Tomorrow is Oct. 10.
It will be Game Day for Princeton Football, who kicks off at Wagner at noon.
November 10, one month from tomorrow, will be a Game Day for another Princeton team, the women's basketball team. If you can believe it, Nov. 10 will be Game Day No. 4 for those Tigers.
The season opens Nov. 2 at home against Belmont, with a trip to Richmond to take on the Spiders and then Belmont on Nov. 6 and 8. The game on the 10th will be home against Villanova.
If four games by No. 10 seems like a lot, there are five more games in the month of November, with a trip to California to play at UCLA and Pepperdine and home games against Rutgers, George Mason and Georgia Tech.
As you know the team that plays those games will be led by first-year head coach Lauren Gosselin. As you also know, you need to add Northwestern to the list of women's basketball teams you'll be rooting for moving forward.
The Ivy League had its women's basketball media conference call yesterday, one day after announcing its preseason media poll. There's no surprise about the top three — Princeton, Columbia and Harvard, in that order. Those three have dominated the league of late and figure to do so again.
Of course, while the women's basketball season begins soon, it also runs for a long time, into March. As such there will be a lot more time ahead to talk about the Tigers, Gosselin and the way the season unfolds.
As for the football team, the game is the final non-league matchup of the regular season. Princeton has won two straight after an opening loss, including a dominant 35-7 win over Columbia in the Ivy League opener last weekend, also in New York City.
Wagner, a member of the Northeast Conference, enters the game at 1-4, 0-2 in its league. Of its two losses, one came at the hands of James Madison (you might remember that team from last year's college football playoff) and California (from the Pac 12, um, Atlantic Coast Conference).
If you're looking for a great view, by the way, Wagner's stadium offers that.
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For Princeton, the game tomorrow is a great chance to keep the momentum going heading into the stretch of six Ivy League games in six weeks. That momentum includes the 219-yard, four-TD rushing day that Kai Honda had last week against Columbia.
Princeton's biggest weapon might not be Honda. It might just be its punter Brady Clark, who would be leading all of college football (FBS, FCS, D2, D3) with a 52.7 yard average, though to be ranked a punter needs to average 3.6 punts per game, which after three games would be 10.8 and Clark has only had seven total punts.
You can read more about Clark HERE, in a feature story from Craig Sachson. It includes this:
Clark, whose punting average would break the Ivy League record by more than seven yards, has developed a process for handling his in-game responsibilities. While teammates generate the raw emotion to help them reach their athletic peak, he knows he needs to remain calm and grounded.
Princeton leads the Ivy League in rushing offense, helped mightily by Honda, whose 101.7 yards per game are one behind Columbia's Griffin Johnson for the league lead. Somewhat interestingly, at least to TigerBlog, is that Princeton leads the league in rushing yards but is only sixth in the league in rushing attempts.
That's impressive stuff.
Princeton is also last in the league in passing yards per game. Princeton has run it 100 times and thrown it 63 times though its first three games. Woody Hayes would be proud — he's the one who famously said "there are only three things that can happen when you throw the ball and two of them are bad." Then again, he also had his career as the legendary Ohio State coach end when he punched a guy on the other team in a bowl game.
Next up for Princeton will be a home game against Brown a week from tomorrow, with kickoff at noon.
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