The Tiger Weekend

Would you like to guess how many minutes Val Kilmer was on screen in the original "Top Gun?

How about 10 minutes. You know you've made a huge impact on a movie when you're so well associated with it in only 10 minutes. And hey, has anyone ever looked cooler in a movie than Kilmer did in those 10 minutes? 

TigerBlog loved the original and the recent sequel "Top Gun Maverick." The small appearance that Kilmer made in the sequel became even more special with the realization of how sick he was, something that culminated in his death this week. 

There are some actors whom everyone seems to like, and Kilmer was one of those. TB, as millions of others were, was saddened by the news of his passing. 

Val Kilmer was only 65 when he died. He'll live on in every role he every role he ever had. Watching him in the "Top Gun" movies has just gotten more special.  

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The Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association race will take a dramatic turn in some direction after this weekend. Princeton, currently in first place at 5-1 at the midway point of the league season, hosts second-place George Mason (4-2) in matches tonight at 7 and tomorrow at 4 in Dillon Gym. 

There are three other teams with three league losses (Charleston, Harvard, Penn State). The top four teams will reach the league tournament, with an NCAA bid to the winner of that event. 

The tournament will be held at the regular-season champ. The matches this weekend won't decide who that is, though it will start to define how the next two weeks unfold. 

Princeton will finish its regular season with Harvard at home next weekend and then a trip to Penn State the following weekend.

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The chase for the two Princeton Lacrosse goal scoring records continues tomorrow, as the men host Vermont (noon) and the women are at Cornell (also noon).

For the men, senior Coulter Mackesy has 150 goals, leaving him in second place all-time at Princeton, behind only Jesse Hubbard, whose 163 goals have been the record since 1998. Princeton has four regular season games to go, plus possible appearances in the Ivy tournament and NCAA tournament. 

Mackesy also has 223 career points, fourth-best at Princeton. Michael Sowers' 302 points won't be challenged any time soon. Kevin Lowe is second with 247, and Ryan Boyle is third with 232.

For the women, senior McKenzie Blake has 186 career goals, which leaves her 23 away from Kyla Sears' record of 209. Unlike the men, the women's record has already been broken twice in the last eight years, with a possible third time if Blake can do it. 

The women have six regular season games left, plus the same postseason opportunities as the men. Both teams are in the top 5 in RPI now (the men are No. 1; the women are No. 5). 

There are other lacrosse players who are moving up the career lists. 

Haven Dora, the reigning Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week after her four-goal, four-assist day in a huge 13-11 win over Yale, has 80 career assists. She is also chasing Sears, who holds the career record with 98. Dora, of course, is only a junior, which means that she has a pretty good chance of catching Sears and pushing the record way past where it is now.

Sophie Whiteway, a senior, is third all-time in draw controls with 185, four away from Elizabeth George. The record belongs to Marge Donovan, who is at 214.

Michael Bath, a senior on the men's team is tied with Zach Currier for third in career caused turnovers with 55. Chad Wiedmaier holds the record with 83, with George Baughan's 67 in second place.

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TigerBlog made his first trip to the new racket center on the Meadows Campus and, well, it's stunning. If you haven't been there, make sure you get a chance to check it out. 

Your next chance is tomorrow and Sunday, when the men's tennis team hosts Harvard and then Dartmouth. Princeton enters the weekend ranked 34th in Division I, while Harvard is No. 14.

 The matches both days start at 1. 

The women are on the road at Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend. 

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The complete weekend schedule is HERE.

Go Kaitlyn

Do you enjoy TigerBlog every day? 

If so, then you, a Princeton fan, have to give at least some credit to the new head coach of men's basketball at Penn. Ironic, no? 

When TigerBlog was a freshman at Penn, he had a work-study job in the psychology department. So did the new Penn coach, Fran McCaffery. 

Through the hours and hours the two spent making photocopies of readings for professors — without a copy machine that could collate and staple, mind you — TB and Fran became friends. TigerBlog met his parents, including his father, who was a longtime usher at the Palestra. 

He also met Fran's brother Jack, who back then was a sportswriter at the Trenton Times and who went from there to a long career at the Delaware County Times. It was Jack who first suggested to TB that he might want to try his hand at sportswriting.

In fact, Jack took TB to his first writing assignment, a high school football game between two local prep schools, Pennington Prep and the Academy of the New Church. TB will never forget what Jack said to him on that ride: "Once you get the ink in your blood, you never get it out."

That's about as true as anything anyone has ever said to him. And while the ink eventually gave way to whatever it is that fuels this every day, Jack continues to be correct.

If you look at it from 10,000 feet, TB never would have met Jack had he not met Fran first, and if he hadn't met Jack, then he wouldn't be writing a blog for Princeton every day. 

