Have A Great Thanksgiving

The Princeton men's water polo team won its fifth straight conference championship this past weekend, and in doing so the Tigers accomplished two things.

First, they advanced to the NCAA tournament, where they will play second-seeded UCLA on Dec. 5 in the quarterfinals. The entire event, by the way, is being held at Stanford.

Second, they put Joanna Dwyer into a somewhat strange situation. Dwyer, as you might remember, is leaving Princeton's Office of Athletic Communications to go to the University of Southern California. In fact, TB isn't sure which of those two actually employs her right now. 

Joanna has been the men's water polo contact here, and she will also be the contact there as well. USC enters the tournament as the No. 1 seed. 

How cool would it be for her if the two make the final? 

Also, following up on what TigerBlog wrote yesterday about how the easiest Player of the Week decision ever was the one that honored Tiger men's hockey player Kai Daniels, the news that Josh Robinson was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year was also hardly a shocking development. 

Robinson was a five-time Ivy Rookie of the Week in a season in which he set program records for receptions (46) and receiving yards (569) for freshmen. 

As for today, remember that you can watch the Princeton women's basketball team at Rhode Island this afternoon at 1 on ESPN+. Rhode Island enters the game 6-1, with only a loss to Rutgers and most recently a win over No. 16 North Carolina State. Both of those games ended up with scores of 68-63, which TB probably finds more interesting than you do. 

Princeton is 5-1 on the year, with only a loss to unbeaten and sixth-ranked Maryland. If you're wondering (and you're probably not), the last time Princeton played a game that ended up 68-63 was last year in the NCAA tournament, when the Tigers fell to Iowa State by that score. There have been five games in Princeton women's basketball history that have ended up 68-63, and the Tigers are 1-4 in those games — with a 2009 win over Columbia. 

That's enough of that, no? 

And of course, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. If you see these guys, give them sanctuary. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Players Of The Week

TigerBlog had his surgery yesterday for his melanoma. 

Everything went well — except for the fact that he now has to use a walker for a week. If that doesn't make you feel old, there was this from the physical therapy person: "We find that OLDER patients prefer the walker to the crutches."

Even worse than that? She's right. The walker is so much easier. 

TB can joke about all this because the skin cancer was caught early from a regular bi-annual checkup with Minnie The Dermatologist. He will repeat this: If you don't have your own Minnie, go find one and make an appointment. Getting in to see the dermatologist is not easy. Call TODAY. 

Remember last week's tribute to TB's late friend Chuck Sullivan? He died of melanoma at 54.  

Also, if you're a woman under 30 who spends time in the sun — say, possibly a college athlete — you're in a very high risk group. TB told every member of the field hockey team multiple times to make sure she goes. He's telling you too. 

As he wrote when this first happened, he would never have guessed that the small freckle on his foot was problematic, let alone life threatening. Let your Minnie figure that part out.  

Okay, hopefully you got the message.

And with that, there was yesterday's news that Kai Daniels was the ECAC Forward of the Week. At least, TB assumes he was. He didn't bother to check. 

Who else could it be? Ah, yes. It was Daniels.

Uhhhhh Ya Think?

6️⃣ goals in a weekend, including 5️⃣ in one game, will get you @ecachockey Forward of the Week presented by @bluebirdhotels!

Congrats, KD! pic.twitter.com/DawOIULyCc

— Princeton Men's Ice Hockey (@princetonhockey) November 24, 2025

You read that right. Daniels had six goals this past weekend, including five against St. Lawrence Friday night to be the first NCAA player with that many in a game since 2011. 

He then followed that up with the game-winner Saturday night against Clarkson. Player of the Week? Very much so. 

Who is Kai Daniels? He is a junior from Whistler, British Columbia whose cousin Kieran Lubin played football at Princeton and whose uncle Joe Lubin played squash at Princeton. He also had 11 goals in 52 career games prior to this weekend, when he had six in two. 

His six goals came on just nine shots. TigerBlog doesn't know a ton about hockey, but that seems pretty good. Daniels was 2 for 17 on the season before he went off this weekend. 

It's way too early to look at the ECAC standings, so TB instead will look at the upcoming schedule, which has the Tigers at Bowling Green Friday and Saturday, a trip that presumably includes a team Thanksgiving event. 

Meanwhile, speaking of Princeton athletes who won Player of the Week, there was also Skye Belker of the women's basketball team. This one also was pretty much obvious.  

From the release on goprincetontigers.com: You can read the entire story HERE.

Belker averaged 19.3 points per game in the Tigers' 3-0 week, shooting 19-of-33 overall (.576) while going 9-of-14 from deep (.643). She also sank all 11 free throws and averaged 4.3 assists per contest.

TigerBlog knows a lot about basketball stats. Those are really good ones.

Belker put up 27 of her points in a 100-93 win over Penn State in a game played in the Bahamas. Talk about heating up.

Wait, 100-93 for a Carla Berube team? That's a rarity.

It was the third time in Princeton women's basketball history that the team reached 100 points. The other two came in a 107-44 win over Wagner in 2016 and a 104-33 win over Portland State in the 31-1 season of 2014-15.

This time, the Tigers needed pretty much every single one of those 100 points.  

By the way, do you know what the halftime score was in that game? How about 38-34 Tigers. That means that Princeton put up 66 in the second half alone, shooting 8 for 10 from three in the last two quarters. 

Next up for Princeton is a trip to Rhode Island for a game with a 1 pm tip tomorrow. If you're unable to put weight on your foot and don't really want to use your walker, then that's perfectly timed. 

One more time — call your dermatologist.  

Through The Tears, Many Reasons To Smile

 

There were tears flowing freely from Olivia Caponiti's eyes, and on this day, there would only be two options. 

Tears, or euphoria. There would be no middle ground, not with these stakes, not with this margin for error. 

For one team, there would be the sheer, unimaginable joy of winning the NCAA field hockey championship. For the other team, there would be the sheer, unimaginable agony of having come sooooo close to the big prize. 

In the end, it was Northwestern, who cashed in a penalty corner in the second overtime for a 2-1 win, who got to experience the joy. And that left Princeton with only one available emotion, and as such, hence the tears. 

They didn't form only in the eyes of Olivia Caponiti, of course. The finality of such a loss in such a situation is brutal, and pretty much everyone in a Princeton uniform had the same reaction as Caponiti. 

It's just that Caponiti was standing closest to TigerBlog near the Princeton bench afterwards, and her tears were the first ones TB saw. 

He wanted to say something to make it better. He wanted to tell her that she had played a remarkable game in the Tiger goal, that there was no way that the game would have gone as long as it did without her. He wanted to tell her that she had made some extraordinary saves, the kind that only the elite of the elite would make.

Liv says no again and now has seven saves. We're off to the second 10-minute OT. A goal means the NCAA championship; no goal in 10 more min means a shootout to decide it.

👀 https://t.co/c3pRMcmSxi (ESPNU) pic.twitter.com/YSTDGaHnwU

— Princeton FH (@TigerFH) November 23, 2025

He wanted to tell her that, as a junior, she'd be back next year. He wanted to tell her that she had gone from a two-year backup to one of the best goalies in the country, and that this glorious run to late November would have never happened without her, both in the cage and everywhere else she was as part of this team. 

There was no team gathering where her voice, her laugh, didn't rise about the din. There was no team member who, or even season-long observer, who didn't feel better about things when Caponiti was around. 

Of course, in the moment, none of that would have made any difference to her. Or to any of the other Tigers. 

It'll take some time, actually. And when it does, what will stick out are moments that put them in position to have it hurt this badly. 

TigerBlog had a front row seat for all of it. He saw first-hand how a team can gel and go from a win-some, lose-some 4-3 start to the season that included a home loss to Harvard on Sept. 26 that essentially meant the Ivy League championship to a team that learned how to win and did so 14 straight times until yesterday. 

Along the way, there were two wins over Harvard — a team that went 19-0 against the rest of Division I — including in the Ivy tournament final and then the NCAA semifinals. There were countless wins over the top of Division I, including a 3-2 regular-season win at Northwestern that is the Wildcats' only defeat in their last 27 games. 

