Southern Sweep

Okay, here's the problem that has plagued noted scholars and mathematicians going all the way back to last Thursday: 

There are 61 people at a group check-in at an airport. Each person checks one bag, for a total of 61. To expedite the check-in process, each bag is randomly assigned a tag with the name of someone in the group. 

The question is: What are the odds that any person in the group of 61 is randomly given his/her own tag? 

TigerBlog thought of that when the men's lacrosse team checked in at Philadelphia Airport last Thursday for its flight to Raleigh-Durham and its weekend at Duke and North Carolina. He asked quite a few people — including players — and got quite a few answers. 

For the record, whatever the odds actually are, there were no bags that came out with the owner's name on them. 

Meanwhile, on the flight back, check-in went one person at a time. Seats on the plane were random, and so TB found himself in the last row, on the aisle. He thought he had made a trade for a window seat with Director of Operations Drew Cottrell (he's sort of the glue of the entire program), but it fell through at the end. 

Instead, TB was in the aisle in the back. At one point, he glanced across to the person who was opposite him, shortstick defensive midfielder Cooper Mueller. 

TB couldn't help but think about how he'd traveled on buses 35 years ago with Cooper's father Kit, the two-time Ivy League men's basketball Player of the Year. There have been a lot of miles and a lot of athletes in between.

Rather than getting all philosophical about the passage of time, TB will get back to the weekend in North Carolina. Simply put, it couldn't have gone much better for the Tigers. 

There were two games, and there were two wins. TigerBlog called it "Southern Swing. Southern Sweep."

These weren't just any two teams, by the way. Both were unbeaten and ranked in the top five. 

And they weren't just any wins.  They were both extraordinarily exciting games, first a 15-14 win over Duke and then a 14-12 win over UNC. Both went right to the wire, the Duke game not decided until a face-off win with 19 seconds left and the UNC game not decided until a Ryan Croddick save with 1:24 left that was followed by a clear and goal into the empty net. 

Beyond just that, these wins were about toughness. Princeton had the lead in both games, only to have Duke come back to tie and North Carolina lead, and both times Princeton responded, with clutch performances all over the field. 

There were great offensive finishes, including Colin Burns' behind-the-back finish that became the No. 4 play on SportsCenter's top 10 after the Duke game. And that one might not have been the most amazing, That honor might fall to Chad Palumbo's fourth-quarter goal (one of his four in the final 23 minutes of the game) against UNC:

CHAD PALUMBO WOULD NOT BE DENIED!! 😤😤😤

(via ACCNX, @TigerLacrosse) pic.twitter.com/afE7FSdnl4

— TLN 🥍 (@LacrosseNetwork) March 2, 2025

The offensive performances were impressive. Of the 29 goals that were scored over the weekend, five came from Coulter Mackesy and four came from Palumbo. In all, there were 11 different Tigers who scored at least once. 

Princeton showed depth all over the field. It got huge saves from goalie Ryan Croddick when most needed, like the one with 1:24 to go against UNC with the Tigers up one. It got three goals in the two games from Carson Krammer, who is sort of like a baseball player who can hit 475 foot home runs; when he unleashes, everyone oohs and ahhhs.

 Oh, and there is Jackson Green. TigerBlog would try to describe his impact, but that's not easy to do. Yes, he had a goal in both games, but that hardly quantifies what he does. In fact, nothing really does, other than the number five — as in the five texts TB got during the weekend that basically said "is Jackson Green the best player on the field?"

Princeton is now 3-1. All three wins are against top 10 teams (Penn State is the other); its loss is to Maryland, the No. 1 ranked team in the country. The four Princeton opponents are a combined 18-3, and all three losses are against the Tigers.  

Head coach Matt Madalon wanted to challenge his team as much as he could. He also wanted to give his Tigers two ways into the NCAA tournament, with either an at-large bid or the Ivy automatic bid. The three top 10 wins figure to give Princeton a leg up on the first way in. 

Next up is a home game against Rutgers Saturday at 7. The winner gets the Meistrell Cup. 

Princeton hasn't won any trophies yet this season. What it has done is establish itself as one of the best teams in the country, both with its results and with any eye test. 

That was crystal  clear this weekend in North Carolina.