40 Down — Former Indianapolis Stadium

Before TigerBlog gets to his longtime friend Craig Sachson, he wants to make sure he mentions the start of the Princeton women's hockey team.

Princeton, under second-year head coach Courtney Kessel, is the only remaining Division I women's hockey team with a perfect record. The Tigers are 8-0-0, with a coaches' poll ranking of No. 4 and a more important NPI of No. 2. 

This will be an off-weekend for Princeton, who will then make the long road trip to Clarkson and St. Lawrence. TB will have more on this team next week before that trip, but he did want to make sure that he gave a mention this week.  

Okay, Craig Sachson. That's how you want to play it? 

TigerBlog's comment yesterday that his 211-day winning streak in Wordle ended Monday with the quasi-word "Loamy" drew this from his longtime friend and former colleague: 

This was the exchange that followed: 

TB: Can you use "Loamy" in a sentence?
CS: Nope.

In the interest of honesty, TB is impressed that Craig admitted he couldn't use it in a sentence and that he has a streak of 686 days. Fortunately, TB got back to his winning ways yesterday with "truce." 

In other puzzle news, there was this clue in a recent New York Times edition: 

"40 Down — Former Indianapolis Stadium."

For a clue, TigerBlog refers you to another longtime friend, Vinnie DiCarlo Jr., and wherever in his house he still has the sign he swiped from that very former Indianapolis stadium back in March of 1996. That's actually two clues. 

The answer is of course the RCA Dome. Filling that in made TB smile. And why wouldn't it?  

The RCA Dome was the location of Princeton's 43-41 win over UCLA in the 1996 NCAA tournament opening round. The sign in Vinnie's house was, um, relocated from the point where the media entered and thus said "This is not a public entrance to the RCA Dome."

You've seen the iconic picture of Mitch Henderson after that win a million times, so what's one ore, right? 

Never gets old, right? Any time TigerBlog has been in Indianapolis since the building was torn down and the Lucas Oil Stadium built in its place, he's had a bittersweet remembrance of that glorious week 30 years ago. 

These days, Henderson is the head coach for Princeton's men's basketball team. If that's all you know him as, then you missed out on watching the perfect Princeton point guard. If you did watch him, how many better passers have you ever seen? Almost nobody that TB can think of, other than Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. 

Henderson's team is home tonight at 7 against Stony Brook. There is not a lot of history to this matchup. 

Tonight, in fact, will be the third meeting between the teams, with each having won the home game. For the record, it was 91-77 at Stony Brook in 2014 and 77-64 Tigers a year earlier at Jadwin. 

Trivia question: Between those two games, one Princeton player had a total of 42 points, including 28 in the win at home. Can you name him? 

Think about it for a few paragraphs.

Princeton is back home after a Sunday loss at Siena, which came after the Tigers won back-to-back Jadwin games to start the season. Stony Brook is 1-1, with a win over SUNY-Old Westbury and then a 78-65 loss this past Friday at Northwestern. 

The Seawolves are led by Bryan Ndjonga, a 6-9 senior from Cameroon who has averaged 18.5 points in the first two, with 18 against SUNY-Old Westbury and then 19 at Northwestern. Here's an interesting note about Ndjonga — Stony Brook is his fourth college in four years, after starting out at Cal State-Northridge and then heading to Central Michigan and Canisius before this year with the Seawolves. 

Princeton will head to Rhode Island for a game Sunday at 2 and then come home to play Monmouth a week from Friday. After that will be five straight road games. 

Again, it'll be Tigers vs. Seawolves tonight at 7.  

Oh, and your trivia answer: Steven Cook.