April Weekend

TigerBlog heard from quite a few of you yesterday about his story about trying to be a running back for one play for the Princeton football team back in the training camp of 1994.

All but one of those responses were of the same basic theme: "You got me." One of them, though, was this: "If you had any guts, you'd do it this coming training camp." 

To that, TB says this: "No chance."

Anyway, that's enough April Fools' stuff for one year. It's April Fools' Day, not April Fools' week or month. 

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March is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb, and it certainly go the second part right. It was around 70 at midnight when March turned to April. 

Of course, April showers being what they are, the schedule for baseball and softball this weekend has had to be altered due to the forecast. Instead of playing tomorrow and Sunday, both teams will play games today and tomorrow, both at home. 

For the softball team, that means a single game today at 4 against Brown, with two more tomorrow, beginning at 12:30. For the baseball team, it means three against Yale, with one today at 3 and then a doubleheader tomorrow, with first pitch at 11:30. 

The softball team is 6-0 already in the league as it looks to win another Ivy title and to host the tournament next month. Brown's last trip to Cynthia Paul Field ended with a dogpile (or is that Bearpile) for winning the 2025 Ivy tournament. 

Princeton has hosted the league tournament (or championship series, its predecessor) each of the last four years as the Ivy champ. Princeton won the postseason event in 2022 and 2024, but before it can worry about a numerical recurrence, there is the matter of 15 more regular season games. 

The baseball team also has 15 regular season games to go as it pursues an Ivy tournament spot. Right now each team has played six league games, and three games separate all eight teams. 

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The women's lacrosse team has three Ivy League games in eight days beginning tomorrow at noon, when Cornell comes to Sherrerd Field. After that, it'll be the Tigers and Penn Wednesday at 7 on the same field and then a trip to Columbia a week from tomorrow at 1.

Princeton and Penn have played two Ivy games to date, while the rest of the league has played three each. The Tigers are 1-1, while Cornell is 2-1. Yale (3-0) and Penn (2-0) are unbeaten, while the other four teams all have at least two losses. 

The top four teams will compete in the Ivy tournament next month as well.  

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The forecast for tomorrow in Princeton is for a temperature near 80. In Burlington, the one in Vermont, it's for 45 — but at least no rain. 

The men's lacrosse team will make its first trip ever to Vermont as it takes on the Catamounts in the final non-league game of the regular season. After this, it'll be Penn (home), Harvard (away) and Dartmouth (home) before possible Ivy tournament and NCAA tournament games. 

Here's one tidbit about the men's lacrosse team: 

Jack Stahl has had more caused turnovers than goals allowed by the player he’s been guarding in seven of the eight games since he’s moved to a starting defenseman spot from longstick midfielder. Stahl was named Inside Lacrosse’s No. 1 breakout player of the season two weeks ago.  

That seems pretty good. 

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The Sam Howell Invitational track and field meet will be held this weekend at Weaver Track and Field Stadium. 

Of every sport, the track and field season goes the longest, especially if you add cross country into the mix. It is a physical and mental grind, especially since the whole point is to be at peak form at the most important moments of the season. 

There aren't many people in Princeton left who knew Sam Howell. TigerBlog did. Howell, for those who don't know, was a 1950 Princeton grad who worked here for 38 years, including 21 years (1970-91) as an Associate Athletic Director. 

There was a plaque in Sam's memory outside the ticket office in Jadwin Gym, and it refered to him as "warm-hearted."  Yeah, that's definitely how TB would describe him to someone who never had a chance to meet him. 

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The women's tennis team won its Ivy League opener last week at home against Penn, and the Tigers now have two more this weekend in Princeton — tomorrow against Harvard and Sunday against Dartmouth. The doubles will start at 1 both days. 

If you haven't seen it already, you can check out TigerBlog's feature story on Eva Elbaz, the only senior on the team and its No. 3 singles player. Elbaz grew up in Paris and moved to this country to go to high school at IMG Academy in Florida as a 16-year-old junior. Oh, and she didn't speak English at the time. 

You can read the story HERE.

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As for the rest of the weekend schedule, you can see it HERE.

Irreverence, With A Modicum Of Responsibility

After a day of being inundated with obviously fake press releases and stories, TigerBlog would like to point out something that he should have mentioned related to April Fools' Day.

The point is not to get someone to believe something plausible. The point is to get someone to believe something completely implausible.  

A school may start a new Division I program in a sport? A popular show was canceled? Where's the creativity?

Do you want to know where the creativity is? It is right HERE.  

Oh, and if you didn't know to do it already, take the first letter of each word in the subhead and see what it spells. 

TigerBlog was right. The more implausible, the better. 

TB hasn't read that piece in a very long time, and yet he remembers back to when it first came out. He and everyone he knew believed every word of it.  

The author was George Plimpton. If you don't know anything about him, he was a pretty fascinating human being, even if he did go to Harvard. 

Plimpton spoke at the Daily Princetonian banquet back in March of 1969, which was 60 years ago and 16 years before the Sidd Finch story. Here is what the newspaper wrote about Plimpton's talk: 

George Plimpton, Paper Lion and graduate of the Harvard Lampoon and the Boston Celtics training camp, told an audience of 90 at last night's 93rd annual Daily Princetonian banquet that "irreverance with a modicum of responsibility" is the key virtue in college publications. Plimpton, looking like a cross between a tall Johnny Carson and a suntanned Ted Kennedy, entertained his audience with anecdotes of his experiences as America's most famous literary "impostor." His best seller, Paper Lion, is an account of his sojourn with the Detroit Lions football team. Currently he is playing with the Boston Celtics to gather information for a book on the pro basketball team. Before joining up with the Celtics, he was coached by Princeton's Bill Bradley. "Bradley is a polite man. Even after a month of practicing with me, he still called me 'Mr. Plimpton.' "When I practiced set shots sometimes he would say 'Very good, Mr. Plimpton,' but most of the time, 'Too bad, Mr. Plimpton.' " 

If you don't get the "Paper Lion" reference, it refers to one of the books that Plimpton wrote about his own athletic exploits. Actually, make that unathletic exploits, since he wasn't a very good athlete. 

That's not something that prevented him from seeing how an average adult would do against the very best in a sport. He started out by pitching to some of the best players in Major League Baseball back in 1960 for what became a book called "Out Of My League." TB had never heard of it until yesterday, and he ordered in on Amazon. He'll let you know how it is.

Meanwhile, a few years later, Plimpton tried out for the Detroit Lions as a quarterback. The book (and movie starring Alan Alda) was called "Paper Lion."

When he was first at Princeton (and a lot younger), he wanted to emulate "Paper Lion" with the Princeton football team during its 1994 training camp. Back then, the players actually slept in Caldwell Field House, but TB was going to draw the line there. 

His hope was to be a running back for one play, to see what it would be like. He had no illusions of breaking one for 50 yards or anything. He wanted a simple hand-off up the middle, just to see what getting hit would be like. 

Then he'd write about it. How simple, right? 

Well, it started out simply. It was okay with the coaches. It was okay with then-equipment manager Hank Towns, who had to actually teach TB had to put on all the gear. And his uniform number? It was to be 42. What else would he wear other than the number that 10 years later would be retired. 

You know who wasn't okay with it? University Risk Management, even though TB said he would sign a waiver. Nope. No go. 

To this day, TB can still remember how he just couldn't get the practice jersey over the shoulder pads. Who knows how to do that if they've never played football? Turns out you had to put the jersey over the pads before putting either over your head. 

Also to this day, TB wonders what would have happened. He is pretty sure that he would have gotten positive yards. 

Ah, but it's okay, for two reasons. First, the reality is that he likely would have broken something. And second, he made that whole thing up. 

See? The more implausible, the better. 

Now that's irreverence, with a modicum of responsibility. 

Happy Anniversary Sidd Finch

It's April 1 — and you know what that means. 

More lame April Fools' jokes. They're like Super Bowl Commercials. There was a time when they were extraordinarily clever, and that time has passed. 

In fact, April Fools' jokes and Super Bowl commercials both peaked in the 1980s. For the commercials, it was the 1984 introduction of Macintosh computer from Apple. 

And for April Fools' jokes? Well, you had to be there.  

TigerBlog was a senior in West Philadelphia when Sidd Finch burst onto the scene on this day in 1985. Finch was the phenom of all phenoms, and he'd just been signed by the New York Mets. There was a big article in Sports Illustrated and everything.

Finch wore one hiking boot when he pitched and was a big fan of Eastern philosophy. His fastball topped out at 168 mph, and he could pitch every day. Baseball was never going to be the same.

TigerBlog believed every word in the story. Everyone did. Why not? It was in Sports Illustrated, for crying out loud. George Plimpton wrote it.

It was only later – days later – that it became known that it was a hoax. The first letter of every word in the subhead (He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga) spelled out "Happy April Fools Day."

It remains the greatest April Fools Day prank of all-time – and a great learning lesson for TigerBlog. Lesson No. 1, actually. And what is the lesson?