Could the Tigers repeat that? 

Oh, did they come close. They led 1-0 after three, scoring with two minutes to go when Beth Yeager scored her 59th and final goal as a Tiger, fittingly on a drag flick penalty corner shot. Through it all, Northwestern continued to pressure Princeton's defense in a way that no other team could this year 

Princeton allowed only 13 shots in its first three NCAA games. Northwestern threw 16 at Caponiti and her defense; the only other game where the opponent had more shots was the first meeting with Northwestern, where the Wildcats had 18. 

You cannot defend any better than Princeton did this weekend. The Tigers wiped out Harvard, allowing five shots and no goals in the 2-0 semifinal win. This time, Princeton kept Northwestern  — the third-highest scoring team in Division I — off the scoreboard until the fourth quarter, when the game was tied off one of the 10 penalty corners. It was another penalty corner that won it in the second overtime. 

What can you say about Princeton's defense? Ottilie Sykes might as well have been a roadblock. The same is true of freshman Gabriella Anderson. And sophomore Clem Houlden. And freshman Tabby Vaughan. 

They were ferocious, limiting Northwestern's swarming offense. Oh, and then there was Ella Cashman, a junior. 

Does it get tougher? She tore her ACL, completely, in the Ivy tournament final. She missed the first two NCAA games. There was no way she was missing the Final Four, and she didn't. Somehow, Cashman and athletic trainer Jade Hennessy pieced her together just enough to play about half of each game this weekend. And play well. 

Princeton started four freshmen and four sophomores. It's a young team with an incredibly bright future. And a present of which they should all be incredibly proud.

Yesterday afternoon, that didn't really matter much in the brutal moment when the ball hit the back of the cage to end it. 

You wanted to be the team in the dogpile on the blue turf at Duke. 

Instead, you were the team whose tears fell to that turf. 

In the moment, no words would help. In the long run? 

They'll be as proud of themselves as TigerBlog is of them. Thanks for the front row seat.

You are one amazing team.  

Smile

Okay, it's a very busy weekend. 

TigerBlog jumps right in ...

* * *

There was an error (since corrected) here yesterday. No, it wasn't that Bill Belichick really did take a picture with Princeton associate head field hockey coach Dina Rizzo. He stiffed her, as TB reported.

The error was that today's NCAA semifinal game between Princeton and Harvard at Duke does not appear to be available on ESPN+, only on ESPNU. It's streamable HERE, though you need an ESPNU account to be able to access it.  

TB apologizes for the mistake.  

The winner of Princeton-Harvard will face the winner of the second semifinal, between North Carolina and Northwestern, in Sunday's championship game at 1. 

Last night was the Final Four banquet, which gathered the four teams who are competing this weekend. It was a very nice event, the calm before the coming storm of the weekend, which will end with an NCAA title for one of those four teams. 

TigerBlog, for his part, broke out his Class of 1965 gear for the occasion:

By the way, that's TB with Rizzo and athletic trainer Jade Hennessy. TigerBlog was honored to be in the picture and would take a picture with Rizzo any time. 

And as a follow-up to the story of that one North Carolina head coach who did not opt to let a Princetonian get a picture taken with him, TigerBlog approached Tar Heel field hockey coach Erin Matson to see if she would take a picture with him. Was it a UNC thing? 

The answer? 

"Of course," she said. That's two UNC head coaches who've jumped at the chance to get a picture with TigerBlog. 

* * * 

As for the game today, it's the third meeting of the season between the teams, and each has a win in the first two. Harvard took down Princeton 3-1 in Princeton back on Sept. 26, but Princeton has not lost since, rolling up 13 straight wins, including a 2-1 win over Harvard in the Ivy League tournament final at Harvard two Sundays ago. 

You can read all about the game in TB's "A to Z" HERE, and he'll give you some highlights:

* Princeton has started four freshmen and four sophomores in its two NCAA tournament wins
* Princeton has not trailed at any point during its 13-game winning streak
* the team who scores first is 19-1 in Princeton's 20 games 
* Harvard has only trailed during four games this season and was the last unbeaten team in Division I
* Princeton allows only seven shots per game and has held Harvard to 14 in the two games
* Harvard has scored four goals on 14 shots in two games against Princeton and averages 15.2 shots per game

If ever there has seemed to be a 50-50 matchup in an NCAA semifinal game, this is it.  

* * *

The men's soccer team found out its opponent for Sunday's second round NCAA tournament game. The third-seeded Tigers will face Duke, who defeated FDU 1-0 yesterday afternoon, interestingly, in Durham as well. 

The goal came on a penalty kick in the final minute by the way. Apparently it was a good call, but the ref needs to be really sure to award it there. 

So now Duke gets to make the same 482-mile bus ride that the Princeton field hockey team did, assuming it's the same difference from Duke to Princeton as it is Princeton to Duke. The regular NCAA tournament rule is that the organization will pay for flights for teams beyond 400 miles from the game site, but because of all the delays of late, it was moved to 500 miles. 

Hmmm. What is 500-482? The answer is "a long bus ride."

Princeton is the No. 3 seed in the men's soccer tournament. The down side of getting a first-round bye is that your first opponent will have just won a game and by definition will have some momentum. The plus side is that you have extra rest and, you know, you've earned the right to play at home for everything you've done all season.  

The game will be Sunday at 4 on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium.  

* * *

The women's basketball team is in the Bahamas for games tomorrow against Penn State and Sunday against Maryland-Eastern Shore. 

TB has never been to the Bahamas. He hears it's nice. Going there is not on his bucket list. You want to know what is? 

Princeton head coach Carla Berube was recently on a podcast in which she mentioned her love of karaoke. You can see for yourself at around the 14:40 mark: 

After hearing that, TB texted Berube the video of his rendition of "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" during field hockey Bus Karaoke a few weeks ago. Berube texted him back that she'd like to do a duet, to which TB said that it had vaulted to No. 1 on his bucket list. 

* * *

The Ivy League women's volleyball tournament will be in Dillon Gym this weekend, beginning today with the semifinals between No. 1 Princeton and No. 4 Brown at 4, followed by No. 2 Cornell and No. 3 Yale at 7. 

The winners meet tomorrow at 6 for the Ivy League's automatic NCAA tournament bid. No matter what happens at Dillon this weekend, Princeton is the outright Ivy League champion for 2025. 

The All-Ivy team that was announced this week had Princeton's Sydney Draper as the Player of the Year. There were seven first-team All-Ivy selections, and all seven will be in Dillon this weekend — including Princeton's Draper and Valerie Nutakor.  

* * * 

Beyond those events, it's another busy weekend, including the final football game of the season. The Tigers will be at Penn tomorrow, with kickoff at 1 at Franklin Field. It's always good to end a season with a win.

The NCAA cross country championships are tomorrow, in Missouri. The Princeton men won the Mid-Atlantic Regional last weekend to qualify as a team and enter the event ranked 18th in the country. A Top 20 finish would sound good. 

The full schedule for the weekend's more-than 30 events is HERE.

 

Thanks For Nothing

 

So TigerBlog has told you this story from his days as a vendor at the old Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia before:

Mario Soto was the Cincinnati Reds' ace and the favorite player of Evan Weiss, then a vendor who used to drive TigerBlog from West Philadelphia to the stadium every day in his VW and today a doctor in Philadelphia. All season, Weiss waited for the Reds — the last team to come into Philly — to arrive so he could get Soto's autograph, and then finally the day was there. Weiss waited for Soto to get off the bus and went up to him and asked for his autograph, only to have Soto walk by without stopping. Talk about being crushed. 

And now, a mere 42 years later, TigerBlog got to experience those same emotions all over again. 

It happened yesterday in the late afternoon. The Princeton field hockey team had just wrapped up practice at the University of North Carolina, in advance of the NCAA Final Four at Duke. 

Princeton will play tomorrow at noon against Harvard in the first national semifinal (ESPNU), followed by North Carolina and Northwestern. The championship game will be Sunday at 1 (same broadcast outlet). It will be an intense weekend. 

