No Judgement

You know what TigerBlog hates (besides winter)?

Sports that are judged. You're just begging for reputational biases or, even worse, outright cheating, all of which lends itself to questionable outcomes. 

Take the side-by-side bumpy-hill skiing, or whatever it's called. Two skiers race down a hill, stopping along the way to twirl and somersault and a bunch of other things that slow them down, eventually getting to the finish line — and then you wait for the judges to decide who won. 

When TB watched this event (he thinks it's called "dual moguls") the other day, he couldn't help but think of the words of one of the greatest American authors of all time: 

Then those things ran about with big bumps, jumps and kicks and with hops and big thumps and all kinds of bad tricks.  

Why not just make the tricks the same for all the skiers and then whoever gets to the bottom first after having done all of those tricks wins? Instead, the woman who won the gold medal finished well behind the silver medalist, but the judges awarded her first by one point. 

Bonus points, by the way, to those who correctly identified the quote, which TB will tell you at the end.  

You know what event TB was awed by? Skeleton. 

Basically, you're on a sled similar to the one that everyone had as a kid, only you're flying down an icy course at speeds that approach 80 miles per hour, with winding turns and 180 degree direction changes, not to mention your face a fraction of an inch from the track. TB wants to try it, and by that he means "no possible way would he ever do that." 

Janine Flock was the women's gold medalist and one of the feel-good stories of the Winter Olympics. The 36-year-old Austrian was in her fourth Olympics without ever having won a medal, finishing fourth in 2018. 

Lucky for her nobody came along after she crossed the finish line to tell her that someone who went slower won the gold because of subjective judging. 

Speaking of things that happened on ice this weekend, how about the end of the ECAC women's hockey regular season? That was as wild as almost anything the Olympics has had so far. 

Princeton went into the regular season assured of one thing — a first-round playoff bye and home ice for the quarterfinals (which, he supposes, is actually two things). How would it all play out? 

It started Friday night, when Princeton hosted Yale, where a win would have clinched the outright title. Instead, the Bulldogs won 2-0, vaulting them over Princeton and into first place with one game to go. 

Where did that leave the standings? Yale now had 45 points, followed by Princeton with 44 and Quinnipiac at 43. With three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime win, one for an overtime loss and zero for a regulation loss, the permutations were many. 

Saturday night saw Brown at Princeton and Yale at Quinnipiac. The Princeton-Brown game ended first, when Issy Wunder scored in overtime after the Bears had tied the game with 1:30 to play in regulation. This was all after Wunder had given Princeton a 2-1 lead with eight minutes to go.

The OT win left Princeton with 46 points, which meant Yale would win the outright championship with a regulation win, something that seemed inevitable with a 3-1 Bulldog lead with less than two minutes to go. 

And then? Shockingly, Quinnipiac scored two empty-net goals 38 seconds apart and then won it in overtime. Shocking indeed. 

When it all settled, Yale earned one point for its OT loss, making it a 46-46 tie for the championship, with Quinnipiac one point back at 45. For Princeton, its first ECAC regular season title came in the first year for head coach Courtney Kessel.

Yale earned the No. 1 seed over Princeton through the tiebreakers. Princeton will be the No. 2 seed, giving the Tigers this weekend off while its opponent is determined. The quarterfinals will be the following weekend, and the league's semifinals and final will be in Lake Placid March 6-7.

Oh, and extra credit goes to those who knew that quote was from "The Cat In The Hat." 

Two Championships, One Today And One Tomorrow

Where to start with your week? 

Should TigerBlog go with the women's hockey team, which came out on top of the final ECAC regular season standings after a wild weekend? Or perhaps with the women's squash team and its dominant Ivy League championship? 

Both are compelling. Both earned home postseason berths with their wins this weekend.  

He considered combining the two into one entry, but that didn't seem fair, given what both teams accomplished. So what did he do? 

He used the random number app on his phone and asked it to generate a number between 1-100. If it came up evens, he'd start with women's hockey. If it came up odds, he go with women's squash. 

It came up "43," so it's women's squash day. Tomorrow will be women's hockey.  

You know which team TigerBlog was rooting for in the Princeton-Harvard women's squash match yesterday? 

Hint - It's not necessarily obvious. Hint 2 - It was Princeton, but ... 

Princeton defeated Harvard 7-2 yesterday to close out a perfect Ivy League regular season. The win gave the Tigers the outright Ivy League championship and the host role for the first Ivy League women's squash tournament, which will come to the Meadows racket center this coming weekend. 

There's a lot more to Princeton's win than just that, though. 

Harvard came into the weekend ranked No. 1 in the country and why not? The Crimson have been a machine of late, with 10 of the last 13 Howe Cup national championships. Princeton, by the way, was ranked second, while Penn was ranked third. 

In the league? Harvard had won nine straight titles entering this weekend and had a 74-match regular-season Ivy League winning streak.  

The weekend began with Princeton and Harvard unbeaten, followed by Penn, with only a 6-3 loss to Princeton. The Crimson started their weekend in Philadelphia Saturday, at the same time the Tigers hosted Dartmouth.  

Princeton, as expected, won 9-0. Harvard-Penn? The winning streak ended there, as the Quakers won 6-3. 

That set up yesterday's final day of the regular season. A Penn win over Dartmouth, which was something of a given, would leave the Quakers with one league loss. A Harvard win would have set up a three-way tie. A Princeton win would have meant the championship outright for the Tigers. 

Maybe TB should have let the drama build, but he already gave away the ending. If you forgot, it was 7-2 Tigers. In only one match did Princeton lose more than one game. 

The 7-0 run through the league was Princeton's first since 2013. The Tigers have now won seven league championships all time.  

Meanwhile, back at which team TigerBlog was rooting for in the match? That would be Princeton field hockey. Where did the field hockey team fit in? 

Well, TFH, as its known, went into the academic year tied with Harvard for the most Ivy League championships all time for any women's programs with 28 each. Princeton reached the NCAA field hockey championship game and won the league tournament this past fall, but it did not win the regular season, which is where the championship is officially won. 

As such, Harvard women's squash would have taken a 29-28 lead in championships with another one. Instead, the two remained tied at the top. TB even sent a text to the team group chat telling the players to thank a squash friend.

The Ivy League squash tournament is new. Unlike the other Ivy tournaments, there is no automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, as the squash national championship is decided by the College Squash Association's Howe Cup tournament. 

It should still be a fascinating event. Princeton, as the top seed, will play fourth seed Cornell. Penn and Harvard will have their rematch (by virtue of the women's win, the men's tournament will also be at Princeton and feature the Tigers, Yale, Harvard and Penn; the men's winner will host both tournaments next year). Both tournaments will be held this coming Saturday and Sunday; the CSA championships for both will be March 5-8 in Philadelphia. 

So that's the women's squash. Women's hockey will be here tomorrow. 

Oh, and skeleton too.  

Beginnings, Middles, Ends And More

It's opening weekend for some, championship weekend for others and pretty much anything in between for the rest. 

In other words, there's a lot going on this weekend, so TigerBlog will jump right into it.

*

The women's basketball team is at Columbia tonight at 6, in a game that will be televised on ESPNU. Princeton is a game up on the Lions and Harvard as they head into the weekend, though all three figure to be locks for the upcoming Ivy League tournament. 

Columbia and Princeton played two weeks ago in Jadwin Gym, where the Lions won 73-67 to give the Tigers their only league loss (and only loss in the last 17 games). There were eight players in that game (five Lions, three Tigers) who were in double figures. 