People believe everything they read. It doesn't matter where they read it. It doesn't matter what it says. If it's written someplace where others can read it, it must be true. 

At least at first. Maybe skepticism takes over at some point, but when you first read whatever words you read, you're very likely to believe them.

TigerBlog did some quick research on the origins of April Fools' Day and saw that it somehow related to "The Canterbury Tales." TB didn't think they were funny at all. 

And maybe the fact that the Sidd Finch piece was so good — like the Apple Macintosh commercial a year earlier — has left TB jaded all these decades since. That's possible. Something certainly has (just kidding). 

For years, TigerBlog has wanted to write a great April Fools story that would be a Princeton version of Sidd Finch. He just hasn't hit upon the perfect idea. It has to be so outrageous, so over-the-top, that it defies all logic and yet fits Rule No. 1 — it was written here, so it must be true. 

The closest he came was a reference to the idea that Princeton was changing its school colors from Orange and Black to silver and teal, and yes, he got a few emails from people who hated the idea. That was pretty good.  

And he has a few other ideas as well. You never know when he might hit you with one of them. Maybe even today. 

In the meantime, there are three Princeton teams who compete today. No, really. There are. This isn't the joke. 

The softball team is at Lehigh at 4 this afternoon for a non-league matchup. How has the Ivy season started for the softball team? 

Well, it's just two weeks in and already the Tigers are 6-0 and three games up on the rest of the field. That's pretty hard to do. Fresh off sweeps of Cornell and Columbia, Princeton will be home the next two weekends against Brown and then Penn, two teams who are in a pack of four at 3-3 right now along with Harvard and Dartmouth. 

Keep in mind that the Ivy League champion will host the league's tournament next month for a spot in the NCAA tournament. 

There are also two home events this evening. 

The women's water polo team is home at 6:30 against Wagner and then at Marist tomorrow at 7 before a week off until the CWPA tournament at Michigan. Princeton is currently 20-5 and ranked 12th, in a tie with Michigan actually, one spot behind Harvard and two spots behind Indiana. 

Also, at 6 tonight, the women's lacrosse team will host Stony Brook. If you're traveling day of game from Stony Brook to Princeton or the other way as often happens, your ride can take somewhere between 2.5 and 11 hours. 

Stony Brook comes into the game tonight ranked 14th nationally. Princeton is 21st. 

The Tigers are looking to rebound after the 16-8 loss to Yale Saturday. Next up for Princeton after this one will be Cornell at home Saturday at noon. 

And with that, go enjoy your Wednesday. If you're playing practical jokes, do TigerBlog a favor. Make them really creative. 

Make Sidd Finch proud.  

Tuesday Night Lacrosse

Did you see that shot off the turnover that went in with less than a second to go in the game Sunday? 

No, not the Duke-UConn one — though upon further review, should UConn coach Danny Hurley have been called for a technical foul for getting in the ref's face and bumping him afterwards? Would you have called one there? 

The shot TB is referencing was a few hours earlier, when Rutgers scored with 0.1 seconds left to tie its men's lacrosse game against Johns Hopkins. The play didn't quite get the national attention of the one in basketball, though the result was basically the same. 

Hopkins had the ball up one but turned it over with 12 seconds left. Rutgers was just able to beat the final horn after an incredible clear. Rutgers won the game, this one in overtime. 

Rutgers (No. 13) is one of the four RPI top 20 teams that Princeton has defeated this season. Ironically, Maryland (No. 21 currently) is not one of them. 

The others are No. 1 North Carolina, No. 3 Syracuse and No. 20 Yale. Princeton is No. 2 in the most updated RPI.

Where else are these Tigers ranked? 

Well, they're No. 2 in RPI, No. 3 in USA Lacrosse Magazine, No. 4 by the coaches and No. 5 in the Kane Inside Lacrosse Media Poll. What would you do if you were making a pregame graphic for the team's game tonight against Lehigh. 

Face-off on Sherrerd Field is at 7 tonight. If you're interested in Division I men's lacrosse this weekend, well, guess what? Between the end of the two games Sunday (UNC defeated Harvard 17-7 in the other one) and the Merrimack-Manhattan game Friday, tonight's game is the only one scheduled. 

This is also Princeton's lone midweek game of the 2026 regular season. Back when TigerBlog started covering the team in the early 1990s, there were three or four of them. 

The Ivy League has seven men's lacrosse teams, which means each team gets one in-season Saturday off from a league game. This is Princeton's week; in addition to the game tonight, Princeton will also play at Vermont Saturday. 

For all of the men's lacrosse games TigerBlog has seen, there aren't too many that can rival the statistical oddities that came out of Saturday's 20-14 win at Brown. Consider these little nuggets:

* Princeton had 11 failed clears
* Princeton had one caused turnover
* Princeton allowed six extra man goals despite committing only four penalties (two were full time)

Despite that, Princeton had the lead for the final 55 minutes of a 60-minute game. The Tigers led by at least four from the end of the first quarter through the end and by at least five for all of the final 37 minutes. 

That is not easy to do. 

Princeton senior midfielder John Dunphey had five goals and three assists in the game. That's one fewer goal than he had in the first seven games combined, and the eight points he had Saturday were also one fewer than he'd had all season prior. 

Dunphey's five goals came on five shots and followed a two-goal, two-shot game the week earlier against Cornell.  His seven straight goals on seven shots match what Chad Palumbo (who also had five goals against Brown) did in the NCAA tournament a year ago. 

It's been quite a season to date for the Tigers, who are hoping to improve on last season's excruciating loss to Syracuse in the NCAA quarterfinals. The Princeton resume, with those big non-league early-season wins, pretty much as the team looking good for the NCAA tournament again; if that does happen it would be the Tigers' fifth straight trip. 

After the two games this week, Princeton finishes the regular season with games at home against Penn, at Harvard and home against Dartmouth. Penn is now No. 18 in RPI, and Harvard is No. 5.  

Meanwhile, again, what was once a very busy night on the college lacrosse schedule has only one game on it tonight — and that is on Sherrerd Field at 7, where Princeton and Lehigh will meet for the, well, who knows how many times they've actually met. 

After all, there is this:

The series history between Princeton and Lehigh is somewhat uncertain. The Princeton record book and the Lehigh record book agree that the first game in the series was a 3-1 Princeton win in 1888. They also agree that there were 10 more games through 1933, though they disagree on the final score of the 1933 game - Lehigh has it 8-4 Princeton; Princeton has it 8-1. It gets a little murkier in 1934 and 1935, when Lehigh has games against Princeton but Princeton has games against Lehigh L.C., not Lehigh, like the first 11 games. Then there's 1940 and 1941, when Lehigh has a pair of games against Princeton that Princeton has no record of having been played.  

Winter Wonderland

Well, just when it looked like the current NCAA men's basketball tournament would get all the way to the Final Four without anything remotely interesting happening, along came UConn-Duke. 

It certainly looked like another dull regional final, like the other three had been, after the eight Sweet 16 games weren't exactly memorable either. Duke led by 19 points in the first half and 15 at the half. You could be forgiven if you turned it off and started scrolling X or went to dinner or watched whatever show you were binging.  

In fact, TigerBlog has a friend who was working and wanted to know if the game was worth watching. TB's first response was "no." His second response was "you may want to watch the last few minutes."

What started out as boring and didn't seem like it was going to be any different most of the way ended up being one of the best endings of an NCAA game you'll ever see. It wasn't quite Duke-Kentucky from 1992, another East Regional final, but it was incredible nonetheless. 

And this time, Duke on the losing end, as UConn miraculously pulled out a 73-72 win when Braylon Mullins hit a shot with 0.3 seconds to go from so far beyond the three-point line that it would have made Caitlin Clark envious. The shot came after Duke had 1) led by 19-points in the first-half, 2) led by 15 at the half, 3) had the ball and the lead in the final seconds and 4) turned it over just across midcourt with maybe three seconds to go. 

If you watched it, you probably had some sort of expletive come out of your mouth as Mullins' shot splashed through. 

And now the Final Four is set: Michigan vs. Arizona and UConn vs. Illinois. It'll probably be more of the same that has dominated this tournament, but hey, the Duke-UConn game will be talked about forever.  

The two basketball tournaments and the men's ice hockey tournament will be crowning champions in the next two weeks, and that will be it for the winter college seasons. 

For Princeton, the winter ended on the sports calendar just a few days after it did on the actual calendar, which is always a good sign. The final Tigers to compete were on the men's swimming and diving team, who finished the season this weekend at Georgia Tech. 

Princeton, in fact, finished 22nd as a team there, the program's best finish in 14 years. The team was led by senior Mitchell Schott, who earned first-team All-American honors by finishing seventh in the 200 butterfly and eighth in the 200 freestyle. 