Yesterday, though, was merely a practice after a long trip down for the Tigers, who left Caldwell Field House Tuesday afternoon, stopped for the night in Richmond and finally rolled into North Carolina in the middle of the afternoon. After checking into the hotel, it was off to work out at UNC's field. 

Princeton Associate Head Coach Dina Rizzo is a native of Walpole, Mass., which is pretty much walkable to Gillette Stadium, home of the Patriots. Like most of that area, Rizzo is a big Patriots fan, especially during the glory years of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. 

And where is Belichick these days? He's the head coach at North Carolina. And where was he specifically yesterday when Princeton was wrapping up practice? Inside the building adjacent to the field hockey team, giving a pep talk to the Tar Heels. 

While this was going on, Princeton was milling around outside the very same building, waiting for its post-practice food to be delivered to the bus. The entire Princeton group knew who was inside the building. 

And there was Rizzo, all excited about the idea of getting a photo with Belichik when he came outside and sending it her family of fellow Patriots fans. 

TigerBlog could see it coming from a mile away. It was going to be, sigh, Evan Weiss and Mario Soto all over again.  

With that, 1) Belichick eventually walked out of the building, 2) Rizzo went up and asked if she could get a picture, 3) Belichick said no and got into a golf cart to be driven away (though he sat in the cart for two minutes or so) and 4) it was very, very weak of him. Oh, and 5) Rizzo and her whole family — after she texted them — are no longer fans of said coach. 

C'mon now. How hard would it have been to take one picture? Yes, he probably gets that all the time, but still, this was right after he had just talked to one field hockey team and when another was just sitting there waiting to get on its bus. There wasn't a crush of fans. And besides, Rizzo announced herself by giving her hometown. 

It was just like Mario Soto all those years ago. Soto now works in the Reds' front office; hopefully he's a changed man. 

At the other side of the likeability scale sits Jim Barlow, the head coach of the Princeton men's soccer team. His team will be playing its NCAA opener Sunday against the winner of tonight's first round game between FDU and Duke.

That game will be played at Duke, coincidentally. 

Just before TB got on the bus yesterday, he ran into Barlow, on his way to practice. TB told Barlow that he would be happy to scout the FDU-Duke game. 

Now forget for a minute that TB wasn't really serious. After all, there's an NCAA Final Four banquet for field hockey tonight as well.

You can also forget that TB's scouting report would have gone something like this: "They each had 11 guys, and both teams tried to kick the ball into the other team's goal." 

What did Barlow say? He reminded TB that NCAA rules prohibit any representative from an opponent to see the game in person. 

Barlow never met an NCAA rule he didn't know and follow to the letter. 

Anyway, it's about to get really serious for the field hockey and men's soccer teams. For yesterday? 

It was Mario Soto all over again.  

RIP Chuck Sullivan

TigerBlog took Joanna Dwyer to lunch yesterday. 

It was the last time they'd both be in Princeton prior to Dwyer's leaving to begin her new job, in athletic communications at the University of Southern California. Her last weekend at Princeton will see her on the road with her men's water polo team, who will be at Brown for the NWPC tournament. 

TB, for his part, left yesterday with the field hockey team for the Final Four at Duke, where the Tigers will play Friday at noon against Harvard in the first semifinal, followed by UNC-Northwestern in the other. The winners will meet Sunday at 1 for the national title. 

It was really nice to have lunch with Joanna before she moved on in her career. She'll have gone from graduating from Elon in 2024, to nearly 1.5 years at Princeton and now on to USC, where she will cover water polo and swimming and diving. 

TB told her something that he thinks is important. Make sure, he said, that no matter where your career takes you that you remember your time at Princeton with great fondness, and not as something you had to have on your resume to get your next job. 

There have been a lot of people who have come through Princeton Athletics during TB's years here. Some have indeed cherished their experience. Others have been box checking. 

One of the people in that first group was named Chuck Sullivan. No matter where he went or where he worked, he took a piece of Princeton with him. 

Have you enjoyed reading TigerBlog all these years, or anything else TB has written? Did you enjoy the women's athletics history book? 

You can thank Chuck Sullivan for all of  it. 

Actually, you can't anymore. Chuck passed away earlier this week, at the age of just 54. Melanoma did him in. 

TB didn't even know Chuck was sick. It had been too long since he had spoken to him. 

Who was Chuck Sullivan? At the time of his death, he was the assistant commissioner for communications at the American Conference. Before that, he had been at Harvard, Bryant and UMass-Boston. And before that, he was a member of the Princeton Office of Athletic Communications. 

Chuck was an intern when TB first started on the Princeton payroll back in 1994. At the time, TB knew very little about athletic communications, other than what he'd seen during his five years of covering Princeton at the Trenton Times. He knew nothing of computers, let alone desktop publishing. 

He is not overstating things in the least to say that were it not for Chuck Sullivan, TB never would have lasted more than a few months at Princeton. Chuck taught TB how to use a Mac, starting with the most basic part of turning it on. He basically held TB's hand those first few months, until TB started to get a feel for how the OAC worked. 

That's just how Chuck was. He didn't wonder why some guy from the newspaper got a job that he was probably more qualified to get. He just helped. 

Chuck was a gentleman, and a gentle man. He was kind and caring and compassionate. He loved the experience at Princeton and the athletes with whom he worked. 

He was also funny. He had a dry sense of humor and an understated laugh, but he would certainly make TB smile, even more so with every mistake he made back then. Remember earlier this week, when TB forgot that Trevor Tierney had been first-team All-Ivy League as the son of a Princeton head coach, like Sam Vigilante — son of men's head track and field and cross country coach Jason Vigilante — was this season in men's soccer? 

Chuck would have shrugged his shoulders at TB and offered up a engaging smile, gestures that would have at once made fun of TB while making him realize it wasn't the end of the world. 

TB and Chuck stayed in touch through the years as he moved along his career trajectory. They'd text several times a year, usually about something related to a current event that sparked a memory the two had shared way back when. 

The news of his death hit TB hard. It came on a group text with former Princeton OACers Chuck Yrigoyen, Kurt Kehl and Mark Panus, all of whom were also stunned by what had happen — and all of whom, like TB, regretted that they hadn't spent more time through the years staying in touch. 

TigerBlog has his surgery for his own melanoma this coming Monday. It was only caught because he regularly makes trips to the dermatologist, something that he's been urging everyone he sees to do. 

Sadly, that warning comes too late for Chuck Sullivan. 

TB sends his condolences to Chuck's wife Renee and his sons Orry and Owen. It's of little comfort now for them to know just how many people loved Chuck Sullivan and are deeply mourning his passing. 

TigerBlog is just one of those people. 

He wants to pick up his phone and reach out to Chuck, thank him again for all he did for him all those years ago (something he is very glad he did many times in the decades since) and apologize for not being better at having stayed in touch. 

He knows he can't though. It's horrible, tragic news. 

A wonderful man has been taken decades before his time.  

The Three Seed

 

Duh.

TigerBlog wrote yesterday that Sam Vigilante of the men's soccer team was a first-team All-Ivy League selection while his father Jason is the head coach of the Princeton men's cross country and track and field program and asked the question if Princeton had ever had a similar situation before. 

TB said that it was either something really obvious or something unprecedented and left it out that. 

He'd like to thank all the people who pointed out that it was, in fact, obvious. Uh, does the name "Tierney" ring a bell? 

Yes, Bill Tierney was the head men's lacrosse coach at Princeton and his son Trevor was a first-team All-Ivy League goalie. Together, along with Bill's other son Brendan, they won the 2001 NCAA championship, the sixth in program history.

How in the world could TB have forgotten anything Tierney? TB could say he did it on purpose to see if anyone notice (though that wouldn't be true). He could blame it on the long, busy weekend with a lot of winning. That's better.  

Of all the times Princeton has reached the NCAA tournament in lacrosse, both men's and women's, there have only been three times that the teams have been the No. 1 overall seed. For the men, it was 1996 and 1997, both of which ended in a national championship.

For the women, it was 2004, which ended in an NCAA title game loss, ending Princeton's two-year run as national champ. 

