Back To Back

TigerBlog, as you know, loves a good statistical anomaly. 

Here's a good one. It involves Princeton lacrosse seniors McKenzie Blake and Coulter Mackesy.

A year ago, Blake scored 67 goals — and she enters this season 67 goals away from Kyla Sears' school record of 209. A year ago, Mackesy scored 40 goals — and he enters this season 40 goals away from Jesse Hubbard's school record of 163.

Now that's pretty wild, no? 

The opening day for Princeton Lacrosse is two weeks from tomorrow, when the women host Virginia and the men are at Penn State. Two weeks? What the? 

In the meantime, this weekend features a genuine old-fashioned Ivy League basketball back-to-back. For Princeton, that means the men are home today at 5 against Yale and tomorrow at 5 against Brown, while the women are in New Haven tonight at 6 and Providence tomorrow at 5.

The 1958-59 season was the first time that Ivy League men's basketball featured six weekends of Friday/Saturday games against travel partners. The year before, the travel partner format was pretty well established, though it wasn't strictly played on back-to-back nights. 

It stayed that way through until the 2021-22 season, when the league spread the schedule out over 10 weeks instead of six. Now, there's a mix of single-game weekends, back-to-backs and a Saturday/Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 

For the overwhelming majority of the time that Ivy basketball has been played, the travel-partner weekends have been in play. TB likes the new way, with this mix, especially when there is a Saturday afternoon game.

Still, for people like him, the back-to-backs are special. TB has so many great memories of those weekend back-to-backs, as you do too probably. He really liked when Princeton was on the road and the team would play Friday night and then head to a different gym for a quick turnaround to Saturday. 

The new schedules require a different kind of preparation. The back-to-backs are more physically challenging, obviously, with an additional 40 minutes — and some travel — mixed into the weekend. 

Beyond that, there was also the need to prepare for two different teams in one weekend. Those two teams could have very different styles of play and very different personnel, and coaches had to figure out what the best way to ready was. Teams got into practice routines of preparing for Saturday's opponent on, say, Wednesday and Friday's on Thursday, or something like that. 

This weekend's games are huge as both the men and women chase down a league title and a spot in the Ivy League tournaments, which will be held at Brown this year.

The women are 4-1, tied with Harvard behind 5-0 Columbia. The latter two meet tonight in Cambridge. 

Princeton already owns a win over Harvard but also a loss to Columbia. None of those three obviously has a loss to any of the other five, which means that there is a different kind of pressure in the head-to-head games and the games against the rest of the league. 

Brown enters the weekend in fourth place at 3-2 in the league, having split with Dartmouth and lost by 30 to Harvard while also defeating Yale and Cornell. Yale comes into the weekend 1-4 in the league, with a win over Dartmouth. 

For the men, Yale is the lone Ivy unbeaten at 4-0, ahead of 3-1 Princeton and Cornell, who won at Jadwin last week. Dartmouth and Penn are 2-2 each, followed by Brown and Harvard at 1-3 and Columbia at 0-4.

As a subplot for the weekend, Xaivian Lee comes into the game tonight with 974 career points, while Caden Pierce comes in with 971. It would be great for both of them to get to 1,000 this weekend. 

Lee has 98 career three-pointers, leaving him two away from the 100 mark. Pierce has 82 career three-pointers and 633 career rebounds (seventh all-time at Princeton), and no Princeton men's player has ever put up both of those numbers before. 

Blake Peters made six three-pointers last week against Cornell and now has 170, No. 7 on the program career list as well.

There's more to the weekend than just basketball. There are two home women's hockey games, two men's games on the road, HYP swimming and diving in New Haven, showdowns in squash and other events. 

You can see the whole schedule HERE.