Sophomore Patrick Dinu finished 11th in the 100 free, becoming a second-team All-American. Schott and Dinu teamed with Logan Noguchi and Jake Tararo to finish 16th nationally in the 400 free relay, giving those four honorable mention All-American honors. 

It's always good to have All-Americans. 

And championships. 

Princeton Athletics had plenty of both in the winter season that just ended. 

Princeton won the Ivy League championship in men's swimming and diving. And women's swimming and diving. And men's indoor track and field. And women's indoor track and field. And women's basketball. And women's squash. 

That's six Ivy titles for the winter — which runs the 2025-26 total to 11 after a five-title fall: men's cross country, women's cross country, men's soccer, women's soccer and women's volleyball. 

And that doesn't count the women's hockey team, which was the ECAC regular season champion for the first time ever. Or the men's water polo team from the fall. Or the field hockey team's Ivy tournament championship on the way to the national championship game. 

How many All-Americans have there been? TB lost track awhile ago, but the answer is: "a lot."

Even more than that, think about how many athletes play on the seven teams that won championships. For as long as TB has been at Princeton, he's heard about the goal of providing a "championship experience" to those who compete here. 

Of course, that is never a guarantee. And there are great moments that don't end with championships. TigerBlog referenced this last week, with the men's hockey team's loss in overtime to Dartmouth in the ECAC final and Marc-Anthony McGowan's loss in the NCAA 125-pound wrestling final. 

You want to know something else that's great about this past winter for Princeton Athletics? It's not necessary the best winter Princeton has ever had. 

How many places could win that many championships and have that many All-Americans and still make that statement? 

For TB, winter is his least favorite season, at least weather-wise. This one was still a lot of fun, even with all the snow.  

Time And Other Materials

If you want to see two of the greatest athletes in Princeton history this afternoon, can TigerBlog recommend heading to the campus art museum? 

Amie Knox was an 11-letter winner between field hockey, squash and tennis who graduated in 1977. Martha Russo was a field hockey/lacrosse player who graduated in 1985.

Was she just any field hockey/lacrosse player? Uh, no. Russo is widely considered to be as fine an athlete as there was in the first 20 or so years of women's athletics at Princeton. She was a speed demon — at least until she suffered two devastating knee injuries. 

Instead of competing in the 1984 Olympics with the U.S. field hockey team, Russo's athletic career was over. 

The two athletic legends will be at the Art Museum today at 2 for a screening of the documentary "Time And Other Materials." Russo turned to art after her injuries and today is a highly regarded sculptor. Knox went into a career in television and film production. 

The documentary, according to the website: 
"is a captivating look at what it means to live a life devoted to creativity. Through a series of intimate studio sessions, the documentary film explores the inner worlds and artistic processes of five women artists working in animation, ceramics, installation, large-scale sculpture, and more. Following the screening, Martha Russo ’85, a former student of the artist Toshiko Takaezu and one of the artists featured in the film, will join director Amie Knox ’77 in a discussion moderated by Lecturer in Visual Arts Dani Levine."

For more information, click HERE. 

You can read more about the two in TigerBlog's book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton, which you can get HERE. 

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The women's lacrosse team is home tomorrow, which itself is news. The Tigers have played seven games to date, only one of which has been on Sherrerd Field. 

The opponent tomorrow will be Yale, who is ranked No. 9 in the current Kane Inside Lacrosse media poll, the same poll that has Princeton at No. 19. If you go by RPI, the teams are much closer, with Princeton at No. 14 and Yale at No. 15.

Princeton averages 14.29 goals per game, which is about three times as many as Yale, who leads Division I in scoring defense at 5.39, allows. Yale is 2-0 in the league with wins over Columbia and Brown, while Princeton is 1-0, with a win over Harvard. Penn is the only other unbeaten in the league at Dartmouth. 

The opening draw tomorrow is at noon. 

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You can see a lot of Princeton-Brown tomorrow in Providence if you happen to be there. 

The men's lacrosse team will be there tomorrow at noon to take on the Bears. About 100 yards away, the Princeton baseball team will be playing a doubleheader, with first pitch tomorrow at 11:30. There will also be a third game (baseball, not lacrosse) Sunday at noon.

The men's lacrosse team will look to rebound from its 13-11 loss to Cornell a week ago, which ended a five-game winning streak and evened the Tigers' Ivy record at 1-1. Princeton has won 11 straight Ivy games against teams other than Cornell but is 0-3 against the Big Red in that same stretch. 

The last Princeton loss to an Ivy team other than Cornell? That would have been the last trip to Brown, where the Bears won 13-12 after jumping out to a 6-0 lead back in 2024.

The baseball team won its first two league games last weekend against Cornell before falling in Game 3. Penn is the only team that swept its opening baseball weekend and so is the lone 3-0 team, while Princeton, Brown and Columbia all went 2-1. 

The top four teams in the league in both sports will reach the Ivy League tournament in May. 

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Did you see the Grant Hill-Rick Pitino piece on the 1992 Duke-Kentucky game, which is widely considered to be the greatest college basketball game ever? 

TigerBlog covered that game back in his newspaper days and was seated directly behind the Kentucky bench, about five feet away from Pitino. During the final timeout, TB's only memory of the then-Kentucky coach is that he held his hands up and said "no fouls; don't foul" over and over. 

So what did Pitino say when Hill asked him about it? Exactly what TB remembered that he said. 

Vindication is always fun.  

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As more than one person pointed out to TB yesterday, Carla Berube did promise to do a karaoke duet with him. Now that she's heading to Northwestern, TB resolves to hold her to that some day. 

Meanwhile, again, HERE is the complete weekend schedule. 

And if you can, get over to the art museum today.  

Goodbye Carla

TigerBlog is pretty sure he had the same reaction to the news that Carla Berube is leaving Princeton to become the head women's basketball coach at Northwestern: "Nope. No. No. Won't allow it. La La La La La."

If you are looking for approval ratings, Berube will be leaving with a 100 percent positive one. TigerBlog has never heard anyone who has worked with her ever have a bad word to say about her. 

TB is in that group, certainly. He got to know her during the years when he and Berube did the "Conversations With Carla" podcast, and even though they haven't had as many conversations the last few years, TB can't say enough good things about her. 

There is absolutely nothing phony about her. She is as driven and competitive as any coach Princeton has had during TB's time here, and yet she has never lost the genuine, warm and upbeat qualities that define her personality.

The news was released yesterday afternoon, in conjunction with the announcement from Northwestern. This isn't the first time TigerBlog will have to root for Northwestern Basketball, since it's not the first time the Wildcats have come to Jadwin Gym to find a new head coach.

It was 26 years ago that Bill Carmody was hired away from Princeton to take over the program in Evanston. There are other connections between Princeton Basketball and Northwestern; men's head coach Mitch Henderson was an assistant for 10 years under Carmody, and Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack was an administrator there as well. 

TB would include Mike Mahoney in that group, though Mahoney has never actually worked at Princeton. Mahoney, who oversees athletic communications at Penn, was the men's basketball contact at Northwestern when Carmody was there.  

And now Carla Berube heads there. 

There really wasn't much more she could do at Princeton. In her six seasons as Tiger head coach, she put together a 147-28 record. That's a mere .840 winning percentage. 

Her record in Ivy games was even more impressive, as in 77-7. That's .917. 

She won five Ivy League championships and four Ivy League tournaments. She took her team to the NCAA tournament every year, including this past one, when her team went 26-4. She has two NCAA tournament wins on her Princeton resume as well.  

Of course winning has followed her wherever she's gone. None of this is new to any Princeton fans, but she was a 1,000-point scorer and NCAA champ as a player at UConn. She coached Tufts for 17 years and went 384-96 overall. Add in her record at Princeton and you have 531-124. 

Insane. 

As TB wrote not that long ago:

Carla Berube is in her 23rd season as a college basketball head coach. Counting this season, she will have lost five games or fewer in 13 of those seasons. Actually, it becomes more incredible when you consider that only two of her first 10 teams at Tufts lost five or fewer, which means means that 11 of her last 13 teams have lost five games or fewer — including four of six at Princeton. Hey, if you want to throw in the four years she played at UConn, where none of those teams lost more than four games in a season, and in her 27 seasons as a player and head coach, she's up to 17 that have lost five or fewer. 

The program she takes over is coming off an 8-21 season, including 2-14 in the Big Ten. The last time the Wildcats had a winning season was 2021-22, when they went 17-12. Each of the last three seasons has seen the team win just two B1G games. 

There are certainly other questions that this move brings out. Can she win there? What does this mean for UConn when that job eventually opens? Who will replace her at Princeton?

None of those really matter right now. 

For today, there is only the appreciation for Carla Berube, the coach and the human being, and all she did during her time here. 

Princeton University is much better off for having her as one of its own — even if that time is now over. 

Even as TB wishes her the best, he, again, speaks for Princeton fans everywhere when he says that he will miss her.  