The 2012 NCAA champion Princeton field hockey team was the No. 2 seed. The 1998 and 2001 men's lacrosse championship teams were also No. 2 seeds. The 1992 and 1994 NCAA champs were both No. 3 seeds. 

The 1994 NCAA women's lacrosse champion Tigers did so as the No. 2 seed, as did the 2002 champs. The 2003 champs were unseeded. 

Armed with all of this history, TigerBlog watched yesterday's NCAA men's soccer selections, hoping to see Princeton come up as the No. 1 overall seed. Princeton, after all, has only lost once all season, and that was to Hofstra back on Sept. 10. 

The Tigers have spent much of the year as the No. 1 team in the RPI, and in fact that's where they are today still. So would they be No. 1? 

Nope. That chance went away quickly, as Vermont — the defending NCAA champion — saw its name come up on the No. 1 line as the first time announced. Instead, Princeton flashed under No. 3, drawing the winner of Thursday's opening round game between Duke and FDU, which will be played in Durham.  

The winner of that game will be in Princeton Sunday, with kickoff at 4.

So here's looking on the bright side: 

* of the 10 NCAA titles in lacrosse and field hockey, seven came when the Princeton team was not the No. 1 seed
* the top four seeds will play at home all the way through the national semifinals as long as they keep winning
* being the No. 3 seed in men's soccer is itself an unbelievable accomplishment and a statement on just what kind of season Princeton has had
* there's always an additional pressure with being the No. 1 seed

Princeton Soccer has made two runs to the Final Four all-time, first by the men in 1993 and then by the women in 2004. In both cases, the teams played all of their NCAA tournament games prior to the semifinals at home, on its old Lourie-Love Field.  

Where does this leave Princeton men's soccer 2025? 

As TB said, the first game for this team will be Sunday. At this time of year, it has to be said that every game could also be the last of the year. 

Sure, you could look ahead in the bracket and see what potential matchups there are ahead. Or you could look back to a year ago, when an unseeded team won it all in a Final Four that also had the No. 1 seed, No. 3 seed and No. 13 seed. And you could notice that the No. 4 seed lost in the opening round. 

Princeton has had itself a season for the ages to put itself in a position to play on its home field Sunday, and possibly beyond. 

Those last three words? Don't mention them to anyone associated with this team though. There are 48 teams in the field. There will be 32 come Sunday. 

All of them are thinking big right now. Nobody is going to be looking ahead of anyone.  

As TB said back in today's first word, "duh." 

How About That Weekend?

And just when you thought that a four-Ivy League championship weekend would be hard to beat, along comes this past weekend. 

This time, there would only be one Ivy League championship, though it was joined by an Ivy League tournament championship, a win to vault a team into the NCAA tournament Final Four, an NCAA Regional championship and a whole lot of chances for the best photos of them all — the jubo ones. 

It started when the men's cross country team went 2-4-5-15-19 to win the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional at Lehigh Saturday to earn automatic qualification into the NCAA championship meet Saturday in Missouri. Princeton was led by Myles Hogan, who passed eight runners over the second half of the 10K race to finish as runner-up in 29:21.2.

The men's cross country team is coached by Jason Vigilante. Remember that last name. TigerBlog will be writing it again in a few paragraphs. 

On the women's side, by the way, Anna McNatt and Meg Madison qualified as individuals for the national championship race.  

Next up, the women's volleyball socked away another Ivy League championship and earned itself the host role for the Ivy League tournament with 3-0 wins over Harvard and Dartmouth. That's two straight Ivy championships and 21 all time, easily the most in league history. 

The tournament will start in Dillon Gym Friday at 4 with the top seed Tigers against No. 4 Brown and then No. 2 Cornell and No. 3 Yale at 7. The winners will meet Saturday at 6, with an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament for the winner. 

The women's volleyball team also celebrated Senior Night Saturday, just to add some more jubo to the mix. A Senior Night with an outright Ivy title? That's something the team's three seniors — Luci Scalamandre, Valerie Nutakor and Ella Bunde — won't forget anytime soon. 

Oh, and if you're wondering what "jubo" means, it's the Office of Athletic Communications way of saying "jubilation."

Meanwhile, the men's soccer team won the Ivy League tournament on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium Sunday morning with a 2-0 win over Cornell. The first goal was scored by Sam Vigilante; that name is familiar, no? 

Vigilante was a first-team All-Ivy League selection, one of six for the Tigers this year. It got TB to thinking if Princeton has had a head coach who had a son or daughter who became a first-team All-Ivy selection. 

This falls under the heading of either no, or someone really obvious whom TB is overlooking. 

Princeton's second goal came courtesy of Liam Beckwith, a second-team All-Ivy pick. Once again Princeton's defense did not allow a goal. Hey, it's only allowed five all year, right? 

Next up for Jim Barlow's team is today's NCAA Selection Show, which will be at 1 this afternoon. Princeton has a very, very legitimate chance at being the No. 1 overall seed, which would be an amazing tribute to the season the Tigers are having. 

Princeton, of course, went 7-0-0 in the Ivy League during the regular season and didn't allow a goal along the way. The tournament championship followed that regular season title, which is one of five this fall for Princeton.

The others? Men's cross country. Women's cross country. Men's soccer. Women's soccer. 

One team that did NOT win its Ivy League championship was the field hockey team. Harvard won that one, going 7-0 to the Tigers' 6-1, with a 3-1 Harvard win on Sept. 26 the difference. 

The Tigers have made up for it in a big way since. In fact, that Sept. 26 game was the last time Princeton has lost, and that winning streak reached 13 straight yesterday with a dramatic 2-1 win over Syracuse in the NCAA quarterfinals. 

This came one week after Princeton won the Ivy League tournament championship with a 2-1 win at Harvard. The game-winner in both games came from the incomparable Beth Yeager, who did so with 1:43 to go against Syracuse, after assisting on Pru Lindsey's goal that had made it 1-0 Tigers late in the third.  

The win yesterday sends Princeton to the Final Four at Duke, with the semifinals Friday and the final Monday. And who is going to be meeting Princeton in Durham? 

That would be none other than the Crimson. Yes, it'll be Princeton-Harvard III Friday at 2:30, after North Carolina and Northwestern in the other semifinal. Princeton is the only team this year who has beaten Harvard and Northwestern, both of whom have only that one loss. 

And that was the weekend in jubo. 

You never get tired of them.  

Another Busy Weekend

It's been such a busy week that TigerBlog is only now able to mention the official in the Indiana-Penn State football game last Saturday who made the correct call on the amazing catch that won the game for the Hoosiers. 

The catch was incredible enough. The call might have been better. He was right on top of it, saw the catch and the feet, moved into the right position and threw his arms up for the touchdown. 

Replay confirmed he was correct. While the review was ongoing, the ref was probably thinking to himself "why bother?"

*

Princeton defeated Harvard 3-1 in the Ivy League men's soccer tournament semifinal last night, advancing to Sunday's final against Cornell. The winner of that game will get the NCAA tournament automatic bid, but it's relatively certain that both teams will reach the tournament when the bids are announced Monday.

Princeton certainly will. The Tigers have spent the entire season either No. 1 or No. 2 in Division I RPI. 

The game last night showed you something about this team, though. It has toughness. 

Harvard scored in the first five minutes of the game. Okay, teams give up goals, right? Well, not this Princeton team. It hadn't allowed a goal the entire Ivy season, going 7-0-0 with 12 goals for and zero goals against. 

How would the team respond to being behind so early? First, goalkeeper Andrew Samuels made a fantastic save on a Harvard drive to keep it at only a one-goal deficit. 

And then? The Tigers attacked ferociously, throwing 16 shots up in the first half alone. One of those, off a corner, finally found the back of the net with one minute to go before the half, and then two more followed early in the second. 

That's what championship teams do. The game Sunday will be at 11. It won't be the last Princeton game on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium for 2025 though. This could be a fun few weeks.  

*

Princeton Football is home tomorrow against Yale in the 147th meeting in a series that dates to Nov. 18, 1873. That was a long time ago. 

