West Coast Weekend

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

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

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

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

TB will give you a few paragraphs to do so. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HERE is the complete Princeton Athletics schedule for the weekend.

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

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

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

Well done, Ivy office.