Old Rivals

The Princeton men's basketball team hosts Yale tomorrow, with tipoff at 2 in Jadwin Gym. 

The women, now ranked 24th in the country, will also play Yale tomorrow, also at 2. That game also tips at 2. 

Both Princeton teams won their Ivy openers this past week against Penn, both in close games. Olivia Hutcherson earned her first Ivy League Player of the Week award after she scored a career-high 20 in the 74-68 win at the Palestra. 

It's the men's game from the other night that TigerBlog would like to talk about today, however. Princeton won that one 78-76 Monday night after playing the most perfect basketball you can play in the first 11 minutes of the second half (this included making the first 16 shots after intermission). It's a win that gave Princeton the all-time series lead (127-126) for the first time ever. 

The end was dramatic too, as a Penn three-point attempt that would have won the game didn't fall. TigerBlog, though, starts when the opening tip was about 90 minutes away. 

Fans had not yet entered the building. Various players from both teams were milling around, getting some shots up, stretching, doing what players do before a game. 

Those working at the game were busy setting up — television, table personnel, game management. It was very much what you'd see prior to any college basketball game anywhere. Nothing was out of the ordinary. 

Over in what are the VIP seats opposite the Princeton bench sat two people, one in a blue Penn Basketball pullover and the other in a black Princeton Basketball pullover. They were talking like old friends who hadn't seen each other in a long time, and, well, that's exactly what they were. 

The Penn guy was head men's basketball coach Fran McCaffery. The Princeton guy was Roger Gordon,  who has no title, though if he did it would be something along the line of "guy who has done pretty every single thing you can do for the program and has done so for six decades now."

Here they are together:

They are both Philly guys, even if Roger has been a Princeton guy since the 1970s and Fran has had coaching stops at Lehigh, Siena and Iowa. TB wasn't sure how long it's been since they'd seen each other when he pointed them to each other Monday night, but however many years it had been melted away in the moment. 

"I tried to recruit this guy," Roger said laughing as they hugged.  

Then there was another picture that was taken at the game Monday. This one also mixed the two teams and the rivalry that has meant so much to so many. 

You know what's in this picture? 

That's 3,234 college points. That's seven All-Ivy League selections. That's seven Ivy League championships. 

And now, 40-something years later, that's a lot of smiles. 

Who are they? 

Well, you probably recognize Howard Levy in the middle. Howard, Princeton Class of 1985, was an assistant coach at Princeton under Bill Carmody, John Thompson and Joe Scott before becoming the head coach at Mercer County Community College. 

The other two guys? Those are also Penn guys. 

On the left is Bruce Lefkowitz, Class of 1987. On the right is Paul Little, Class of 1983. Little was the 1980 Ivy Rookie of the Year and 1983 Player of the Year. All three were All-Ivy League selections. All three played in the NCAA tournament. 

And all three were big parts of the Princeton-Penn rivalry.  

TigerBlog talks all the time about the bond that comes from being teammates and how it endures forever. That is certainly the case.

There is also, though, a different kind of bond, the one between rivals. Maybe it doesn't start out as being friendly, but it softens as the years (and decades) go by. Respect grows. Memories fade just enough that the exact way the game played out isn't exactly remembered the same by everyone. 

And what are you left with? Old rivals, smiling together, while the rivalry that brought them together plays out another classic in front of them.  

It's another special part about college athletics.  

And it was on full display at Jadwin Monday night.  

Back At It

So TigerBlog was walking outside of Jadwin Gym along Faculty Road the other day when he saw this guy. 

They both eyeballed each other for a second and then both backed up a bit — one faster than the other. Then they seemed to assess that the other posed no danger and went about their business. 

TB was going to ask if the fox wanted to get a picture together, but he thought better of it. Instead, he settled for a candid of the fox, who strolled by, flashed TB a paw bump and then turned left towards the lake. 

Foxes, by the way, actually pose very little threat to humans unless they're attacked. They're actually more afraid of people than the people are of them. This little fact meant nothing to TigerBlog when he first saw his little friend of course, and nor does he recommend trying to go up to one to make a friend. 

