Another Winning Weekend

TigerBlog wants to ask you a question to start your week: Did you see where Princeton stands in the Learfield Directors' Cup standings after the winter? 

It's insanely impressive. 

Here is the Top 10:
1. ACC
2. Big Ten
3. ACC
4. Big Ten
5. Big Ten
6. ACC
7. PRINCETON
8. Big Ten
9. SEC 
10. ACC

That's ridiculous. To date, Princeton's best finish to date has been 18th, in the 2021-22. And now seventh through the winter? 

Look at that company. 

In case you don't know what the Directors' Cup is, it's a ranking system that looks to rate the top overall college athletic programs, using NCAA tournament participation and success. It's been awarded in Division I, II and III since the 1993-94 academic year. 

Princeton has been the top Ivy League program in all but five of those years. There have been seven Top 30 finishes, but nothing quite like this. Also, in most years, Princeton has gotten more points in the spring than in either the fall or winter. 

What will happen this year? Well, there are certainly some spring teams that are headed into NCAA competition. Could Princeton get a Top 10 finish? That would be extraordinary. 

If you think this happens accidentally, it doesn't. To get big points you have to advance in NCAA tournaments or have high finishes in NCAA competitions. 

Meanwhile, within the Ivy League, Princeton has continued to add to its championship total for 2025-26. This weekend saw two more Ivy League titles added to the list, as the softball team clinched a fifth straight and the men's lacrosse team shared the championship with Cornell with its 17-9 win over Dartmouth. 

That runs the total for the academic year to 14. That's a lot — though not the record, which Princeton set last year with 17. 

Here are your Ivy champs to date: 

Fall - women's soccer, men's soccer, women's volleyball, men's cross country, women's cross country
Winter - women's basketball, women's squash, men's indoor track and field, women's indoor track and field, men's swimming and diving, women's indoor track and field, men's indoor track and field
Spring (to date) - women's tennis, men's lacrosse, softball

That list does not include men's water polo and women's hockey, which won their non-Ivy League championships. It also doesn't include the field hockey team, which won the Ivy League tournament and reached the NCAA final but did not win the Ivy League championship (which goes to the regular season winner).

The softball championship has been particularly impressive. The Tigers won their first 14 Ivy games before a loss against Yale and then rebounded to pummel Harvard 8-0, 12-3 in a Saturday doubleheader to clinch the championship. 

According to the Andrew Borders Sports Bureau, this was the first time Princeton ever swept Harvard in doubleheader with both games by run-rule. 

Princeton clinched the championship after 17 games. Duncan Yin of the Class of 1982, who is as big a Princeton sports fan as there is, did the math on this. 

First, he texted a question to TigerBlog:

Question inspired by our softball team:  After 17 games, what is the maximum number of games that the leader can hold in terms of its lead over the second-place team?

Then he answered his own question:

It's not easy to be up 6 games after only 17 games.  The maximum possible is what? 17-0 leader, five teams at 8-9, one team at 7-10, one  team at 4-13. Max possible mathematically after 17 games is +9 and we're up +6.

TB will take Duncan's word for it. He did go to the Harvard Business School after Princeton, and that doesn't make him a bad person. Quite the opposite. He's a good person and a devoted father. And really good at math, it seems. 

Princeton finished off its weekend by winning the game at Harvard yesterday by an 8-2 score. Next up for Princeton will be three home games against Dartmouth to finish the regular season, before hosting the Ivy tournament the following weekend. For the historical context, it's back to the AB Sports Bureau:

With the win, the 2026 Tigers became just the eighth team since 2007, when the Ivy League season grew to 20 games before becoming 21 games in 2018, to win at least 17 Ivy games. Four of the eight teams are Princeton teams, with 2026 alongside 2008, 2022 and 2025, and it's just the second time an team has won at least 17 Ivy games in back-to-back seasons, along with Harvard in 2011 and 2012. Princeton can go for the league wins record next week when it hosts Dartmouth, as Princeton in 2008, Harvard in 2011 and Dartmouth in 2014 set and then equaled the Ivy wins record of 18.  

Impressive.