Columbia then turned around and lost the following night at Penn. Like that weekend, this one is also a back-to-back, with Princeton then at Cornell Saturday at 5 and Penn at Columbia. 

Princeton-Columbia women's games have become incredibly intense the last few years, and tonight's game figures to be no different. No matter what happens tonight, both teams will have to turn it around in less than 24 hours and be ready to play again. 

*

Opening weekend? Yes it is, for Princeton softball and men's lacrosse. 

The softball team is in Florida, where it will play games at Jacksonville and North Florida, whose campus is located within walking distance of TB's college roommate Charlie's house. 

By the way, here is the closest beach to North Florida. It's about a 15-minute ride from the campus: 

TigerBlog took that picture when he was there in December. He didn't realize how close North Florida was to his friend's house. It certainly looks like a good place to watch softball, especially in February. 

The season actually kicks off today, when Princeton will be at Jacksonville to take on Stony Brook at 11 am and the host Dolphins at 4. The venue shifts to North Florida tomorrow, for games at 3 and 5 against Stony Brook again and then UNF. Princeton will then play Iona Sunday, also at North Florida at 10 am.

Princeton has won four straight Ivy League championships and is now the preseason favorite to make it five, after the league poll was announced this week. 

*

The Jacksonville forecast is for sunshine and temps near or above 70 this weekend. The Princeton forecast for tomorrow is for sunshine and 44 degrees, which, after the last month, will feel like 70 degrees.

The moderation in the weather comes at a perfect time, as the third-ranked Princeton men's lacrosse team opens a season of great promise with a visit from Penn State (noon). The Tigers won in State College last year in a game that was moved indoors, and there was some thought that this game might have to find an indoor site too until this forecast came along. 

Penn State is playing its third game, with a win over Colgate that was followed by an overtime loss to Villanova last week. The game on Sherrerd Field tomorrow starts a stretch of four games in 16 days, all against teams who, like Princeton, have a legitimate chance to win the NCAA championship. 

After this game, it'll be Princeton at No. 1 Maryland and then home against No. 2 Syracuse and No. 5 North Carolina. If you're into good lacrosse, there's plenty of it coming your way. 

*

Princeton's athletic website yesterday featured two, well, features. 

One of them was from TigerBlog's colleague Warren Croxton, who wrote about former women's basketball player Krystal Hill, Class of 2011. You can read his story HERE.

Hill was a big part of the great transformation of Princeton women's basketball, which went 7-23 her freshman year, 14-14 her sophomore year and then 26-3 and 24-5 her last two years, winning the league championship both times and reaching the NCAA tournament for the first two times in program history. 

Since then, there has been nothing but sustained success — for the team and for Hill, who went on to medical school at Penn and now is an internal medicine physician at the Veteran Affairs medical center in Houston and assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine,

The other feature is TigerBlog's story on men's lacrosse senior Chad Palumbo, the preseason Division I Midfielder of the Year by USA Lacrosse. Palumbo's story is about way more than lacrosse, though. 

He was diagnosed with a rare soft tissue cancer before his senior year of high school, and his resilience in the face of that illness has been inspiring. His growth as a lacrosse player has also been impressive, to the point where he's gone from being benched as a freshman to being a captain this year. 

Oh, and he also tied the program record for goals in an NCAA tournament game last spring with six against Syracuse in the quarterfinals, despite sustaining a knee injury on the first of those goals. It would be six months before he was fully recovered. 

You can read about Chad HERE.

*

The Ivy League women's squash championship and host role for the inaugural league tournament will be decided this weekend at the racket center at the Meadows Campus. Princeton hosts Dartmouth tomorrow and then No. 1 Harvard Sunday, with both at noon. 

This is from the preview story on goprincetontigers.com:

Harvard and Princeton are both 4-0, with Penn right behind at 3-1. All three teams have clinched Ivy League Tournament bids, with the fourth spot coming down to the last weekend among 2-3 Cornell, 1-3 Dartmouth and 1-3 Yale. Harvard will go to Penn on Saturday before coming to Princeton. The women's top seed will host the tournament, set for Feb. 21-22. 

The men will also host Dartmouth and Harvard this weekend, with start time also at noon. The building will also be the host for the ECAC men's tennis championships (No. 2 seed Princeton plays Dartmouth tonight at 6).

*

This is the final weekend of the ECAC women's hockey regular season. As TB wrote Tuesday, Princeton is still very much in the running for the championship. 

First-place Princeton hosts Yale tonight (6) and Brown tomorrow (3). The Tigers are already assured of no worse than fourth place in the league, which means a first-round playoff bye and the host role for a best-of-three quarterfinal series. 

Princeton has 44 points entering this weekend, two ahead of second place Yale. There are almost endless scenarios for the way the weekend breaks, but obviously Princeton can win the championship by winning out. 

*

The complete schedule for the weekend is HERE. 

Remembering Lorin Maurer, 17 Years Later

TigerBlog goes back into the archives today, back 16 years ago to be exact.

It was on that day that he, and the rest of Princeton Department of Athletics and world beyond, woke up to the shocking news of the plane crash outside of Buffalo. Among those killed was Lorin Maurer, who oversaw the Princeton Athletic Friends Groups at the time. She had just turned 30; she'd be nearing 50 today.

 

Each year since, TB has written about the emotions of losing a colleague and a friend. With each year, the number of people who knew Lorin has dwindled until now there are only a handful left who remember her, the warmth she always displayed, the smile that never went away. In fact, her smile is the last thing TB ever saw from her. 

 

Here is how TB put it back in 2009, with the comments he received afterwards... Lorin, you were truly an exceptional person, and nobody who knew you will ever forget you:

 

When she walked past the door of TigerBlog HQ yesterday afternoon, like she had a million times before and figured to a million times again, Lorin Maurer paused, smiled and kept going. She never said a word; TigerBlog didn't say anything back to her.

Who could have ever have imagined it would be the last time he'd ever see her?

Lorin Maurer was killed late Thursday night when Continental Connection Flight 3407 crashed near Buffalo. She was heading there for the wedding of her boyfriend's brother (her boyfriend was not on the flight); she was just 30 years old.

TigerBlog knew Lorin since she first started working here in 2005. We've worked together any number of times on all kinds of projects. As with any people who approach projects from different angles, we had our disagreements and clashes, but for the most part we were on the same page.

She was young and full of life. She had accomplished a great deal in her young life, and sadly, much of that was learned while writing her obituary. The last time TigerBlog ever saw her summed her up perfectly. Nothing to say? Flash a smile, and let that speak for you: "Hello; hope you're doing okay; I'll see you another time."

So what to make of all this? How do you make sense of the fact that a 30-year-old just starting out, with so much energy and zest, is gone like that? How do you rationalize the fact that you were just in the same meeting the day she died, that you have another meeting scheduled with her on Monday? How do you figure that you came to HQ figuring to work on a lacrosse program and that you wrote a youthful colleague's obit instead?

The first reaction is that you never know what's coming down the road, so you have to stop every day to appreciate whom you have and what you have. But that should all be obvious. It's not something we all do enough of, but Lorin's passing isn't going to change that.

She had a great many friends here at Princeton, not only in the athletic department but also in development and with alums throughout the country with whom she interacted. She was well-liked and well-respected for the job she did.

TigerBlog thought for awhile about something profound to say, some inspiration to draw from her death. In the end, what is there to say?

She was here yesterday, so alive. She's gone today. It's beyond sad.

That's all there is to say.

44 Down

TigerBlog loves to do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day. 

