Spring Sports Weekend

The news that Gene Hackman passed away had to touch pretty much everyone of every generation.

Has there ever been a more beloved movie star? If there has been, the list of those ahead of Hackman isn't very long. 

Hackman was great in so many different roles — the brother in "Bonnie and Clyde," the preacher in "The Poseidon Adventure," the tough New York City cop in "The French Connection." 

His best role? That had to be as high school basketball coach Norman Dale in "Hoosiers," for which he didn't even receive an Academy Award nomination. What the heck? 

Paul Newman won that year (1986) for "The Color of Money," and the other nominees were from long-forgotten roles in long-forgotten movies: Dexter Gordon for "Round Midnight," Bob Hoskins for "Mona Lisa," William Hurt for "Children of a Lesser God," and James Woods for "Salvador."

You know those stories where they do an NFL or NBA redraft from five years later or so? If there was a redraft for 1986 movies, then Hackman would have won (no offense Mr. Newman).

The only problem that TigerBlog had with Hackman is that he wasn't the greatest game coach. Yes, he definitely had his team ready to play and yes his players played hard for him. 

But needing one of his players to tell him that he thinks that Jimmy could take his guy? And then wanting to use Jimmy as a decoy for the last shot?

Ah, but that's nitpicking. Gene Hackman was as great as it gets at what he did. The news yesterday was sad. 

"Hoosiers," of course, was from a winter sport, and TB went through the weekend at Princeton for the winter teams yesterday. Today is for the Princeton spring sports. 

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The women's lacrosse team defeated Delaware 15-14 Wednesday afternoon, getting a goal from Jami MacDonald with 10 seconds to play for the winner. It was an extraordinary game, one that saw the Tigers score the first six goals, lead 7-1 at the end of the first and then trail 14-13 in the fourth before McKenzie Blake tied it with 1:18 to go and then MacDonald won it.

MacDonald finished the game with four goals and two assists. Is it too simplistic to say as MacDonald goes, so go the Tigers? She was shut out in the season-opening loss to Virginia but has had four goals in each of the next two games, both wins (Loyola and Delaware).

MacDonald's four goals were two fewer than the six Blake put up. Her two assists were five fewer than the seven that Haven Dora had, giving Dora the school record for assists in a game. 

Like TB said, it was an extraordinary game. 

Next up for Princeton is a home game tomorrow against Hofstra (noon start). The Pride come in with a record of 4-0 on the young season, with wins over LIU, Manhattan, Marist and Fairfield. 

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The men's lacrosse team flew out of Philadelphia yesterday afternoon for the short (but very, very bumpy) trip to Raleigh Durham. This weekend will see eighth-ranked Princeton take on No. 7 Duke today at 6 and then No. 4 North Carolina Sunday at 11 am. 

Princeton is 1-1, with a win over No. 9 Penn State and a loss to No. 2 Maryland. This weekend is part of an ACC/Ivy event, with Penn at North Carolina tonight and Duke Sunday. A year ago, all four teams went 1-1 on this weekend. 

One of the highlights of the weekend will be the matchup between North Carolina goalie Michael Gianforcaro, a Princeton alum who was the Most Outstanding Player at the Ivy League tournament in 2023 and who helped Princeton to another Ivy tournament title a year ago. 

Gianforcaro is playing for the Tar Heels as a grad student. His replacement at Princeton is Ryan Croddick, Gianforcaro's backup the last two years. Croddick enters the weekend leading the country in saves per game with 17.5.

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The Princeton lacrosse career goal scoring records are both being seriously challenged this season. McKenzie Blake's six against Delaware give her 16 for the season and 158 for her career. Should she maintain her 5.3 goals per game average, she'd finish the regular season with 222; the school record is 209, held by Kyla Sears (Class of 2022).

On the men's side, Coulter Mackesy has 131 goals, one away from tying Mikey MacDonald, Jami's brother, for third place at Princeton, behind only Jesse Hubbard (163) and Chris Massey (146), both of whom were in the Class of 1998.

Should Mackesy maintain his current pace of 4.0 goals per game, he would have 175 goals at the end of the regular season. 

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The men's lacrosse team isn't the only one who hopped on a plane this weekend. The softball team is in College Station, Texas, where a monster field awaits. 

It started last night, when Princeton took on No. 8 Texas A&M, the host school for the weekend. Princeton will play two more games today, against No. 13 Texas Tech and Texas State, and then two more tomorrow, against Idaho State and George Washington.

What's up next weekend for Princeton? A spring break trip to California. 

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The baseball team also is in the state of North Carolina this weekend. 

Princeton is at Wake Forest for four games, though only two of them are against the Demon Deacons. Princeton's schedule has a game at noon today against Maryland, followed by another game at 4 against Wake Forest. 

The Tigers then play Maryland tomorrow at 1 and then Wake again Sunday at 9:30 am. 

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There's home men's and women's tennis this weekend as well, which means another chance to check out the new tennis center at the Meadows Campus. 

The schedule is:

men vs. Binghamton today (1)
men vs. Middle Tennessee today (6)
women vs. Penn State tomorrow (10)
women vs. Temple tomorrow (3)
men vs. Tulsa Sunday (12)
men vs. Saint Joseph's Sunday (5)

That's a lot of good tennis. 

There is also home men's volleyball, against NJIT tonight at 7 and Lincoln Memorial tomorrow at 4.

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The complete schedule is HERE.

Winter Sports

Now this is Crossover Season.

There is so much going on for the weekend that it'll take two days to preview it all. Hmmm. 

How about winter sports today and spring sports tomorrow? That's not a bad plan. Plus, it'll give you a sense of just how many teams are playing. 

Okay. Winter sports it is for today. 

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It'll definitely be an Ivy League title weekend for at least three teams, with the men's swimming and diving championships in Providence and the Heptagonal indoor track and field championships at Cornell. 

In the track and field world, the Princeton women came within six points of winning a year ago. The Princeton men, on the other hand, went wire-to-wire and won by 53 points over runner-up Cornell.

For the men, last year's championship was the ninth in a row. Princeton is currently ranked second in the Mid-Atlantic Region, the same spot Harvard has in the Northeast. Penn is No. 4 in the Mid-Atlantic; Cornell is No. 3 in the Northeast, with Dartmouth at No. 6.

Princeton's women are also No. 2 in the Mid-Atlantic (in fact, the top four men and women are in the same order in the Northeast, with Penn State at No. 1 followed by Princeton, Rutgers and Penn). Harvard is No. 1 in the Northeast.

Princeton's distance medley relay team of Connor McCormick, Xavier Donaldson, Sam Rodman and Harrison Witt earned the Ivy Athlete of the Week honor after they broke the league record this past Friday at Boston University with a 9:17.30. When you hear "distance medley relay" and "Ivy record," it becomes even more impressive when you consider that the 2013 Princeton DMR (Michael Williams, Austin Hollimon, Russell Dinkins, Peter Callahan) won the NCAA championship in 9:33.01.

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The men's swimming and diving championships are being held at Brown. Harvard has won seven straight Ivy titles, and you have to go back to 1993 to find a year where the winner was not Harvard or Princeton. 

The Tigers are the only ranked Ivy team right now, at No. 23. Harvard and Yale are in the "receiving votes" category. 

Princeton defeated both Harvard and Yale at the recent HYP meet.

The swimmer to keep an eye on is Mitchell Schott, a junior who has one Ivy relay championship on his resume. Schott has already set three Princeton program records this season (100 free, 500 free, 1000 free). 

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The women's hockey team defeated RPI 3-2 last weekend in the ECAC first round playoff game and will now travel to Colgate for the quarterfinals, which are best of three. Game 1 is tomorrow at 6, with Game 2 at 6 Saturday and then Game 3 if necessary at 3 Sunday. 

Junior issy Wunder was named the Ivy league Player of the Year this week after scoring 24 goals, second on the team, with 47 points and a plus-31 rating. She was also a unanimous first-team All-Ivy selection. 

Sarah Paul and Mackenzie Alexander were both second-team selections, and Rosie Klein was honorable mention. 

