics had completely shifted. The short break between games turned into a chaotic symphony of advice from coaches and teammates, creating a chorus I could hardly decipher.

 

In response, I opted to close my eyes, shutting out the crowd, the noise, doubts, and mounting pressure. The fifth game became a singular focus on finding a way to win. Before stepping on the court, I made a promise to leave everything on the court – a commitment that led to the most focused performance of my career.

 

The tie-breaking game brought not just mental but physical intensity. Coming back from a persistent year-long injury, I had to navigate the match strategically to avoid potential setbacks similar to the re-injury I had suffered in the Harvard match just weeks prior. Memories of pushing limits during practice flooded in, a testament to our team's preparation both mentally and physically.

 

In the heat of the match against Penn, the sting of last year's loss to Trinity at nationals haunted me. That defeat was a poignant moment etched in our collective memory, marked by tears shared in the hallway afterward. Rather than letting that setback define us, it became a powerful motivator this season, more than ever intensifying our training efforts in the lead-up to this crucial match. The pain of that loss fueled our resilience and determination, pushing us to train harder and strive for redemption on the court.

 

Amidst it all, assistant coach Neil Pomphrey who was coaching me during the match, disappeared into the ever-growing crowd. Pressure mounted, and the tie-breaking game unfolded with points swinging like a pendulum. I realized the only way I could win now was to increase pressure on my opponent by raising the pace of the game, reaching the ball earlier, and playing more aggressively. Point by point, I saw my opponent getting worn down. The moment I won the last point is one I will never forget — I was overcome with relief and joy seeing how proud my teammates and coaches were, and the chants of my nickname “Kimo!” only made the victory sweeter. Watching the victory on video still gives me goosebumps; however, I want to emphasize that this victory was not a one-person show. My teammates contributed tremendously throughout the season and in this game, making me just a small part of this great achievement.

 

Despite winning many individual awards for Princeton, they pale in comparison to the satisfaction of winning an Ivy title with the team. Princeton men's squash is a force to be reckoned with. We've faced heartbreaks together, falling short of winning titles time and time again. Those losses intensified the sweetness of this achievement as a senior. This journey, this team – winning that Ivy title is a defining moment etched deeply in my Princeton career and for the rest of my life.

Shoveling Into Spring

Well, it was only 10 days ago TigerBlog that was out at the pool in Florida. 

Yesterday? There were six inches of snow to be shoveled. That's probably what he deserved for his week in Florida, but what did the rest of you do to deserve this? 

The forecast here was for mostly rain, with a foot of snow in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Instead, it appears that the bulk of the storm was centered somewhere around Central Jersey and New York, leading to a rarity — a day when the Princeton campus was closed to "non-essential workers," a group that includes TigerBlog. 

Not to worry, though. He is still here today. 

He might be a little sore, but he's here. This was the big, heavy wet snow, the kind that's hardest to shovel. On the other hand, he didn't have to go to the gym yesterday after that workout.

Ah, but with each shovel-full that had to be removed from the driveway, TigerBlog kept having the same thought go through his head: "It's nearly spring."

Well, that, and "what does the groundhog know anyway?" He also went back to his youth, when he would shovel his driveway just wide enough to get his mother's car out of the garage. Even then he hated to shovel.

There may be a few more weeks of winter, but it's also the opening weekend for the Princeton men's and women's lacrosse teams. Next week, those two will be joined by baseball and softball. 

Feel the warmth?

The college lacrosse season actually began two weeks ago, if you can believe it. The 15 Ivy League teams will join the fun this weekend.

The Princeton women will be at Virginia at noon. The Tigers were picked to finish second in the Ivy League preseason poll.

The Princeton men will be at Monmouth at noon. These Tigers were picked to finish third in the Ivy League preseason poll.

It'll be 38 for a high in West Long Branch Saturday. It'll be 46 for a high in Charlottesville. 

The women's game matches the 18th-ranked Cavaliers and the 19th-ranked Tigers, according to the USA Lacrosse poll. Virginia, 16th in the coaches' poll, has already played twice and won both of those, defeating Liberty and Stanford. 

The men's game might not be a home game, but with this year's schedule, it sort of is. Princeton plays 13 regular season games, and eight of those are on the road. A trip to Monmouth? That's nothing, an hour on the bus. Next weekend it's at Maryland. The weekend after that it's at North Carolina and Duke. After that, it's another short road trip, that one to Rutgers. 