One More For Winter

Every time TigerBlog drove, or for that matter walked, over the bridge on Washington Road between December and about two weeks ago, he wondered where the Princeton rowing teams were going to be able to compete this season. 

The lake? It was frozen, presumably solid.  

Every time he looked at the far side of Sherrerd Field, he wondered if Princeton would have a home lacrosse game this season without remnants of the snow bank, the one that at one point stood 14 feet high. During one early season game, TB was asked by a media member why the facility no longer had the men's and women's championship banners along the fence, to which TB pointed out that they were still there, only blocked by the white fortress. 

Then, all of the sudden, the ice was gone from the lake and the snow was (almost completely) gone from the far side. Amazing what rain and a few days near 80 degrees can do.

The oddest part is that TB didn't even notice until it was pointed out to him. "Hey, the snow is gone." And "Hey, the water is back."

And why not?  

It is, after all, officially springtime, or, as Pete Carril would have called it, "the spring of the year."  

The Ivy League baseball and softball seasons opened this past weekend. 

For Princeton, that meant six games against Cornell between the two teams, with five Tiger wins. The softball team won all three of its games, and the baseball team went two for three. 

The Ivy League season opens for both tennis teams this weekend, with the women home against Penn. There is rowing and golf and outdoor track and field and rugby and lacrosse this weekend, all of which are outdoor events. 

HERE is the whole Princeton Athletics schedule. 

Ah, but the winter isn't quite over. Maybe the calendar says it is, but there's still enough chill in the air to suggest otherwise. 

And, there's also still one more winter sports event, at least for Princeton. That would be the NCAA men's swimming and diving championships, which begin today in Atlanta. 

Princeton will be represented there by 10 athletes, three of whom are divers and seven of whom are swimmers. Senior Mitchell Schott and sophomore Patrick Dinu will both be a part of six events, swimming together in the 200, 400 and 800 free relays, against each other in the 200 free and then individually in the 500 free and 200 butterfly (Schott) and 50 and 100 free (Dinu).

Aidan Wang, for his part, will compete in the 1M, 3M and platform diving events. 

The women's event was held in the same pool a week ago. Princeton junior Eleanor Sun finished 14th in the 200 individual medley to earn second-team All-American honors one year after doing so in the 400 IM.

Last weekend also saw Princeton compete at the NCAA fencing championships, where other Tigers became All-Americans as well. 

This year, for the first time, the NCAA fencing national team championship was divided into a men's winner and a women's winner, both of whom happened to be Notre Dame. Before this year, there was one combined, co-ed team champion. 

The individual championships didn't change, with qualifying bouts that earned team points and then sent the top four to the semifinals for each of the three weapons. Tiger junior Hadley Husisian was the runner-up in the epee, giving her three All-American honors in three years of competing (she took off a year while qualifying for the U.S. team at the 2024 Olympics).

Princeton also had three other women become All-Americans: senior Honor Johnson (saber) junior Alexandra Lee (saber, where she reached the semifinals) and freshman Angel Xiao (epee). Princeton finished third in the team standings. 

On the men's side, both senior Brandon Lee (foil) and junior Alec Brooke (epee) were All-Americans, Lee for the third time and Brooke of the second. 

Princeton's men finished ninth overall.  

By the way, a special shout out goes to TB's longtime friend and colleague Andrew Borders, who alerted TB that Princeton's women under the new format would have won the NCAA title in 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2023. The 2013 Tigers did win the combined NCAA championship. 

NCAA Hooping

Well, this has been a fairly dull NCAA men's basketball tournament, hasn't it? 

Perhaps this is the year it actually gets better as it goes along, as opposed to the way it usually is, as TigerBlog has repeatedly said. The biggest upset of the first round was High Point over Wisconsin 83-82.

It was an exciting game and all, and congrats to the Panthers. At the same time, it'll hardly be remembered as one of the great moments in tournament history.  

The most interesting part of the first four days , to TigerBlog at least, was not even a game. It was a graphic. 

It was, specifically, this graphic, which popped up during the Iowa State-Kentucky Round 2 game: 

What you have here are three of the greatest players of all-time and a guy from Kentucky TB had never heard of before. Turns out that he 1) played at Blair Academy in New Jersey and 2) is a transfer from Oklahoma. 

If you're in TB's basic age range, you don't need him to tell you that Oscar Robertson played at Cincinnati and Larry Bird played at Indiana State. Bill Bradley? You better know where he played; if you don't, consult the statue of him in front of Jadwin Gym. 

Assists were not an official college basketball stat until 1974-75, though they sometimes appear on box scores back another 10 years. One of the games that did have assists kept was the 1965 NCAA regional final between Princeton and Providence, the one referenced in the graphic.

In that game, Bradley went for 41 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists — one short of a triple double. Speaking of those triple-doubles, 1) Robertson was the first player ever to average a triple double for a full NBA season, and 2) because assists weren't regularly kept, there's no record of how many such triple doubles Bradley might have had as a Tiger, though TB would guess it would have to be in, well, double figures. 

Imagine having a 41-point, 10-rebound, nine-assist game and it's not your best game ever, or, for that matter, it'snot your best game of that NCAA tournament. That would have been two games later, when Bradley went for 58 points, 17 rebounds and four assists in what was then the consolation game. Those 58 points, by the way, remain the record for a Final Four game. 

Hey, you can add that to the list of records that Bradley set that will almost certainly never be broken. 

Meanwhile, back in the present, the Princeton women's basketball team is back in New Jersey after its 82-68 opening round loss to Oklahoma State in Los Angeles. 

This was an uphill struggle for Princeton the whole way, as OK State got out quickly to lead by 10 after the first quarter and 18 early in the second at 31-13. Princeton would get within four twice and within five at 63-58 in the fourth before a 9-0 Cowgirl run put it away. 

signing out after 96 wins, four NCAA Tournaments and three Ivy League titles.

Thank you, @nat_strose and @taylorrcharless. #GetStops 🐯🏀 pic.twitter.com/NBIMAIU0Qo

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) March 22, 2026

Princeton was led by Madison St. Rose, who scored 17 in her Tiger finale. Like Tiger alums like Kaitlyn Chen and Abby Meyers before her, St. Rose will graduate from Princeton and play elsewhere next year after missing almost all of her junior year with a torn ACL.

St. Rose cemented her status as a Princeton all-time great long ago. She finished her career with 1,215 points, and her 13.2 points per game leaves her a hair away from the program's all-time top 10. 

The other senior on this team was Taylor Charles, who had five points and two blocked shots in her final game. Charles was a strong role player during her career, playing in 75 games and being a part of four NCAA tournament teams. '

Skye Belker scored 14 in the game, giving her 1,004 for her career prior to her senior year. Ashley Chea also had 14, and she'll bring 847 points into her senior year. Should she match her assist total from this year next season, she'd vault to No. 2 all-time at Princeton. 

The loss ended the Tigers' season at 26-4, which basically speaks for itself, right? 

If it doesn't, then let TB add this: What Princeton women's basketball has built and sustained is extraordinary. The level of consistent excellence and national success is unmatched in Ivy League women's basketball history.  

The 2025-26 season simply adds to that legacy.  

A 2-1 Two For One

It was a 2-1 two-for-one.

Unfortunately for Princeton, that is. 

Actually, perhaps "unfortunately" is too harsh a word. It has too much of a negative connotation, and, short of the outcome, there was absolutely nothing negative about either of the 2-1s. 

And while it might have been the greatest Saturday for Princeton Athletics, it's important to step back and appreciate the incredible accomplishments that went into the 2-1 two-for-one.

First of all, what does TigerBlog mean by "2-1 two-for-one?"

There were two championship events for Princeton Saturday night. Both ended 2-1. Princeton, in both, had the one. 

One of the the was the ECAC men's hockey final, where Princeton lost to Dartmouth by that 2-1 score, this time in overtime. The other one was the NCAA wrestling 125-pound final, where Princeton's Marc-Anthony McGowan lost 2-1 to Penn State's No. 1 seeded Luke Lilledahl. 

That's two 2-1s. A 2-1 two-for-one.  

So that part is unfortunate. To come so close to a championship like that? It stings. Very much so. And for a very long time. 

It takes TigerBlog back to something that he heard head field hockey coach Carla Tagliente once say in a similar situation. To paraphrase: when you put that much of yourself into something and fall short, it's supposed to hurt; if it doesn't, you're not invested enough. 

Carla is 100 percent correct. Also, so this doesn't get to be too much of a downer, here's a picture of her new dog:

Say hi to "Rocky." That's a great face. 

Okay, back to today's point.

Yes, it's supposed to sting, and it definitely does. TB has been in too many of those lockerrooms through the years not to have learned that (he's fortunate to be in on the other side too).

Still, sometimes just putting yourself in position like that is worth celebrating.  

TB starts with McGowan. A sophomore from Tampa who attended prep wrestling power Blair Academy, McGowan has twice been the Ivy League champion at his weight — and in fact is the only 125-pound champ the Ivy League has ever had, since it's only been two years of the tournament. 