The easiest puzzle of the week is Monday's, and they're supposed to get progressively harder as the week goes along. TB sometimes goes with the "check" function, which will show him if he's gotten everything correct to that point. 

What he won't do is cheat — unless that counts as cheating, which he doesn't think it does. Sometimes he'll reach out to someone for help, especially on pop culture. That's about it. 

There's also a crossword archive that goes all the back to the 1990s. Those are fun, considering how much the world has evolved, technology has changed, pop-culture has moved along and phrases are different, al of which makes the clues completely different. 

Yesterday's puzzle was fairly easy. TB finished it in less than 20 minutes. 

Here was 37-across: 

"Toy Story 2" character who says "I'm packing you an extra pair of shoes, and your angry eyes, just in case"

That was clearly Mrs. Potato Head, who was voiced by Estelle Harris. Mr. Potato Head was voiced by Don Rickles, by the way. 

Then there was 66-across. It was definitely a challenge: 

Catholic university whose mascot is a lion, aptly.

Turns out the answer is St. Leo. TB got that because he had the "t," "e" and "o."

Ah, but this was a special edition of the puzzle, largely because of 44-down and 45-down. Here they were:

44 down: John ___, longtime writer for The New Yorker
45 down: State that's the subject of 44-Down's book "Coming Into the Country"

They were both six letters. 

How great was this? The answers are, of course, "McPhee" and "Alaska." TigerBlog has read almost all the books of the first, including "Coming Into The Country," of which he has a signed copy. 

Mr. McPhee, as you probably know, is one of TigerBlog's heroes and favorite people. They have spent hours and hours and hours together, riding bikes, talking about the writing process, talking about Princeton Athletics history, talking about pretty much anything. Oh, and they've even gone fishing together. 

That's one of TB's favorite pictures ever. 

McPhee, now in his 90s, is a member of the Class of 1953. His father Harry was the team physician for Princeton Athletics in the 1930s and ’40s, and John grew up around Princeton games and athletes.  

What are your plans for your 90th birthday? John McPhee and TigerBlog rode together for 11 miles on the day McPhee turned 90. That's a good goal to have, right? How many 90 year olds do you know, let alone 90 year olds who could ride 11 miles?  

John McPhee has been a living, breathing almanac of Princeton Athletics. His roommate at Princeton was Dick Kazmaier, the 1951 Heisman Trophy winner. His first book was about Bill Bradley and his senior year of 1964-65. He was incredibly close with Pete Carril and is still incredibly close with Bill Tierney. 

He taught a writing seminar at Princeton for five decades, impacting hundreds of students. He has been a longtime Fellow with the men's lacrosse team, where his influence has been felt by another few hundred Princeton students.  

And, of course, by TigerBlog, who has learned a lot from his time with Mr. McPhee. Included in their time together have been three international trips with the men's lacrosse team — they've ridden together in Portugal, Spain and Costa Rica. 

Mr. McPhee has told TigerBlog some of the best, funniest, deepest, well-communicated stories he's ever heard. There are so many of them that TB hardly would know where to start to share them. Trust him though. Every second of them has been way worth it.   

And there John was, in the New York Times crossword puzzle yesterday. TigerBlog smiled and then filled in the correct answers. 

It was a welcome sight in his daily puzzle.  

And of course, if there had been a crossword clue that was, say, a nine-letter word for "has written five days a week since 2009," he's certain that Mr. McPhee would have easily gotten "TigerBlog." 

Skating To The Finish

Today might be the day, finally. 

 For what, you might wonder? Today, for the first time in 28 days, the forecast for Princeton calls for temperatures to actually go above freezing. 

If you're wondering, those 27 straight days without getting to at least 33 degrees is a record for these parts, by a lot. TigerBlog read a story about how the previous record was 14 straight days, set back in 1961 and equalled in 1979. 

TB doesn't remember such a cold snap back in 1979, when he was in high school. He does know that the past four weeks here have been brutal. 

He'd go so far as to say that this past Saturday was the coldest day he can ever remember in the Central New Jersey area, where he grew up and where he has worked for four decades. It was 1 degree Saturday morning when he got into his car, with the windchill somewhere around minus-20.

And now there is at least the slightest hint that winter might finally be letting its vice grip go. Oh, and TigerBlog can hear his longtime friend and fellow Ivy League sports chronicler Bruce Wood — he of the Big Green Alert and the Dartmouth coverage — laughing at TB for thinking that this is cold. 

When TB asked the question a few weeks ago about who could possibly like winter more than summer, Bruce sent him a two-word email: "I can."

TigerBlog saw someone ice skating on the Delaware-Raritan Canal as he drove home yesterday afternoon. That's something he's never seen before. 

There is still important ice skating to be done indoors at Baker Rink in the next few weeks. 

There is only one weekend to go in the ECAC and Ivy League women's hockey regular seasons. For Princeton, that means home games against Yale Friday (6) and Brown Saturday (3). Here's the way things stand right now, starting with the ECAC:

* Princeton is in first place with 44 points, two ahead of second-place Yale as the teams get set to meet Friday night. Keep in mind that teams get three points for a regulation win, two points for an OT win, 1.5 points for a tie, one point for an OT loss and zero points for a regulation loss. TB leaves you to do the math. Quinnipiac, by the way, is in third with 40 points with games against Brown and Yale as well, and the Bears are tied for fourth place with 38 points along with Clarkson. The top four teams get a first-round tournament bye and will host the quarterfinal round.

* The Ivy League women's hockey champion is determined by the ECAC games involving Ivy teams against other Ivy teams, as opposed to a separate schedule of games. Princeton is in fourth place in the league and needs a sweep this weekend to have a chance at the Ivy title. 

As for Princeton men's hockey, the Tigers have played 16 ECAC games so far, with six more to go. That's two per weekend for three more weeks.

A year ago, in 22 ECAC games, Princeton had 25 points, finishing in ninth place in the league standings. Through those 16 games this season, Princeton already has 31 points, leaving the team in fourth place at this stage. 

Remember — the top four teams get a first-round tournament bye and get to host the quarterfinals. 

What's the difference this year? Last year, Princeton gave up 73 goals in 22 ECAC games, which equals 3.32 goals-against per game. At the same time, Princeton scored 55 goals in 22 games, which is 2.5 per game. 

This year, Princeton has already scored 51 goals in 16 games. That's 3.2 per game. And defensively? Princeton has allowed only 39 goals in 16 games, for an average of 2.4. That's one goal less allowed per game and one more scored per game. 

That's a winning formula. 

Not shockingly, Princeton's Arthur Smith was named the ECAC Goalie of the Week this past week after wins over Yale and Brown, with a 2.00 goals-against average and a .907 save percentage. Smith is now the first goalie in the league to win the honor twice this season. 

It'll be a big weekend for the Tigers, who have a home-and-home against league-leading Quinnipiac, with a game Saturday in Connecticut and then home Sunday (4). Quinnipiac is 13-2-1 in the league, with the top offense and top defense (tied with Cornell) in the ECAC.

Six To Go

TigerBlog is tired of hearing about all the anticipation around Super Bowl commercials. 

So in case you want to debate which Super Bowl commercial you thought was the best, the answer is "none of them." They haven't been good in forever. They're overhyped, over-acted, silly and completely unfunny. 

Or maybe TigerBlog and anyone who was watching the Super Bowl in 1984 has been forever spoiled by this: 

Nothing will ever approach that commercial — especially since its prognostication was accurate. 

If you aren't sold on that one, how about this one, which is from 1997 and is the only one that even remotely has come close:

That's GI Joe and Barbie, who broke Ken's heart as they pulled away in their Nissan.  