TigerBlog can't help but wonder where that fox is right now. Does he have a fox family somewhere in the area? Or is he a lone wolf, er, fox?

It turns out that foxes are in fact loners. Who knew? Perhaps this is the start of something for TB: "In addition to his work with Princeton Athletics, TigerBlog has also become one of the world's leading authorities on the social habits of the fox. His books include the history of women's athletics at Princeton, a novel and his recently released 'Of Fox and Men.'" 

Yeah, no. 

TB will just leave it as hopefully that guy found something to eat and is now enjoying some fox downtime.

And back to Princeton Athletics, there have been 18 total events between Dec. 7 and today, which is Jan. 8. After that lull, there will now be 23 events between today and tomorrow alone. 

Where will more of them be held than anywhere else? If you said "the Naval Academy," you would be correct. 

By the way, TigerBlog will give a shout-out to his longtime friend and colleague Stacie Michaud, with whom he has worked along with Loyola's Ryan Eigenbrode and Johns Hopkins' Ernie Larossa on the NCAA men's lacrosse statkeeping manual. 

They all got together this past summer for lunch. Judging them to be no threat, TB did in fact get a picture with the group. 

 

Stacie works with Navy football and Navy men's lacrosse, among many other teams, and she is now looking at a remarkable first: the Midshipmen will be playing football and men's lacrosse in the same month.

Yes. Navy defeated Cincinnati 35-13 Jan. 2 in the Liberty Bowl, and the men's lacrosse team plays its first regular season game on Jan. 31 against High Point. 

Crossover season is supposed to be fall/winter or winter/spring, not fall/spring. That's 29 days from the last football game and first men's lacrosse game. 

Again, it takes a lot of effort from a lot of people on a lot of campuses to keep all these teams able to compete. Most of those people do their work anonymously and only get noticed if something goes wrong, but there are so many hard workers out there who do this out of love.  

If Stacie is looking for something to do in her brief time in between, she can go see four different Princeton teams compete on her campus this weekend. The men's and women's swimming and diving teams will be there, along with the host Mids, Division III powerhouse Kenyon and Delaware, for a meet that will run tomorrow and Saturday. 

The men's and women's track and field teams will also be at Navy for a meet Saturday. 

The men's and women's squash teams will be at Virginia Saturday, while the wrestling team is at Franklin & Marshall tomorrow. 

There is also, as TB wrote earlier this week, home men's hockey (RPI and Union tomorrow and Saturday, both at 7) and away women's hockey (at Union tomorrow at 6 and at RPI Saturday at 3). There is also home men's basketball against Yale and away women's basketball at Yale, both Saturday at 2. 

This weekend is just the start of the mad rush that starts shortly. Between the end of this weekend and the end of January, there will be 96 Princeton athletic events. And then the spring teams start to play in February. 

By the time everyone exhales, it'll be summer again.  

That's what makes all this fun.  

First Place

The best game TigerBlog has ever seen at Hobey Baker Rink — and one of the very best he's seen pretty much anywhere — was back on March 4, 2017. 

It was Game 2 of the ECAC opening round series between Princeton and Colgate. The Tigers had lost the first game in overtime and were down 3-2 in the second game, where a loss would have meant the series. And when TB says "down 3-2," he means "down a goal with 10 seconds to go."

And with five seconds to go, with the clock running. Shockingly, miraculously, heart-stoppingly — Princeton tied it, on an Eric Robinson goal with one second left. Max Veronneau then won it overtime, and Princeton then won Game 3 and the series. 

That's the same Eric Robinson who has now played 424 games in the NHL, with 63 goals and 73 assists. Perhaps TB will reach out to Robinson and see where that last-second goal ranks all time for him. 

TigerBlog thought of that goal when he watched the Princeton-Harvard men's game Saturday night. This time, Princeton was up 2-0 into the third period, only to have Harvard tie it. Would this game go to overtime? 