He reached the NCAA tournament a year ago, winning one match and losing two. This year, he entered as the No. 10 seed, which is impressive but isn't exactly the prime spot for making a long run. 

Make a run he did, however, including a quarterfinal win over No. 2 seed Eddie Ventresca of Virginia Tech. Lilledahl, also a sophomore, finished off a 25-0 season by edging out McGowan in a defensive matchup. 

That match took place about an hour after the conclusion of the ECAC men's hockey final. Princeton, picked eighth in the league's preseason poll, ended the regular season in fourth, earning a first-round bye and home ice for the league quarterfinal series, a sweep over Union. 

That advanced the Tigers to this weekend's single-elimination league final four, which began when Dartmouth blanked Clarkson 4-0 Friday in a game that started at 4. Princeton then played shortly after seven, against Cornell, the two-time defending league champion.

The Big Red scored early, as in 2:33 in, but Princeton scored twice in the second period to go up before Cornell tied it at 2-2. That set the stage for the game-winner from Joshua Karnish with 7:55 left in the third. 

Princeton then had to kill off a penalty and a pulled goalie. If you watched, you saw Tigers' flying everywhere in the defensive zone, getting bodies in front of pucks and doing everything possible to keep the Big Red from the tie. 

It was an unrelenting effort, and also a draining one. And now Princeton had to turn around to play the final at 5 Saturday — a little more than 19 hours after the semifinal ended.  

What was on the line? A Princeton would win have meant an NCAA tournament appearance, something that Dartmouth (and Cornell for that matter) already had secured. 

Did Princeton have anything left after the Cornell win? 

Princeton fell behind again, this time on a power play goal midway through the first. It would stay that way until less than nine minutes were left in the third, when again Karnish came up huge, this time to tie it. 

To overtime it went. Princeton seemed to have the best of the chances — but it was Dartmouth who snuck one in after 11 minutes. 

Just like that, it was game over, season over. 

Of course that stings. In a major way.

It's the immediacy of it that hurts the most. You go from maximum effort to having it end on a dime. Your first instinct is "no, there has to be something we can do," and then you realize there isn't. 

Well, there is. You can appreciate the magnitude of what you've done, the effort that you put out, the way there was really nothing left of you that wasn't thrown into competing. You can do all those things. 

You just can't do it in the moment. 

Congrats to McGowan and to the men's hockey team.

It was amazing to watch you.  

Madness And More

The Siena men's basketball team almost beat Duke — and almost tied Bill Carmody. 

In the end, neither happened. 

Siena, a 16-seed, led No. 1 seed Duke by as many as 14 points before the Blue Devils rallied for a 71-65 victory. The Bill Carmody part? 

Well, TigerBlog got a text from his longtime friend and former colleague John Cornell yesterday afternoon that Siena was "going all Bill Carmody on us right here." It took TB a few seconds to realize what he meant. 

If you recall the opening round of the 1999 NIT between Princeton and Georgetown at Jadwin Gym, Carmody — then the Tiger head coach — played only five players the entire way. Five guys. Forty minutes each. 

Princeton won the game 54-47. Can you name the five players who went all 40 minutes? 

As for Siena yesterday, head coach Gerry McNamara went with the same five until he subbed with 10.8 seconds remaining, when he made his only lineup change of the day. He was left with four players who went all 40 and one who went 39:49.2. 

Why did he do this? TB looked at Siena's stats and saw that the Saints had three players average at least 30 minutes this season, with three more over 20 minutes and four more over 10. Also, clearly his five guys were exhausted at the end. 

The Princeton answer, by the way, is Chris Young, Mason Rocca, Brian Earl, Ahmed El-Nokali and Gabe Lewullis.  

The first full day of NCAA tournament games yesterday featured that near upset and a genuine upset, when 12th-seed High Point defeated fifth-seed Wisconsin 83-82. It might seem shocking that the Big South champ could beat a Big 10 team, and in many ways it is. Still, High Point is now 31-4. It doesn't matter what league you're in; when you're used to winning, you know what to do at the end. 

The same, hopefully, will be true for the ninth-seed Princeton women's basketball team, who brings a 26-3 record into its Round 1 game tomorrow night (7:25) against eight-seed Oklahoma State at UCLA. The Cowgirls are 23-9 overall, 12-6 in the Big 12. 

If you want to read a little more about Madison St. Rose, by the way, there was this piece from Emilia Reay in the Asbury Park Press.  

Here's an interesting note about the game: The Princeton women are the only New Jersey team, men's or women's, who reached the Division I tournament. 

Meanwhile, there is more to March than just the Madness. For Princeton, there are also two games against Cornell. 

The Princeton men's hockey team will play the Big Red in the second ECAC semifinal tonight at 7:00 in Lake Placid, after the game between Dartmouth and Clarkson. The final will be tomorrow evening at 5, with an automatic NCAA tournament bid for the winner. 

Princeton and Cornell have split two meetings so far this season, with each on top at home. For Cornell, that meant a 2-1 win in Ithaca on Jan. 16. For Princeton, it was a 4-2 win at Baker Rink Feb. 21.

Princeton went to Lake Placid Wednesday after sweeping Union at home last weekend, winning two games by a 5-2 count. The Tigers in Year 2 under Ben Syer finished in fourth place during the regular season, which meant a first-round bye and home ice last weekend. 

Elsewhere in Princeton-Cornell news, those two will meet tomorrow at noon at Sherrerd Field in men's lacrosse. 

Since the start of last season, Princeton is 18-5, with two of those losses to the Big Red, who happen to be the defending NCAA champion. Princeton's other three losses are to Penn State this year (Princeton won last year) and Maryland and Syracuse last year (both of whom Princeton has defeated this year).

Princeton is ranked third in all three polls (Inside Lacrosse, USILA, USA Lacrosse Magazine) but is No. 1 in the first RPI, which was released this week. The Tigers have won five straight since that opening loss to Penn State, and all five are against RPI Top 20 teams, including two in the top 10). 

Cornell has two losses this season, to Richmond and Penn State. Like Princeton (who won at Yale), Cornell won its Ivy opener last week against Brown. 

If you want to see the full weekend schedule for Princeton's teams, click HERE.  

Let The Games Begin

Welcome to what is the start of the favorite few days of the annual sporting calendar for, oh, quite a few million of you. 

It's the start of the first full day of the NCAA basketball tournaments. There will be wall-to-wall basketball for the next few days, as the 128 teams in Round 1 of the two tournaments get whittled down to the 32 who will remain for the two Sweet 16s.  

You'll hear people bemoan the demise of their brackets. You'll watch the end of more than one upset. You'll fall in love with a player whose name you do not yet know. 

And you'll prove what TigerBlog has always said. 

The NCAA basketball tournaments are unlike any other postseason event in that they get less and less interesting with each passing round. The excitement of the next few days begins to wane, for several reasons — mostly because 1) the sheer quantity of games day and night almost surely will lead to something amazing and 2) all the people who have filled out their own brackets are dialed in to whatever upsets they've chosen. 

Want proof? 

Ask yourself to name as many great first-round games as you can. Then ask yourself to name as many great Sweet 16 games as you can. 

See?

For the teams involved, the time between the Selection Show and opening tip-off is a strange mix of a complete blur and of having time stand still. TigerBlog has been lucky to have traveled with Princeton Basketball teams to the NCAA tournament, and every part of the experience is to be cherished. 

At the same time, there's also a game to play — or hopefully games. Just as the journey is incredible, the destination cannot be overlooked. 

After all, this is your chance to make history, the kind that will be referred to decades after the fact, as those wonderful highlights that pop up this time each year remind everyone. 

Each team gets its day-before practice at the actual venue. Those are more walkthroughs. The actual practicing goes on in some small college gym, or even a local high school gym. 

The Princeton women's basketball team has had to deal with all kinds of logistical challenges once it was announced Sunday that the team would be flying all the way across the country for its NCAA opener at UCLA. If you forgot, the Tigers are the No. 9 seed in their region (Sacramento 2) and will take on No. 8 Oklahoma State Saturday night at 7:30 Eastern time in the first round. 

The winner of that game gets the winner of the game between the top-seeded Bruins and No. 16 Cal-Baptist. 

If you're going to be the lower seed and want to win an NCAA game, logic suggests that the best spot to be is No. 9. If you want to win two games, well, the likely second-round opponent is the No. 1 seed, in this case, a UCLA team that is 31-1 and has a good a chance as anyone to win it all. 

But hey, that's why you play, right? Both Oklahoma State and Princeton would love to have the chance to be the one to make that kind of history. 

Speaking of history, here's something you might not have known about Oklahoma State's teams (this comes from the website visitstillwater.org):

For a decade, students had been fiercely competing in inter-class sports. However, with the formation of the football team, they were encouraged to set aside class rivalries and unite under a common banner. The students chose the Tigers as their mascot and adopted the orange and black colors, inspired by the tradition of Princeton University. This led to Oklahoma A&M being affectionately dubbed the “Princeton of the Prairie.” Despite lacking a paid coach, 14 determined young men made up the Tiger squad for their first season. 