As for the game itself, it was hardly a classic and in fact was one of the worst. It felt like a Sunday night regular season game in October — and not because it was a defensive struggle for the most part. TB doesn't mind a good defensive struggle. This was just dull, that's all, even when New England (briefly) tried to rally.  

Like the commercials that played during the broadcast, this one will hardly be remembered through the years.  

And with that, TigerBlog segues to Ivy League basketball. 

There are 16 Ivy League teams between the men and women, all of whom have six more Ivy games to play before the top four advance to Cornell for the league tournament.  

Of those 16 teams, only six currently are above .500. Another four are at .500. The women's field seems on the verge of being set. The men's field? 

Who knows.

If you look at the men's standings, Harvard and Yale are both 6-2. Brown is 1-7. The other five teams are bunched, with four at 4-4 and one at 3-5.

For the record, you have Princeton, Penn, Cornell and Dartmouth at 4-4, with Columbia the team at 3-5. And this is with only six games left. 

Princeton and Penn added another classic to their history Saturday in the Palestra, where the Quakers won 61-60 despite a late Tiger comeback. Incredibly, Princeton had beaten Penn 30 straight times prior to that between the men's and women's teams.

The 30th win in that streak came Friday night in Jadwin Gym, where Princeton's women trailed by two at the half before winning 69-50. Princeton's women are now 8-2 when tied or trailing at the half, which is the best record in Division I (according to TB's good friend Duncan Yin, Class of 1982; TB trusts that Duncan did not just make that up).

Princeton is in first place alone at 7-1, with Columbia and Harvard next at 6-2 each. Brown is in fourth at 5-3, two games up on Penn at 3-5. It's starting to look very much like those four will be in Ithaca next month. 

Back in the present, junior Olivia Hutcherson led Princeton with 19 points in the win Friday, along with seven rebounds and five steals. Hutcherson has made a huge jump this year, both by the numbers and by the eye test. 

Hutcherson played in nine games as a freshman and scored four points. She improved those numbers to 4.2 points and 4.3 rebounds last year, when she started 23 games. 

This year? She is up to 12.5 points and 6.0 rebounds. She shot 47.3 percent from the field last season and has improved that to 55.7 percent this season. 

Only five players in the Ivy League are currently shooting better than 50 percent. Nobody is ahead of Hutcherson. 

As TB said, though, you don't need to see the numbers to see how much she has elevated her game. You just have to pay attention. As much as anything, she's playing with such obvious confidence, and that's translating to her on-court success.

Next up for both Princeton teams are Cornell and Columbia this coming weekend. The men are home Friday at 7 against the Big Red and Saturday at 6 against Columbia. 

The women are at Columbia Friday at 6 (that game is on ESPNU) and then at Cornell Saturday at 5.  

Big Games

The Super Bowl comes up Sunday, as you may have heard. 

BrotherBlog is a longtime Seattle resident and reluctant sports fan, mostly by marriage. He gets extra credit for knowing not only that his local team had made it to the big game but also knowing who the opponent will be. 

If you haven't been paying attention, it'll be BB's Seattle Seahawks against the New England Patriots. TigerBlog asked his brother for his prediction for the game, and this is what he came back with:

"I don't know. It'll be what it'll be." 

Yeah, the upcoming hours and hours of pregame shows across multiple networks have nothing on BrotherBlog. There's genius in his analysis. Must be the lawyer in him. 

TigerBlog's preseason Super Bowl prediction was the Bills over the Lions. They should let those two teams play just to see if TB would have been correct. 

Given how bad his predictions were for the preseason, he's probably going to be way off on this one, but hey, here goes: Seattle 31, New England 21. 

TigerBlog will watch the game, even if it's not the game he's most looking forward to seeing this weekend. It's not even in the top two. 

Both of those have the words "Princeton" and "Penn" in them. And they both involve basketball. 

The Princeton women are home tonight at 7 against Penn. The men's game will be tomorrow at the Palestra. 

This weekend will see all Ivy League teams play once, against the team that has been their traditional travel partner. These games mark the start of the second trip through the 14-game round robin, which will end with four men's teams and four women's team on their way to Cornell for the league tournament. 

Who will those teams be? 

On the women's side, there are, not surprisingly, three teams who are already pretty much locked in — Princeton, Columbia and Harvard. The Tigers start the weekend alone in first place at 6-1, one game ahead of the 5-2 Lions and Crimson. 

A year ago, all three of them reached the NCAA tournament, something that was unprecedented in Ivy basketball history. This year, they're all looking to get back, with current NET rankings of 44 (Princeton), 59 (Columbia) and 66 (Harvard). 

The battle for fourth place has Brown at 4-3, one game ahead of Penn and Cornell. Princeton opened its Ivy season back on Jan. 3 with a 74-68 win over the Quakers at the Palestra in a game where Princeton led big early, trailed in the fourth quarter and then rallied to win it. 

Speaking of the Palestra, the Tiger and Quaker men will play there tomorrow at 2. 

If the women's race has some clear definition to it, the men's side is a complete free for all. Princeton is one game out of first place entering the weekend at 4-3, tied with Dartmouth, behind 5-2 Yale and Harvard. 

There are three teams one game back of the Tigers at 3-4 (Cornell, Columbia, Penn). That's seven teams separated by two games at the midway point of the league schedule. TB has no way of tracking how many times in league history that the league standings have had this many teams this close at this point, but he's willing to guess that the answer is "not a lot, if ever."

Princeton and Penn also opened their Ivy seasons against each other on the men's side, back on Jan. 5, when the Tigers came from 14 points down to go up by 14 and then hold on for a 78-76 victory.  

As you know, that win gave Princeton the lead in the all-time series for the first time ever. Entering the game tomorrow, it is now Princeton 127, Penn 126. 

Now is not the time to focus on historical context, though. The race to Ithaca is starts its second lap this weekend. 

It figures to be a crazy run to the finish.  

The Juggler

The Ivy League men's track and field Athlete of the Week this week was Joe Licata. 

This was the third straight week that a Tiger won the men's award. Last week it was Jackson Clarke, who had set an Ivy League record in the 200, while also running the second-best time in Division I this season. The week before was Greg Foster, after his Ivy record in the long jump, which also was second-best in Division I this season. 

So what did Licata do? 

Apparently, he was honored either for his personal best 64-0 in the shot put at the Penn Invite. Or, it's possible that he was honored for what he's doing in the photo. 

Which of those two things is more impressive? Well, obviously the shot put, but hey, the juggling is also ridiculous. 

That photo came from a video from Princeton superfan Pattie Friend, who finds time to work at an eating club checking in students on Sunday nights after attending essentially every event on campus she can. Pattie's husband Lloyd was a member of the Class of 1965.

By the way, if you want to see the greatest juggler of all time, go on YouTube and look up W.C. Fields. Hopefully you've heard of him, you little chickadees. 

*

There will be two Ivy League championships won in Jadwin Gym this weekend, in men's and women's fencing. 

The Ivy League round-robin event will be held at Princeton Saturday and Sunday. The women will compete in the morning both days, and the men will go in the afternoon.

The complete Princeton schedule, and ticket information, can be found HERE.

Princeton's men have won 18 Ivy fencing titles all time, including the past two years. The women have won 13, including three of the last four. 

*

The Winter Olympics begin this weekend in Milan, Italy. 