Princeton and Colgate split their two regular season meetings, with an overtime goal from Wunder in a 4-3 Tiger win on Nov. 22 in Princeton and then a 4-0 Colgate win on Jan. 18 in Hamilton.

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The men's hockey regular season ends with a road trip to St. Lawrence and Clarkson, with puck drop at 7 tomorrow and Saturday. 

Princeton will be on the road for the opening playoff game next week, most likely at RPI, Harvard or Brown.

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TigerBlog gave you the men's basketball update yesterday. For the women, Princeton is at Harvard tomorrow (8) and Dartmouth Saturday (7), which means that nobody is playing in Jadwin Gym this weekend, which is a real rarity. 

It's very likely that the Princeton-Harvard game will be a preview of the Ivy tournament semifinal. Columbia is 10-1 in the league and Princeton and Harvard are both 9-2. Columbia still has games left against Brown, Yale and Cornell, none of whom has a winning record in the league. 

Columbia has the tiebreaker over Princeton with its 2-0 record against the Tigers and would have the tiebreaker in a three-way tie with Princeton and Harvard. The Lions would also have the tiebreaker over Harvard if both finish 12-2.

Princeton defeated Harvard 52-50 in the meeting at Jadwin in January. 

Princeton, Harvard and Columbia have all clinched Ivy tournament spots. The fourth spot will go to either Penn or Brown.

Men's Hoops Update

Apparently, many of you thought Pete Carril's "no wonder that guy threw a chair at you" line was very funny.

It was even funnier in the moment. Hey, did you know this about Carril? Who was the losing coach in his first ever game as Princeton's head coach?

The answer is: Bobby Knight, back when Knight was coaching at Army.

It was on Dec. 1, 1967, that Carril made his debut as the Tiger head coach, beginning a tenure that would take him all the way to the RCA Dome in Indianapolis 29 years later. Here is how the Daily Princetonian story about Carril's first game began:

With one hand directing the action on the court and the other probably clutching an aspirin bottle, Pete Carril won his first basketball game as head coach at Princeton University Friday night, 62-59 over Army. But in the process he saw all his seeds of concern for the early season grow into ugly weeds. Laughing weakly after Army's well-drilled team had finally learned that you're not supposed to beat the eighth-ranked team in the nation on its home court, Carril joked, "What a way to start my career at Princeton." He added in the same breath. "We played a terrible game."

Yeah. TigerBlog can hear Carril's saying those words. 

Can you picture Pete Carril and Bobby Knight when they were young coaches? TB has always wondered at what point Carril went from young coach to being considered a bit eccentric and curmudgeonly? Is there a specific age where that happens. 

And yes, TigerBlog gets that with every passing year, those names mean less and less to those who weren't around to see them in their primes. 

Maybe that's why TB does what he can to keep the Carril legend, and those of other Princetonians, alive. Meanwhile, there is the matter of current events. 

On the men's basketball side, there are three regular season games remaining for all eight teams. 

Right now, Yale is 11-0. Behind the Bulldogs, there are five teams who are pushing for the other three spots in the Ivy League tournament, which, by the way, begins in Providence in just 17 days.

Were the tournament to start today, the other three teams would be Dartmouth, Cornell and Princeton, in that order. That, in all likelihood, will change radically in the next two weekends. 

For the record, the teams enter this weekend with Dartmouth at 7-4, Princeton and Cornell at 6-5 and Harvard and Brown at 5-6. Penn is 3-8, and Columbia is 1-10.

Princeton's remaining three games are at Columbia Friday night at 7 and then at Cornell Sunday at 2. That game can be seen on ESPNU, which is why it is Sunday. It also gives Princeton an extra day of rest after the long bus ride.

Princeton finishes the regular season at Jadwin Gym on Saturday, March 8, with tip-off at 2. This schedule makes Princeton the only team in the top six of the standings who plays both of the teams in the bottom two in the standings now, though who knows if that is an actual advantage — since Princeton beat Columbia by four and Penn by two the first time around, nothing will be easy. 

Brown came from way back last year to make the Ivy tournament field and then came within 30 seconds of getting into the NCAA tournament. The Bears are going to have to come from behind again to get in, and they have a huge game Friday night at Harvard. 

It's possible that whoever loses that game won't be mathematically eliminated, but there will be a lot of help needed to get in. Brown finishes the year with a game at Dartmouth Saturday and then home against Yale next weekend; Harvard has the Brown game and then Yale Saturday and Dartmouth in its finale.

Princeton, by the way, can clinch its Ivy tournament spot with two wins this weekend and a loss to Yale by the team that wins the Harvard-Brown game. And possibly even with one win, depending on how it all plays out. 

This Friday is the 28th. March begins Saturday. The Madness is right round the corner. 

Consider this weekend its prelude. 

No Wonder That Guy Threw A Chair At You

It was 40 years ago Sunday that Bobby Knight hurled a chair across the court at Indiana's Assembly Hall.

It was his way of gently suggesting that he was displeased with a call from an official that day. 

If you're too young to remember Bobby Knight, he was certainly a complex figure. There are some who consider him to be the very best college basketball coach ever; there are others who can't believe he was ever allowed to coach 18- to 22-year-old college athletes. 

Anyway, it was the night of Feb. 23, 1985, when Indiana was home against Purdue. It was a little more than five minutes into the game, and Indiana had already been called for six fouls. 

The infamous moment began with a foul call against Indiana in the post. Knight began to berate referee Fred Jaspers, who told him to sit down. Knight did — but he was still saying his piece, which resulted in a technical. 

When Purdue's Steve Reid went to shoot the technicals, Knight picked up a red plastic chair from his bench and hurled it in Reid's general direction, though the chair veered away and headed straight to the photographers. 

Knight was T'd up again and ejected. The Indiana fans wildly supported him as he left. 

That's the famous part of the story.

The less famous part involved none other than Pete Carril. 

It was 11 years later that one of the refs from the Indiana-Purdue game was officiating a Princeton game. TigerBlog was sitting on press row, right next to Carril. When a call went against the Tigers, Carril's response was this: "No wonder that guy threw a chair at you."

How's that? 

In other national college basketball news from the weekend that touches Princeton, UCLA honored the late Bill Walton by naming his widow Lori as an honorary captain and by dressing pretty much anyone in Pauley Pavilion in tye-dye. 

The family of Bill Walton gather on the court to honor No. 32 💙💛 pic.twitter.com/1CUKKYyjHe

— CBS Sports College Basketball 🏀 (@CBSSportsCBB) February 23, 2025

One of those family members who can be seen in the video is former Princeton great Nate Walton, one of Bill's sons. 

TigerBlog remembers back to when Nate Walton was being recruited at Princeton. It's one of TB's favorite moments in all his time in Jadwin Gym.

Bill Carmody excitedly walked into TB's office and said "the greatest college basketball player of all-time is in the men's room." That certainly got TB's attention. 

Of course TB got up and walked down the balcony and into the men's room. The entire 20 seconds or so it took to get there had TB wonder who the greatest college basketball player of all time could be.

He had it narrowed down to four choices — Pete Maravich, Lew Alcindor (who became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), David Thompson and Walton. 

As it turned out, Walton was the correct answer. 

Walton, as you might have guessed, was the same personable, larger-than-life figure in the Jadwin bathroom as he was on the court and television. Maybe it's because he was tired of talking to people about how he went 21 for 22 in the 1973 NCAA championship game win over Memphis State, but he took the initiative in the conversation.

In the 45 seconds or so they were standing there, Walton asked TB about 20 questions about himself, what he did at Princeton, what he thought of the men's basketball program and so on. 

TB would get a call from Walton a few days after one of Nate's games at Princeton, asking if he had left his gloves on TB's desk. The answer was that he in fact had, and so the next time he was in Jadwin he came and picked them up. 

Nate, by the way, was gifted with his father's personality. Nate Walton was a first-team All-Ivy League selection as a senior in 2001, when he led the Tigers to an unlikely Ivy League championship and an NCAA tournament appearance. 

The 2001-02 men's basketball media guide (those were books that were printed in the preseason and became obsolete almost immediately) referred to that Ivy title in then-head coach John Thompson III's bio, where it said that Thompson had "taken a team without a star and won a championship in his first season."