Princeton of the Prairie. How about that? 

The Princeton of the Prairie and the Princeton in New Jersey have never played before. Ok State is 5-0 all-time against the Ivy League, most recently with a win over Harvard in 2022. 

The Cowgirls, as they are known now, do have one Princeton connection: assistant coach Robyne Bostick was an assistant at Princeton in the 2001-02 season. Also, in keeping with the way of the world, the 13-player OSU roster includes eight players who are transfers. 

Lastly, here's an interesting fact for you: Between the two teams, there are 10 players who average in double figures in scoring — and an 11th who averages 9.9.

Let the games begin. Enjoy the next few days. 

It's the best part of the Madness.  

Personal Fowl

Did you hear about the all-turkey basketball team? 

Couldn't win a game. Too many fowls.  

TigerBlog has finally calmed down from what he saw when he opened his door yesterday morning. He even got a picture of the scene to share with all of you. 

Yup. There they are. TB's own personal fowls. They stopped off at his front door, gave a little gobble and kept wandering away to the trees.

His neighbor Linda had a different name for them. She's the one who puts out corn for the turkeys and deer and anyone else who strolls by. Yesterday these two chased her all the way to her front door, gobbling aggressively the whole time. 

What did Linda call them? Ungrateful fowls.

And with that, TB apologizes for the fowl language. 

Meanwhile, you know what always sounds good before an athlete's name? No, not "Ungrateful." How about "First-team All-American."

The NCAA indoor track and field championships were held this past weekend in Fayetteville, Ark., and every Princeton athlete who competed came back as an All-American. That's pretty good, right? 

Georgina Scoot and Alexandra Kelly both leapt their way to first-team status, Scoot in the triple jump and Kelly in the long jump. Scott broke the Ivy League record in the triple jump with a 13.49 while finishing sixth, though you don't have to feel for the previous record holder, since it was Scoot at 13.47. 

In fact, her senior indoor season saw her win the event at the Ivy Heps championships for the fourth straight time, and the record she broke in Arkansas was set at the most recent Heps.

Kelly finished third in the long jump, in a program record 6.54m to earn her own first-team honors. Like Scoot, Kelly is also a senior. She has three indoor Heps long jump titles to her credit. 

From the time the NCAA indoor meet started in 1983 through last year, Princeton had one woman finish in the top three: Cack Ferrell in the 3,000 meters in 2005. Princeton has now had two more in each of the last two years, with Kelly this year and a second-place finish Mena Scratchard in the mile last year. 

This was also the first time Princeton women's track and field had two indoor first-team All-Americans in the same year. 

As for the men, Greg Foster became a first-team All-American in the long jump with his fourth-place finish, one that almost became higher until three jumpers passed him with personal bests at the end. Foster was already the Ivy record holder in the event, and he is also a four-time Heps indoor winner in the long jump.

In addition, this was his second first-team All-American honor and first indoors. 

Joe Licata was another first-team All-American, with his in the shot put. Licata finished sixth overall with a personal best of 65-11, one that puts him second all-time at Princeton.  

Who's first? Funny you should ask. 

First, there's the matter of who was second? That would have been C.J. Licata, at 64-10. The last name seems familiar, right? 

And second, who is still first? That would be Augie Wolf, a 1984 U.S. Olympian whose 66-1.75 at the 1983 NCAA championships has stood for 43 years now. Wolf, by the way, finished fourth at those 1984 Olympic Games. 

Back here in 2026, Princeton's 4x400 relay team of Jonathan York, Xavier Donaldson, Kavon Miller and Joey Gant finished sixth, earning themselves first-team All-American as well. 

Myles Hogan finished 10th in the 5,000, while Connor McCormick finished 13th in the mile. Both became second-team All-Americans. 

Still ahead are the NCAA Championships this weekend in men's and women's fencing (which for the first time will have separate national champs, as opposed to one co-ed winner), wrestling and men's and women's swimming and diving. 

If you're wondering, the fencing will be at Notre Dame, the wrestling will be in Cleveland and the swimming and diving will be in Atlanta.  

Will there be more first-team All-American Tigers after all of that?  

ILT Champs, Again

 

There's absolutely nothing in the world of college athletics like an NCAA Selection Show, regardless of the sport. 

None of the teams know what their seed or opponent will be until everybody finds out. The teams on the bubble don't know if they're in or out any earlier than a casual fan. 

The joy you see from each team's reaction shot on television is 100 percent genuine. In the case of the women's basketball tournament — whose current bids were announced Sunday night — it doesn't matter if you're UConn or the team that has to play UConn. 

That moment when you see your team's name flash across? It freezes in time and stays with every member of the team forever. 

It's a reward for the season to date. It's an acknowledgement of the challenge ahead. 

As the draw is revealed, teams have a sense of where they're going to be slotted. As such, whenever that portion of the bracket comes up, the energy in the room rises and rises — until another team's name is shown. Then you cross off that bracket and that location and start to think about where else you might be headed.  

Unless you see your name quickly, the drama builds and builds and builds. And with that, TigerBlog will pause and get back to the building drama. But first: 

Here's an actual text message that TB received Saturday evening: 

Seriously, Fadima Tall just played one of the greatest basketball games that any Princeton player ever has. 

Yes, that's quite a statement. On the other hand, the sender would know. He's as big a Princeton fan as TigerBlog has ever met — and he's not prone to things like overstatement or recency bias. 

The message came shortly after Princeton defeated Harvard 63-53 in the Ivy League women's tournament final Saturday, taking the championship for the sixth time in the eight years the event has been contested. 

How good was Tall? The 6-1 junior played 38 minutes and scored 20 points on 8 of 12 shooting, with seven rebounds, three assists and four steals. That's a great all-around performance. Deservedly, Tall was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. 

Ah, but the defining quality of this Princeton team is that it doesn't not rely on any one player, or even any two players. On any given night, or really on any given possession, any Tiger on the floor can be the dominant one. 

Consider the last four minutes of the championship game. 

Princeton lead by eight early in the fourth quarter, only to see Harvard come back and tie it at twice, the second time at 51-51 with 4:01 to play. Keep in mind that Princeton was headed to the NCAA tournament no matter what, whether it won the game (automatic bid) or didn't (a lock for an at-large). Harvard, on the other hand, had only one path in — win the last four minutes and the autobid. 

So what happened? Would the momentum of getting back into the game so quickly and the immediacy of needing the win be the difference? No. 

Princeton went on a 12-2 run to close it out. It was a remarkable finishing sprint, one that was spurred by Olivia Hutcherson, who finished with 12 points in the game, of which eight came in those final four minutes. 

In other words, again, this was a team effort. 

It was also a defensive effort. Princeton won its semifinal game 65-51 over Brown (Tall had 11 points and 10 rebounds), which included with the championship meant the Tigers allowed 103 points in the two games, or 51.5. 

For the season, Princeton allowed an average of 60 per game. That number could have been 160 per game. When it comes to the Ivy tournament, Carla Berube's teams always clamp down. 

In fact, Princeton has allowed an average of 56.3 points per game in nine ILT games since Berube became head coach. Not shockingly, Princeton is now 8-1 in those games. 

And now, to get back to the Selection Show, the tournament title left Princeton as the lone Ivy representative. It also left the team knowing that its name would be coming up somewhere along the way.

Where would the Tigers go? And who would be waiting there for them?  

It was fairly obvious that the team was headed to either an 8-9 game or a 7-10 game. Would it would be Storrs? Nope. That came and went without the Tigers. That also meant the team was almost surely getting on a plane.

And that's what happened. In the UCLA pod of the Sacramento 2 Regional, first it was a No. 1 seed UCLA and a No. 16 seed Cal Baptist. Then it was a No. 8, Oklahoma State. Seconds later, Princeton came up as the No. 9. 

With that, one kind of drama ended. 

Another one — the one that includes travel logistics, scouting, game prep, tickets, media appearances and everything that goes into an NCAA tournament game — was just beginning.  

 

Ice Sculpture

TigerBlog finds it amazing that the Princeton men's hockey team has won three ECAC championships — in 1998, 2008 and 2018. 

What are the chances of that? Three titles, all spaced 10 years apart. 

Is there any other team that has the same numerical trajectory?  

And while TB is asking questions, could the current Tigers change that history? Well, they're two games away from doing so. 

Those won't be two easy games. At least the 2025-26 team has a chance to try for the big prize. 

Princeton earned that chance this past weekend, sweeping away Union in the ECAC quarterfinals at Hobey Baker Rink with back-to-back 5-2 wins. Of those 10 goals, six of them came from Kai Daniells and Jake Manfre, who had three apiece in the series. Half of those 10 goals came off assists from David Jacobs.