Nope. Kai Daniels stuffed in the game-winner, assisted by Kai Greaves, with 2.6 seconds to go. Kai from Kai. How many of those have there been all-time?  

The 3-2 win completed a weekend sweep of nationally ranked Dartmouth (a 5-4 Princeton win Friday night) and Harvard. The Tiger men have now won five straight and have not lost since Nov. 29. 

Princeton, not surprisingly, took two of the ECAC weekly awards, with Tyler Rubin as the top defenseman for the second straight week and Arthur Smith as the top goalie. Rubin had three assists and three blocked shots in the two games, and Smith had 58 saves with the six goals against. 

Where are they in the ECAC standings? First place. 

Where are the women? Also first place.  

Getting back to the men, they also moved into the national rankings this week, coming in at No. 20 in the USCHO.com poll. It's the first time Princeton has been ranked since November of 2018. 

In addition, the National Collegiate Percentage Index ratings have Princeton currently at No. 8. These are the ratings that determine the NCAA tournament field.  

Winning streak. National ranking. Princeton up at the top of the standings. This has been a great start to Year 2 under head coach Ben Styer. 

This is from the story on goprincetontigers.com about the national ranking:

The Tigers have been dominant at Hobey Baker Rink, winning all eight home games to start the 2025-26 season. Princeton's eight-game winning streak at home to start the season is the longest in the 103-year history of Hobey Baker Rink and is tied with Cornell for the current active longest home winning streak in the nation. Princeton's six consecutive ECAC wins also marks the nation's longest-active conference play winning streak. 

The women outscored Stonehill 18-1 over the course of two games at Baker Rink the past weekend. Princeton had eight different players with at least one goal, led by Issy Wunder and MacKenzie Alexander with five each. 

Princeton's women are ranked ninth in this week's poll and more importantly eighth in the NPI. This is all under a first-year head coach, Courtney Kessel. 

The ECAC men's standings right now have Princeton with 19 points, one ahead of Cornell and Dartmouth and two ahead of Harvard. The women's standings have Princeton with 22 points, ahead of second place Brown (20.5), third place Clarkson (19.5) and then Cornell and Yale (18 each).

Next up will be two road games this weekend for the women (at Union Friday at 6 and RPI Saturday at 3) and two home games for the men (home against RPI Friday and Union Saturday, both at 7). 

There is a very, very long way to go between now and March. There's a difference between being in first place in early January and being there as the regular season winds down. 

Still, there's also a difference between being in first place in January and being way down the standings, hoping to make a run. 

And, of course, what both Princeton teams have definitely done to date is make what comes next pretty exciting. As of early January, you can't ask for much better than what these two teams have given so far. 

What A Night In Jadwin

This was a win 123 years in the making. 

Or, more accurately, 123 years and 11 minutes. 

Before TigerBlog gets to what happened last night in Jadwin Gym, he first has to give an apology to the women's and men's hockey teams. TB had written and had ready to go for today an entry on the great weekend both teams had. 

After last night's Princeton-Penn men's basketball game, that entry will have to wait until tomorrow. So yes, apologies to the hockey teams — and congrats on both being in first place in the ECAC. 

Okay, back to Jadwin Gym last night. There is so much that can be said about what happened in one extraordinary game. TB will start with the voice he had in his head when he wrote about the game for yesterday.

It was the voice of former Princeton head men's coach Bill Carmody, who was whispering — figuratively — into TB's ear the same thing over and over: "The Whammy. The Whammy. The Whammy."

It was a phrase that Carmody used a lot. It describes a situation that most people would call simply a "jinx," where someone mentions something good that might happen before it has a chance to actually do so. If it doesn't, then it's your fault for mentioning it. 

That's "The Whammy."

And so it was that TB didn't mention the historical significance of this game. 

Penn won the first three games of the series that started in 1903. Princeton tied it at 3-3 by 1905, and then Penn retook the lead. From that point until their second meeting last year, Princeton never tied the series again. 

