Where to start with your week?
Should TigerBlog go with the women's hockey team, which came out on top of the final ECAC regular season standings after a wild weekend? Or perhaps with the women's squash team and its dominant Ivy League championship?
Both are compelling. Both earned home postseason berths with their wins this weekend.
He considered combining the two into one entry, but that didn't seem fair, given what both teams accomplished. So what did he do?
He used the random number app on his phone and asked it to generate a number between 1-100. If it came up evens, he'd start with women's hockey. If it came up odds, he go with women's squash.
It came up "43," so it's women's squash day. Tomorrow will be women's hockey.
You know which team TigerBlog was rooting for in the Princeton-Harvard women's squash match yesterday?
Hint - It's not necessarily obvious. Hint 2 - It was Princeton, but ...
Princeton defeated Harvard 7-2 yesterday to close out a perfect Ivy League regular season. The win gave the Tigers the outright Ivy League championship and the host role for the first Ivy League women's squash tournament, which will come to the Meadows racket center this coming weekend.
There's a lot more to Princeton's win than just that, though.
Harvard came into the weekend ranked No. 1 in the country and why not? The Crimson have been a machine of late, with 10 of the last 13 Howe Cup national championships. Princeton, by the way, was ranked second, while Penn was ranked third.
In the league? Harvard had won nine straight titles entering this weekend and had a 74-match regular-season Ivy League winning streak.
The weekend began with Princeton and Harvard unbeaten, followed by Penn, with only a 6-3 loss to Princeton. The Crimson started their weekend in Philadelphia Saturday, at the same time the Tigers hosted Dartmouth.
Princeton, as expected, won 9-0. Harvard-Penn? The winning streak ended there, as the Quakers won 6-3.
That set up yesterday's final day of the regular season. A Penn win over Dartmouth, which was something of a given, would leave the Quakers with one league loss. A Harvard win would have set up a three-way tie. A Princeton win would have meant the championship outright for the Tigers.
Maybe TB should have let the drama build, but he already gave away the ending. If you forgot, it was 7-2 Tigers. In only one match did Princeton lose more than one game.
The 7-0 run through the league was Princeton's first since 2013. The Tigers have now won seven league championships all time.
Meanwhile, back at which team TigerBlog was rooting for in the match? That would be Princeton field hockey. Where did the field hockey team fit in?
Well, TFH, as its known, went into the academic year tied with Harvard for the most Ivy League championships all time for any women's programs with 28 each. Princeton reached the NCAA field hockey championship game and won the league tournament this past fall, but it did not win the regular season, which is where the championship is officially won.
As such, Harvard women's squash would have taken a 29-28 lead in championships with another one. Instead, the two remained tied at the top. TB even sent a text to the team group chat telling the players to thank a squash friend.
The Ivy League squash tournament is new. Unlike the other Ivy tournaments, there is no automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, as the squash national championship is decided by the College Squash Association's Howe Cup tournament.
It should still be a fascinating event. Princeton, as the top seed, will play fourth seed Cornell. Penn and Harvard will have their rematch (by virtue of the women's win, the men's tournament will also be at Princeton and feature the Tigers, Yale, Harvard and Penn; the men's winner will host both tournaments next year). Both tournaments will be held this coming Saturday and Sunday; the CSA championships for both will be March 5-8 in Philadelphia.
So that's the women's squash. Women's hockey will be here tomorrow.
Oh, and skeleton too.
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