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.