Ah, but last year's sweep brought the all-time total to Princeton 126 wins, Penn 126 wins. And that meant that a Princeton win would give the Tigers, for the first time ever, the all-time series lead. 

Did you read any of that in TigerBlog yesterday? No, you didn't. That's because of Carmody's voice. 

Had TB written it and Princeton lost, it would have The Whammy personified. 

So what happened? Well, something incredible, for history and for the present. 

Princeton 78, Penn 76. Princeton 127, Penn 126.  

It certainly didn't start out looking like this would be the night for history. Penn led by 14 with just about two minutes to go in the first half at 30-16, but Princeton finished the half on enough of a run to make it 32-24 at the break. 

What happened to start the second half was unfathomable. No, it was more than that. It was perfection. 

To give you a sense of what happened, consider this: Penn started out the half by shooting 6 for 12 from the field, including 2 for 3 from three-point range, and went from up eight to down seven. 

Has that ever happened anywhere before, on any level? A team shoots 50 percent from the field with double figure attempts and adds a pair of three-pointers and is outscored by 15 in that time? 

How?  

Well, quite simply, Princeton couldn't miss. 

TigerBlog was sitting with, among others, men's soccer coach Jim Barlow, his assistant coaches Steve Totten and Sam Maira, his brother Chris (of NFL Films and a Penn alum), former women's track and field coach Peter Farrell and former men's track and field coach Fred Samara. They were watching and talking, the normal sort of stuff. 

Peter was doing what he does, which is telling great stories about his time at Princeton, or his love for his alma mater Notre Dame or his daughter's recent wedding to Princeton women's lacrosse great Olivia Hompe. Very few people can tell stories like Peter. 

As the stories went along, Princeton began its move. First it was tied. Then the Tigers began to pull away. 

At one point, TB checked out the live stats to see what the Princeton shooting percentage for the second half was. Turned out it was 100. As in 100 percent. As in no shots missed. 

When TB pointed this out to the group, they began to count with each continued make. Eventually, that streak went to 16. Sixteen? Sixteen straight makes to start the half? 

Yes. And that included four threes. And this was a Princeton team that started the game 3 for 15. 

TB has never seen anything like it. The 16th make came with nine minutes left and put Princeton up 63-48 (the streak was actually 17 straight made field goals, including the one that Jackson Hicke made to end the first half). 

Princeton scored eight points in the first 11 minutes of the first half. The Tigers scored 39 in the first 11 minutes of the second half.  

How did Princeton manage to do this?  

There were two catalysts. First, Jack Stanton decided to morph into Michael Jordan, scoring 12 of his game-high 23 in that stretch. And then there was Dalen Davis. 

Returning after an injury that cost him most of November and all of December, Davis stepped onto the court five minutes into the first half and then went 1 for 5 with two points before intermission. 

In the second half? He exploded too, scoring 17 more while shooting 7 for 8 from the field. 

It wasn't just the points from Davis. It was the emotional lift he gave his team. You couldn't help but feel it and sense it if you were in the building. 

Penn, though, didn't fold. In fact, the game ended with a three-point attempt that would have won the game for the Quakers. 

So if you add it up, Princeton outscored Penn 39-16 in those first 11 minutes of the second half but was outscored 60-39 the rest of the night. That was 39 Tiger points in those 11 minutes, and 39 Tiger points in the other 29. 

They were 11 stunning minutes of absolute Princeton perfection. 

They were 123 years in the making.  

Princeton-Penn x 2

That 13-point first quarter lead was long gone, and now with little more than five minutes to go, the Princeton women's basketball team was down by four. 

The occasion was the Tigers' Ivy League opener at the Palestra Saturday against a Penn team that had five straight en route to a 10-3 record. The Quakers had battled all the way back from looking like they might be blown out to the verge of pulling it out. 

Ah, but TigerBlog had learned his lesson. Remember the George Mason game? 

Well, this time TB never lost faith. He can honestly say that he never thought Princeton would lose. And in the end, the final was Princeton 74, Penn 68. 