A few days after it came out, TB's phone rang. It was Nate Walton. And what did he say?

Nate: "There's a mistake in the media guide in Coach Thompson's bio."
TB: "What's that?"
Nate: "I was a star."

Ah yes. Those were the days. 

 

Another Jump In The Pool

So here are 17 seconds that can't help but make you smile, no? 

Earned their stripes. 🌿🏊‍♀️@PUCSDT | @PUTIGERS pic.twitter.com/08OLHTJzw3

— Ivy League (@IvyLeague) February 23, 2025

You're smiling, right? Of course you are. 

The video shows your 2025 Ivy League women's swimming and diving champion Princeton Tigers. It also shows just how gleeful a team can be after winning something that is not easy to do. 

The Ivy League meet is contested over the course of four days and nights, with preliminaries in the morning and finals in the evening. Getting to the finish line in any individual race is hard enough; getting to the final finish line Saturday night with the most points is even tougher. 

It's no wonder that everyone in the video is so happy. Winning is not easy. 

The last person in the video is head coach Abby Brethauer. First of all, getting a Gatorade bath on a pool deck could lead to some danger, but hey, she's clearly not bothered by it. And then she ends up in the pool with everyone else. 

It's the thrill of victory, as people TigerBlog's age might say.

Before he gets into the specifics, TB does want to restate the obvious: Championships are never to be taken for granted. 

And so what that Princeton has now won three straight women's swimming and diving championships and 26 overall, by far the most of any school. Nothing is ever guaranteed to you.

If you think in those terms, it really makes you appreciate the consistency that defined Princeton women's swimming and diving — and Princeton Athletics for that matter. 

Look at 2024-25, for instance. Back in the fall, Princeton had five Ivy League championship teams — field hockey, women's soccer, women's volleyball, men's cross country, women's cross country — and that doesn't include the NWPA title for the men's water polo team and the Ivy tournament title in men's soccer. 

This winter, Princeton had already won the Ivy title in men's fencing before the women's swimming and diving teams did so. That's seven league titles with several more for the winter and then the entire spring still to be contested. 

Getting to 10 Ivy titles is something that six Ivy schools have never even approached. For Princeton, it's something of a goal for every academic year. 

Don't ever take for granted how hard that is to do.

Meanwhile, for the women's swimming and diving title from this weekend, Eleanor Sun was the Co-High Point Swimmer of the Meet and Charlotte Martinkus was the High Point Diver of the Meet for the second time in her career. 

Sun won three individual events (200 butterfly, 200 IM, 400 IM) and was on two winning relays (400 and 800 free). Martinkus won the 1- and 3-meter dives.

In all Princeton won 10 events — five individual, three relay and two diving. In addition to Sun, Princeton also had individual champs in Dakota Tucker (200 breaststroke) and Sabrina Johnston (50 free). 

The final team scores had Princeton with 1,479 points, nearly 200 ahead of second-place Harvard (1,287.5). Harvard won five individual events Friday night alone and had seven for the weekend. How do you win by nearly 200 points if you're outdone in individual championships? 

By having a complete team effort, that's how. While the winners are the ones who get the most recognition, it's depth that piles up the points. 

Here's an example, the 100 backstroke Friday night. Harvard's Anya Mostek won the event. Princeton, though, had Johnston, Isabella Korbly and Alexa Pappas come in 3-4-5. For the 100 back, Princeton picked up 106.5 points to Harvard's 67. And that's how you win.

It's also much more cerebral for the coaches than you might think. There are any number of possible permutations of entries. The challenge is to put it all together to maximize the points. 

And then you have to go out and do it. That's what the Princeton women did.

It's three straight now and 26 overall. 

Do not take those numbers for granted. 

See You At Sherrerd And Jadwin Tomorrow

If you work in college athletics as long as TigerBlog has, you get to meet all kinds of people all over the country along the way. 

Most of them are of the "nice guy" or "she does a good job" type, even if neither is actually true. There are a few, though, who really stand out. One such person is Art Chase.

Art is one of those people who always seems to be happy to see you. He makes you feel like a really good friend, even if it's been years since you last were in the same room. There aren't too many people TB has met through the years who have made that kind of impact on him. 

TigerBlog has known Art from his work through the years at Duke, where he went from sports information director to Senior Associate AD for External Relations. Now, after being in Durham for the last 25 years, Art has himself a new job: Director of Athletics at the Citadel.

Congrats Art. TB is really happy for his friend. Go Bulldogs (the Citadel ones)!!

It's not easy to go from athletic communications to athletic director. TigerBlog has known of a handful of people who have made that jump; those who have are all wildly impressive. 

Is the same true of someone who has a communications background who becomes the chair of the NCAA men's lacrosse rules committee? That's probably not as impressive, though it is rarer. 

The current chair of the committee (TigerBlog) and his predecessor as chair of the committee (Maryland head coach John Tillman) will both be at Sherrerd Field tomorrow for a huge early season men's lacrosse matchup. Princeton is 1-0 on the season after a very impressive 11-10 win over Penn State on the road last weekend, and Maryland is 3-0 with wins over Richmond, Loyola and Syracuse. 

Face-off is at noon.

Rankings? Maryland is No. 2 in two of the three major polls and No. 3 in the other. Princeton is No. 2 in the poll were Maryland is No. 3 and No. 5 in the other two. Clearly these are two of the best teams in the country. 

Now, here are a few things to know about this matchup: 

* Maryland is 5-0 against Princeton since the start of the 2022 season (three regular season games, the 2022 NCAA semifinals and 2024 NCAA opening round). In those 300 minutes, Maryland has never trailed and had the lead for 282 minutes. Maryland has made a living against Princeton jumping out to an early lead, dominating face-offs and milking possession times. Twice in the NCAA game last spring Maryland scored goals with one second left on the shot clock. That's crushing stuff.

* Princeton goalie Ryan Croddick made 22 saves last week against Penn State, the most ever by a Princeton goalie in his first career start. He also had an assist on a long outlet pass after a save. Croddick was the USA Lacrosse Magazine Division I Player of the Week and the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Week. His opposite number tomorrow will be Logan McNaney. Even after last week, Croddick has played 92:09 career minutes, with 26 career saves. McNaney has made 55 career starts and played 3,319:49 career minutes, with 621 career saves.

* Maryland has held all three of its opponents to exactly seven goals. In its last 48 games, Princeton has played Maryland five times and the rest of the country 43 times. Of those five Maryland games, Princeton has reached double figures only once, and that was a 10-goal performance in the 2022 regular season. In the other 43 games, Princeton has reached double figures 40 times. 

Do with that information what you will. 

The lacrosse game will end around 2, which gives you plenty of time to go have a nosh and then head to Jadwin Gym, where there will be a basketball doubleheader tomorrow. It starts at 5:30 with a showdown for first place between Princeton and Columbia, both of whom are 9-1 in the league, one game ahead of 8-2 Harvard.

In the NET rankings, all three are in the top 50 in Division I. There are several prognostications that have all three in the upcoming NCAA tournament, which would be incredible. 

Columbia is the top scoring team in the league, at 73.8 points per game. Princeton is second in the league and 28th in Division I in scoring defense at 56.1 points per game. 

This has become a very special rivalry, with an unmissable intensity to each matchup. These games are not to be missed. 

The Princeton men's basketball team is home tonight (7) against Harvard and then again tomorrow (8) against surging Dartmouth. Princeton is tied for third in the league, a game back of the Big Green. 

Each Ivy men's team has five games to play before the start of the Ivy League tournament. This week will do a lot to start to straighten out who the four teams in Providence will be. 

So put that on your schedule for tomorrow. You can see the men's lacrosse game against Maryland, the women's basketball game against Columbia and the men's basketball game against Dartmouth and not miss a second of any of them. 

What more can you ask for on a February Saturday?

The Busy Weekend

The Ivy League championship meet in women's swimming and diving at DeNunzio Pool runs through Saturday night, when the league title will be awarded.

Princeton is the defending champion, having won for the 25th time last year. The only time this century that the winner of this meet wasn't Princeton or Harvard was in 2017, when Yale won. 

