Hello From Rome

Hello from Rome. 

If TigerBlog is correct, this is the 11th different country he's blogged from since he started doing this. If you're keeping score, the list would be: the United States, Costa Rica, England, Spain, Andorra, France, Morocco, the Canary Islands, Poland, Israel and now Italy. 

Day 1 of the men's lacrosse international trip saw the team reach Rome around 10 am local time and then spend the next eight hours or so on an extended, informative and beautiful walking tour of the center of the city. TB didn't sleep much on the plane, and neither did the other person in his row — head coach Matt Madalon.

The flight did not have working WiFi or entertainment options, so really all that was left was to keep saying to each other "are you still awake?" For the most part they both were. 

TB, of course, chose to focus on the positives, of which there were several: 1) limited turbulence, 2) Madalon gave TB his chicken (the other option was vegetarian chili), 3) TB had the window and Madalon had the aisle, with nobody in the middle seat.

The most astonishing fact from the flight involved this woman: 

The conversation went like this:

Flight Attendant: "Princeton?"
Madalon: "Yes."
Flight Attendant: "My aunt works at Princeton. Maybe you know her?"
Madalon: "Who is she?"
Flight Attendant: "Rochelle Calhoun."

Uh, yeah. Rochelle Calhoun is, until her coming retirement at the end of the year, the University Vice President for Campus Life. So, yes, Madalon knew her. 

What were the odds of that? Flight attendants, by the way, work really hard. 

The Princeton buses rolled out Caldwell Saturday afternoon to go [the long way] to Kennedy Airport, arriving three hours later for the 8 pm flight. The Princeton football game was pretty much over by then, though the sweaty last few moments of Princeton's 16-10 win over Brown came after the buses left. 

One member of the men's lacrosse team is not on the Italian trip. That would be Jackson Green, who is busy playing football for the Tigers. Against Brown? Green had four catches for 79 yards. 

Princeton went out to a 16-0 lead at the half and then held off Brown's second-half challenge. Esteban Nunez Perez kicked three field goals (34, 25, 38) after a Wyatt Becker to Paul Kuhner 29-yard touchdown pass. Kai Honda did not score a touchdown, but he did carry 28 times for 84 yards.  

Becker and Ty Ciongoli once again split the quarterback position, going 20 for 34 for 255 yards. How were those yards split? Becker 128, Ciangoli 127. Princeton had 38 rushing attempts to go with those 34 passes; there seems to be balance in there. 

The Tigers lost their opener at Bryant but have since won four straight, including two straight in the Ivy League. Each league team has now played three non-league games and two league games, and the season will end with another five Ivy games for all eight teams in the next five weeks. 

This is your weekly reminder that this will change next year, when there will be a week off after the sixth game and all eight teams will open the season against a league opponent. Next year, that will mean opening against Harvard for Princeton.

This year, it'll be Princeton-Harvard on Week 6 in a matchup of the only teams in the league that are 2-0. That automatically makes it interesting. Kickoff will be at 3 in Cambridge. 

Also, another interesting nugget is that the win over Brown was the 88th as head coach at Princeton for Bob Surace. What is the record for career coaching wins at Princeton? That would be 89, which Bill Roper achieved back in 1930.

Do individual honors matter to Bob Surace? Of course they do. He's human. But his own success is directly tied to team success, and he's smart enough to know that. He'll downplay the achievement when he reaches it, but breaking a record that has stood for 96 years is not something that should be taken lightly. 

TigerBlog will have more on the football game Friday. He'll also have more on his time here in Italy as the week goes along. 

For now, given the fact that he's hardly slept and has an early day today as the team heads the Vatican and the Colosseum, he'll leave you with this:

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.