On Sale Now

TigerBlog begins today by rescinding his shout out to himself yesterday, when he said he'd be posting his feature story on Ryan Croddick, the goalie who was the Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four as Princeton won its seventh NCAA men's lacrosse championship.

As it turned out, the story won't be posted until today. He promises. He even got a handful of notes yesterday wondering where the story was. 

TB gave you the first paragraph yesterday. Here's the second: 

The eye blinks at around the same rate. Even the complex computer that is the human brain, equipped with its billions of neurons, cannot process a moment in time so small. So how to explain the man on the other side of the table, then? Maybe it’s as simple as acknowledging that to him, traditional measures of time are irrelevant. 

That whets the appetite. The entire story runs more than 7,500 words, which makes it the single longest feature story TB has ever written, other than chapters in the women's history book. You can buy that HERE, by the way.  

In the meantime, another week has come and gone, which means that as of today, Princeton is just three weeks away from the start of the 2026-27 athletic year. How can that be, right? 

It will begin on Aug. 20, when the women's soccer team will host Loyola. That will be Game 1 of nearly 700 athletic events between that game and the NCAA track and field championships in June.

Speaking of Princeton soccer, there is the matter of the men's team. The Tigers are coming off a 15-2-2 season that saw them go 7-0-0 in the Ivy League without allowing a single goal in any of those games and earn the No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament. 

The 2026 season begins Aug. 28, at home against Villanova. That game will be followed by another home game three days later against Portland, which sounds like an interesting matchup. 

There aren't many bigger Princeton Athletic fans anywhere than men's soccer coach Jim Barlow. When his team isn't playing he can be found watching any number of other Princeton teams play. 

This is why it wasn't surprising to TigerBlog to see Barlow make a tiny cameo in a video on the ticket page. You can see the video HERE; did you find Barlow? 

The ticket page now has five separate entries to buy season tickets for the upcoming 2026-27 regular seasons. Those five are football, men's and women's basketball and men's and women's hockey; HERE is the link to the main ticket page. 

All five of those teams have their own storylines heading into their coming seasons. Maybe the biggest one will be the debut of Lauren Gosselin as the women's basketball coach, after she had been part of Carla Berube's staff for so many years. 

Princeton returns four starters from last year's team, which went 26-4 and won the Ivy League and Ivy League tournament championships. From 1985 through 2009, Princeton women's basketball won two Ivy titles. Since then, the team has won 12 more and played in 11 NCAA tournaments. 

Princeton Athletics has undergone numerous changes since TigerBlog first came around back in the late 1980s. Right up there with anything has been the growth of women's basketball and especially women's basketball attendance, which has increased several times over in the last 15 or so years. 

What's most noticeable about that growth has been the number of men and boys in attendance at the games. Princeton women's basketball has become a terrific event each night. 

The men's team has a long history of being a great draw at Jadwin Gym. Every football game on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium is a happening. 

Both the men's and women's hockey teams are coming off great seasons, the women with an ECAC regular season championship and NCAA tournament appearance and the men with a dramatic run at the ECAC tournament before finally falling in overtime in the championship game. 

Hobey Baker Rink? It's quaint and historic, and game nights there are something if you've never been to one.  

The football team opens its season Sept. 19 at Bryant before the home opener seven days later against Albany. Then there are two straight trips to New York City, for the Ivy opener at Columbia and a non-league game at Wagner. The season finishes with four home games among the final six. 

And this will all be kickoff very soon. Tickets? On sale now.