If you're in Princeton this weekend, it's a fun event. 

If you're looking to get out of town, and if Scott Bradley asks you if you want to go with the baseball team on its season-opening trip this weekend, just say "yes."

Why? Because the Tigers open with a three-game series at Miami. You have someplace better to be in late February? 

Bradley enters his 27th season as the head coach of the Tigers. Only Bill Clarke has won more game as Tiger baseball coach — and, to quote Pete Carril once, or at least something Carril might have said — "they named the field after that guy."

Actually, TigerBlog is pretty sure Carril did say that. Carril was a huge fan of Princeton baseball, and he loved to sit at Clarke Field in, what he definitely said, was the "spring of the year."

Bradley is more than a baseball coach. He's a huge Princeton Athletics fan. He's an educator. He's a great citizen. 

His team has worked with New Jersey Special Olympics though the years, and Bradley commemorated that on his highly entertaining X feed over the weekend:

Through the years with Special Olympics! Today will be fun as we train with Special Olympics, NJ! 💪🏻⚾️ pic.twitter.com/aTkYjlfTTG

— Coach (@CoachBradley9) February 16, 2025

The baseball team doesn't play at Clarke Field until its Ivy League opener against Dartmouth on March 22. In addition to heading to Miami, Bradley's team will also be making trips to Wake Forest (where it will also play Maryland), William & Mary, VCU, Liberty and Villanova.

Closer to home this weekend, the Princeton men's basketball team will take on Harvard tomorrow night at 7 and Dartmouth Saturday night at 8. The Princeton-Dartmouth men's game will be preceded by the Princeton-Columbia women's game at 5:30.

The current men's basketball standings show a wild ride for the final three Ivy League tournament spots, after Yale clinched its spot this past weekend. 

With nine games down and five to be played, you have Yale at 9-0, followed by Dartmouth at 6-3, Princeton and Cornell at 5-4 and Harvard and Brown at 4-5. 

TB quoted Pete Carril before. Now he'd like to offer the words of another former Princeton men's basketball coach, John Thompson III. Or at least paraphrase.

Back when JT3 was coaching the Tigers and there was no Ivy tournament, he used to say that the goal was to get through each weekend in the league still in first place. Fast-forwarding, you want to get through each weekend still in the top four, which is where Princeton finds itself. 

The women's ice hockey team lost 4-3 to RPI Saturday in its regular season finale. The Tigers scored first on Emerson O'Leary's goal, with assists to Mackenzie Alexander and Issy Wunder (100th career point), but RPI came back to go up 4-1.

The good news? There's a quick turnaround for a rematch between the teams. 

This will also be at Hobey Baker Rink, tomorrow at 3, in the first-round of the ECAC Playoffs. Keep in mind, the first round is again one game, before the best of three quarterfinals.

There's more hockey at Baker Rink than one women's game. The men are home tomorrow night at 7 against Brown and then Saturday against Yale, also at 7. Princeton finds itself in a fairly packed group of teams who are hoping to open their ECAC playoffs at home, and each team has four regular season games to go, which means 12 points are still on the line. 

For Princeton, the end of the regular season means the trip to St. Lawrence and Clarkson next weekend. The Tigers are currently seven points back of Brown for the final home ice position.

The full weekend schedule can be found HERE. 

Guest TigerBlog - Go Birds

Warren Croxton is the kind of person you like to have as your friend. 

He's genuine. He has a good, solid, sarcastic wit about him. He works hard at his job in the Office of Athletic Communications.

He's also very loyal. There's his wife and two kids, and yeah, he likes them and all. He really, really, really likes his Philly sports teams though. 

He emailed TigerBlog the other day and said this: "It's long but sums up my feeling the last week. I'd love to get it on TigerBlog."

Say no more, Warren. Oh, and this line? How perfect is this: When I found out I was going to be a father, I dreamed of the idea of taking my kids to a championship parade.

Here you go: 

It’s been a week since the Eagles won the Super Bowl.

That’s a weird sentence for me to type out. It’s even harder to comprehend that they’ve now done it twice.

Back in grade school, my friends and I got together to watch Eagles games at each other houses. It was right around the time Andy Reid was hired.

I remember exactly where I was during each of Reid’s NFC Championship losses. The Rams one, I was sitting on my couch, thinking to myself, "oh they’ll get back and win one."

The Bucs one was at my house, surrounded by friends. This was the one. The Eagles were favored, it was the last game at Veteran Stadium … the Bucs couldn’t win in the cold.

As you can imagine, I’m not a fan of Ronde Barber. The Eagles lost and I started to believe the higher powers did not like Philadelphia (something about the fans being mean).

The next year, while watching at my friend Tyler’s house, the Eagles hosted the Carolina Panthers. The week before, they converted a 4th and 26 against the Green Bay Packers and won in overtime.

Surely, the higher powers from above would grant Philadelphia as the team of destiny, right? RIGHT?

As you can imagine, I’m not a fan of Ricky Manning Jr., He picked off Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb three times, leading to the Panthers' winning 14-3.

In the off-season, the Eagles got Terrell Owens. The 2004 season was almost perfect. I was a junior in high school and my friends’ group was still getting together for games, with 35 people squeezed into my mother’s living room to watch the Eagles take down the Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football.

For the playoffs, we gathered at my friend Ryan’s house (more on him later). The Bucs NFC Championship game loss basically put my house on the banned list for playoff games as you can understand.

The Eagles took down the Atlanta Falcons, 27-10, in the NFC Championship. They finally did it. Our school had a snow day the next day to top it off.

SURELY, the higher powers above would shine on the city of Philadelphia, right? RIGHT?

As Rodney Harrison picked off McNabb, securing the Super Bowl for the New England Patriots, I just walked out of Ryan’s house and didn’t even acknowledge anyone. I walked up to the Dunkin Donuts down the street and waited for my mom to pick me up. Radio was off and we drove home in silence. She knew the deal.

That same group of friends and I watched the Phillies win the World Series in 2008 (at my house where there was no bad juju for baseball).

I've stayed in touch with most of that group. In 2017, the Eagles were awesome and were the No. 1 seed in the NFC. I did social media blackout for the Falcons playoff game because I was working a Princeton women’s basketball game. (Princeton beat Cornell, 75-54).

Hours after the city of Philadelphia took one big giant breath as Matt Ryan flung the ball to Julio Jones in the end zone, I caught up and celebrated with my wife.

Tired of watching NFC Championship losses, I decided to go to the NFC Championship game against the Minnesota Vikings a week later. Minnesota had won their previous game on a walk off touchdown by Stefon Diggs.

Surely, they were the team of destiny.

Not so fast. Nick Foles turned into Superman and the Eagles dominated the Vikings, 38-7.

We watched Super Bowl two weeks later at my friend Vinny’s apartment in the city.

I cried like a baby. My favorite part was the first text I got immediately after game was from my 92-year-old grandmother. All it said was congratulations. It hit me in all the feels. Broad Street was fun that night and the parade was all I ever dreamed of.

Fast forward to now … I have two children under three. Yes, they will be Philadelphia sports sickos like their father.

When I found out I was going to be a father, I dreamed of the idea of taking my kids to a championship parade. That’s one of the great things about sports … celebrating the end game.

My wife, who is the best, made it very clear, as Will Shipley scored the Eagles’ eighth touchdown against the Washington Commanders in the NFC Championship game last month, the kids absolutely cannot go on Broad Street immediately after the Super Bowl.

Okay, okay, fine, but they’re going to the parade if they win.

As soon as the Chiefs went three and out to begin the second half, I had a pretty good feeling that the Eagles were going to win.

The Devonta Smith long touchdown catch was the dagger to me.

As the game wrapped up, my friends and I walked towards Broad Street. My wife stayed back with the kids.

As we walked down Market Street, I was arm and arm with my friend Ryan. We were all so excited and I told him … man, we have come a long way since I walked out of your house and didn’t say bye to anyone.

We had a great laugh. We got to about 13th and Market before there was large crowd in the middle of the street. We saw Gritty; we saw fireworks. It was a great time.

