Winter Wonderland

Well, just when it looked like the current NCAA men's basketball tournament would get all the way to the Final Four without anything remotely interesting happening, along came UConn-Duke. 

It certainly looked like another dull regional final, like the other three had been, after the eight Sweet 16 games weren't exactly memorable either. Duke led by 19 points in the first half and 15 at the half. You could be forgiven if you turned it off and started scrolling X or went to dinner or watched whatever show you were binging.  

In fact, TigerBlog has a friend who was working and wanted to know if the game was worth watching. TB's first response was "no." His second response was "you may want to watch the last few minutes."

What started out as boring and didn't seem like it was going to be any different most of the way ended up being one of the best endings of an NCAA game you'll ever see. It wasn't quite Duke-Kentucky from 1992, another East Regional final, but it was incredible nonetheless. 

And this time, Duke on the losing end, as UConn miraculously pulled out a 73-72 win when Braylon Mullins hit a shot with 0.3 seconds to go from so far beyond the three-point line that it would have made Caitlin Clark envious. The shot came after Duke had 1) led by 19-points in the first-half, 2) led by 15 at the half, 3) had the ball and the lead in the final seconds and 4) turned it over just across midcourt with maybe three seconds to go. 

If you watched it, you probably had some sort of expletive come out of your mouth as Mullins' shot splashed through. 

And now the Final Four is set: Michigan vs. Arizona and UConn vs. Illinois. It'll probably be more of the same that has dominated this tournament, but hey, the Duke-UConn game will be talked about forever.  

The two basketball tournaments and the men's ice hockey tournament will be crowning champions in the next two weeks, and that will be it for the winter college seasons. 

For Princeton, the winter ended on the sports calendar just a few days after it did on the actual calendar, which is always a good sign. The final Tigers to compete were on the men's swimming and diving team, who finished the season this weekend at Georgia Tech. 

Princeton, in fact, finished 22nd as a team there, the program's best finish in 14 years. The team was led by senior Mitchell Schott, who earned first-team All-American honors by finishing seventh in the 200 butterfly and eighth in the 200 freestyle. 

Sophomore Patrick Dinu finished 11th in the 100 free, becoming a second-team All-American. Schott and Dinu teamed with Logan Noguchi and Jake Tararo to finish 16th nationally in the 400 free relay, giving those four honorable mention All-American honors. 

It's always good to have All-Americans. 

And championships. 

Princeton Athletics had plenty of both in the winter season that just ended. 

Princeton won the Ivy League championship in men's swimming and diving. And women's swimming and diving. And men's indoor track and field. And women's indoor track and field. And women's basketball. And women's squash. 

That's six Ivy titles for the winter — which runs the 2025-26 total to 11 after a five-title fall: men's cross country, women's cross country, men's soccer, women's soccer and women's volleyball. 

And that doesn't count the women's hockey team, which was the ECAC regular season champion for the first time ever. Or the men's water polo team from the fall. Or the field hockey team's Ivy tournament championship on the way to the national championship game. 

How many All-Americans have there been? TB lost track awhile ago, but the answer is: "a lot."

Even more than that, think about how many athletes play on the seven teams that won championships. For as long as TB has been at Princeton, he's heard about the goal of providing a "championship experience" to those who compete here. 

Of course, that is never a guarantee. And there are great moments that don't end with championships. TigerBlog referenced this last week, with the men's hockey team's loss in overtime to Dartmouth in the ECAC final and Marc-Anthony McGowan's loss in the NCAA 125-pound wrestling final. 

You want to know something else that's great about this past winter for Princeton Athletics? It's not necessary the best winter Princeton has ever had. 

How many places could win that many championships and have that many All-Americans and still make that statement? 

For TB, winter is his least favorite season, at least weather-wise. This one was still a lot of fun, even with all the snow.