The Tigers finished the game with a 17-7 run, one that showed once again that this is a team that knows how to win. In doing so, Princeton extended its own winning streak to 11 while improving to 13-1 overall and running its winning streak against Penn to 15 straight. 

It's not easy to do what Princeton did in that game. When you have an early double figure lead like that (it was 25-12 at one point) and then look up to see that you're down (for the record, it was a 12-2 Penn run to start the fourth quarter that left it 61-57 Quakers with 5:44 left. 

Now Princeton had no momentum. It's margin for error was gone. Shots hadn't been falling like they had been. 

In fact, Princeton missed its first seven field goal attempts in the fourth quarter and made only one of its first nine. And then the switch was flipped. 

After falling behind by four, Princeton shot 5 for 8 for the rest of the game. Oh, and two of those misses? They were followed by offensive rebounds and second-chance makes. 

What did the win make Carla Berube's regular-season Ivy League record as Tiger head coach? Is 66-5 good? 

(Mental note: TigerBlog needs to remind Berube that she's promised him a karaoke duet at some point). 

Once again, Princeton showed that it is more than a one-woman team. This time, it was Olivia Hutcherson's turn to lead the team in scoring, with a career-high 20, along with five rebounds, three assists, three steals and two blocks. 

Madison St. Rose had 15 in the game, the fourth of which was her 1,000th career point, making her the 29th Tiger women's player to reach the milestone. It came on a jump shot from above the foul line in the first quarter. 

St. Rose, as you probably know, played only four games last year as a junior before a knee injury ended that season. As such, she's reached 1,000 points in what is essentially 2.5 seasons. That's very impressive. 

The women are at Yale this coming Saturday at 2. 

The men? They're home tonight, also against Penn. Tip-off in Jadwin is 7. 

For those who don't know this, the Princeton-Penn men's basketball rivalry is unlike any other in college basketball. Between 1963 and 2009, only three times did a team other than those two go to the NCAA tournament as the Ivy League champion. 

There is no league that got only one bid that can make that claim. Not even close. 

The Princeton-Penn men's basketball game is always special. TB has seen it for 45 years now, starting as a Penn student and continuing through his newspaper career and all his decades at Princeton. The game just always feels different. 

It's the Ivy League opener for both as well. It's also the first Princeton-Penn game as a head coach for Fran McCaffery, a former Quaker point guard (extra credit if you know that he began his college career at Wake Forest). 

He's also the reason that TB got into the newspaper business, and as such to Princeton, in the first place. TB has shared this story before; the gist is that he and McCaffery had a work-study job together in the psychology department basement, and it was through Fran that TB met Jack McCaffery, his older brother and a longtime sportswriter/columnist in the Philadelphia area. It was Jack who actually got TB his first writing job. 

It'll be good to see Fran, and hopefully Jack will be in the building too. And then it will be time to root against them. 

Tip off, as he said, is at 7.  

Welcome To 2026

Happy 2026.

How was your New Years Eve? Did you have fun? You probably had more fun than TigerBlog. 

Well, unless your car slid on the ice and ended up with the front left wheel suspended over a small ravine you did. And unless you also fell on said ice in an effort to extricate your car from said predicament. 

TB called his 24-hour roadside assistance, and a tow truck arrived rather quickly. And what was TB told? Nah, can't help you. The truck would just slide on the ice as well, the driver told TigerBlog. 

Eventually, TB was able to slowly back his car up and have the left front tire somehow make its way back to join the other three on flat ground. Was everything smooth sailing from there? Well, sort of, only TigerBlog fell on the ice yet again. 

Ah, but both he and his car seemed to be fine yesterday. Mr. Tow Truck Driver had said to wait 12 hours to make sure he hadn't caused slow leak in the tire, and that doesn't appear to be the case.   

 

Enough of that. The holidays are officially over, which means that it's time for all the lights, decorations and trees to come down if they haven't already. 

It's Jan. 2, obviously. You know what that means, right? It means that the opening days for Princeton men's and women's lacrosse, baseball and softball are all, officially, next month. 