Yale leads the series 80-55-10. Only Lafayette-Lehigh have played more times, and they didn't play for the first time until 1884. 

No other teams who continue to play to this day started their series before Princeton and Yale. 

Of course, history is important to TigerBlog, who has the word "historian" in his official Princeton title. The present is also important obviously, and this is Week 9 of the Ivy football season for 2025.

Princeton is looking to win out to finish over .500 in the league. Yale is still in the running for the league championship and the automatic NCAA bid, something that would go to the Bulldogs with a win tomorrow and then next week against Harvard. 

Congratulations go out to Princeton freshman Josh Robinson, a five-time Ivy Rookie of the Week, who broke the Princeton records for receptions and receiving yards by a freshman. He now has 34 catches and 388 yards as he enters the Yale game. 

Kickoff is at noon.

*

The NCAA field hockey tournament will continue to play out on Bedford Field this weekend. It began Wednesday with the opening round, when Fairfield defeated Boston University 1-0. 

The Stags will now play Princeton, the host school and No. 2 overall seed, today at noon, followed by the game between Liberty and Syracuse. The winners will meet Sunday at 1, and the winner of that game heads to the Final Four at Duke next weekend. 

Princeton brings an 11-game winning streak into the NCAA tournament after winning the Ivy tournament a week ago at Harvard, ending the Crimson's 17-game streak in the final by a 2-1 score. Ivy League field hockey had a particularly strong year, with three NCAA teams for the first time ever, with the Tigers, Crimson and Yale. 

Want to read more about the game? Click HERE.

*

So it's only two games into the Princeton women's basketball season, and you can already define this team as one that can overcome obstacles. 

You remember that Princeton spent 14 hours in Newark Airport before heading to Georgia Tech last weekend, arriving 12 hours before a 2 pm tip-off. 

What happened? Princeton rallied from seven down after the third quarter to win 67-61. 

That was followed by a bus ride back to Princeton, one that required an overnight stay in North Carolina. With only one day to turnaround to play at Villanova, what happened? 

Princeton rallied again, this time from 14 down in the third quarter to win 73-68.  

Through two games, Princeton has been outscored 107-93 in the first three quarters and has outscored its two opponents 47-22 in the fourth. It's early, but that's a great sign.

Next up? A trip to Maryland Sunday at 1

*

The men's basketball team will play at Kansas tomorrow at 2 as part of its 10-game November schedule. 

The Tigers opened their season last Saturday at Akron. Between that game and the end of the month, that will add up to 10 games in a 22-day stretch. That's an NBA-type schedule. 

Seriously. During that same time, both the Sixers and Knicks play 11 games. 

Princeton is 2-1 on the young season. A team with no seniors will take some time to gel, but there is definitely reason to be optimistic about these Tigers. 

*

It's another busy weekend all around for Princeton Athletics. The complete schedule is HERE. 

On Nov. 13

TigerBlog has finally figured out what day of the week it is. 

Thursday, right? For some reason, he thought yesterday was Tuesday. He even posted that here. Why? He has no idea. 

If he couldn't remember the day, the date is another story. Today is Nov. 13. To TigerBlog, today will forever be Digger Day. 

Steve DiGregorio — Digger, to all who knew him — will forever be one of the best friends TigerBlog will ever have. Even more importantly, he will be one of the absolute best people TB has ever met. 

TigerBlog knows the day that Digger was born (Feb. 17). Sadly, he also knows the day he passed away (Oct. 12, 2021). 

So why is Nov. 13 special? It's because of what Digger would send to TB on this day every single year. 

The two of them were huge fans of the TV show "The Odd Couple." During Digger's time as an assistant football coach at Princeton, TB would go down the balcony into his friend's office, and there would inevitably be a quote from the show from one of them within a minute or two.  

If you don't remember the show, it starred Jack Klugman and Tony Randall as the legendary Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. It remains all these decades later TB's favorite comedy of all time. 

What would Digger send to TB? A picture of Klugman and Randall. And why on this day?:

TB can't count the number of times in the last four years that he's been in a situation where he's wanted to use a line from the show and tell Digger about it. 

"I'm an orthodontist." 
"An American frog? You bet I'll fix him."
"Go, now, into the other room. Watch Sesame Street."
"That time I went to the Smithsonian. Didn't I get you a petrified spider?"
"You, sir, are an idiot." 

Ah, TB could list their favorites all day. Instead, he'll just say that it's Nov. 13 and he's thinking about his dear friend, someone he misses terribly. 

*

Nov. 13 of this year will also be the opening day of the Ivy League men's soccer tournament. 

Princeton, the Ivy League champion, is the host and will play in the second semifinal, at 7 tonight, against No. 4 Harvard, after the first game at 3:30 between No. 2 Cornell and No. 3 Penn. The winners play Sunday at 11 am, with the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament for the winner. 

Princeton does not need that automatic bid to get to the NCAA field. When the pairings are announced Monday, the Tigers know they'll be 1) in them and 2) at home. It's a good place to be at this stage of the year. 

That's what happens when you've had the season Princeton has had. The Tigers are back to the No. 1 spot in the Division I RPI, after briefly dropping to No. 2. They are No. 3 in the coaches' poll this week. 

They have a record of 13-1-2 and have not lost since a 1-0 loss to Hofstra in the second game of the year, back on Sept. 10. 

The team, as you should know, made history this year with its run through the Ivy League, which was unprecedented. How so? Princeton went 7-0-0 and did not allow a single goal in any of those games, something no Ivy men's soccer team had ever done before. 

The All-Ivy League team that were announced yesterday had a distinctly Princetonian flavor to them. Is six first-team All-Ivy selections a lot? 

Daniel Ittycheria was the Ivy Offensive Player of the Year. Andrew Samuels was the Ivy Defensive Player of the Year. Those two, plus Giuliano Fravolini Whitchurch were unanimous first-team All-Ivy picks. Bardia Hormozi, Jack Jasinski and Sam Vigilante were also named to the first team. 

The Princeton coaching staff of Jim Barlow, Steve Totten, Sam Maira and Tom Moffat were the Coaching Staff of the Year. 

If you go back to last year, Princeton was 7-2 in its last nine games, which adds up to a 25-game run of 20-3-2. Princeton also won last year's Ivy tournament to reach the NCAA tournament, where it fell at Akron 1-0 in the first round. 

Had Princeton not won the ILT last year, it would have been on the bubble. As TB said, that's not an issue this year. 

It doesn't make this tournament any less of a big deal. Princeton wants to keep the roll it's on going. Cornell, No. 21 in the RPI, is almost surely in the NCAA field as well. No matter what, it'll be a fun, competitive event. 

And it starts today. Nov. 13. 

Digger Day.  

Called For Traveling

The field hockey bus home from Harvard after the Ivy League tournament championship Sunday was, as you might expect, festive. 

Except in the second seat on the right side of the bus. In that seat it was all business, at least for, oh, about four hours. 

Tiffani Semanchik is a Princeton Athletics travel coordinator, and she was doing all sorts of coordinating from her seat on the field hockey bus. She came to support the field hockey team for its trip to Harvard, but her focus had to be in more places than just Massachusetts. 

With the air travel issues of last weekend, Semanchik spent much of the weekend figuring out how to, among other things, get the women's basketball team back and forth to Atlanta for its game against Georgia Tech. It wasn't easy. 

The women's basketball team spent 14 hours in Newark Airport Saturday, with tip time at Georgia Tech set for 2 pm Sunday. Three times the Tigers got on an airplane. Three times there was another issue that prevented take-off.

By the time Princeton got to Atlanta, it was 1:45 am. Tip off was a little more than 12 hours away. 

So what happened? Princeton opened its season with a 67-61 win over its ACC opponent. Now that's impressive. 

Princeton also made its way home, despite the fact that its return flight was first delayed and then cancelled. That's why Semanchik was so busy over on the field hockey bus. 

For most of the trip back, Semanchik came up with every possible permutation and solution for how to get a team from Atlanta to Princeton. TigerBlog isn't sure how many phone calls she made and who those recipients were, but she dove in and tackled the challenge as if she was a player readying for a big game. 