The men do have their home opener Tuesday night against Manhattan at 6. The women are at Penn State next weekend and then play their home opener against Rutgers on Feb. 28, at 7.

Princeton's men are currently ranked 11th. They will be looking for a third-straight trip to the NCAA tournament.

This weekend will also feature the Princeton women's water polo invitational at DeNunzio Pool. Even if it's indoors, women's water polo is still a spring sport.

Princeton plays Harvard Saturday at 11 and Siena Saturday at 5 and then Mount St. Mary's Sunday at 11:30 and San Diego State Sunday at 4:30.

The San Diego State women's water polo team will play Siena and La Salle Saturday and Wagner at Princeton Sunday. There are 14 California players and no players from any other states on the team. There are also eight international players, with two from Canada (who presumably are not strangers to winter), one from Spain, one from England, two from Australia and two from New Zealand. 

TB remembers when the NCAA men's championships were held at DeNunzio (in 2009), and there was snow on the first day. The California teams? They were bewildered by the snow, but you know what even more of an adjustment to them? 

Playing indoors. 

Anyway, there figures to be plenty of snow still on the ground for San Diego State's arrival. 

Then again, it is time for spring — at least the spring sports season.

Hopefully that means no more shoveling for this winter.

A Three-Title Weekend

TigerBlog is part of a four-person text group that plays Wordle every morning.

If you like puzzles and haven't played Wordle, then you should start immediately. Basically, you get six chances to guess a five-letter word, and with each guess, you're told if 1) the letters you selected are in the final word and 2) if they are in the right spot in the final word. 

In TB's group, the person who gets the word in the fewest guesses chooses the starting word for the next day. If there's a tie, then the person who has gone the longest without choosing gets to do so.

TB, by the way, is the only person in the group who has actually met the other three. Intriguing, no? Well, not really. One of the other three is Miss Blog. There's also her dear friend Jen, as well as TB's longtime friend and University colleague Dan Day. 

Last week, one of the starting words was "enure." TigerBlog had no idea this was a word, but it actually is. Its definition: (legal term) to come into operation; to take place, have effect; to be available; to be applied (to the use or benefit of a person).

TigerBlog had the opportunity to choose the starting word Sunday. In honor of the Super Bowl, he came up with something different: If the 49ers won, the starting word would be "Brock;" if the Chiefs won, the starting word would be "Swift."

Anyway, it was "Swift." TigerBlog won't spend a lot of time on the Super Bowl, but he will say this:

* the last 30 minutes of the 4.5 hour game were very dramatic, obviously; other than that, it was a sloppy game that happened to be close
* the fact that the Niners kicker missed an extra point had exactly zero impact on the way the game turned out
* the only good part of any commercial was Matt Damon's role in the Ben Afleck one; the rest seemed to have been cut from the "find a celebrity, any celebrity, and then nobody cares how stupid the actual content is" mold
* you have to know the rules
* TB believes that Tony Romo isn't as bad as most people seem to think, and he enjoys listening to him as much as any other color commentator since John Madden (nobody will ever be better)
* and last but not least, never, ever, ever, ever doubt Pat Mahomes with the game on the line

By the way, today's group Wordle starting word was "puppy," and TB got it in four, while everyone else got it in fifve. What should tomorrow's word be? How about "three," as in the number of Ivy League championships Princeton won this past weekend.

TigerBlog was in his office on Jadwin's E Level Saturday afternoon just in time to see the end of the fourth game of the final match of Princeton's men's squash match against Penn. He would have gone up two flights to watch it, but the gallery was just packed. 

Instead, he watched the stream, and he turned it on at the right moment. Princeton and Penn were tied at 4-4, and the No. 1 match was going to decide the winner. If Penn won, it would have the outright Ivy championship. If Princeton won, then the teams would share the championship.

For a little background, this would be the final day of squash competition in Jadwin Gym's history, since the teams are moving across the lake to a new squash center next season. Also, Penn had won four of the first five matches completed (Zain Ahmed at No. 8 had given Princeton its only win in those first five), which meant Princeton had to go 4 for 4 from then on to win.

Avi Agarwal finished off a 3-0 win for the Tigers at No. 6, making it 4-2. Gordon Lam at No. 9 finished off his match in four games, winning the final two to make it 4-3.