Before any of that, though, you have the first weekend of the new year, which figures some pretty good events on the Princeton Athletics calendar. In fact, there are only nine events between today and Monday, but the schedule makes up in quality what it lacks in quantity. 

It starts today (it's Friday, right? — who can tell what day of the week it is right about now?) with the first of two hockey doubleheaders at Baker Rink. The women will host Stonehill at 3 today and tomorrow, while the men will take on Dartmouth tonight at 7 and Harvard tomorrow at 7. 

The women will return to their ECAC schedule next weekend at Union and RPI. The Tigers are currently where in the league standings? 

If you guessed "first place," you are correct. Princeton has 22 points, followed by Clarkson with 19.5. Every team in the league has played 10 league games except Clarkson and St. Lawrence, who have played nine each. 

The two opponents for the men this weekend are both ranked, with Dartmouth at No. 8 and Harvard at No. 18. Dartmouth is the only unbeaten team in the ECAC at 6-0-0 for 18 points, followed by Cornell with 16, Harvard with 15 and Princeton with 13. 

So yes, these appear to be pretty good games on tap. 

Elsewhere, the women's basketball team will be at Penn tomorrow, with tip-off at 2. It's the Ivy League opener for both, and they've both had really good non-league success to this point. 

In fact they come into this game with a combined record of 24-4, with the Tigers at 12-1 and the Quakers at 10-3. Princeton has won 10 straight, with its only loss to Maryland, who is 14-0 and ranked eighth in the Division I NET ratings (and sixth in the AP poll). 

Penn has won five straight games, including a sweep of Maryland-Eastern Shore and Binghamton at the FDU tournament this past Monday and Tuesday. 

Princeton's NET ranking is now 38 in Division I (and 25 in the AP poll). Penn is 110 in the NET, behind the Tigers, Columbia (58) and Harvard (81) among Ivy schools. 

As a point of interest heading into the game, Princeton leads the Ivy League in scoring with 75.9 points per game. Penn is third in the league in scoring offense at 54.5 points per game.  

The wrestling team (split squad matches against Lock Haven and Hofstra Sunday morning) and men's volleyball team (exhibition match in Toronto tomorrow night) are on the road this weekend, which brings TB to the ninth game on the schedule: Monday's men's basketball home game against Penn. 

It's the Ivy opener for both of them as well. Jadwin tip-off is at 7.  

TB will have more on that one here Monday.  

 

Goodbye 2025. Hello 2026.

 

We can't return; we can only look. Behind from where we came. And go round and round and round in the Circle Game. — Joni Mitchell 

Ah, "The Circle Game." It's one of TigerBlog's 10 favorite songs of all time, for sure. 

It's a song about time, and how there's no stopping it. And, yes, the seasons have once again gone round and round and the painted ponies have gone up and down, and the end of another year has arrived. 

Goodbye 2025. Hello 2026.

As has become a TigerBog tradition, the last day of the year brings with it a Princeton Athletics review of the top Tiger moments of the previous 12 months. In case you have forgotten, here is the list of TB's top stories from each year since he started doing this in 2012 (and remember, he and he alone chose these):  

2012 - the NCAA field hockey championship
2013 - the Ivy League football championship
2014 - Julia Ratcliffe's NCAA hammer title
2015 - the women's basketball team goes 31-1
2016 - Ashleigh Johnson wins gold as an undergraduate
2017 - the women's soccer team defeats UNC to reach the NCAA quarterfinals
2018 - the men's hockey team wins the ECAC championship/the football team goes 10-0
2019 - the field hockey team reaches the NCAA final
2020 - the Covid pandemic
2021 - the women's lightweight rowing national championship
2022 - the death of Pete Carril
2023 - the men's basketball team reaches the Sweet 16 
2024 - 19 Princeton teams have won their most recent league title

And for 2025? Once again, there is no shortage of possibilities. 