On the other end of the ice, Arthur Smith made 63 saves in the two games, including 34 Saturday night.  

The series was the first postseason home appearance for Princeton since 2018 and the first home quarterfinal series since 2009. The two wins mean that Princeton finishes the season 14-2-1 at home — and Baker Rink has once again become a very electric venue. 

The two games might have had the same score, but they got there two completely different ways. 

Game 1 Friday night was all Tigers. It was 1-0 after the first period, 3-0 after the second and 4-0 early in the third.  

Game 2 Saturday night? That was a bit different. 

Princeton scored first but then fell behind 2-1 after two periods, the second Union goal a shorthanded one. Would there be a Game 3 in this series? 

Uh, no. Not after the four-goal third period Princeton put up. 

It took three minutes to tie it, on a Jaxson Ezman power play goal. It took four more to take the lead, when Daniells, who had all three of his in Saturday's clincher, finished off a cross-crease backhanded feed from Jacobs. 

What a play!!

Jacobs to Daniells and the Tigs are up 3-2!! @ecachockey | @TeamECH | @NCAAIceHockey pic.twitter.com/k1w5lySyBH

— Princeton Men's Ice Hockey (@princetonhockey) March 15, 2026

It's hard to say which of the 10 goals was the prettiest, but this way up the list. Jacobs' pass laid out perfectly to Daniells' stick, even though there were three, or maybe even four, Union players who were in the vicinity, not counting the goalie. 

Empty net goals don't usually turn up on the list of the prettiest goals, but the two Saturday night certainly did. The first came from Manfre, who outsprinted a Union defender to the loose puck to jam it into the goal. The second came from Daniells, whose shot from the Princeton blue line made its way under the Union goalie as he tried unsuccessfully to get back into the net. 

What's amazing about the streak of one championship every 10 years is that the intervening years were not very kind. Princeton had eight losing seasons between the 1998 and 2008 titles. There were seven losing seasons between 2008 and 2018. 

Since 2018, Princeton has had six losing seasons — out of six seasons played. That included last year, when the Tigers went 12-14-3 in the Ben Syer's first season as head coach.

How do you turn that around so quickly?  

The wins this weekend improved Princeton to 17-12-3. They also vaulted Princeton into the ECAC semifinals, which will take place this coming weekend in Lake Placid. 

Because the tournament is constantly reseeded, it wasn't until yesterday's deciding Game 3 between Cornell and Harvard that the matchups for Lake Placid could be set. Now they are. 

It'll be Dartmouth vs. Clarkson in the first semifinal Friday at 4, followed by Princeton and Cornell Friday at 7. The championship game will be Saturday at 5:30. 

The winner gets an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Can it be Princeton? Why not the Tigers — even if it is two years early.  

Either way, what Syer  and his staff and players have done this season has been remarkable. This past weekend was the end of the games at Baker Rink for 2025-26. The atmosphere there for the two games was amazing.  

And to still be playing this late into March, with a chance to keep it going? 

Who could have asked for more from this team?  

Tip-Off, Face-Off

The current UMass men's basketball season began with a 78-72 loss to Marshall on Nov. 3. 

That was a Monday. What was Justin Lafleur doing that day? He was getting ready for the upcoming Princeton-Dartmouth football game. 

After all, he was the Dartmouth football athletic communications contact at the time. He probably in his wildest imagination couldn't have anticipated that, come March, he'd be the contact for a team that would make the biggest seismic impact on the NCAA men's basketball selections. 

And yet there he was yesterday in Cleveland, in his new role with the UMass men's basketball team, watching his new team take down previously 31-0 Miami 87-83 to advance to the MAC semifinals. UMass had lost six of seven games heading into the tournament.

Will Miami get an at-large bid? Probably. If so, then that also means that the MAC will have more than one team for the first time since 1999, which further means some other team is now on the outside looking in. 

Congrats to Justin, one of the really good guys in college athletic communications. And one of the hardest working. 

Justin's athletic communications counterpart for that football game against Princeton back in November was Warren Croxton, who is also the contact for the women's basketball team. As such, he is in Ithaca for the Ivy League tournament, which begins today at 4:30 when the top-seeded Tigers take on Brown, followed by the second game, between Columbia and Harvard. 

Princeton went 2-0 against Brown this season and allowed 86 points in the two games combined against a team that averages 61 per game. Speaking of defense, the Bears lead the Ivy League, allowing just 56.5 per game; Princeton scored 58 and 69 in the two wins. 

The Tigers, for their part, led the Ivy League in scoring offense, with 73.1 points per game, the highest total in any of Carla Berube's six seasons as head coach. The Tigers start four players who average double figures and a fifth who averages 9.8. 

Brown is led by unanimous first-team All-Ivy selection Grace Arnolie, whose father Anthony was on Penn's basketball team and was a classmate of TigerBlog's, who sought him out at the game this year at Jadwin Gym to say hello and who had to explain that while, yes, in fact, TB was dressed head-to-toe in Princeton gear that he was, in fact, a Penn classmate. Arnolie (Grace) was second in the league in scoring at 17.5 per game and had 14 in each game against Princeton.

As TB said, tip-off will be at 4:30, which means that you can watch that game on ESPN+ and then shift over to the men's hockey game against Union, also on ESPN+.  Opening face-off is at 7 from Hobey Baker Rink. 

The game is the start of a best-of-three ECAC quarterfinal series, with Game 2 tomorrow at 7 and, if necessary, Game 3 Sunday at 4. The winner gets a trip to the ECAC semifinals next weekend in Lake Placid.

Princeton, the fourth seed, is playing a home ECAC quarterfinal series for the first time since 2009 and for the first time in the ECAC playoffs at all since 2018. It's been a remarkable turnaround in Year 2 under head coach Ben Styer, as the Tigers went from a ninth-place finish with 25 points last year to a fourth-place finish with 37 points this season. 

Princeton split its two games against Union this season, with a 5-1 win at Union and a 4-2 loss at Baker Rink. 

Princeton had two All-ECAC selections, with goalie Arthur Smith and forward Kai Daniells both named to the third team. Daniells leads the team with 16 goals and is second with 16 assists (David Jacobs leads the team with 20 assists), which makes Daniells the first Tiger with at least 16 of each in a season since Ryan Kuffner had 22 goals and 22 assists in 2017-18, the last time Princeton reached the NCAA tournament.  

The other quarterfinals have Clarkson at No. 1 Quinnipiac, Colgate at No. 2 Dartmouth and Harvard at No. 3 Cornell. As an aside, two of the other seven remaining teams have Directors of Athletics who used to work at Princeton — Colgate's Yariv Amir and Union's Jim McLaughlin. 

The semifinal matchups will be determined by seedings among the four remaining teams. 

Yeah, No

Today TigerBlog tries something a little different: 

Yeah — The Princeton women's hockey team plays its NCAA tournament opener tonight against UConn, at Penn State's Pegula Ice Arena. Opening face-off is at 7. You can watch it on ESPN+.

No — Princeton was swept by UConn this season in Storrs, with scores of 2-1 and 3-0. 

Yeah — Those games were nearly five months ago. 

Yeah — Princeton is making its fifth NCAA tournament appearance after a season in which the team won its first ECAC regular season title.

Yeah — The winner of the Princeton-UConn game will face the host Nittany Lions Saturday at 2, with the winner to the Frozen Four, which will also be at Penn State. 

No — To get to the Frozen Four, Princeton would have to get past UConn and then a Penn State team coached by longtime friend and former Tiger head coach Jeff Kampersal (who was the first Princeton hockey player TB ever wrote about, back in the early 1990s).

Yeah — The men's hockey team opens its ECAC quarterfinal series tomorrow at 7 at home against Union. Game 2 will be Saturday at 7. Game 3, if necessary, will be Sunday at 4. 

Yeah — If you haven't seen THIS STORY on a group of Princeton Hockey superfans who call themselves "The Hobey Bakers," make sure you read it. 

Yeah — The writer of the piece is Princeton sophomore Emilia Reay, who also writes for the Daily Princetonian and has dived in headfirst to helping TB at men's lacrosse home games. 

No — Emilia does some great Princeton commentaries on her Instagram account but has a limited following. Make sure you give a follow to: emiliareaycametoplay. 

Yeah — The NCAA indoor track and field championships will be held this weekend in Fayetteville, Ark., with four men's individuals, two women's individuals and one men's relay. 

Yeah — Greg Foster is the No. 2 seed in the long jump. 

Yeah — You can read more HERE and HERE. 

Yeah — Princeton men's lacrosse defenseman Jack Stahl added USILA Team of the Week honors to his Ivy League Defensive Player of the Week award after holding Rutgers' Colin Kurdyla to one goal on six shots. Kurdyla then responded with four goals and seven assists in his next game, a 19-4 Scarlet Knights win. 

Yeah — Stahl's performance against Kurdyla plus his performances against Syracuse's Joey Spallina and UNC's Owen Duffy resulted in three All-Americans who combined for two goals and four assists on 20 shots. Those three All-Americans in their following game after facing Stahl combined for seven goals and 13 assists. 

