Twas The Day After Christmas

Twas the day after Christmas ... 

Do you think they have some sort of debrief/follow-up meeting at the North Pole this week, or is it just vacation time? 

By the way here's a Christmas joke you can file away for next year: 

"How much does it cost to power Santa's sleigh? Eight bucks. Nine if it's foggy."

TigerBlog will now give you a second to recover from the howls of laughter.

Ayway, so how was your Christmas? 

Merry, TigerBlog hopes. There was at least enough snow on the ground to qualify as a White Christmas in the Princeton area, something that doesn't happen most years.

Great news: TigerBlog Jr.'s gift is arriving today. TB was going to share with you a screenshot of the email he got confirming delivery before Christmas, but hey, why embarrass the company when it's really TB's fault for waiting so long to order it, right?

Today is Dec 26. As TB has written before:

Today has to be the worst day to have a birthday. Well, it's either today, or February 29. 

Actually, December 26 has to be way worse. When you're born on Feb. 29, yes, your birthday only comes around once every four years, but that has to be a pretty cool thing in a lot of ways. If you were, say, 28, you could tell people you were seven.

No, Dec. 26 is the worst day for a birthday. Yesterday, obviously, was Christmas. Today is the day that nobody really feels like doing anything after a long time, and actually a long month, of lead-up.

You don't want to be the one to say "hey, it's my birthday. What are we doing?" 

The answer has to be "nothing. You're on your own. We're all wiped out."

Anyway, if today's your birthday, well, happy birthday. 

There was some pretty interesting pre-Christmas news that TB saw the other day. It came in the form of one of the few things that might be able to get him to root against Caitlin Clark. 

The Washington Mystics hired Sydney Johnson to be their new head coach. 

That's the same Sydney Johnson who is the only Ivy League men's basketball alum ever to have all three of these things on his resume: Player of the Year, along with Ivy champion as a player and head coach. Actually, Johnson had two Ivy League championships (1996, 1997), with his Player of the Year honor in 1997, his senior year. 

Johnson was a defensive stopper at Princeton who could guard anyone on the other team and who still holds the school record for career steals with 169. He also found time to score 1,044 career points, 33 of which came on 11 consecutive made three-pointers, across two games, a number that is still the Ivy League record. 

Johnson began his coaching career at Georgetown under John Thompson III and was part of the Hoyas staff that led the team to the 2007 NCAA Final Four. He then got the head coaching job at Princeton and took the Tigers to the 2011 NCAA tournament and a two-point loss to Kentucky in the opening round. 

Now he takes over the Mystics, who finished a game back of the Atlanta Dream for the final playoff spot a year ago. The team also drew 20,711 fans to a game against Clark and the Indiana Fever in what is the most-attended game in league history. 

TigerBlog was the men's basketball contact during Johnson's career as a player at Princeton, and TB saw all but three games that Johnson played as a Tiger. He was one of those people who was mature beyond what you'd expect from a college athlete, and that made him one of the best leaders of a team TB has seen in all his years here. In fact, Johnson was a three-time team captain.

Here's a quote from the story announcing the hiring of Johnson as head coach and Jamila Wideman, a Stanford alum and the No. 3 pick in the first WNBA draft back in 1997, as the team's general manager:

“There are few things more valuable to me than tenacity, integrity, and excellence – and those qualities are what make Jamila and Sydney stand above the crowd,” stated Monumental Sports & Entertainment Partner Sheila C. Johnson. “These highly decorated, accomplished, and world-class leaders will serve to empower and inspire our players by maintaining a championship culture filled with purpose and compassion."

Those words — tenacity, integrity and excellence — those all perfectly describe Sydney Johnson. And now he's a WNBA head coach. 

Go Mystics. Even when they play Fever.