What would he have been instead? TB has wondered that often. He's glad the way it works out, and he's never forgotten how much of that he owes to the McCaffery family. 

Of course, he'll still root against Fran when he plays against Princeton and all. But he's still grateful.

On the other hand, TB will definitely be rooting for Kaitlyn Chen this weekend for the womens Final Four. 

Chen, as you know, is a Princeton alum. She's also the only player in any sport to be a three-time Most Outstanding Player at an Ivy League tournament. 

She's done a lot of winning in her career, first at Princeton, where she played in three NCAA tournaments in three years, winning two games, and now in her graduate year at UConn.

Kaitlyn went 22-3 during the month of March in her career.

She is the definition of a winner. 🧡🖤💙 https://t.co/wZgGo4vWRV

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) April 2, 2025

That 22-3 record in March is crazy. Maybe the most impressive is that she's played 25 games in the month of March in the first place. 

Next up for her will be her first game in April. Chen and the Huskies are in the Final Four in Tampa, where they will play UCLA at 9:30 tomorrow night in the second semifinal. The first game matches South Carolina and Texas at 7.

TigerBlog isn't the only one who is rooting for Chen. The same is true for pretty much every Princeton fan, especially women's basketball head coach Carla Berube, herself a UConn alum. She has been a frequent visitor to her alma mater to watch her former star play this season, in addition to leading the Tigers to a sixth-straight NCAA appearance.

Chen is a big reason why the Huskies are still playing. No, she hasn't made Paige Bueckers (71 points in the last two games) level contributions, but Chen did put up 15 against USC in a 78-64 win in the Elite Eight, shooting 6 for 9 from the field. 

For the season, Chen has started every game, all 38 of them. She averages 7.1 points per game and is third on the team with 126 assists, with only 64 turnovers. 

The UConn women, by the way, are the only non-No. 1 seed in either the men's or women's Final Four. The other seven teams are all No. 1s, which has made for a rather dull tournament but perhaps will end up with a great final weekend. 

The best ending, for Princeton fans, is a championship for the UConn women. 

And no matter what happens, Chen will always be a huge part of Princeton women's basketball history. 

Hopefully it ends up win-win.

"If I Call You Up Crying, I Know I Will Hang Up Laughing"

TigerBlog was at the field hockey team banquet Sunday night at the Springdale golf club. 

As you have probably surmised, TB loves working with the team. The coaches are great. The players are all very welcoming. It's definitely a family vibe to be around the program — and that certainly came through with every heartfelt word from each speaker.

As with most team banquets, the focus was the seniors. In this case, one junior came up to say a few words about one senior, and then another. The words and the emotions behind them were clear in every case.

At one point, junior Ella Hampson was talking about senior Aimee Jungfer when she said something that TB wrote down, so as not to forget it. Here is what she said:

"If I call you up crying, I know I will hang up laughing."

How perfect is that? 

The field hockey team won the Ivy League championship this past fall. It was the 28th for the team, which ties the Harvard women's squash team for the most by any women's team in league history. The Tigers also reached the NCAA quarterfinals, marking the 18th time the team has gotten at least that far. 

Banquets, though, are not about that. That's why what Hampson said had nothing to do with winning or losing or individual honors or stats or anything else.

It was about the bond that grows out of being college teammates, spending all those years together in almost every kind of situation. It's something that, if TB may be preachy a bit, can only evolve over time, a lot of time — and with the constantly changing landscape of college sports, it's something that is going to be destroyed for a lot of those athletes. 

At Princeton, though, it is still the best part of the experience. TB sees it with field hockey and men's lacrosse. He saw it through his daughter's experience with women's lacrosse. Others see it with every other team.

And that's the end of today's lecture. Make sure you do the reading for next week.

Also, it's enough with the silly April Fools Day stuff. Thankfully that's a full year away.

You know what's only a few hours away? That would be the first home night game in the history of Princeton softball. 

It'll be the Tigers and Lehigh, squaring off at Cynthia Paul Field tonight. First pitch is at 6.

TB was able to see a few innings of one of the games at the new stadium the other day before he left for Dartmouth. It is an impressive place, as is the entire new Meadows Campus complex, including the racquet center. He's guessing the softball field will look great under the lights. 

Princeton has the reigning Ivy Pitcher of the Week with Brielle Wright, who pitched 13 innings last weekend and allowed no runs while striking out 13. Wright is the Ivy League record holder for saves in a season and career, but she has made more starts this year than she had in her first two years combined. 

Princeton is currently 6-0 in the Ivy League with sweeps of Harvard and Yale, leaving the Tigers two games up on Dartmouth and Columbia.

