If A Kiss Is Just A Kiss, Can't A Tie Be Just A Tie?

If you think TigerBlog hates the word "loamy," it's not even his least favorite of the week. 

No, that honor belongs to a different word: "shootout."

The Princeton field hockey team continues to have one of the most incredible seasons you will ever see a team have in any sport, thanks to that dreaded shootout rule. Princeton is 13-5 on the year, which doesn't tell a fraction of the story. 

Princeton is 13-0 in games that have finished in regulation or overtime. Princeton is 0-5 in shootouts. It's extraordinary. 

Thanks to Nick Moeller at the NCAA, TigerBlog has learned that no other team in Division I has lost more than two shootouts. Princeton has five — most recently in the Ivy League tournament final against Yale this past Sunday. 

Princeton's five shootout losses are to the teams seeded second, third, fourth, sixth and eighth. For its part, Princeton is the fifth seed and will open the NCAA tournament against Syracuse tomorrow at 2:30 at UConn, who will play Lafayette in the first game in Storrs. The winners meet Sunday at noon for a trip to the Final Four, held this year at Louisville.  

Syracuse, by the way, is 4-1 in shootouts, including back-to-back wins over North Carolina and Boston College in the ACC tournament semis and final.  

As you know, Princeton reached the NCAA final a year ago, falling in double overtime to Northwestern. The Wildcats will look for a third straight championship this year as the top seed, though Princeton won the regular season game between the two.

That game was a 2-1 Tiger win in overtime. Princeton also beat Cornell in overtime. That's seven OT games out of 18, or the most of any season in program history. 

It's the shootouts, though, that are impossible to explain. TigerBlog hates them no matter who wins them, for a bunch of reasons, including: 

* at no point in a field hockey game do you see a breakaway from 23 meters away with no other players involved for eight seconds
* just by observation, it seems that in 75 percent of attempts, the goalie makes a save originally that takes her out of position, leaving an empty cage for a rebound that goes in just before the eight seconds expire
* this somewhat random way to decide a game has an out-sized impact on future fortunes for the teams involved

If the two teams are tied after 60 minutes of regulation and 15 minutes of overtime, then let it be a tie. If it's a postseason game, keep playing until someone scores. Knowing that you need to score to win changes your approach. 

Anyway, that's TB rant on shootouts. As for ties, TB refers you to the UNC-Wilmington women's soccer team. Why is that? It's because UNC-W is currently 11-0-7. If a kiss is just a kiss, can't a tie be just a tie? 

Speaking of women's soccer, Princeton will also be playing in the postseason, in this case the Ivy League tournament at Dartmouth. 

Princeton is the third seed in the ILT and will play today at 3:30 against second-seeded Columbia, with top seed Dartmouth and fourth seed Brown in the other semifinal. The winners play Sunday at 1 for the league's automatic NCAA tournament bid. 

The first goal in the Princeton-Columbia game will be the first between the teams this season, as they played to a 0-0 tie back on Halloween night in New York City. A year ago, Dartmouth won the Ivy tournament at Princeton; the Tigers are trying to reverse that this time around. 

Whatever happens in the tournament, Stella Monberg has already made some history, becoming the first Princeton player and second player in Ivy history to be the league's Offensive Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year.  

Princeton had two other first-team selections, Zoe Markesini and Kayla Wong. Julia Johnson, Dylan Jovanovic and Maddie Recupero were all second-team picks. 

Johnson is the daughter of Sydney Johnson, the 1997 Ivy men's basketball Player of the Year. Has there been another father/daughter All-Ivy combination? TB will have to look into that. 

By the way, the weather at both UConn and Dartmouth doesn't exactly look promising, but hey, that's what the postseason is about. Survive and advance, right?

And no ties.