The rest of the week is much of a blur. Princeton Women’s Basketball played on Friday but there was no world where I was missing the parade.

It was a beautiful day in Philadelphia on Friday. My wife and I along with our two kids drove over to the stadiums and walked up Broad Street. We gathered with friends and watched the buses go by.

The best part? My one-year-old son being enamored with the floating confetti in the sky.

It was then, it hit me how great sports can be. A moment I had dreamed of, and it lived up to the expectations.

Miles And Miles

There was a time when the biggest quest in sports involved nothing more than a human being and a stopwatch.

Would a person ever run a sub-four-minute mile? If you're a little older than TigerBlog, then you know who Roger Bannister was. If you don't, he was the first to accomplish the feat.

It wasn't until May 6, 1954, that Bannister became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes. This is from a story TigerBlog found about the occasion:

The stadium announcer for the race was Norris McWhirter, who who went on to co-publish and co-edit the Guinness Book of World Records. He teased the crowd by delaying his announcement of Bannister's race time for as long as possible:

Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event nine, the one mile: first, number forty one, R. G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which—subject to ratification—will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire and World Record. The time was three...

The roar of the crowd drowned out the rest of the announcement. Bannister's time was 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.

Only 11 years earlier, Princeton figured quite prominently in the mile record, as New Zealand's Jack Lovelock defeated Princeton's own Bill Bonthron in a race at Palmer Stadium in which both bettered the existing world record, Lovelock in 4:07.6 and Bonthron in 4:08.7.

Bonthron would again beat the old mile record in a race at Palmer Stadium on June 16, 1934, when Glenn Cunningham ran a 4:06.7. That was 10 years before the record run by Bannister, whose running career ended when he became a neurologist instead.

There has always been something very special about a four-minute mile. Princeton's Bill Burke, from Burke, Va., ran a 3:58.70 at the 1991 Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden. 

That was back on a Friday night. The following evening, TigerBlog interviewed Burke at halftime of a Princeton men's basketball game when TB was doing radio — and when the media section at Jadwin was on the bench side, in the center section. That was a long time ago.

TigerBlog was pretty new to interviewing people on the radio in 1991. He wonders what his questions were and what Burke had to say about such a huge running accomplishment, one that was still a very big deal back in 1991.

What he does remember about the interview was that there was a feeling of awe around what Burke had done. A four-minute mile? 

Burke, by the way, shared the 1991 Roper Trophy with men's basketball player Kit Mueller. It's always good to get a shoutout for Kit. 

Princeton recently had another four-minute miler, and again, it'll always be a special accomplishment. This time it was Harrison Witt, who broke his own Princeton and Ivy League record by going 3:52.87 at Boston University. His old record was 3:56.12, or more than three seconds faster. 

To give you a sense of how far the ability to run has come, Princeton had three athletes who broke four minutes in the BU mile, with Connor McCormick at 3:56.40 and Collin Boler at 3:59.07.

The mile isn't the marquee event that it used to be, but it still exists. In fact, it is the only non-metric event that the IAAF recognizes for world record purposes. 

To that end, no woman has ever run a sub-four-minute mile. The women's world record is 4:07.64, set on July 21, 2023, by Kenyan Faith Kipyegon, a three-time Olympic gold medalist in, what else, the 1,500 meters. 

Princeton's Mena Sctchard broke her own program mile record with a 4:28.43, more than four seconds off her own previous program record, set earlier this winter. 

Speaking of track and field records, there was also the men's 4x400 relay at the Tyson Invitational in Fayetteville, Arkansas, this past weekend. Princeton's team of Jon York, Joey Gant, Karl Dietz and Xavier Donaldson ran a 3:07.16, which added up to a new program record as well, beating the old record of 3:08.14, set by Gant, Jackson Clarke, Dietz and Donaldson earlier this winter as well.

Peter Hessler was a teammate of Burke's at Princeton who went on to be a Rhodes Scholar. He recently emailed TigerBlog about something else and mentioned that he see Burke somewhat regularly and that "he still looks like a miler." 

That's a good thing to look like in your mid-50s, no?

Senior Day Sweetness

Is 22-9 a good first quarter? 

What if it's not the best first quarter of your weekend? Is it still a good first quarter? 

The Princeton women's basketball team was home twice this weekend. Both games were essentially over after 10 minutes. 

It started Friday night, when the Tigers sprinted out to a 33-10 first quarter lead over Brown. You have to give the Bears credit for not quitting and even getting within nine in the fourth quarter before Princeton closed it out 78-67.

The game Saturday night against Yale started out 22-9 and ended up 71-42. That's called taking care of business at home.

The two first quarters, if TigerBlog's math is good, were a combined 55-19. When you have those kinds of leads, you're going to be awfully hard to catch — and that's how it played out. 

TB wrote last week about the idea of holding teams under 100 total points for a weekend. Princeton didn't do that this weekend, but this whole first quarter thing might be more fascinating. 

Getting out by that kind of margin makes you almost impossible to beat, especially when you defend like Carla Berube's teams do. TB will have to go back to do some research on that, though his hunch is that if you spot Carla Berube a 36-point edge in two first quarters, your chances of winning aren't going to be great.

In the meantime, this weekend was also Senior Day for the women's basketball, and it was an extraordinary Senior Day at that. 

In the course of a season, or a career, for that matter, there will always be some moments that stand out no matter what. Senior Day is one of them. 

No player or parent who has gone through a college Senior Day will ever forget the emotions of the experience. Nor should they. You'll have to trust TB; he's speaking from first-hand knowledge here. 

Senior Day 2025 for the women's basketball team couldn't have been more perfect. The Tigers have five seniors this season — Amelia Osgood, Parker Hill, Paige Morton, Katie Thiers and Adaora Nwokeji. 

Because the classes immediately ahead of them were stacked — with Kaitlyn Chen, Ellie Mitchell and Chet Nweke — and because of the talent that has come to Princeton since, there haven't been overwhelming minutes to be had for this class. 

Still, they have made huge contributions to Ivy League championship teams and teams that have won NCAA tournament games. And this was their Senior Night. 

So what happened? The five seniors combined for 42 points, matching Yale's total.

Osgood scored 13 points, shooting 5 for 7 from the field and making her only three. Nwokeji had 10 points of her own; she and Osgood combined had 15 for the year coming in. 

Morton and Thiers went for 15 between them, on 6 for 12 shooting. Thiers also seemed to have a huge family support in the stands, including a "Katie Thiers Is My Sister" poster held by a young man who might have been the rower from the University of Washington TB once wrote about. 

Hill, the only regular starter in the group, had four. To see them put up 42 between them on their special night was awesome. 

Meanwhile, there is the small matter of the Ivy League race. As TigerBlog said last week, the biggest game of this weekend in Ivy women's hoops was yesterday's game between Harvard and Columbia, and the result has turned the league race in a vastly different direction. 

Harvard took down Columbia 60-54, handing the Lions their first Ivy loss. Could there be a three-way tie for the championship?

Princeton and Columbia are both 9-1, a game ahead of Harvard. Princeton hosts Columbia Saturday at 5:30 (the men play Dartmouth at 8 afterwards) and then is at Harvard on Feb. 28. Should the Tigers beat the Lions and Harvard beat Princeton and none of those three lose any of their other games, then there would in fact be a three-way tie for the championship. 

All three teams are ranked in the top 50 of the NET ratings. Having games against the other two still to go will help Princeton's.

That's all for the coming weeks, though. This coming Saturday will be a big one Jadwin Gym. 

This past Saturday was a different kind of vibe, a Senior Day vibe that couldn't have been scripted any better. None of the members of the Class of 2025 will ever forget it. 

Spring Is Here, Sort Of?

TigerBlog had just hit "save" on the content management system to post the first pregame story of the 2025 men's lacrosse season when he may have actually muttered "this is exciting." 

As he has written many times before, that's the attitude that is needed to be in this business for as long as he has been.

It's the start of the season for three different Princeton "spring" teams this weekend. 

The softball team joins the men's and women's lacrosse teams as their seasons all get underway in the next few hours. It begins today with the softball opener in Chapel Hill, where the Tigers play Drexel at 12:30 and then North Carolina at 3. Princeton will play North Carolina again tomorrow at 1:30, followed by games against George Mason tomorrow at 4 and Sunday at 10. 