In the end, the team had to bus back, stopping overnight in Raleigh. There were drivers to be found, hotel rooms needing to booked and every other detail along the way. Tiffani was all over it — all while watching the Georgia Tech game on her laptop at the same time.  

TigerBlog always like to salute his colleagues who go above and beyond with little to no recognition, and this was one of those times. Well done, Tiffani. The field hockey staff, who was seated around her the entire time, marveled at her determination and thoroughness. 

So did TB. In fact, when she was finally able to close down her computer, TigerBlog said something to her that made her know how much she was appreciated: "Hey Tiff. Did you consider putting them on the train?" 

He was joking, of course. He was as impressed as anyone else who was around her. 

The Princeton women's basketball team has to travel again today, this time a much shorter distance. This time the destination is Villanova, where the Tigers and Wildcats will play at 7 tonight. 

The fact that Princeton overcame everything it did to win at Georgia Tech is a reminder of a very fundamental tenet of Jadwin Gym: Never, ever, ever underestimate Carla Berube. 

The game also marked the return of senior Madison St. Rose, whose junior season ended after only four games due to knee injury. St. Rose was one of four Tigers in double figures in scoring against Georgia Tech, with 13 points, five rebounds and four assists. 

stepped up when we needed her the most. @fadimahtall has been selected as an Ann Meyers Drysdale @USBWA National Player of the Week! https://t.co/D9eQTynHJ2#GetStops 🐯🏀 pic.twitter.com/rtgbbUhe97

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) November 11, 2025

Fadima Tall led the team with 16 points, followed by Olivia Hutcherson's 15. Ashley Chea had 12. Not that it matters who leads the team in scoring. First, as you recall, Berube's teams are always built around defense. 

Second, this looks like a team where it'll be hard to gameplan around just one major scoring threat. That's always a good thing. 

Tall, by the way, was named the Ann Meyers Drysdale USBWA National Player of the Week. That's a great way to start off your new season, right? 

And TB supposes, maybe there's a Player of the Week award out there for Tiffani Semanchik? 

Clearly she deserves some sort of recognition.  

 

Fun, And Serious

Tony Cashman used the epically English word "knackered" to describe his daughter Ella when he and TigerBlog spoke after Princeton's Ivy League field hockey tournament championship win over Harvard Sunday. 

It's used to say something along the lines of "exhausted."

TigerBlog countered with a much more American word. 

"She's TOUGH," TB told her father. 

Cashman wears No. 16 for the Tigers. It could be the amount of bruises she carries with her on Game Day. Maybe she should wear a higher number for that matter. It makes no difference. She keeps moving forward, making big play after big play. 

She was at her "get out of my way" best Sunday as the Tigers defeated Harvard 2-1 in the final, handing the host Crimson their first loss of the season while stretching their own winning streak to 11. A few hours later, Princeton and Harvard both got the good — though hardly surprising — news that both would be home for the NCAA tournament. 

Princeton earned the No. 2 seed, behind only North Carolina. The Tigers will host four games this week on Bedford Field, beginning tomorrow at 2 with the opening round matchup between MAAC champion Fairfield and Patriot League champion Boston University, the winner of which will play Princeton Friday at 12. 

Liberty, the Big East champion, and Syracuse, an at-large entrant out of the ACC, will play Friday at 2:30. The winners of the Friday games then play Sunday at 1 for a trip to the Final Four next week at Duke. 

Princeton would almost surely have been at home even without the win Sunday over previously 17-0 Harvard, who won on Bedford Field 3-1 back on Sept. 26 in what turned out to be the team's final regular season loss. The ILT win did vault the Tigers up in seedings though, with Harvard No. 3 and Virginia at No. 4 as the other hosts. 

This Princeton field hockey team is 15-3 on the year, including an 8-0 record away from home. It has accomplished what is has to date by knowing one of the most important lessons any team can learn — there's a time to have fun, and there's a time to be serious. 

And trust TigerBlog, who has a front row seat for all of it. This team, more than pretty much any he's ever been around, has mastered both. 

That's why you can sit on the bus with them and hear nothing but either laughter, singing or music. It's why their default is smiling, why they love to stop and pose for happy photos as they walk up to the field prior to their games.  

It's also why you can sit on the bench and see the determination with which they play and the way they support each other at all times. You can look at their faces and see teammates who have each other's backs and who push each other to be better at all times. 

That's how this past weekend went. Fun, and serious. 

Beth Yeager was the Ivy tournament Most Outstanding Player, also not surprisingly. How she did it was not easy. Yeager is one of those elite players who puts up huge numbers but whose contributions cannot be measured statistically, and that's how she played all tournament. She just makes everyone better. 

Princeton and Harvard (who, by the way, are a mere 107-1 against the rest of the league since 2016) were even at 1-1 in the third quarter when Yeager attempted a penalty stroke — and had it turned aside by Crimson keeper Linde Burger. And yet, amazingly, just two minutes later, she ripped a shot past Burger off a penalty corner for what would be the game-winner. 

Pru Lindsey, who somehow wasn't an All-Ivy selection, scored goals in each game of the tournament, including the first for the Tigers in the 3-0 win over Yale (also an NCAA team) in the semifinal. Lindsey and another All-Ivy snub, Anna Faulstich, also are members of the "I don't back down ever" club. 

Faulstich scored the second goal against Yale (Yeager had the third), and then there was Faulstich right in the middle of the frantic final seconds of the Harvard game, keeping the Crimson from getting the equalizer. 

But the person who most personified this team was Cashman. If you talk to her any time other than while a game is going on, you'd be hard-pressed to equate her soft-spoken English accent and almost shy smile with the ferocity with which she plays. And, to use TB's word, how tough she is when she does so. 

Like against Harvard. What were a few more bruises when there was a championship to be won? 

The ride home was another in a series of joyous trips with this team. Can the Tigers get through this weekend and head on the road one more time? 

It'll be worth watching the NCAA games at Bedford to find out. 

Just Perfect

Is it still College Sports Communicators Appreciation Week? 

No? It ended? 

Well in that case, TigerBlog would like to say that he does NOT appreciate his colleague Joanna Dwyer, not after what she said at last week's Office of Athletic Communications staff meeting.

Turns out she's leaving Princeton. What the? 

TigerBlog is kidding of course. He very much appreciates Joanna, a relative novice in this business. She graduated from Elon in 2024 and then came to Princeton to start her career. And now she's moving on to a school in the Big Ten. 

That would be USC, by the way. TigerBlog is actually happy for her, even if his colleague Andrew Borders might not be. Andrew is a UCLA grad and USC, well, it's not his favorite. 

As for Joanna, she will be spending her time at USC poolside, as her teams to cover will be water polo and swimming and diving. Here she is with the Princeton men's water polo team a year ago, after its NWPC championship. 

Joanna brought enthusiasm, energy, work ethic and passion to her year-plus at Princeton. She made every day of her time as a Tiger fun, which is a big, big plus. She's one of those people you meet that you know that everyone takes an immediate liking to when she enters their orbit.

The same is true of the other recent college grad who started at the same time as Joanna, Alex Henn. Alex is now TB's favorite of the two, largely because she is not moving across the country. 

Alex certainly wouldn't be doing that now. Not with where her beloved Princeton men's soccer team is these days. 

Princeton ended its regular season Saturday afternoon at Penn and did so in a way that can only be described with one word: Perfect. 

The Tigers made history at Penn with their 1-0 win, In doing so, Princeton completed its Ivy League schedule a perfect 7-0-0.

Okay, that's been done before. Princeton has done it three times now. What was the history? 

Princeton outscored its seven Ivy opponents by a combined 12-0. That's ZERO goals allowed in seven league games — and that's never been done before. 

And that's perfection. 

Before this, only once had a team gone through the seven Ivy games and allowed only a single goal, and that was Yale back in 1986. There were three other times that a team had allowed only two.

Think about what goes into not allowing any goals in a seven-game stretch. No corner kick that took a crazy bounce in the area. No counter in a game you were dominating. 