From the goprincetontigers.com preview story: Princeton is 6-0 in the Ivy for the first time since 2008, when the team started 14-0 in the league on the way to an 18-2 start that set an Ivy record for league wins that has since been equaled but not surpassed.

The Tigers head to Dartmouth for three games this weekend, hopefully to encounter better weather than TB did last weekend. You can't play softball in that weather, obviously.

It'll be the same long bus ride up for the team, though. It is on such bus rides that the relationships that last forever are solidified. 

You get no wins or losses for those rides. What you do get is what Ella Hampson said at the banquet Sunday night. 

You'll remember that long after you forget the details of any game. 

Everything Under The Sun — Except The Sun

TigerBlog was in the press box at Scully-Fahey Field prior to the men's lacrosse game between Princeton and Dartmouth Saturday afternoon. 

A little more than 300 miles to the southwest, it was 80 degrees and sunny. Even further to the south, it felt like August. 

In Hanover, N.H.? Uh, no. 

At the other end of the small press box, Dartmouth broadcasters Matt Corsetti and Andrew Sood were pre-recording their intro. Their first take was just about flawless — except that they said that Princeton had won its Ivy League opener one week earlier against Harvard. 

This put TigerBlog in a tough spot. He knew that Princeton had actually played two Ivy League games already. Should he tell them? Who would notice? 

Well, TB erred on the side of accuracy, and he's glad he did. When he pointed out the small error, Corsetti and Sood decided to do a second take. And because of that, Corsetti ad-libbed a great line when he said that Scully-Fahey Field had "Snow. Sleet. Hail. Freezing Rain. There's everything under the sun — except the sun."

Brilliant stuff. 

Yes, the final weekend of March brought all of that to Dartmouth. As it turned out, there was mostly rain by the second half, after the forecast called for as many as six inches of snow, which is the amount that fell 25 miles north of Hanover. 

The weather ended up not being the main story of the game. The goalie play was.

Dartmouth's Mason Morel made 21 saves. Princeton's Ryan Croddick made 13. That was 34 saves against 19 goals, 11 of which came from Princeton. That's 11-8 Tigers, if you didn't want to do the math. 

Dartmouth cut it to one late in the fourth quarter but never tied it. The Tigers were up 10-8 with just under a minute to play when Croddick picked up a loose ball, turned it over to create a one-on-one situation and then made an amazing save to keep it at two. 

It's a final in Hanover: No. 4 Princeton 11, No. 18 Dartmouth 8.

And check out this save from Ryan Croddick #SCTop10 pic.twitter.com/jLM6tQkhev

— Princeton Men's Lacrosse (@TigerLacrosse) March 29, 2025

The win improved Princeton to 6-2 overall. Incredibly, seven of Princeton's first eight opponents are in the top 14 of the current RPI, and the Tigers are 5-2 in those games. The other game was against Rutgers, who has been in and out of the top 20 and is now 22. 

Princeton has wins over No. 4 North Carolina, No. 5 Harvard, No. 6 Penn State, No. 10 Duke and No. 14 Dartmouth in addition to Rutgers, with losses to No. 2 Maryland and No. 8 Cornell. 

The Tigers have a No. 1 ranking in the RPI and a No. 1 ranking in strength of schedule. It's been a remarkable start to the season. 

The Tigers will now finish the regular season with five straight games against teams not in the top 20, with four of those at home, including tonight at 7 on Sherrerd Field against Lehigh. The teams played a Tuesday game a year ago as well, and the Tigers won 12-10. 

What makes this Princeton team special is that it is, in every sense of the word, a team. As its head coach, Matt Madalon, likes to say to his group: "Everything we achieve, we achieve together."

Just look at some of the remarkable numbers that this team has produced:

* against Dartmouth, Princeton had 12 caused turnovers — and 12 different players had one each. TB has never heard of such a thing before.

* in its win against Harvard two Saturdays ago, Princeton got nine goals from offensive midfielders and four from its attack Against Dartmouth, Princeton got eight goals from its attack and one from its offensive midfielders. 

* Princeton has regularly played eight longsticks and six shortstick midfielders. That's depth.

* Princeton has only committed seven penalties all season. 

The game tonight is followed by one Saturday at noon at home against Vermont. After that are three Ivy games on three Saturdays: home against Brown, at Penn, home against Yale. 

Madalon always talks about having two ways to get into the NCAA tournament, via the automatic bid or by an at-large. Princeton has been to the NCAA tournament for three straight years, in 2022 (reaching the Final Four) as an at-large and then the last two years by winning the Ivy tournament. 

This year's team is well-positioned for an at-large bid with the wins it already has on its resume. There's a long way to go, though — and every game brings its own challenge. 

Tonight will be no different — though at least the weather looks like it's cooperating.