No — The Princeton men's tennis team was ranked 28th last week, when its only match was against No. 27 Pepperdine, a match Princeton won 4-1. This week's rankings? Pepperdine stayed at No. 27. Princeton dropped to No. 29.

Yeah — The men's and women's tennis teams are spending Spring Break in California. The women opened their trip with a 4-0 win over Fresno State and now play at Cal Poly today and then Loyola Marymount Saturday. The men play Memphis today and then San Diego Saturday, with both matches on San Diego's courts. 

No — Like the men, the women also dropped in the rankings, going from No. 37 last week to No. 54 this week. That's a 17-spot drop. And hey, keep in mind that Princeton didn't even play last week. 

Yeah — Speaking of California, the women's water polo team is also there for Spring Break. The 14th ranked Tigers will take on No. 2 UCLA today at 7 Eastern/4 Pacific in Los Angeles, with four more matches at the San Diego State Invitational this weekend. 

No — The women's water polo team will play eight times in all on this trip, but none will be against USC, whose athletic communications contact is former Princeton contact Joanna Dwyer.  

Yeah — It's the home opener for the softball team, who has a doubleheader Saturday and a single game Sunday against Binghamton. 

Yeah — This is Year 2 of the Cynthia Paul Field on the Meadows Campus. If you haven't been to a game there yet, make sure you do so this season; it's a great facility. 

No — A loyal reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, reminded TB that he wrote THIS several years back and Princeton Athletic siblings. In other words, he'd already answered his own question from earlier this week. 

No — TigerBlog is almost finished with "Packed To The Rafters," an Australian show that has 122 episodes in all. If you have Acorn TV, watch it; you'll be glad you did. 

Yeah — The complete weekend schedule is HERE. 

Berube By The Numbers

As a reminder, the Ivy League women's basketball tournament begins at Cornell Friday afternoon. 

Princeton, as the outright Ivy League champion, is the No. 1 seed and will take on fourth-seeded Brown at 4:30, followed by No. 2 Columbia and No. 3 Harvard. The winners will play Saturday at 5:30 for the tournament championship and the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. 

Nothing that happens in the tournament will change who the 2026 Ivy League champion is. That will be Princeton, not matter what.  

The semifinals can be seen on ESPN+. The final will be on ESPNU.

If you're looking for tickets, click HERE. 

And with that,  TigerBlog segues to something that he finds amazing. 

The Princeton women's basketball team enters the Ivy League tournament at Cornell Friday with a record of 24-3. Not bad, right? 

Given that the Tigers can lose no more than one game in Ivy Madness and no more than one game in the postseason awaits after that (almost surely the NCAA tournament), the maximum number of losses this team can have for 2025-26 would be five. 

That's really good, though it's not the amazing part. 

This is:

Carla Berube is in her 23rd season as a college basketball head coach. Counting this season, she will have lost five games or fewer in 13 of those seasons. 

Amazing, right? 

Actually, it becomes more incredible when you consider that only two of her first 10 teams at Tufts lost five or fewer, which means means that 11 of her last 13 teams have lost five games or fewer — including four of six at Princeton. 

Hey, if you want to throw in the four years she played at UConn, where none of those teams lost more than four games in a season, and in her 27 seasons as a player and head coach, she's up to 17 that have lost five or fewer. 

Oh, and this is the 14th straight year that her teams have lost two or fewer league games in a season. Fourteen? 

Think about it. Five losses? That's not a lot. Two league losses? That's also not a lot. 

Her overall record as she heads to Ivy Madness is 529-123. That's a winning percentage of .811. 

Her record at Princeton is 145-27. That's a winning percentage of .843. Within the league? She's 77-7. That's .917. 

Nine. One Seven. 

Also, she has a dog named "Scooby Berube." That might be the best thing about her. Just kidding. Just kidding. 

Berube and her staff of Lauren Gosselin, Lauren Dillon, Jordan Edwards and Lilly Paro were honored, again, as the Ivy League's Coaching Staff of the Year when the league awards were announced yesterday. 

In addition, Princeton had five players who received All-Ivy honors. To show you how balanced this group is, every one of those five has been the team's best player on more than one night this season. 

Madison St. Rose, who averaged 16.0 points per game this season, one year after suffering a torn ACL, was the team's lone first-team pick. St. Rose's resume now includes an Ivy League Rookie of the Year award and a second-team All-Ivy selection as a sophomore. 

St. Rose went over the 1,000-point mark earlier this season. It's likely that the next 1,000-point scorer in program history will be Skye Belker, a second-team selection this season for the second-straight time. Belker brings 971 points with her into the Ivy tournament. 

Fadima Tall was also a second-team selection for the second-straight year. Tall was a two-time Ivy League and National Player of the Week winner this season, is the team's leading rebounder and improved her shooting percentage (.408-.456) and three-point percentage (.323-.373).

To give you an example of the balance TB mentioned, consider that Ashley Chea and Olivia Hutcherson were both honorable mention selections. Has a team ever had two better honorable mention selections?  

None of those numbers and none of those honors will matter once the ball goes up Friday in Ithaca, and for whatever comes after that for this team. 

At the same time, it's not a bad moment to take stock in what Carla Berube has put together in her career. 

As TB said, it's definitely amazing.  

Oh MacDonalds

One of TigerBlog's very favorite families in Princeton Athletics history is the MacDonald Family of Georgetown, Ont. 

As TB has written before, he's played a card game with the MacDonalds in the past that revealed them to be ultra, ultra competitive. It didn't help that TB won, by the way. 

Steve and Linda MacDonald, the patriarch and matriarch of the family, nearly came to blows. Well, not really. There was some mention of divorce after decades and decades of marital bliss, though TB is pretty sure it was in jest. Yes, they're still together. 

Given all of this, TB can only imagine what's going between Mikey MacDonald, Princeton Class of 2015, and his younger sister Jami, a current Tiger senior. You remember Mikey MacDonald, right? He was the 2015 Roper Trophy winner as the top senior male athlete in his class. 

Mikey MacDonald was a lacrosse player. So is Jami. 

Here are two little facts that make TB chuckle:

* Mikey finished his Princeton career with 208 career points, which at the time was the fifth-highest total in program history and which is now seventh. Can you name the two players who've passed him, by the way? 

Jami? She enters tomorrow's game at Virginia with, wait for it, 207 career points. Can you imagine the trash talk? 

* There's also the fact that Jami was named the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week yesterday after having four goals and four assists in Princeton's 19-13 win in its Ivy League opener at Harvard Saturday. It's the second time in her career Jami has been honored with the award. 

Ah, but here's a little fact that probably has not escaped the notice of someone in their house. Mikey was a three-time Ivy League Player of the Week. 

Of course, all of this got TB to thinking if Princeton has had another brother/sister combination where both have been Ivy Player of the Week. His first thought was of the Behnkes, where three soccer-playing siblings combined for six first-team All-Ivy League selections. Here's another trivia question: What were their names? 

TB knows for a fact that the sister was an Ivy Player of the Week. He figures one of the brothers, or probably both, were also honored. 

Is he overlooking anyone obvious? 

The answer to the two questions, by the way, are this: 1) both Michael Sowers and Coulter Mackesy have passed MacDonald and in fact are 1-2 all-time for the Princeton men and 2) you had Griff, Matt and Emily Behncke.

There have to be others, right? TB always overlooks some obvious answers when he asks questions like this. 

While the subject is Ivy League lacrosse Player of the Week awards, or at least tangentially related to that, TB would also like to mention Jack Stahl, the Ivy League men's Defensive Player of the Week. For all of the men's lacrosse players TB has known at Princeton, it's possible that Stahl is the quietest, or at least the one who least needs a spotlight. 

Here is what TB wrote for the story on goprincetontigers.com: 

It's possible that the Princeton men's lacrosse program has never had a player who shuns the spotlight more than Jack Stahl. Unfortunately for him with the way he is playing, that spotlight is going to find him.  

Stahl was honored for Princeton's 20-9 win over Rutgers Saturday. The junior defenseman once again was given the other team's best offensive player to guard, and once again he did exactly what he was supposed to do. 

This time, his assignment was Colin Kurlyda, an All-American who came in with 14 goals on the season. Stahl held Kurlyda to one goal, which came when the Tigers were ahead 19-5.

This came one week after Stahl held two other All-Americans, Syracuse's Joey Spallina and UNC's Owen Duffy, to a combined one goal. If you add those three performances together, Stahl allowed two goals on 20 shots, with five caused turnovers of his own. 

Stahl would have been TB's nominee for Ivy Defensive Player of the Week after that, except that goalie Ryan Croddick had a weekend for the ages. As such, TB was happy to see that he got the recognition he did this time around — even if it probably made him roll his eyes or something. 

Hey, play like he has been, and yes, this is what happens.