Ahmed Hussein won a grueling five-game match at No. 4, taking the final game 12-10. Now it was even.

The No. 1 match was between Princeton's Karim Elbarbary and Penn's Salman Khalil. Elbarbary won the first two games 11-7 and 11-3. Khalil came back with an 11-3 win and then an 11-9 win. Now it was one game to decide it all.

The two went back and forth in a tense, emotional fifth game. In the end, it was Elbarbary 11-9, and it was Princeton 5-4. 

The other two Ivy titles came Sunday, in men's and women's fencing at the Ivy round-robin at Columbia. To show you how good Ivy fencing is, both the men's side and women's side ended in three-way ties, with very little to separate any of the top teams.

On the men's side, Princeton got its first championship since 2017. The Tigers lost 15-12 to Harvard, who lost 15-12 to Columbia, who lost 15-12 to Princeton. That's about as even as it gets.

Then there's the women. Princeton lost to Penn 14-13, but Penn lost to Columbia 14-13 as well. Princeton beat Columbia 16-11. 

Missing Lorin, 15 Years Later

Click here for information on tonight's Sports, Race & Society Lecture: A Conversation With Niyaka Niilampti ’97, Swin Cash and Allison Feater 

It was about two weeks ago when it dawned on TigerBlog that the 25th anniversary of the comeback game at the Palestra between Princeton and Penn was right around the corner.

If you haven't read his feature story from the game that ran last week, you can still see it HERE.

Then, last week, Diana Chamorro his former colleague in the Office of Athletic Communications, stopped by to visit. Diana hasn't been in Princeton since she left here to go back to her home state of California.

How long had it been? TigerBlog wouldn't have guessed it, but it's been 10 years. 

Where does the time go? 

TigerBlog mentioned recently the anniversary of his daily streak of writing here when it reached 15 uninterrupted years. Again, has it really been that long? 

It's a strange dynamic, the way it becomes difficult to remember how long ago something was. TigerBlog can remember scores of games from decades ago, high schools where Princeton athletes went — and yet the one thing he struggles with is class years, especially if Player A graduated before or after Player B.

Why is that?

Maybe it's because he doesn't think of how much time has elapsed. You only think back to the event, the day, the memory — or the person. 

And for today, that person is Lorin Maurer.

As you should know by now, every year on this date, TB writes about his former friend and colleague, Lorin, who was killed in a plane crash on her way to Buffalo on Feb. 12, 2009. That's 15 years ago today.

It's been a decade and a half, and yet the details of that awful few hours remain vivid. 

TigerBlog had been in a meeting that Lorin had also been a part of that afternoon. Lorin needed to leave quickly afterwards; she had to catch a flight to Buffalo for the wedding of her boyfriend's brother.

She had just turned 30. She was the liaison between the Department of Athletics and the team's Friends' Groups. 

Lorin was a former Academic All-American swimmer at Rowan College in South Jersey. She had recently found love. 

She was fun and funny. She was easy to get along with, and she loved to be a part of the group of young people in the athletic department. She had made great friends here. 

When the meeting ended, TigerBlog went back to his office, which was still on the Jadwin Gym mezzanine. Shortly afterwards, Lorin walked by on her way to the parking lot and did what she always did — smiled.

Then she was off. And she had the tragic misfortune to be one of the 50 people (49 on the plane, one on the ground) who died when the plane went down short of the Buffalo airport late that night.

TigerBlog went to bed completely unaware that anything had happened. He woke up to an email from then Director of Athletics Gary Walters, explaining that Lorin Maurer had died.

TB can still feel the shivers he felt when he read the email. It seemed so impossible. How could she be gone? 

She'd just been there, hours before. She was so full of life and energy. All that wasted? All that she had to offer the world lost forever? No way. It couldn't be true.

Sadly, it was. The rest of that day was spent fielding requests from local and national media to find out about Lorin, to see where she worked. There was a basketball game that night, with a moment of silence. Mostly, there were her stunned and inconsolable friends here.

Some of them are still here. Most of the people who knew Lorin from the department have moved on. 

For the ones who knew her, you know what a special person she was, and you feel her loss regularly, and not just on this sad anniversary. 

And for those who didn't? Just know that Lorin Maurer used to work here, used to be a big part of the culture here and used to bring that smile with her to work every day. 

She's gone, horribly, for 15 years now. 