Princeton has three four straight Ivy League championships. As you recall from last spring, the Tigers defeated Ole Miss in the NCAA tournament before bowing out.

The women's lacrosse team is home tomorrow against Virginia at 1. The Tigers are ranked 17th, while the Cavs are ranked eighth.

The men's team is at Penn State, also at 1 tomorrow. Princeton is ranked fifth as it heads into the season in search of a fourth straight trip to the NCAA tournament. Penn State, already 2-0, is ranked 10th. 

It was the Nittany Lions who bounced Princeton from the 2023 NCAA tournament 13-12. The leading scorers from that game was Princeton's Coulter Mackesy (six goals) and Penn State's Ethan Long (five goals), and both are back. 

Speaking of Mackesy, he scored 40 goals last year — and enters his senior year 40 goals away from the school career record of 163, held by Jesse Hubbard since 1998. On the women's side, McKenzie Blake scored 67 goals last year — and she is 67 away from the program record of 209, set in 2022 by Kyla Sears. 

That's a crazy stat.

Anyway, spring is here? 

Winter is here too. 

The women's hockey team is home for its regular season finale — but not for the final time of the year at Baker Rink. Princeton hosts Union tonight at 6 and RPI tomorrow at 3 (which will also be Senior Day). 

No matter what happens this weekend, Princeton will be hosting a first-round ECAC playoff game next weekend, since the Tigers are locked into the top eight of the standings. It's very likely, though not locked in, that one of this weekend's opponents will be back at Baker next weekend.

For the men's hockey team, there are still three weekends left in the regular season, beginning this weekend at RPI (7 tonight) and Union (6 tomorrow). Princeton is currently in ninth place in the standings, which means moving up one spot would be necessary to get playoff home ice. 

Ahead for the men are a home weekend against Yale and Brown and a trip to St. Lawrence and Clarkson.

As for basketball, the women are home twice, against Yale tonight at 6 and Brown tomorrow at 5. The Ivy League standings, as TB has said, are pretty well defined right now, with Columbia at 8-0, Princeton at 7-1 Harvard at 6-2 and Brown at 4-4, followed by four teams with at least six losses. 

The biggest game of the weekend — at least in the big picture of the league, not from Princeton's perspective — is Sunday, when Harvard is at Columbia. Harvard is in the interesting position of being in third place in the standings, having lost to both Princeton and Columbia the first time through, but being the highest ranked league team in the NET rankings at 35, followed by Columbia (42) and Princeton (46).

Harvard needs a win over Columbia to have any realistic shot at a regular season championship. Princeton needs to sweep to keep its NET high and to stay in position to play Harvard and Columbia with a championship on the line. 

For the men, it's a somewhat similar look at the standings, where Yale is 7-0, Princeton and Cornell are 5-2, Dartmouth is 4-2 and then everyone else has at least four losses. The Tigers are at Brown tonight at 7 and Yale tomorrow at 8.

Congratulations Thursday

Congratulations.

For what? For anything and everything. It's a Congratulations Thursday here from TigerBlog. 

*

There were 16 Princeton players who earned the National Field Hockey Coaches' Association's National Academic Squad honors, announced yesterday. This award prioritizes in-season scholastic achievement, which makes it amazing to consider that two-thirds of the Princeton team qualified for the award while also winning an Ivy League championship and advancing to the NCAA tournament quarterfinals. 

Nobody at Princeton should ever forget that this is a school where the highest levels academically and athletically can overlap. It's been the backbone for decades and decades of success stories that make up what is known collectively as "Education Through Athletics."

Every time TigerBlog sees an award like this, of course, he's reminded of one of the best Pete Carril lines ever. When told that one of his players had been named Academic All-American with a 3.8 grade point average, Carril immediately said "Yeah? He'd be better off with a 3.6 and more work on his jump shot."

You can agree with the sentiments from two paragraphs ago and laugh at the ones in the previous paragraph. It's okay. 

Congratulations to the field hockey players. 

*

Further congratulations go out to Joanna Dwyer, the Northeast Water Polo Conference Sports Information Director of the Year. 

TB pointed out to Dwyer that a year ago, she was a senior at Elon who was looking for her first full-time job and had no idea what water polo was all about. Now look at her. 

The accomplishment was well-earned. Dwyer combined her broad content-creation skills with a willingness to, well, dive head first into a sport with which she had no previous experience. When you're good at what you do and you're willing to work hard to learn what you don't know, good things will happen. 

Congratulations to Joanna.

*

Next up is the men's fencing team, which swept all four of its matches to win the Ivy League championship this past weekend at Penn. 

Princeton's closest bout was Sunday's clincher, a 14-13 win over Columbia. 

For Princeton, it was the first back-to-back Ivy titles since 2016-17 and the first perfect Ivy run since 2012. The NCAA Regionals will be held March 8 in Teaneck, and the NCAA Championships will be held at Penn State March 20-23.

Congratulations to the men's fencing team. 

* 

Zach Currier is a former Princeton men's lacrosse player. Does it seem that long ago that he was playing as a Tiger?

Since then, Currier has won a World Indoor Championship and championships on the indoor and outdoor professional level. It's hard to imagine he will not be a Hall of Fame inductee when his playing days are over. 

TB saw on Instagram that Zach and his wife Eva are expecting their first child. That's worthy of a congratulations on Thursday. 

If the new generation has half of the competitiveness of the father, then there will be new fastest Canadian potty-trained baby record. 

By the way, this is opening weekend for Princeton men's (at Penn State Saturday at 1) and women's (home against Virginia at 1) lacrosse. 

Congratulations to Zach and Eva.

*

TigerBlog has minimal, minimal experience as a sports photographer. He does know that there's a feeling that a photographer gets in between that moment of snapping a picture and checking to see if came out exactly as was hoped in the moment.

When it turns out that you did get the picture, it bring a great sense of satisfaction. Hey, even TB has gotten to experience that, maybe less than five times ever, but still. 

With that in mind, congratulations go out to photographer Caean Couto, who had to smile when he saw the shot he took of Princeton men's basketball player Malik Abdullahi in the Tigers' win over Penn at the Palestra last Friday. 

Not bad, huh? 

Princeton's men have a big weekend, with games at Brown (tomorrow at 7) and Yale (Saturday at 8). The women's basketball team will be home against the same two opponents, hosting the Bears (6 tomorrow) and Bulldogs (5 Saturday). 

Congratulations on the picture Caean. 

Remembering Lorin Maurer, 16 Years Later

 

TigerBlog goes back into the archives today, back 16 years ago to be exact.

 

It was on that day that he, and the rest of Princeton Department of Athletics and world beyond, woke up to the shocking news of the plane crash outside of Buffalo. Among those killed was Lorin Maurer, who oversaw the Princeton Athletic Friends Groups at the time. She had just turned 30.

 

Each year since, TB has written about the emotions of losing a colleague and a friend. With each year, the number of people who knew Lorin has dwindled until now there are only a handful left who remember her, the warmth she always displayed, the smile that never went away. In fact, her smile is the last thing TB ever saw from her. 

 

Here is how TB put it back in 2009, with the comments he received afterwards... Lorin, you were truly an exceptional person, and nobody who knew you will ever forget you:

 

When she walked past the door of TigerBlog HQ yesterday afternoon, like she had a million times before and figured to a million times again, Lorin Maurer paused, smiled and kept going. She never said a word; TigerBlog didn't say anything back to her.

Who could have ever have imagined it would be the last time he'd ever see her?

Lorin Maurer was killed late Thursday night when Continental Connection Flight 3407 crashed near Buffalo. She was heading there for the wedding of her boyfriend's brother (her boyfriend was not on the flight); she was just 30 years old.

TigerBlog knew Lorin since she first started working here in 2005. We've worked together any number of times on all kinds of projects. As with any people who approach projects from different angles, we had our disagreements and clashes, but for the most part we were on the same page.