Princeton allowed 71 shots in seven league games. Of those, there were 24 on goal. There was one penalty kick. 

And nothing made its way into the net. Nothing. Zip. Perfect. 

Princeton's season has been something of a dream to this point. The Tigers have spent much of the year as the No. 1 team in the Division I RPI before slipping to No. 2, behind only Maryland. They are also the No. 3 team in the country in the coaches' poll. 

In many ways, though, the season is just beginning. 

Next up will be the Ivy League tournament on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium, beginning Thursday with the semifinal game between Cornell and Penn and then followed by Princeton and Harvard. The winners will meet Sunday for the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Princeton doesn't need that automatic bid. Its spot in the NCAA field was cinched a few weeks back. How much of a run can Princeton make? It'll be worth being at Myslik Field for any game the Tigers play there.

Alex Henn will be. Joanna Dwyer won't. She'll be heading across the country to start her new job. 

Joanna wasn't here very long. Still, you could tell how much this place has meant to her when she made her announcement at the end of the meeting last week. 

She could barely get the words out without tearing up. Her emotions were obvious, and genuine.  

TB will miss her. And he wishes her all the best.  

 

Crossover Chaos

If you were looking for chaos yesterday around 5 in the afternoon, then perhaps a good place to look would have been the lobby of the Newton Marriott hotel.

Everywhere you looked, you had a different college team. Army-West Point men's hockey. Lafayette women's soccer. The Citadel men's basketball. Cornell men's hockey. There were so many teams at the hotel that the little welcome message board needed multiple screens.  

Who else? 

Ah yes. Princeton field hockey. Yale field hockey. They play each other today at 2:30 in the Ivy League tournament semifinal No. 2, after host Harvard and Brown at 11:30. Yesterday afternoon? Their coaches were all smiles and hugs. 

In the middle of all this commotion sat an older man who had no connection to any of it. He was just a hotel guest who was waiting for his Uber driver to arrive. 

TigerBlog found that out when he walked up to him to see what his story was.

"Well, I was trying to listen to my book on tape before my ride got here, but that wasn't happening," he said. 

Yeah, no.

Oh well. As TB has been saying all week, it's full-on Crossover Season, bringing with it the requisite chaos that it always does. At Princeton, and all over college sports. The Marriott lobby was all the proof you needed for that. 

The Tiger field hockey team knows that its season will continue on beyond the Ivy tournament, win or lose. Princeton is in great shape with its 13-3 record, No. 3 RPI and eight wins over fellow Top 20 RPI teams. 

Still, the ILT affords a chance to build on the current nine-game winning streak and solidify a spot as a top four seed and therefore host for the NCAA tournament. Yale, for its part, is ranked 10th in the RPI and is playing for its own NCAA spot. 

For the winner, there could be a matchup with Harvard, who enters the tournament as the lone unbeaten team in Division I.

The Ivy women's soccer semifinals were played yesterday on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium, where Dartmouth defeated Columbia 1-0 in the first game and Princeton then defeated Brown 3-0 in the second. 

The first two Princeton goals came courtesy of Kayla Wong, who, in addition to being a mainstay of the Tigers, is that rare Princeton athlete who is from the same hometown as TigerBlog. Isabella Garces added the third goal for Princeton, who defeated Brown for the second time in five days and stretched its overall winning streak to six games. The Tigers have outscored their opponents 16-2 in those six games.  

The championship game will be Sunday at 1. The winner gets an automatic NCAA tournament bid. 

Speaking of Princeton-Dartmouth, those two will also meet in football tomorrow in Hanover. Kickoff is at 1. 

Princeton had a tough 20-17 loss at Cornell last Saturday, falling below .500 at 3-4 on the year. Both the Tigers and Big Green are 2-2 in the league. 

Dartmouth has the league's second-leading rusher in D.J. Crowther. Princeton has the third-leading rusher in Ethan Clark. Dartmouth quarterback Grayson Saunier and Princeton's Kai Colon are almost even in passing efficiency.

And of course what would a weekend of Crossover Chaos be without two basketball openers?  

The men are at Akron to take on the Zips, with tip-off tomorrow at noon. Remember the game the two played a year ago in Jadwin Gym? 

Dalen Davis won that one for Princeton 76-75 on a three-pointer with 1.6 seconds left, after the Tigers had been down by 15 in the second half. If you recall, Davis' winner was originally called a two before a video review changed it to a three. 

Akron, by the way, finished last year at 28-7 and won the MAC tournament before falling to Arizona in the opening round of the NCAA tournament.  

The women will be in Atlanta to take on Georgia Tech Sunday at 2. The Yellow Jackets have already played their season opener, having defeated Radford 82-36 yesterday. 

Georgia Tech went 22-11 a year ago and also reached the NCAA tournament, losing to Richmond in the opening round. The win yesterday was the first for new head coach Karen Blair, who most recently was the associate head coach at Maryland. 

Princeton's head coach is Carla Berube, who is already in Year 7 with the Tigers. Her record entering this season? How about 121-25? Not bad. 

For the whole Crossover Chaos weekend schedule featuring 16 Princeton teams, click HERE.

The Mayor Of The Ivy Women's Soccer Tournament

TigerBlog was waiting to get on the field hockey bus to Harvard yesterday for the Ivy League tournament when he saw his colleague Andrew Borders as he walked into Jadwin Gym. 

Andrew is the second-longest tenured person in the Office of Athletic Communications. He's also reached the rarefied air of working in the OAC for 20 years, something that happened back on Sept. 19 of this year. 

In typical Andrew style, he didn't mention it to anyone. Personal glory, or really any attention, is completely not what Andrew Borders is about. 

TigerBlog has worked in the OAC longer than anyone else ever has. This is Year No. 32 for him on the Princeton payroll, which doesn't count the five years before that when he covered Princeton sports for the old Trenton Times. 

The great Bill Stryker became the sports information director at Princeton in 1958. Like TigerBlog, Stryker was a New Jersey public school kid, in Stryker's case having grown up in Somerville.

Their backgrounds diverge quite a bit from there. Stryker went into the Navy during World War II after graduating from Somerville High School and then attended Princeton after the war as a member of the Class of 1950. After graduation, he spent the first part of his career at Western Union before coming to Princeton. 

He remained there from 1958 until his death in 1986, at the age of 59. Stryker's 28 years in the OAC rank second (his final title was Director of Athletic Relations).

As near as TB can figure it, nobody else other than Andrew Borders has reached the 20-year mark. Craig Sachson came close but left after 19.

TB offers a belated congratulations Andrew. He's been the sport contact for a whole bunch of Princeton's teams, and he's been the contact for women's soccer and softball since Day 1. He has worked tirelessly in all these years to make the best possible experience for the athletes on all of his teams.

Much like TigerBlog, Andrew has never lost the one thing you need to keep going in this business: the joy of being a part of it. You have to look forward to Gamedays, and Andrew certainly has.  

So far this fall, Andrew has referred to himself with two very endearing nicknames during OAC weekly meetings. The first was when he said he was "NOT the Arbiter of Cool" when it came to what the current generation of athletes would find to be to their liking on social media. 

TB prefers to drop the "NOT" part of that. 

This week, he referred to himself as once again "The Mayor of the Ivy League Women's Soccer Tournament." It's fitting. As the outright Ivy League champion, Princeton will again be the host for the tournament, for the third time in the three years of its existence. 

The tournament begins today, with the opening semifinal between No. 2 Dartmouth and No. 3 Columbia at 3:30 and then the second semifinal between the Tigers and No. 4 Brown at 7. The final will be Sunday at 1.

All three games will be on ESPN+. Tickets are available HERE.

To the winner will go the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.  

Good luck to the Tigers. And good luck to Andrew.  

Why talk about him today? Well, this is College Sports Communicators Appreciation Week.

The OAC has seven members. In addition to TigerBlog, they are Andrew, Elliott Carr, Warren Croxton, Chas Dorman, Alex Henn and Joanna Dwyer.

They'll all be busy this weekend, with the crossover season that TB mentioned yesterday. You'll be able to find them spread out all over. 