She is still not forgotten — nor will she ever be. 

It was a great weekend for Princeton Athletics, and there's plenty of time this week to talk about it. Today?

Feb. 12 belongs to Lorin Maurer.

A Sold Out Jadwin

Click here for information on Monday night's Sports, Race & Society Lecture: A Conversation With Niyaka Niilampti ’97, Swin Cash and Allison Feater

The Princeton-Penn men's basketball game set for tomorrow at Jadwin Gym is officially sold out.

This is what happens when your team gets to the Sweet 16. People want to come see you play the next year.

It's also a by-product of the rivalry, which is the greatest in the history of Ivy League sports. TigerBlog, in his highly unbiased opinion, will take Princeton-Penn men's basketball over any other matchup, including Harvard-Yale football, the only other rivalry in the conversation.

Princeton has won 28 Ivy League championships. Penn has won 26. No other team is close, as in, no other team has reached double figures. 

Between 1963 and 2007, there were only three years that the Ivy League's NCAA tournament bid went to a team other than Princeton or Penn — 1968, 1986, 1988. That's it. 

Yes, that's a very special rivalry.

It seems fitting that the teams are playing this weekend, which also happens to be the 25th anniversary of one of the greatest games college basketball has ever seen. It was on this date, actually, Feb. 9, in 1999, when Princeton and Penn met at the Palestra in what is commonly referred to as "the Comeback Game."

Princeton and Penn were both 6-0 heading into the game. The Tigers had won three straight Ivy titles, but graduation losses such as Mitch Henderson, Steve Goodrich and the late James Mastaglio made it a more even race between the Tigers and Quakers. 

Princeton led 3-0 on a Brian Earl three-point shot. Penn then went on a 29-0 run. It was 33-9 at the half. It was 40-13 with 15 minutes to play.

Princeton won 50-49. 

How was that possible? And how is it possible that 25 years have gone by since? 

TigerBlog has a feature story about the game that you can read HERE. For the story he spoke to Princeton's Chris Young, Penn's Matt Langel and game official Ed Corbett. Their comments are fascinating.

By coincidence, TB spoke to John Thompson III earlier this week. JT3 was a Princeton assistant coach in 1999, one year away from becoming the head coach.

TB mentioned that he was writing the feature, and Thompson said that he has in his office — and has had in every office he's had since that night – a framed ticket from the game.  

Twenty-five years later, the world of Ivy basketball is quite different. The regular-season champion does not get the automatic bid. That, instead, goes to the winner of the league's tournament, which will bring the top four teams to Columbia's Levien Gym next month.

As was the case in 1999, the first Princeton-Penn game is the seventh game on the league schedule. As the Ivy season reaches the midpoint, there are apparently two different storylines.

First, there is the battle for first place. Cornell and Yale are both 6-0, and they will meet tomorrow at 2 in New Haven in their first matchup of the season. Princeton is next at 4-2, with losses to both Cornell and Yale.

Both of those games, though, were on the road. The Tigers will host Yale next Saturday (the 17th, 8 pm) and Cornell March 2 in the second-to-last game of the regular season. 

Then there is the battle for fourth place, or what for now appears to be fourth place. Princeton, Cornell and Yale are unbeaten against the other five league schools to this point, with a combined record of 16-0. That, of course, could change radically with this many games to go, but Princeton now has a two-game lead over fourth place.

Heading into this weekend, Columbia, Brown and Harvard are 2-4 each. Penn and Dartmouth are both 1-5. 

Obviously this is a huge game for both teams. Princeton is looking to keep pace with Yale and Cornell, especially since one is guaranteed to be 7-0 after the game. Penn needs all the wins it can get as it chases an Ivy tournament spot, and the Quakers are only one game out even at 1-5.

There is a long way to go. It'll be a fun race. 

Remember, Princeton's Sweet 16 run last year came after the Tigers went 10-4 in the regular season, tied for the league championship and then won the Ivy tournament.

For tomorrow, it's Princeton-Penn. No wonder the building is sold out. 

The rivalry is still the best the league has to offer.

 

A Jadwin Farewell, And More

Now this is writing:

The victory of the Eli players last month was largely due to the poor condition of the courts. The superiority of the Princeton courts is expected to make the match close with a Tiger victory in the foreground.

That was from the Daily Princetonian of March 16, 1929. Imagine being able to get away with stuff like today? 