She was young and full of life. She had accomplished a great deal in her young life, and sadly, much of that was learned while writing her obituary. The last time TigerBlog ever saw her summed her up perfectly. Nothing to say? Flash a smile, and let that speak for you: "Hello; hope you're doing okay; I'll see you another time."

So what to make of all this? How do you make sense of the fact that a 30-year-old just starting out, with so much energy and zest, is gone like that? How do you rationalize the fact that you were just in the same meeting the day she died, that you have another meeting scheduled with her on Monday? How do you figure that you came to HQ figuring to work on a lacrosse program and that you wrote a youthful colleague's obit instead?

The first reaction is that you never know what's coming down the road, so you have to stop every day to appreciate whom you have and what you have. But that should all be obvious. It's not something we all do enough of, but Lorin's passing isn't going to change that.

She had a great many friends here at Princeton, not only in the athletic department but also in development and with alums throughout the country with whom she interacted. She was well-liked and well-respected for the job she did.

TigerBlog thought for awhile about something profound to say, some inspiration to draw from her death. In the end, what is there to say?

She was here yesterday, so alive. She's gone today. It's beyond sad.

That's all there is to say.

 

And That's 500 Wins

The nightmares that TigerBlog will have because of the commercials during the Super Bowl of the people born with cowboy hat heads should end somewhere around the time ... well ... they'll never end. 

The worst part? He cannot for the life of him tell you what the product in the advertisement was. That's the absolute worst kind of commercial — nightmare inducing and for no real payoff. 

There were very few completely awful commercials, which is an improvement from most years. There were a handful that TB would say were great, but the majority were simply "nice," as opposed to the standard of the last decade or so, which was defined by Super Bowl commercials that were simply trying wayyyyy toooooo hard to be funny and cutting edge — and failed miserably doing so.

There were three commercials from Sunday that stood out to TB. First, there was the Liquid Death drink. TB will actually seek it out to see how it tastes. 

Then there was the breast cancer commercial. It took a very difficult subject and handled it in a way that was just perfect. 

The best commercial? That was the Harrison Ford one for Jeep. The last line was also perfect, and the entire message evoked only feelings of warmth. 

Oh, and TB's prediction of Philadelphia 28, Kansas City 17? That was a pretty good one. The Eagles were just the better team, playing against a team with a great mystique — but not a great offensive line. 

Booger McFarland, speaking on Friday's "Pardon the Interruption," basically said that if the Eagles were to win, then Saquon Barkley wouldn't be the MVP, because the Chiefs were simply not going to let the star running back beat them. That's pretty much how it turned out. 

And one last Super Bowl note, and that would be Jalen Hurts and his combined stats in his two Super Bowl appearances: 44 for 60 for 525 yards and three touchdowns, with 143 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns (he ranks first and second for rushing yards in a Super Bowl game by a quarterback with 72 and 71).

Okay, back to Princeton Athletics and round numbers. 

Princeton's women's basketball team defeated Penn 74-60 Saturday afternoon at Jadwin and in the process earned Tiger head coach Carla Berube her 500th career win. Now that's a big clean round number everyone can appreciate it.

Berube spent 17 years at Tufts before coming to Princeton, and she won 384 of those 500 games with the Jumbos. She is 116-22 at Princeton, for a total of 500-118 and a winning percentage of .809.

Can you imagine winning eight of every 10 games and having your career percentage go down? 

Berube's record in many ways speaks for itself. In many ways, it doesn't.

For instance, you can make a case that the current Princeton season may be her best coaching job yet. Keep in mind who is not on this team from a year ago — Kaitlyn Chen, Ellie Mitchell, Chet Nweke — and who is on this team but unable to play after a knee injury back in November — Madison St. Rose. 

Think about how much firepower was on the team last year that isn't there now. Having St. Rose back was going to go a long way to overcoming those losses, and she lasted less than seven games. 

Was the season over the? Nope. Berbube's teams don't work that way. 

With a new emerging group of stars (Ashley Chea, for instance, had 25 against Penn), Berube's team is 16-5 overall and 7-1 in the Ivy League, one game back of Columbia, who comes to Jadwin Gym Feb. 22. Those two, plus Harvard, seem to be complete locks for the upcoming Ivy tournament, with the Crimson at 5-2. 

Brown is 4-4, while every other team has at least six losses in the league. Princeton, Columbia and Harvard are 15-0 against the rest of the league. 

If you look at the NET rankings, the top three Ivy teams are all in the top 45. It's very likely that there will be at least two of them in the NCAA tournament. 

Harvard is ranked 35th. Columbia is ranked 42nd. Princeton is ranked 45th.

Congratulations to Carla Berube on her big round number. 

If you're a Princeton fan, make sure you appreciate what you've been seeing from her teams since Day 1 for her. 

"Noah Savage Isn't A Bad Guy"

All TigerBlog heard in the lead up to getting his tonsils out was that he could eat all the ice cream he wanted. 

Who has been pushing that myth for all these years? Has to be someone in Big Ice Cream.  

If TB has learned one thing, it's this: "ice cold = horrible pain." Actually, he's also learned that "very hot = horrible pain." You want to hit the sweet spot of warm, like room temperature Yoo-Hoo, which has dominated his consumption for a week. 

Keep that in mind for your sore throat needs. 

By the way, TigerBlog was watching the last five minutes of the first Giants-Patriots Super Bowl game yesterday. You remember the Helmet Catch play made by wide receiver David Tyree, right? 

Do you remember the play before that? It was a pass from Eli Manning that went to where Manning thought Tyree was going to be but wasn't. Instead, it went straight to Rodney Harrison, who makes the interception nine times out of 10. This time, though, it went through his hands. If it hadn't, then the Helmet Catch never would have happened. 

Fate, right? 

In sports closer to home, the Princeton men's basketball team made history at Penn with a 61-59 Friday night. Before that history, TigerBlog will share a funny moment, when Penn's notoriously, um, pro-Quaker color commentator Vince Curran was asked during a dead ball if he could say something nice about Princeton. 

Curran thought and thought and then came out with this: "Noah Savage isn't a bad guy." 

Nope. Noah is as good as it gets. It was just all in the presentation. If you've heard Curran, you know what TB means.

As for the history, this was the first time in program history that two players reached 998 career points in the same game.

What? No round numbers? Does that matter? 

Xaivian Lee finished Princeton's 61-59 win over Penn with 1,003 career points after an 11-point, nine-rebound, four-assist afternoon.

Caden Pierce had nine points, seven rebounds and three assists in the game. He now has 998 for his career. 

It would have been cool for both of them to get to 1,000 in the same game (something that's happened twice on the women's side with Kate Thirolf and Maggie Langlas and then Allison Cahill and Maureen Lane). Or would it? 

John Nolan, in the process of building his name in the broadcasting world in Indiana, and TigerBlog have had a long-running back-and-forth on the subject of America's obsession with round numbers. This is another example of that. 

Lee made the biggest play of the game, and it wasn't on a play where he actually scored. Instead, Penn was ahead 58-56 after a made free throw with 53 seconds to go. The second foul shot was no good, and Penn's 6-10 Johnnie Walter was the first to the rebound. 

It appeared for a moment that Walter was going to have an uncontested layup, making it a two-possession game. Then, in a blink, the 6-4 Lee came away with the ball instead. It was a subtle play, but it changed the entire trajectory of the game. 

Now, instead of a sure-fire four-point Penn lead with less than a minute to go, it was a two-point Penn lead, one that became a one-point Princeton lead when Lee set up Dalen Davis for a three-pointer on the next possession. 

Penn tied with by making the first of two foul shots. Lee gained possession of the miss on the second shot again, and he then somehow set up Jackson Hicke with less than a second to go. Hicke was fouled on his shot attempt and then made both, giving Princeton a big win. 

The weekend's results left each men's team with seven of its 14 games played. The top four after the next go-round of the double round robin will gather in Providence for the Ivy League tournament. 

Are those four teams pretty clear right now? 

Yale is 7-0. Princeton and Cornell are 5-2 each (the Tigers are in New Haven this coming Saturday at 8 after playing at Brown Friday at 7). Dartmouth, who has yet to appear in the men's ILT, is 4-3. Everyone else has at least five losses. 