Princeton women's hockey will be once again represented by alums Sarah Fillier and Claire Thompson, who won a gold medal with Team Canada in the 2022 Games in Beijing. If history is any indicator, they'll add either a second gold or silver, as the overwhelming favorites to reach the final will be the Canadians and the Americans. 

It would be shocking if the final wasn't those two. In fact, this is the eighth time that women's hockey has been held at the Winter Olympics, and only once in the first seven has the final been someone other than the USA and Canada. That was in the third tournament, in 2006, when Canada won gold, Sweden had silver and the USA won silver. 

Former Princeton women's hockey player Kelly Cooke will again be an official at these Olympics. 

*

Continuing in the category of non-shocking hockey news, Princeton women's hockey's Uma Corniea was named the ECAC Goalie of the Week Award of the season. 

Corniea made a career-high 43 saves in the 6-1 win at Clarkson Saturday in a showdown for first place in the league. This came one night after a 30-save performance in a 2-0 shutout win over St. Lawrence. 

That's 73 saves and one goal allowed. That's a .986 save percentage and 0.50 goals-against average. You'll win a lot of games with those numbers. 

*

There will be home ice hockey this weekend for the Princeton men, against Yale tomorrow and Brown Saturday. Face-off both nights will be at 7. 

As TigerBlog wrote the other day, the Princeton men are in fifth place in the ECAC standings as they head into this weekend. 

Princeton has 30 points, five back of fourth-place Harvard. The top four teams in the league will get a first-round bye in the conference playoff and home ice for the quarterfinals. Teams 5-8 will host the first round; Princeton is eight points ahead of ninth-place Union at this point.  

Yale currently is in eighth place, one point ahead of Union. Brown is tied for 10th.  

*

In all there will be 28 events, including the ECAC women's tennis tournament at the Si Qin Family Indoor Tennis Center. At the same time in the same building, you can see Princeton and Penn in men's and women's squash. 

The complete schedule is HERE. 

At The Racket Center

There are, obviously, two people in this photo. 

One of them is among the most accomplished people in the history of Princeton Athletics. The other one is TigerBlog. 

Hints: 1) She never lost during her Princeton playing career, 2) she was Princeton's first female individual national champion, 3) she went on to become a doctor. 

The background of the photo is of the Si Qin Family Indoor Tennis Center at the Meadows Campus. If you haven't been there, put it high on your list of venues to check out. 

In addition to the indoor tennis courts, the building is also the new home of Princeton men's and women's squash. The viewing areas for both sports are spectacular. 

TigerBlog has spent a great deal of time in the building of late. He has added men's and women's tennis to the teams he covers. 

How has the experience been so far? It's reminded him, yet again, of what the best part of working at Princeton all these years has been. 

He doesn't really need to tell you, right? It's pretty straightforward. It's the opportunity to work with the Princeton athletes, who are some of the most impressive people you'll find anywhere. The opportunity to help them have a better experience has been his main motivation all this time. 

TB has always been a tennis fan. He rooted for John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova way back when, and he had the great opportunity to cover the 1984 US Open back in his newspaper days. The major tournaments are still among his favorite events to watch each year. 

He's seen bits and pieces of Princeton tennis through the years, just not to the extent that he has the last few weeks. College tennis matches, he's learning, are pretty fascinating. 

For starters, the rules are different. There is no deuce, just a winner-take-all point (receiver's choice on which side that point begins) to decide games that get to 40-all. It speeds things up considerably, but it also changes the dynamic of a game that gets to 30-all. 

There are three one-set doubles matches to start, and the team that wins two of them gets one team point. Then there are six best-of-three singles matches, all worth one team point each. 

The direction of the team match can swing back and forth quickly, as the player who won the first set easily falls behind in the second. Just when it seems like one team has it wrapped up, the other team come right back. 

TigerBlog has already seen some great matches. The doubles point between Princeton and St. John's women went to a tiebreaker in the deciding match before Tigers Eva Elbaz and Isabella Chhiv pulled it out, surviving three match points and falling behind 3-0 in the tiebreaker to win. 

The men's team fell to Liberty 4-3 after the deciding match stretched for nearly three hours between Princeton's Aleksandar Mitric and Liberty's David Ekpenyong. This one also reached a deciding tiebreaker. Yes, Princeton lost, but still, the effort that both players put in was inspiring. 

More than wins and losses, though, it's always very intriguing to see the team dynamics within individual sports and the close-knit support between the men's team and the women's team. As much as TB wants to feel that he has made an impact on the experience the athletes have, he also knows for a fact that they have made his experience so much better all these decades. 

When he first met with the women's team, he gave them a copy of his book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton. He also told them how women's athletics here started with their sport, tennis. 

And that leads him back to the woman in the picture. Her name is Wendy Zaharko, Class of 1974. She was a three-time national college squash champion who didn't compete in the national tournament as a sophomore. In her entire time at Princeton, she never lost so much as a game, let alone a match. 

Here was a quote of hers from the history book: 

“The women athletes were the ones who really brought the alums around to accept women at Princeton,” she says. “We were good ambassadors. I used to get letters from old alums, crazy letters. I got one from Michigan that was twenty-five typed pages. There’s no doubt that co-education changed and helped Princeton. When you add fifty percent of humanity to a great institution of higher learning, it can only make it an even better ‘best damn place of all.’ I was there to get an education, and there’s a lot of education to be gotten from sports.”

Wendy was at the racket center Sunday to watch women's squash and was then introduced to TigerBlog. Like many athletes at Princeton through the years, Wendy is one TB has written about extensively without ever having met. 

Until Sunday. 

It was great to actually say hi in person. She's a sort of celebrity to TigerBlog. 

And it was great to meet her at the racket center. 

If you've never been there, it's a great place to spend some time.  

Penultimate Weekend

TigerBlog was in the Bubble Sunday morning for a men's lacrosse scrimmage. 

One of the things about lacrosse that always makes TB smile is that after each game and the handshake line, you'll immediately see hugs and catch-ups from all the players on both teams who either played with or against each other in high school or club growing up. It's a staple of every game. 

You can see an example of this yourself. 

As for the Bubble, if you don't know, it sits over Powers Field from the end of the football season through the spring. 

You can ask anyone who has ever been inside, and you'll get the same statement. When you are inside the Bubble, you cannot believe you are on the football field in the stadium. You'll get a 100 percent rate of response. 

As ridiculous as it seems, the first Division I lacrosse games were played this past weekend. It was still January. 

Perhaps because of the audacity of scheduling games outdoors in the Northeast in January, the weather was more conducive to sled dog racing than lacrosse. Remember when the lacrosse season didn't start until March 1? 

If you're wondering, the Princeton men open their season a week from Saturday at home against Penn State. The Princeton women open their season the following Saturday at Loyola, on the same day the men are at Maryland. 

Both teams are highly ranked heading into 2026. The men, in fact, are either No. 2 or No. 3 in every preseason poll, while the women are as high as No. 5. 

The Princeton men's lacrosse season opener starts a few hours before the last game of the Princeton women's hockey team's regular season finale. That means that there are only four games left before the ECAC tournament begins.

The Tigers enter the penultimate (TB loves that word for some strange reason) weekend of the regular season in first place in the league standings with 41 points, three ahead of second-place Clarkson. 

TB will get back to Princeton Hockey in a moment. First, according to the Oxford English Dictionary: 

The earliest known use of the word "penultimate" is in the early 1500s. OED's earliest evidence for "penultimate" is from 1529, in a letter by Stephen Gardiner, theologian, administrator, and bishop of Winchester.

That's a long time ago. 

