Thursday Round-Up

TigerBlog saw the news that Dale Brown passed away last week. 

If the name isn't familiar, Brown was the LSU men's basketball coach from 1992 to 1997. No other men's basketball coach at LSU has ever won more than the 448 Brown won. 

TB can't think of Brown without thinking about the time when he and Mark Panus (TB's predecessor in the Office of Athletic Communications) were sitting in the front seat of a car heading to the Meadowlands for a basketball luncheon. In the backseat? Pete Carril. 

This was in the early 1990s, when Shaquille O'Neal was playing for Brown. As Panus drove the car up the New Jersey Turnpike, Brown was being interviewed on WFAN sports radio. TB and Panus were simply listening, and every now and then a grunt came from the back seat. 

The grunts got louder as Brown talked about being in big men to work with Shaq, including Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Finally, Carril couldn't take it anymore. From the backseat, he finally erupted with this: 

"What are you doing? Why do you need to bring in those guys? Why don't you teach him? Is it because you don't know nothing?" 

Carril and Brown lived into their 90s. All of these years later, remembering that drive always makes TB laugh. 

Anyway, RIP Dale Brown. 

And while the subject is men's basketball, the Tigers are home tonight at 7 against Hofstra.  

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The first Ivy League fall tournament begins tomorrow at Harvard with the field hockey tournament. Princeton is the No. 2 seed and will play Cornell in the second semifinal at 2:30, after Harvard and fourth-seed Yale play at 11:30. The winners will play Sunday at noon for the league's automatic NCAA tournament bid. 

And why is the tournament at Harvard? It's because the Crimson defeated Princeton 2-1 in a shootout back on Sept. 26. As TigerBlog left the game that day in Cambridge, he knew he'd be back come ILT time.

Princeton is 12-4 on the season, with all four of those losses via shootout, to the teams ranked 1-2-3-12 in the current RPI. The Tigers, who have won eight straight, have five wins over Top 20 RPI teams, including two in the Top 10 (No. 4 Northwestern, No. 10 Penn State). 

The NCAA tournament field will be announced Sunday night at 10.

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The soccer tournaments are a week away, and both Princeton teams are playing to get into the field of four in this weekend's final regular season games. 

The women are currently tied with Harvard for fourth with 10 points, behind Brown and Columbia with 13 each and Dartmouth with 12. Princeton hosts Brown Saturday at 6, in what is also Senior Night. 

There can still mathematically be a five-way tie for the championship, which would make the tournament scenarios even more crazy. Princeton has already lost to Harvard, tied against Dartmouth and beaten Columbia. A win over Brown would, TB is pretty sure, mean a spot in the tournament. 

The men are also home Saturday, against Penn at 3. If you think the women's race is complex, here's what you have on the men's side right now: 

Cornell has already won the league and clinched home field. Columbia has been eliminated. The other six They all have either nine points (Yale, Penn) or seven points (Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown). 

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Princeton Hockey is a combined 8-0-0 to date, with six of those wins for the women's team, who is home this weekend against Colgate (tomorrow at 6) and Cornell (Saturday at 6). Princeton is already 4-0-0 in the ECAC, with you know an eternity left to play. 

The men opened their season last weekend with a sweep of Stonehill. This weekend sees the Tigers open their ECAC schedule at Colgate and Cornell, with both games at 7. 

To give you a sense of just how much of an eternity there is in a hockey season, the last day of the men's regular season is also the same day as the third game of the season for the women's lacrosse team. 

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In other Crossover Season news, the women's volleyball team is home against Dartmouth tomorrow at 6 and Harvard Saturday at 5. There are two weekends left in the Ivy season, but it's reasonably certain who the four teams in the tournament will be. 

Right now Cornell is 9-1, followed by 8-2 Yale, 7-3 Harvard and 6-4 Princeton. From there it drops down to 3-7 Penn and Brown and 2-8 Columbia and Dartmouth.  

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Aleksandar Mitric and Simeon Stankovic will be in Georgia this weekend for the ITA Conference Masters tournament. Mitric and Stankovic won the Ivy League doubles championship, which advanced them to this tournament. A win in Georgia this weekend would earn another trip to Georgia later this month, for the NCAA tournament. 

Princeton has already qualified Landon Ardila and Tsehay Driscoll for the singles tournament. 

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The complete weekend schedule is HERE.