Warren will be at Dartmouth and Georgia Tech on consecutive days for football and women's basketball. That's not an easy doubleheader.

 TB will be at Harvard. Chas will be with men's hockey at Brown and Yale. Elliott is heading to Akron with men's basketball. Alex and her men's soccer team will be at Penn. Joanna has two home women's hockey games. 

And that doesn't take into account all the other teams who are playing — 16 of them this weekend — who need preview stories, in-game social media, game recaps and whatever else is part of what the OAC does. 

So yes, this was a good day to mention Andrew, and all of TB's colleagues. TB appreciates them all. 

You do as well, if you're a Princeton fan.  

Crossing Over

Yes, it's November, which means Halloween was so last month. 

Still, TigerBlog would like to share this little exchange he had with a friend who is the mother of an angelic little cherub of a three year old. 

The mom: Trick or treating was a disaster. She hated it. Someone’s decoration shared the bajeezers out of her and then that was it.
TB: What were the decorations? 
The mom: It was a howling skeleton dog. And it howled at her when she reached for the bowl. Motion detecting. Believe me, I couldn't help but laugh a little, but it was so bad. 

TigerBlog did apologize for laughing as well. Can you picture that? The poor little thing. 

And with that, Halloween is in the rearview mirror and Thanksgiving is only three weeks away. You know what that means? 

It's peak crossover season for Princeton Athletics.  

Consider the weekend plans of TigerBlog's colleague Warren Croxton, the football/women's basketball contact in the Office of Athletic Communications. He'll be heading up to Hanover Friday for Saturday's Princeton-Dartmouth football game and then coming back after. Then it'll be up before dawn Sunday to catch a flight to Atlanta for the Princeton-Georgia Tech women's basketball game and then flying back immediately after that game. 

Warren mentioned at Monday's OAC meeting that he might have to Zoom into next week's meeting. 

Between tomorrow and Sunday, Princeton will have 16 different varsity teams combine to have at least 31 competitions, with the potential for others depending on how it goes. That's a lot of athletes in a lot of places for a lot of events.  

You can also multiply Warren out by everyone else in communications, facilities, equipment, event management, athletic training and everything else that goes into putting teams on fields. It's taxing and challenging but also rewarding and a huge source of pride. 

The Ivy League women's soccer tournament will begin tomorrow on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. Princeton, the outright Ivy champion, brings its five-game winning streak into the event, whose winner will earn the Ivy League's automatic NCAA tournament bid. 

Your schedule is:

Tomorrow
Semifinal #1: No. 2 Dartmouth vs. No. 3 Columbia – 3:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Semifinal #2: No. 1 Princeton vs. No. 4 Brown – 7 p.m. (ESPN+)
Sunday 
Championship Game: Winner of Semifinal #1 vs. Winner of Semifinal #2 - 1 p.m. (ESPN+) 

Unlike years past, this time the tournament is spread over an additional day, so keep that in mind if you're attending or watching. Tickets are available HERE.

The league field hockey tournament starts Friday at Harvard, where Princeton will play 

Friday
Semifinal #1: 1: No. 1 Harvard vs. No. 4 Brown – 11:30 a.m. (ESPN+)
Semifinal #2: No. 2 Princeton vs. No. 3 Yale  – 2:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Sunday
Championship Game: Winner of Semifinal #1 vs. Winner of Semifinal #2 - 12 p.m. (ESPN+)

You can get tickets for that event HERE.

Unlike in women's soccer, the Princeton field hockey team is certain to be playing in next weekend's NCAA tournament, regardless of the outcome of the Ivy tournament. That is not to say that there is nothing to play for if you're the Tigers. 

Princeton does have a very real chance of playing at home next week, with a current RPI of No. 3. Also, Princeton has won nine straight heading into the tournament, which, by the way, is on the home field of the only unbeaten team in Division I, a team with a No. 2 RPI. 

If you want to see men's soccer, you can head to Penn Saturday to see Princeton, the team ranked No. 1 in Division I RPI, try to close out a perfect Ivy season. In fact, it could end up being the most perfect Ivy season ever. Kickoff is at 5.

No team has ever gone through an entire Ivy schedule without allowing a goal. Princeton is 6-0-0, having already clinched the Ivy League outright title and host role for next weekend's tournament. Princeton also has six Ivy shutouts; the record for fewest league goals allowed in a season is one, by Yale in 1986. 

Doing so won't be easy. Penn, who is locked into the No. 3 spot in the Ivy tournament and will play No. 2 Cornell in the semifinals, is the second-highest scoring team in the league. Princeton will play the No. 4 seed, which is still to be determined. 

What else is on the dance card? 

Men's basketball at Akron. Men's and women's tennis. Men's and women's hockey. Fencing. Swimming and diving. Women's volleyball.  

The seasons are crossing over. 

It's a busy time — and a fun one.  

Catch Of The Day

TigerBlog thought of an interesting question related to what he wrote about the catch Andy Pages made to save the World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers Sunday night. 

Would Pages have made that same catch had it been a game in May or June or so? The catch he made was about 98 percent effort. Can you dial up that same kind of effort for just another regular season game? 

Also, TB has a friend named Andy Page. There's no way she would have made that catch. 

Moving along to some football stuff, did you happen to notice who the FCS Special Teams Player of the Week was? The answer is the entire William & Mary special teams unit. 

The Tribe defeated Albany 37-7 Saturday afternoon. How did they get to 37? 

There were four touchdowns, for 24 points. There were four extra points, which made for 28. There was one field goal, taking it to 31. William & Mary's placekicker, by the way, is Keegan Shackford, whose last name should be familiar to Princeton women's soccer fans.

So that was 31 points. Where did the other six come from? A touchdown with a missed extra point? Nope. Two field goals? Nope. 

Those six came from three safeties. That's right. Three safeties, all of which came on blocked punts. Oh, and one of those four touchdowns? It came on a fake field goal. 

That's quite a day for the special teams. 

If you're wondering, the FCS record for safeties in a game is four. W&M became the fourth team ever to reach at least three in a game. 

Then there was Andrei Iosivas, the Princeton alum who is now a wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals. Iosivas should have had the game-winning touchdown reception against the Bears Sunday afternoon in what was just a crazy, crazy game. 

Our guy @AndreiIosivas snagged five catches for 66 yards along with his 11th career touchdown for the @Bengals today. #JUICE 🍊🥤| #WhoDey pic.twitter.com/OgArh2Hg7V

— Princeton Football (@PrincetonFTBL) November 2, 2025

Iosivas' TD reception came with 58 seconds to play in the fourth quarter and put the Bengals up 42-41. Would that be enough? Uh, no. 

Yes, the magic number would be 58. Unfortunately, it was because Chicago won the game 47-42 with a 58-yard TD pass with 17 seconds to go. 

Next up is The Catch of the Day: red snapper, with a pineapple-mango salsa and fingerling potatoes. Just kidding. TB just made that up.  

The real Catch of the Day, or at least the weekend, went to Princeton freshman Josh Robinson. Did you see it?  

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A post shared by Princeton Tigers Football (@princetonftbl)

That was incredible. TB would have thought higher than the No. 10 Play of the Day, but hey, he'll take it. 

What was the most amazing part? Was it the fact that Robinson's knee or elbow never hit the ground? Or was it how many Cornell defenders had him pinned? Or was it that he had the presence of mind to get it into the end zone? 

There haven't been too many better individual efforts by a Princeton player to match that. Maybe Jesper Horsted's tip to himself on the big drive in the epic game against Dartmouth in 2018, a completely even game where every single play had the potential to change the outcome. Princeton won that one 14-9 in a matchup of unbeatens. 

The TD Saturday at Cornell came in what became a 20-17 loss for Princeton, but that hardly detracts from what Robinson did. That play went a long way to earning Robinson his fourth Ivy Rookie of the Week Award.

Robinson's 26 receptions are three off the Princeton freshman record, set by Matt Costello in 2011. Costello also holds the freshman record for receiving yards with 341; Robinson will bring 318 into the game Saturday at Dartmouth.