Back at hockey, the Princeton men are home this coming Friday against Yale and Saturday against Brown, both at 7. The ECAC men's race still has four weekends left in the regular season, and Princeton is currently in fifth place, five points back of fourth-place Harvard. 

The top four teams for both the men and women get a first-round bye and the host role for the quarterfinals in the ECAC tournament. 

The Princeton women swept St. Lawrence (2-0) and Clarkson (6-1) this past weekend on the road. Had Clarkson defeated Princeton, then Princeton would be in second place now, not first. 

Princeton scored two minutes into the game and three times in the first 16 minutes, including two that came shorthanded. It was 5-0 Tigers after two periods and then 6-0 midway through the third before Clarkson got on the board. 

Once again it was a very big weekend for Tiger goalie Uma Corniea, who made a career-high 43 saves against Clarkson, one night after shutting out St. Lawrence with 30 saves. That's 73 saves and one goal allowed. 

That's very, very, very, very good. Four very's.   

It's a very, very, very long ride back from the St. Lawrence and Clarkson road trip. It's a very, very long ride on the Dartmouth/Harvard road trip that Princeton will now have to make this weekend. 

That's one fewer "very."

Princeton will then host Yale and Brown to end the regular season. 

The Division I NPI ratings (the ones that determine the NCAA tournament field) have five ECAC teams in the top 12, including Princeton at No. 8. The Tigers are ranked seventh in this week's USCHO.com poll. 

Somehow, the women's hockey season is winding down. Or, is that just beginning? 

It'll definitely extend beyond the regular season. After that? It could be a very exciting rest of the winter.  

To The Groundhog

Well, it's Groundhog Day. Again.

That means it's time for TigerBlog's annual Feb. 2 rant. 

There are supposedly only two possible outcomes for when Punxsutawney Phil emerges from his slumber: either an early spring or six more weeks of winter. This is dependent on whether or not said groundhog sees his shadow. 

TB's problem with this is that six weeks from now is March 16. Spring doesn't begin until five days later. Presumably an early spring would mean warmer weather would arrive before spring actually does, and both outcomes are saying the same thing. 

It should say "eight more weeks of winter." Where does TB go to have this addressed? 

By the way, an early spring in 2026 would be the next day where the low temperature doesn't mean single digits and the high temperature starts with something other than a 1 or 2. 

Also by the way, the movie "Groundhog Day?" It's one of TB's favorites. 

The movie accomplished something that's hard to do. Before it came out, Groundhog Day was just holiday. Since then, it's become synonymous with something that repeats itself again and again. 

In honor of that impact, TB will repeat two things he's mentioned before, by two of his favorite basketball coaches ever. 

The first is from Donnie Marsh, who was the head coach at the College of New Jersey back in TB's newspaper days and who has gone on to coach all over the college basketball map. He always said that it's very hard to win the game after a big win. 

The second is from John Thompson III, who needs to introduction to you if you're reading this. He always said the goal is to be in first place when the weekend ends. 

Both of those mantras came to be in Ivy League women's basketball this weekend. Columbia defeated Princeton Friday night in Jadwin Gym, ending the Tigers' 15-game winning streak and tying for first place. 

What happened 24 hours later? Columbia lost in Philadelphia at Penn. Donnie Marsh once again is proven correct. 

And so the weekend is now over. And who is in first place? 

Princeton, by itself, after bouncing back to beat Cornell Saturday night.  

Had Columbia defeated Penn, there would have been two effects. First, the Lions would be tied with Princeton. Second, the four teams for the Ivy tournament would almost certainly have been decided. 

Princeton is 6-1, followed by 5-2 Columbia and 5-2 Harvard. Brown is next at 4-3, followed by Penn and Cornell at 3-4 each. 

After a weekend of old-fashioned back-to-back games, this coming weekend will have only a single game for each team — against its traditional travel partner. For Princeton that means a Friday night home game against Penn (tip at 7). 

For the men, there is a corollary to what John Thompson said. In the modern world of Ivy basketball, you want to be in the top four when the weekend ends. 

Once again, the Princeton men have achieved that. The Tigers, who lost at Cornell and won at Columbia, are tied for third with Dartmouth at 4-3, behind Yale and Harvard, who are both at 5-2 after the Crimson won in New Haven Saturday night.  

Every win this season matters, and the entire league race gets flipped around with each outcome. Behind those four would be three teams at 3-4 (Columbia, Cornell, Penn). Brown is two games back at 1-6, but the Bears have rallied from 1-6 to reach the Ivy tournament before.  

It's not easy to bounce back from a Friday night loss at either New York school on a back-to-back. The ride between Cornell and Columbia is the furthest in the league among travel partners, and you're rolling in pretty late while sitting on a loss on the bus the whole time. 

Princeton shot 40 percent from the field Friday night in Ithaca and then 57 percent Saturday night in New York City. There were four Tigers in double figures against the Lions, including Jack Stanton, who had 21 on 6 for 8 three-point shooting.   

Like the women, the men also have only one game this weekend, also against travel partners. For Princeton, that means a date Saturday at 2 in the Palestra against Penn. 

A Great Rivalry Renews

What is the best current rivalry in the Ivy League? 

Wait. Where are TigerBlog's manners? First things first. 

Happy anniversary to Warren Croxton. No, not his wedding anniversary. His Princeton anniversary. 

TigerBlog hired Croxton away from Haverford College to come work in the Princeton Office of Athletics Communications. Wait, how long ago was that? 

Ten years? Already? That was a blink. 

TB asked Warren yesterday if he would have envisioned being here 10 years later, and he said no, before adding this: 

It truly flies by, but it’s easy to wake up and still be here when you deal with the type of people that are here at Princeton — the coaches, staff and most importantly the student athletes.  

He could have been speaking for TB when he said that, other than the fact that on Day 1 for TB he knew he'd be here for the long haul. 

What's it like working with Warren? He's reliable, loyal and professional, and those are all good qualities, obviously. His social media posts can be epic. More than all of that, though, he's the kind of person you want on your team. 

He checks his ego at the door. He always has your back. He is a great family man. He's funny, with the kind of sense of humor that TB really appreciates, with the right blend of sarcasm mixed in. When he gets fired up in an OAC meeting? Yeah. You can't help but be glad he's on your side. 

Warren has worked with a lot of different Princeton teams and a ton of athletes in his first 10 years, from rowers and football players to baseball players, field hockey players and water polo players. He has been very much a key part of the women's basketball program from Day 1.

He's been with the women's basketball team through multiple Ivy championships, Ivy tournament championships, NCAAs and all of the other successes the Tigers have had. 

As such, he can appreciate tonight's game in Jadwin Gym (tip at 6) as much as anyone. It'll be the latest renewal of the Princeton-Columbia women's basketball rivalry, which has vaulted itself way up near (or maybe even at) the top of the best current rivalries in the Ivy League. 

If you look historically, the best Ivy League rivalries have been, to TB at least, Princeton-Penn men's basketball and Harvard-Yale football. Feel free to disagree if you like. 

There have been others that have had great longevity, and there are others that have had their moments. TB can think of quite a few off the top of his head. 

Today? As he said, Princeton-Columbia women's basketball is way up there. These games in recent years have featured some classics, with the accompanying intensity and big crowds. In the last five seasons, Princeton has won two outright titles, Columbia has won one outright title and they've shared two titles.  

Princeton (74.8) and Columbia (72.3) rank 1-2 in the Ivy League in scoring offense, with a nearly six-point drop down to third. This game will feature five of the top eight and seven of the top 12 scorers in the league, including Columbia's Riley Weiss, who leads the league at 18.6 per game. 