In the entire history of this blog, only once has the word "superiority" been used, and it was in this sentence: This applies to the inmates and to the staff, and at certain points it becomes hard to remember who has the moral superiority and stronger character between the two.

TigerBlog wasn't writing about anything to do with Princeton, though it did have to do with Orange and Black, as in "Orange Is The New Black." 

Anyway, TB hasn't been able to figure out who won the match back in 1929, since Princeton wasn't a varsity team until 1931 and Yale's website doesn't list a result for 1929. 

He also isn't 100 percent sure where the superior Princeton courts were in 1929, since Dillon Gym didn't open until 1947. He'd guess it was in University Gymnasium, which burned down in 1944. 

Princeton squash played in Dillon from when it opened until it moved to Jadwin Gym in the fall of 1969. And now? 

Jadwin will be hosting Princeton squash for the final time this weekend. 

Beginning next year, Princeton squash will move across Lake Carnegie to the new Racquet and Recreation Center. You can read about it HERE.

The final day of Princeton squash in Jadwin will be Saturday with a doubleheader against Penn, starting with the men at noon and then ending with the women at 2:30. The women will close out their time in Jadwin with the way they began it, with a match against the Quakers.

The women's Ivy League championship has already been decided, as Harvard has won. On the men's side, Penn has clinched at least a share of the championship and would win outright with a victory, but a Princeton win would give the Tigers a share as well. 

In other words, the Jadwin squash courts are going out in style.

*

The men's and women's Ivy fencing champions will be crowned this weekend. While most round-robin schedules take a few weeks or months to go through, in fencing it's done in two days.

Beginning Saturday and ending Sunday — and that's it — each Ivy team will fence against each other Ivy team. This year's event will be held at Columbia.

The Princeton men are ranked third nationally. The Princeton women are ranked fourth nationally. The women have won the last two Ivy titles.

*

The Sports, Race and Society Lecture Series will bring three women leaders in athletics to McCosh 50 Monday night at 7:30. From the release on goprincetontigers.com (which includes information on how to register).

The "Sports, Race and Society Lecture" returns to campus Monday, February 12th and will feature a conversation with accomplished athletes and current professional sports executives Swin Cash, Allison Feaster and Nyaka Niilampti '97. Cash (Vice President of Basketball Operations & Team Development, New Orleans Pelicans), Feaster (Vice President of Team Operations & Organizational Growth, Boston Celtics), and Niilampti (Vice President of Wellness and Clinical Services, National Football League) will be joined by Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack '00 to discuss their individual journeys to distinguished leadership roles within two of the most prominent men's professional sports leagues in the world.

* 

TigerBlog mentioned the other day that the Ivy women's basketball standings are a bit of a palindrome right now. The women have nothing on the wrestling standings.

Entering this weekend, there are three 3-0 teams (Princeton, Cornell, Penn) and three 0-3 teams (Harvard, Brown, Columbia). 

Tomorrow night at 7:30, two of the three unbeaten teams meet in Jadwin Gym when Princeton hosts Cornell. The Big Red, who are ranked 10th nationally, have won two straight Ivy titles after the Tigers ended its 18-year run with a wildly dramatic win in Jadwin in 2020, which in addition to ending the streak gave Princeton its 500 overall Ivy championship.

*

If you're in Jadwin Gym this weekend, check out the new banners in the lobby.

Cricket 1 And The Green Ghost

Cricket was in TigerBlog's office yesterday.

Actually, it was Cricket 1. There's Cricket 1 and Cricket 2, and only Cricket 1 was in the Office of Athletic Communications. 

The Green Ghost was there too, except he's there most days. 

Who are these phantoms? 

Cricket 1 is Lori Dauphiny, the longtime legendary head coach of women's open rowing at Princeton. Cricket 2 is her brother. 

The Green Ghost is Neal Moyer, one of the Department of Athletics IT specialists. If TB's office door is open, he will be looking directly across a small hallway and right at the Green Ghost.

Where did this nicknames come from? They were their CB handles.

TigerBlog isn't 100 percent sure exactly how all of this came up during their time in the office yesterday. He does know that as soon as he heard them exchange handles that he was going to use "Cricket 1 And The Green Ghost" as the title of today's entry — and possibly later on as the title of a novel or something. 

Do you know what a CB is? Have you ever used one? If you're under-40, TB is guessing not.