Here is a list of teams that won league championships in 2025: 

Winter: men's fencing, men's indoor track and field, women's indoor track and field, men's volleyball, men's swimming and diving, women's swimming and diving

Spring: softball, women's lacrosse, women's golf, men's golf, women's outdoor track and field, men's outdoor track and field, women's lightweight rowing, women's open rowing

Fall: women's soccer, men's soccer, women's volleyball, men's cross country, women's cross country, men's water polo

If TB has his facts right, then that's 20 Princeton teams who have won their most recent league championship. That's more than half of Princeton's teams. 

Also, not on that list is Zeina Zein of the women's squash team, who won the individual national championship. 

Yup, as TB said, there are a lot of choices for the top story of the year.  

Why even bother ranking them? He doesn't want to slight any of these championship teams. 

Still, something has to be the No. 1 story of the year. And to TigerBlog, it's actually one of the teams that was not a conference champ, at least not in the regular season. 

The Princeton field hockey team lost to Harvard 3-1 on Sept. 26, effectively handing the Ivy League title to the Crimson. After all, Princeton and Harvard combined have lost only one league game between them to another league team since 2016. 

With that loss, Princeton slipped to 4-3 overall. Would the year get away from the Tigers? 

Instead, Princeton won 14 straight games from that point, making it all the way to double overtime of the NCAA championship game before falling to Northwestern 2-1. Along the way of its 14-game winning streak, Princeton twice defeated Harvard, first in the Ivy tournament final and then again in the NCAA semifinals. Princeton also avenged another of its losses, defeating Syracuse in the NCAA quarterfinals. 

It was heartbreaking to come so close, but it was also such an amazing run by a team that started four freshmen and four sophomores in the final and grew together in every way a team can. The run also showcased the amazing talent and athleticism of its one senior starter — four-time first-team All-American Beth Yeager. 

To TigerBlog, yes, that was the No. 1 story of the year. To others? Who knows. It's the great part of being part of Princeton Athletics. You can have 20 league champions and still have something else be the top story (though nothing is ever guaranteed one year to the next, so never take it for granted; remember the end of the movie "Patton").  

And with that? Have fun on New Year's Eve, if that's your thing — but make good decisions.  

Who knows what the next 12 months of Princeton Athletics will bring. Who knows what the No. 1 story of 2026 will be? 

Stay tuned.  

In the meantime, TigerBlog wishes everyone a very happy and healthy 2026.  

The Year In Photos

There is a men's basketball game at 1 today at Jadwin Gym between Princeton and Vermont .

The teams last played back on Nov. 26, when the Catamounts won 79-74. That makes this a 35-day gap between games. 

What was the gap between the first game this year and the previous game between them? How about almost 102 years. The only other time the teams met was on Jan. 9, 1924, in a game Princeton won 28-19.

When the game today ends, so will all Princeton Athletic events in the calendar year of 2025. There will be games this weekend to start 2026, after the ball drops in Times Square to turn the page to a new year. 

Princeton's teams combined for nearly 700 athletic events in 2025. There were championships — lots of them — and great moments pretty much every month. 

You know what there was more of than anything else? 

Photos. 

TigerBlog can't begin to guess how many photos were taken of Tiger athletes as they competed in 2025. The answer is in the millions though. 

Yes, millions. 

These photographers will typically take many thousands of photos for every game. They'll actually end up deleting most of them but will still send anywhere from several hundred to a few thousand on to the Office of Athletic Communications. 

Add in how many events are shot and the math takes you well into the seven figures. 

Which ones of all these photos are the best? TigerBlog figured he'd try to sort through the pile, but to be honest, there's just way too many of them. 

Heck, he could flood this space with league championship photos alone. That's a good problem to have though.  

Still, why not showcase some of the best ones? So here you go, with some of the pictures that really stood out for the last 12 months. 

So here you go, with some of the pictures that really stood out for 2025. They don't really need captions. They tell stories all by themselves. 

Which one is your favorite?:

 

The Patriot All-American

So Baylor's men's basketball team is going to have a new addition?