Princeton is the lone unbeaten in the league at 5-0, with Columbia alone in second at 4-1. The league season reaches the halfway point this weekend, as the Tigers are at Cornell tomorrow at 5 and Columbia is at Penn tomorrow. 

On the men's side, Princeton is at Cornell tonight and Columbia tomorrow night, with tip-off at 6 for both games. 

Entering the weekend, you have eight teams separated by three games, including six teams separated by one at either 3-2 or 2-3. Princeton is one of the team's in that 3-2 group; Columbia and Cornell are both 2-3. 

Obviously the top four teams will advance to Ivy Madness in March, and that tournament will be held at Cornell, so the Tigers hope tonight's game is not its only trip to Ithaca this season. 

Cornell is a massive challenge offensively, as the Big Red rank fifth in Division I at 92.1 points per game. The Big Red make 14 threes per game, easily the best in the league. 

Princeton had a very nice bounce-back win last weekend with a 63-53 win over Brown at Jadwin, after being swept on the road the week before. In fact, Princeton is 3-0 in the league at home and 0-2 on the road. 

Tiger sophomore Malik Abddullahi has more than doubled his scoring and rebounding averages from a year ago, going from 4.7 to 9.3 in points and from 2.7 to 6.0 in rebounds per game.  

 

Weekend Forecast

Does this look appealing to you? 

It does not to TigerBlog. He's a beach, summer, warm, sunscreen, long walk guy. 

The only ice he likes is the kind that is followed by "cream." He prefers his hockey to be the "field" kind rather than the "ice" kind. 

If the temperature in Princeton does make it below zero over the weekend, it'll be the first time since 2018 that such a recording will have happened here. 

That all begs this question: At what point will Princeton be completely free of any snow? When will it all have melted away? 

March? April? 

Anyway, no game today: 

*

Meanwhile, it's a relatively slow weekend ahead, and by relatively slow, TigerBlog means only 38. On second thought, that's not slow. 

If you think it's cold here, just take 10 degrees off of what is called for in Princeton and you'll have the temperature this weekend for the Canton/Potsdam area near the Canadian border. Both the Princeton men's and women's hockey teams will be there, though on opposite schedules. 

The women will play tomorrow at 3 in Canton to take on St. Lawrence, while the men will be in Potsdam at 7 to take on Clarkson. They switch venues and opponents the next night, with the women at 2 and the men at 7 again. 

The Princeton women enter the weekend in second place in the ECAC standings with 35 points, one half point behind Quinnipiac (35.5) and tied with Clarkson. Yale is in fourth with 30 points, with Cornell at 28.5.

On the men's side, Princeton was out of the league last weekend at Bentley. The Tigers are in fifth place in the ECAC standings, four points back of Cornell in the race for a first-round playoff bye and home ice in the league quarterfinals. This weekend's opponents are a combined 8-16-2 in the league, but this trip is never an easy one. 

*

In the "you may want to make sure your hair is dry before you go outside" department, this weekend will see the women's water polo team at home and the men's and women's swimming and diving teams are on the road. 

The women's water polo team is hosting the Princeton Invitational and will play five different opponents over three days, beginning with tomorrow's match against Mt. St. Mary's at 4:30 in DeNunzio. There will be two more matches for the Tigers Saturday (Santa Clara at noon, Marist at 7:30) and then two more Sunday (Siena at 9:30, Wagner at 3:30).

As for the swimming and diving teams, they will be in Cambridge for the annual H-Y-P tri-meet. It's safe to assume that the upcoming Ivy League champions for the men's and women's meets will be one of those three. 

*

If you want to see great tennis in an amazing facility, then come by the Si Qin Family Indoor Tennis Center this weekend. 

The Princeton men are home at 5 tomorrow against Oklahoma State. To get to be at home, Princeton had flights canceled and diverted and everything else, resulting in the need to eventually fly to DC and bus back to New Jersey. 

The Tigers had been on the road for 10 days, with stops in Boise, Seattle and San Diego while going 3-1 with wins over Boise State, Washington and Miami before a tough loss to Arizona State. 

After the match against OK State, Princeton will also be home twice Sunday, against Liberty at 10 and Virginia Tech at 3.  

The women will be home Saturday at 1 against Fordham and then against Sunday at 5 against St. John's. The Tigers are off to a 2-0 start, with wins last weekend over James Madison and Rutgers.  

Again, if you haven't been to the new racket center, it is a beautiful place to play and to watch.  

*

There are also four basketball games this weekend, with the women at home tomorrow against Columbia (6) and Saturday against Cornell (5). The men are at Cornell tomorrow at 6 and at Columbia Saturday at 6.

TB will have much more on those games tomorrow.  

The complete Princeton Athletics schedule is HERE. 

Wherever you are, it's likely that the weather there is brutal. Stay safe.  

National Champ, Again

So Bill Belichick will not be a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer? 

Apparently not, if the stories that TigerBlog saw yesterday are true. To the list of reasons that were speculated upon in these stories TB adds this: Stiff Princeton associate head field hockey coach and huge Patriots fan Dina Rizzo on a picture request and you have to wait at least a year to get into any Hall of Fame. 

Don't remember that story? You can read it again HERE.

Just make sure you don't make the same mistake. 

As an aside, it's possible that there are other factors that have gotten in Belichick's way, such as his record with and without Tom Brady as his starting quarter, the fact that Brady won a Super Bowl without Belichick and the fact that the Patriots have now made it back to the big game without him as well. 

The whole no-picture-with-Dina thing didn't help of course. 

The subject today isn't Halls of Fame though. It's national champions.

Princeton added another one yesterday when junior Zeina Zein won the College Squash Association individual championship for the second straight season. This time, Zein took down Harvard's Caroline Fouts 11-8, 12-10, 5-11, 14-12 in the final. 

Zein is now 12-1 all-time in the individual championships, beginning as a freshman, when she reached the semifinals. She's also 10-0 in matches played in the majestic squash facility that has been set up in New York City's Grand Central Terminal. 

Fouts actually led 3-0 in Game 1, 6-0 in Game 2 and had two game balls in Game 4. Zein toughed it out each time. 

The win vaults her into elite Princeton women's squash company as the fourth Tiger to be at least a two-time national champion. The other three are Wendy Zaharko (1972, 74, 75), Demer Holleran (1986, 87, 89) and Julia Beaver (1999, 2000, 01).

Zaharko has one of the most amazing stories of any athlete in Princeton history. Her freshman year of 1970 was wiped out by a spinal condition combined with a fall on a wet Jadwin Gym court that left her in a full body cast that she referred to as a "turtle shell." 

She was told that she would probably never play squash again. When the cast was taken off, she first had to learn to walk again. 

Despite all that, she would never lose a squash match at Princeton. The missing championship on her resume came her sophomore year, when a conflict between the U.S. national championships and a Princeton regular season match led to her leaving the team and not competing in the college final.

Zaharko, by the way, is a medical doctor today, as is Beaver. 

Zein's repeat got TigerBlog to thinking about other Princeton athletes who have been multiple time individual national champions. 

Staying with the sport of squash, the men's program has had six different multiple time individual champs. The first was back in 1941 and 42, when Charles Brinton was the winner. The others were Roger Campbell (1954, 55), Stephen Vehslage (1959, 60, 61), Jeff Stanley (1987, 88), Peter Yik (1999. 2000) and of course Yasser El Halaby (2003, 04, 05, 06).