The CB in question is a Citizen's Band radio. They were very, very, very popular for a very, very, very short time in the 1970s. 

In fact, this song was actually the No. 1 song on the country and pop charts for a while in 1975:

These days, communications are much different. Back then, pretty much everyone either had a CB radio or pretended they did.

By the way, this was before anyone knew what a text message was. Now, according to what TB was able to learn, more than 80 percent of Americans regularly text and more than six billion texts per day are sent in the United States alone.

Ah, but the CD. There was a charm to it.

Cricket 1 and Cricket 2 used to talk to truckers from their home in Washington state, along the highway that went to the eastern part of the state. The Green Ghost still uses his every now and then, but hey, remember, he's an IT guy.

Of course, what do you talk to a rowing coach from Washington about these days? The movie "The Boys in the Boat." TB and Cricket 1 were very much in agreement about the fact that the movie was a nice sports movie but that the book was much better. 

Here's what TB had to say about the book after he read it a few years ago:

The book is a fascinating study of what life was like for the rowers, especially the one around whom the book is centered, a rower named Joe Rantz. They became teenagers and attended college during the Great Depression, and just piecing together enough money to attend college - and eat - was a struggle for most of them.

At the same time, the book also contrasts what the Washington rowers went through with what was going on with the rise of Nazi Germany at the same time. It ends with a great description of the gold medal race, a larger message about what it took to bring down Nazi Germany and then a rundown of what happened to each rower for the rest of their lives.

An alternate in the boat, by the way, was a man named Dutch Schoch. After graduating from Washington and attending the Olympic Games as an alternate, Schoch came to Princeton to coach, and he was the men's heavyweight coach from 1946-65. He was also the head golf coach from 1966 until his death in 1970.

After talking about the book, Dauphiny talked about having been out on the water already and how nice it was with the sun out. Was it cold, TB asked her. She said it wasn't too bad, but then again, she probably long ago developed a different sense of what it means to be cold out on the water.

The women's rowing season is still seven weeks or so away. Dauphiny's team is coming off a third-place national finish, both in the first varsity 8 race and in the total points standings. That's two straight third-place finishes, by the way.

Perhaps a movie can be made about how Dauphiny builds a successful rowing team. Between 2011 and the present, there have only been two times when Dauphiny's team has not won the Ivy League championship. She has produced NCAA champions and Olympic medalists. 

She has coached her Tigers to every NCAA championship since the regatta was first held in 1997. She's a two-time national coach of the year. She's a member of the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Hall of Fame.

When TB asked her where she came up with her CB handle, she said she wasn't 100 percent sure. Maybe she meant the Cricket part.

The No. 1? That's obvious.

A Dozen For Tosan

So Tosan Evbuomwan has played two NBA games and already has as many games in the NBA with at least 12 rebounds and three assists as he did during his entire career at Princeton. 

He also has as many NBA games with at least seven offensive rebounds as he did games at Princeton.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Evbuomwan is on a 10-day contract with the Memphis Grizzlies after putting up sensational numbers with the Motor City Cruise in the G-League this season. He didn't play in the first game after he signed with Memphis, and since then he's played twice.

First, in a loss to the Golden State Warriors, he had three points, one rebound and one assist. Then, Sunday night in a loss to the Celtics, he had three points, 12 rebounds and three assists. 

Also, his minutes played have gone from zero to 16:27 to 29:28. 

Yes, he's shot only 2 for 9 from the field. Still, in just two games, he's shown that he can 1) shoot three-pointers (he's 2 for 5 in the two games) and 2) bring his all-around game to the highest level. 

The first goal for Evbuomwan is to get a second 10-day contract. The longer-term picture is to show he belongs in the NBA on a regular basis.

The opportunity he has now is an interesting one. It's possible that no team has ever had the injury decimation that Memphis has had this season, which gives plenty of opportunity for minutes to the three players currently on 10-day contracts.

On the other hand, the current Grizzlies are going to struggle every night, which makes it a bit tougher to show what an all-around player like Evbuomwan could do with more established players around him. No matter what, though, he has himself a great opportunity here. So far, he seems to be making the most of it.

Next up for Memphis is a game tonight in Madison Square Garden against the Knicks, yet another hot team. 

By the way, who is the last Princeton alum to play in the Garden? 