Nothing is etched in stone yet, though you can do the math as well as anyone. 

Oh, and one other side note for the regular season finale between Princeton and Penn at Jadwin on March 8? A Princeton win would even the all-time series at 126-126, which would make it the first time it's been tied since 3-3 in 1905.

Catching Up

Bill Bradley scored 2,503 points in his three varsity seasons at Princeton, the most recent of which was 60 years ago.

Nobody has come close to that number since. TigerBlog would be shocked if anyone ever did. 

Joe DiMaggio had a 56-game hitting streak once. That was in 1941, or 21 years before Bradley scored his first point at Princeton. If you're wondering, his first point was followed by 27 more on Opening Day 1962-63.

Meanwhile, back at DiMaggio, TB always figured that of any record considered to be unbreakable, DiMaggio's would be the "easiest" to catch. Why? Because it would only take 57 games to do so. 

History suggests that TB's logic if flawed. There have been a lot of Major League players who have played 57 games since 1941. Nobody has come closer than 44 straight games (Pete Rose in 1978) since.

When you are faced with numbers that are overwhelming like these, you realize just how rare the accomplishment itself was. It becomes even more amazing when such a record ultimately falls. 

Back when Penn redid the concourse at the Palestra, it put up a tracker of the men's basketball series against Princeton, probably figuring that there was no way the Tigers would ever catch up. 

According to research done by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Jonathan Tannenwald, as much an Ivy basketball historian as TigerBlog, the most Penn ever led Princeton by was at 25 games, 122-97, after the Quakers won at Jadwin in 2009. 

Here are some other interesting notes Tannenwald came up with (you will be able to read his work online tomorrow):

* Penn built a 23-game lead by 1938 and then matched that several times between then and 1956
* From 1963-69, Princeton won 12 of 13, getting within seven games. Penn then won four straight, pushing the lead back to double figures, where it would stay until 2020
* The series currently stands at Penn 126, Princeton 124

And last, but certainly not least:

* the last time the series was tie was at 3-3 in 1905. Penn won the first three games in the series, beginning on Valentine's Day 1903, which means that Princeton has never, ever at any point held the all-time lead in the series. 

There is no guarantee the Tigers ever will, but the next chance to get closer is tonight at 7 at the Palestra. Should Princeton win that one, then the chance to tie the Quakers would come up on March 8 at Jadwin. 

Nothing is a given, certainly not in a series with this kind of history. Speaking of history, though, it's very likely that at least one Princeton player will reach 1,000 career points tonight, and possibly two, as Xavian Lee (992) and Caden Pierce (989) are both within their average's distance of getting there. 

Blake Peters won't get to 1,000 career points. The senior three-point shooter enters the game tonight with 652 for his career. 

Here a few Peters notes for you, though:

* he is seventh all-time at Princeton with 178 career three-pointers made
* if he maintains his current Ivy League average of 3.5 made threes per game through the rest of the regular season, he'd have 206 (which would bring him within six of moving past Spencer Weisz and tying Gabe Lewullis for fifth at Princeton)
* he is 18 for 33 from three-point range in the last four games

Of course, tonight is about current events, not the past. 

Princeton heads Philadelphia after a huge 69-49 win over Brown last Saturday, a win that came 24 hours after a loss to Yale. It also ended a two-game Ivy losing streak. 

Right now, the league standings have Yale at 6-0, Cornell at 5-1, Princeton at 4-2 and Dartmouth at 3-3, followed by Penn, Brown and Harvard at 2-4 and Columbia at 0-6. This is the last weekend of having a single game for the men.

As for the women, they'll play Penn at home tomorrow at 2. The current standings there are like this before the weekend: Columbia 7-0, Princeton 6-1, Harvard 5-2, Brown 4-3, everyone else either five or six losses. 

Also, for the many people who have reached out to TigerBlog, he's trying to get by on Yoo-Hoo and Kojak reruns, but it's a losing battle so far. To his surgeon, TB says "you were right. The first few weeks after were going to be awful."

Oh, and Super Bowl prediction: If the Eagles win then all will be well. If the Chief win, even if its 52-0, everyone will scream about the refs. 

TB will go with Philadelphia 28, Kansas City 17.

What Did He Say?

It's quite possible that TigerBlog was hallucinating yesterday as he watched "The Rockford Files" reruns while trying to take his mind off the searing pain that has became standard this week in his immediate post-tonsil world. 

In fact, TB wasn't really paying all that close attention, but he's pretty sure he heard Jim say this to the guy who was paying him $200 a day plus expenses: "Wait, you still think you're the lacrosse captain at Andover?" The response? "It was Lawrenceville."

By the way, the guy who claimed to have been a lacrosse captain played Fletcher Daniels on "Hill Street Blues."

Hey, what else are you supposed to do when you're in post-surgical misery besides watch classic 1970s television shows on Roku. Oh yeah. You're supposed to write a blog.

* 

David Ma was a very deserving ECAC men's hockey defensive Player of the Week this past week. He logged huge minutes Saturday night as Princeton defeated No. 19 Dartmouth 3-1 to finish a weekend sweep, one that began with a 4-3 OT win at Harvard Friday night. 

Ma had a goal and two assists in that game, including assisting on the game-winner. 

The sweep at Harvard and Dartmouth was Princeton's first since 2010. It also moved Princeton into the thick of the battle for home ice in the first playoff game. 

How tight are the ECAC standings right now? Princeton is tied with RPI for eighth with 16 points. If you go all the way to the bottom of the standings, you'll notice that the team there has 14 points. In other words, that's five teams within two points — at least one of those five will get a home game in the playoffs. 

Meanwhile, this weekend's schedule has Clarkson and St. Lawrence at Hobey Baker Rink tomorrow and Saturday, with puck drop at 7 both nights.

*

Did you see the end of the Nets-Rockets game Tuesday night? 

There are hundreds of games in an NBA regular season, and very few of them will have the drama that the game at the Barclays Center did. And, best of all, guess who was right in the middle of it all? 

Tosan Evbuowman.

Basically, the Nets were down by four with 10 seconds left. Evbuomwan inbounded the ball to Keon Johnson, who hit a three-pointer. Evbuomwan then lined up to guard the inbounds pass before dropping off and then, somehow, found himself with the ball, which he then tipped above the three-point line to D'Angelo Russell, who drained the game-winner. 

The Nets went from down 97-93 to a 99-97 winner in a blink. Evbuomwan had assists on both of the late threes, plus a steal. 

Tosan Evbuomwan kept playing at the end here. He had 14-4-4 tonight and provided a major assist on the game-winning three for the Nets in a stunning win over the Rockets. pic.twitter.com/rPronuTQlc

— Derek Jones (@DerekJones79) February 5, 2025

He also finished with 14 points on 7 for 11 shooting, with four rebounds and four assists. His numbers with Brooklyn through 16 games: 10.0 points, 4.7 rebounds, 46.8 percent field goal shooting, 32.5 percent three-point shooting, 24.8 minutes. 

You know what else tells you that he's establishing himself as a legitimate NBA player? That he was on the court at the end of the game. 

Tosan Evbuowman is the easiest professional player to root for since Andrei Iosivas. 

* 

There will a men's squash showdown Sunday at Penn for the Ivy League men's squash championship when Princeton heads to Philadelphia to take on the Quakers. Princeton is ranked No. 2 nationally; Penn is ranked No. 1.

The CSA website keeps track of a team's record and then breaks it down way further, to total games won and total points won. In case you're interested, here's how the teams stand so far:

Princeton is 9-0, with a record in all of its matches of 67-14. If you're wondering about games, Princeton is 207.76. If you're wondering about points, that's 2,871-2,088.

Penn is 15-0, with a record in all of its matches of 128-7. If you're wondering about games, the Quakers are 391-63. In points, that's 4,769-2,727.

*

There will also be Ivy League championships crowned at Penn this weekend in men's and women's fencing, who will compete in the league round-robin event as well. 

Princeton earned a share of both titles a year ago. The Tiger women will be going for at least a share for the fourth straight year, while the men will search for their first back-to-back Ivy titles since 2016-17 and 18th overall.