Off the top of his head, TB can think of Tora Harris, who won two NCAA high jump championships (indoor and outdoor 2002) and Sondre Guttormsen, who won three NCAA pole vault championships (indoor 2022, 23; outdoor 2022).

Soren Thompson (2001, 03) was a two-time individual fencing national champion. George Church was the 1912 and 1914 individual national tennis champ. G.T. Dunlap was a two-time NCAA individual golf champion (1930, 31).

There might be others who escaped TB's notice. Either way, you can see how hard it is to do what Zein has just accomplished. 

And she has another year to try to make it a three-peat. Or a Z-peat.  

 

Back In The Final

You know what is worse than shoveling snow? 

Shoveling snow after you've already shoveled the same spot a few hours earlier. What should you do? 

Are you a "shovel every few hours" person or a "wait until it's all over and then tough it out, even though the snow is really heavy by then" person? 

TigerBlog isn't sure what the exact snowfall totals were outside his house. He does know that it was a lot, easily more than a foot. 

He's always been a  "wait until it's over" shoveler, though this time he went out Sunday afternoon and cleared off a bunch of it, mostly because there was freezing rain and sleet in the forecast. It was a good thing he did; when he tried to open his screen door yesterday morning, it was frozen shut. 

So now what to do? He considered tossing boiling water through the screen, though he ultimately figured that three things would happen, and only one of them was good. First, it would melt the ice to allow him to open the screen. That was the good part. 

The two bad outcomes, though, were that 1) it would refreeze and turn his front porch into a mini Baker Rink and 2) he would almost surely get half of the scalding water on the outside of the screen and the other half on his feet. 

Fortunately, before it came to that, his neighbor wandered over and chipped away the ice with a crowbar. Of course, his neighbor is a 75 year old woman, which made TB feel a tad guilty that he was simply standing on one side while she did all the work. At the same time, he realized that she was pretty handy with the crowbar, so he better stay on her good side. 

Also, in fairness and in the spirit of being neighborly, TB did offer her a Snapple. 

TB also needs to give a shoutout to his friend Todd, who said that he was very confident that TB wouldn't lose power in the storm. He said that given that it wouldn't be windy and wouldn't be heavy weight snow, the area would be fine — and it was. 

TigerBlog thought that if the power was going to go out, it would have been Sunday at 3, right at the start of the football games. Fortunately, that wasn't the cae. 

As an aside, the Super Bowl will be Seattle against New England and not TB's preseason prediction of Detroit against Buffalo.  

Meanwhile, on the subject of championships, the College Squash Association individual final — known as the Ramsay Cup in honor of Princeton head coach Gail Ramsay, a four-time individual champion — will be held today at 1:30 at Grand Central Station. If you forgot, the tournament was first held on a special court at the famous train station. 

In fact, a year ago, TigerBlog's colleague Jon Kurian attended that first edition and wrote this in a guest entry afterwards:

Squash is a great sport to watch. Watching it played in a glass court is really cool, but watching it played in a glass court in Grand Central Station was truly surreal. In my opinion, a venue as majestic and grand as Grand Central Terminal was the perfect spot for such a huge event. As I watched, I could not help but notice the enormous crystal chandelier that hung over the court, or the crowd of people walking behind the court on their way to or from the train, or the many people who stopped to watch on their way in or out of the world’s largest train station. 

Last year's winner was Princeton's Zeina Zein, who rolled to the championship without dropping a game. She is back in the final today after winning an all-Princeton semifinal, taking down her teammate Alex Jaffe in four games. 

Zein is a junior from Alexandria, the one in Egypt, not Virginia. Jaffe is a freshman from Philadelphia, the one in Pennslyvania, not in ancient Constantinople.  

The championship match pits Zein and Harvard sophomore Caroline Fouts, who was a high school classmate of Princeton field hockey goalie Olivia Caponiti at Sacred Heart Academy in Greenwich, the one in Connecticut, not England.

Zein is seeking to become Princeton's first back-to-back women's champion since Julia Beaver won each year from 1999-2001. 

Snow Ball

If you're one of the 200 million or so people who was in the path of this storm, TigerBlog hopes you're doing well. 

Of course, like most huge storms, the buildup for this one was way longer than the event itself. How many times did you hear someone say: "Milk? Bread? Eggs? Are people worried that they won't be able to make French toast?"

When storms like this are forecast, there are only two questions TB has: 1) how much snow and 2) when will it start. He doesn't need to know about the low pressure and the fact that driving may be treacherous. He assumes some weather system caused it and that the roads will be slick.  

TB remembers the two biggest blizzards he's experienced — the one in 1978 and the one in 1996. Both of those topped 30 inches of snow, and yet how long was anyone really trapped?  

TigerBlog is not a winter guy. He supposes there are those people who prefer the cold exist, though he can't understand why.

What percentage of people, would you imagine, would list winter as their favorite season? According to one poll TB saw, only 10 percent of Americans chose winter as the favorite. 

Oh, and according to that same poll, guess which states ranked 1-2-3 in terms of how many would say winter is their favorite? That would be: Florida, Hawaii, Arizona. That makes sense. 

The forecast for this storm was for anywhere from six to 24 inches, with some ice possibly mixed in. Whatever the final totals, it wasn't as good as, say, walking on a warm beach with your feet in the water. 

The snow didn't start here until early yesterday, which was about 24 hours later than it was supposed to. TB supposes the snow moved at its own pace, maybe just to spite the forecasters. 

Either way, the storm fortunately didn't disrupt any of the weekend's Ivy League basketball games (snow ball?), with each team for the men and women with just one game on the schedule. For Princeton, this meant a women's game at Brown and a men's game at home against Brown, and both Tiger teams came away with victories. 

The women knocked off Brown 58-49, running their winning streak to 15 straight. That's impressive. 

You want to know something that might be more impressive? It's the fourth time a Carla Berube-coached Princeton team has won at least 15 straight games. 

That's ridiculous, considering she's in her sixth season as the Tiger head coach. 

Next up for Princeton will be the renewal of what has quickly become a great rivalry as Columbia comes to Jadwin Friday at 6, followed by Cornell Saturday. Princeton is now 5-0 and atop the Ivy standings; the Lions are the only team 4-1, followed by 3-2 Harvard and Brown. 

Will those four be the four teams who reach Ithaca for Ivy Madness? Penn and Cornell are both 2-3 and will have something to say about that. 

On the men's side, it's way too early to start to figure out who the four will be. Yale is in first at 4-1. Brown, after its 63-53 loss to Princeton Saturday, is 1-4. Would you write the Bears off? They've been written off before and made a big run to reach the Ivy tournament. 

Everyone else in the league is now either 3-2 (Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth) or 2-3 (Cornell, Columbia, Penn). This is the most wide-open the race for Ivy Madness spots has been. 

The game Saturday at Jadwin saw Jackson Hicke score 19 more points while adding 13 rebounds as he continues to vault himself into solid first-team All-Ivy range. Dalen Davis put up 22 more as he has returned from the injury that cost him nine games. 

Just as with the winning streaks for Berube teams, the men's team also has an astonishing one as well. Princeton was 22 for 22 from the foul line against Brown, after going 11 for 11 against Dartmouth in the previous game. 

Go back to the end of the game before that (at Harvard), and you'll see Princeton made its final five free throw attempts in that one. Add that all together, and that's 38 straight made foul shots by the team. 

As an aside, Princeton was shooting 72 percent for the year from the foul line. Are the 38 straight makes a record of some sort? The NCAA record book only lists single-game, with 32 for 32 the best. 

The men are on the road this coming weekend, first at Cornell Friday and then at Columbia Saturday.