You know which Princeton alum scored the most NBA points in the Garden. That would be Bill Bradley, who is the answer to most questions that start out "what Princeton basketball player ..."

TigerBlog noticed something about Bradley's NBA career numbers with the Knicks, by the way. In his 10 seasons, Bradley had 2,533 career assists. At Princeton, he had 2,503 career points. 

How many assists did Bradley have at Princeton? Zero. What? Well, assists weren't kept until 1973-74, which was nearly a decade after Bradley left.

Had assists been kept them, who knows how many he would have had. Also, who knows how many triple-doubles he would have had. 

As it is, there's only been one triple-double in Princeton history, and that was by Leslie Robinson of the women's team. Robinson's triple-double came on March 2, 2017, when she had 10 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists against Brown.

Bradley's NBA career high was 38 points, on Jan. 5, 1973. Extra credit goes to those who remember the NBA's Buffalo Braves and know what team it is now.

The Knicks won that game 129-106. Buffalo was led by Bob McAdoo, who scored 26 that night. There exists the very real chance that TigerBlog watched that game on television.

By the way, the Knicks were a few months away from their second NBA title in four seasons; they have not won another since.

Bradley never had an NBA triple-double, though he did come within one rebound twice, both times against the 76ers, when he had 17 points, nine rebounds and 11 assists in a game in 1969 and 22 points, nine rebounds and 10 assists in a game a year later.

Oh, and the last Princeton alum to play in the Garden is Steve Goodrich, by the way. Devin Cannady played against the Knicks, but it was a home game in Orlando.

And the Buffalo Braves became the San Diego Clippers and are now the Los Angeles Clippers.

Be A Thinker, Not A Stinker

TigerBlog saw "Rocky" in a movie theater in East Brunswick when it first came out back in 1976.

He can still remember how mesmerizing it was. If there are movies he likes more than that one, the list doesn't go past possibly three or four others. 

When people think about the original "Rocky," they naturally think of two things: 1) the training montage where Rocky runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and 2) the fight scene. TB does too — except he also thinks the first hour or so is as good as it gets as far as character development. 

The news this past Friday that Carl Weathers, who played Apollo Creed in the "Rocky" series, had passed away at only 76 years old struck everyone who was a fan. Weathers, who also played the coach in "Happy Gilmore," seemed to have been universally loved.

TigerBlog would say that his first appearance in the first movie set the tone for a character perfectly:

You know who he is immediately, and his character never let you down from there. Weathers was certainly an athlete, a football player, not a boxer. He played in college at San Diego State and was then with the Raiders and Jets before playing a few seasons in the Canadian Football League. 

Then he turned to acting. He had a lot of other credits besides "Rocky" and "Happy Gilmore," but it was those two roles for which he'll best be remembered. 

As Apollo Creed, he never let you down.

Remember this scene?:

 TigerBlog could go on all day with clips of Apollo Creed throughout his time in the series, but that would prevent him from talking about anything Princeton Athletics related. Instead, he'll just say that he's willing to guess that you took the news of Weathers' passing the same as he did.

Meanwhile back at Princeton Athletics, did you look at the Ivy League women's basketball standings page after this weekend's games? If you didn't, they have a great symmetry to them:

Princeton 7-0
Columbia 6-1
Harvard 5-2
Brown 4-3
Penn 3-4
Yale 2-5
Cornell 1-6
Dartmouth 0-7

The standings are a special tribute to former Tiger assistant women's coach Milena Flores, who always loves a good palindrome.

For the mathematicians out there, how is it possible to do this if every team has not yet played every other team but each team has played one other team twice?

There have been other times that the standings have looked this way, usually in a sport like squash, where the favorite overwhelmingly wins. On those occasions, though, it's because it's been a full round-robin.

Oh well. Whatever the mathematical implications, such standings do look cool — especially when your team is on top.

Once again Princeton got through the weekend unscathed, with a 79-59 win over Yale Friday night and a 76-63 win over Brown Saturday night. 

Here are some numbers from the weekend:

* Princeton outscored its opponents in the first seven quarters of the weekend, until Brown outscored the Tigers 19-17 in the fourth Saturday night

* Princeton had a 49-14 edge in points off turnovers in the two games

* Princeton had a 35-9 edge in second chance points in the two games

* Brown, a team that had a .264 three-point percentage for the season prior to the game, shot 11 for 23 from distance and 11 for 28 on two-point shots

* The Tigers were led by Chet Nweke (career-high 18), Madison St. Rose (18) and Kaitlyn Chen (17)  against Brown; TB wishes there was an easy way to look up the last time Princeton had three players with at least 17

* Chen had a 44-point weekend, shooting 20 for 35 for the two games

* The Ellie Mitchell rebound tracker now looks like this: After having 11 rebounds (seven offensive, four defensive) in each game this weekend, Mitchell now has 1,034 for her career, trailing only Margaret Meier in Princeton Basketball history — that's men and women. With seven regular season games to go and with an average 10.8 per game, Mitchell at her current pace would have 1,109 before the Ivy League Tournament.

* Attendance at Jadwin Gym Saturday night was 2,710

Next up for Princeton is a trip to Penn Saturday at 2. 

If you're planning ahead, you can get to the Palestra for that one and then be back in Jadwin for the men's game against the Quakers at 6. 

To The Groundhog

Happy Groundhog Day.

In honor of the occasion, TigerBlog would like to quote himself:

TigerBlog understands that not every movie made is trying to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In that vein, he's never understood the complete disdain so many people have for the movie "Groundhog Day."

TB saw it in the movies when it came out in 1993, and he's seen it about a thousand times since. It's a perfectly harmless, funny, at times charming, certainly inoffensive movie, and yet there are so many people who flat out hate it.

As an aside, TigerBlog was always confused as a kid by Groundhog Day, as six weeks after Feb. 2 takes you to March 16 (or March 15 in a leap year), which is still winter. He never quite understood the whole "six more weeks of winter" thing. Shouldn't it be more like 10 more weeks of winter if the point is that figuratively speaking spring will be late to arrive?

TB was crushed to learn the whole thing is a sham, at least according to a story he read:The ceremony is largely that: Phil's prediction is determined ahead of time by the Inner Circle, a group who dons top hats and tuxedos and decides in advance what the groundhog will predict.

Still, what could be better than Groundhog Day, a small-town tradition that has such a great little Americana feel to it. Something wholesome, something that hasn't been ruined by commercialism or lack of civility or any of the other ills of contemporary society.

As Phil Connors said: This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.

Before the movie came out, Groundhog Day was all about anticipating spring. Since then, it's become a reference to something that happens over and over and over - you know, like the way Phil kept living the same day over and over. Maybe that's the biggest tribute to the movie, the way it changed an entire meaning of something.

Every year on this day, that whole "six more weeks of winter" vs. "an early spring" really annoys him. 

Anyway, there's the matter of the weekend in Princeton Athletics. 

As TB wrote yesterday, it's a busy day on the Princeton campus today. If you time it right, you can see all or some of:

* women's tennis in Jadwin against Temple at 1
* H-Y-P men's and women's swimming preliminaries at 2
* men's volleyball against Pepperdine at 4 in Dillon
* swimming finals at 6
* women's basketball against Yale at 7
* men's hockey against Dartmouth at 7

Yes, you'd have to hustle to get to at least a part of all of those, but it's certainly doable. 

The men's hockey team will be looking to build on the momentum of a 4-3 overtime win over Army Tuesday night, when Adam Robbins scored the game-winner with 22 seconds to go in the extra period. This came after Army had tied the game with six seconds to go in regulation.

The ECAC standings are still very crowded, with only eight points that separate fourth place (and a first-round bye in the playoffs) and 12th-place RPI. Only five points separate 12th from 8th, and first-round home ice in the playoffs.

As for the women's basketball team, the Tigers are now ranked 25th in both major polls and are unbeaten in the Ivy League at 5-0, with Brown, Harvard and Columbia all at 4-1. Princeton has already beaten Harvard and Columbia, and Brown will come to Jadwin tomorrow at 5.

The men will be at Yale tonight (7) and at Brown tomorrow (6). Coming off its loss last weekend at 4-0 Cornell, the Tigers are taking on the other unbeaten team tonight in the Bulldogs' gym. Cornell takes to the road, taking on a Dartmouth team who took down Brown last week and then Harvard Saturday. 

Princeton is 3-1 in the league. Other than the Tigers and two unbeatens, all five of the other teams check in at 1-3. This will make for a wild ride for the four spots in the Ivy tournament.

For the entire weekend schedule, click HERE.

And Happy Groundhog Day. 

Hopefully there are only six more weeks of winter.