His name is James Nnaji, a 2023 second-round draft pick. That's NBA draft pick. 

To this, TigerBlog says: Good — with one condition. 

Nnaji needs to be an enrolled student who is on track to earn a degree in four years, subject to classroom attendance checks and academic progress updates. Should he fail to meet that standard, then he'd immediately (and permanently) be ineligible. The same is true with anyone else who 1) has been a pro athlete and 2) never played in college. For the latter, the five years to play four years rule still applies. 

Why not? At least that would bring a bit of "college" into the equation for these college athletes, no? Otherwise, what's the point of pretending that Power 4 football and basketball players are students too. In that case, just let them play. 

Either way, the case of Nnaji will probably be a tipping point. Either the football players who fill those massive stadiums need to also be college students or they don't. 

And, as this year has clearly shown, the fans will continue to watch and root for those teams either way.  

In the meantime, if you're tired of stories that are all about money for college athletes, then you need to read up on an event that is beginning today in Arizona. It's the The Patriot All-American golf tournament, where Princeton will be represented by four athletes. 

This isn't just another tournament. It's one that is all about honoring fallen service members and first responders. Each golfer was given a bag at the opening ceremonies yesterday with the name of someone in whose honor he or she will play. 

The tournament begins today and runs through Wednesday, with 54 holes of stroke play. 

Princeton's four golfers are Olivia Duan, Thanana Kotchasanmanee and Sarah Lim of the women's team and Eric Yun of the men's team. 

Beyond the golf, though, there's the matter of Air Force Captain Thomas Gramith, Police Officer Robert Zane, U.S. Marine Corps Major Megan McClung and Sergeant First Class Jason Lee Bishop.

These are the people whose memories the Princeton golfers are playing to keep alive. Here, you can read about them yourself: 

Air Force Captain Thomas Gramith, 27, of Eagan, Minnesota, was assigned to the 336th Fighter Squadron out of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, NC. He died on July 18, 2009 in an F-15E crash near the Ghazni province, Afghanistan. A team of U.S. and coalition forces immediately responded to the crash site, secured it and recovered the Airmen. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star. Capt. Gramith was born in St. Paul, MN and attended St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights. He attended North Dakota State University where he earned a degree in aeronautical engineering. He was also a member of the ROTC program and entered the Air Force in 2005 as a 2nd Lieutenant. Colonel Clark Wigley, Capt Gramith's first Professor of Aerospace Studies reflected, "Tom, like so many before him, was an uncommon young man who will certainly be missed. He died doing something he loved and probably would have done it for free knowing how much he looked forward to being an aviator."
Capt. Gramith is survived by his wife Angie and twin daughters Stella and Eva.

 
Police Officer Robert Zane, 45, of New York, NY died on May 12, 2009, from illnesses he contracted while inhaling toxic materials as he participated in the rescue and recovery efforts at the World Trade Center site following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Officer Zane died of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (kidney, lungs, brain and vertebrae). Officer Zane had served with the New York City Police Department for 16 years and was assigned to the Transit Bureau.
Islip Town and the Sayville community honored Zane with a street renaming and dedication ceremony in September 2020. The intersection of Versa Place and Lowell Road was renamed Robert A. Zane Jr. Way. Officer Zane posthumously received the NYPD Distinguished Service Medal in 2011 and his name has been added to memorials across the country including the 9/11 Responders Remembered Park, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the New York City Police Officers memorial wall. He is survived by his wife Tracy and their two children, Robert "Bobby" Zane III, and Abigail.
 

U.S. Marine Corps Major Megan McClung, 34, of Coupeville, WA, was assigned to the I Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group, I MEF, Camp Pendleton, Cali. She died December 6, 2006, while escorting Newsweek journalists into downtown Ramadi when a massive improvised explosive device destroyed her Humvee, instantly killing McClung and two others. While in high school and college, Maj McClung competed as a gymnast. She was also a triathlete (having competed in six Ironman competitions) and a marathoner. Maj McClung graduated from the Naval Academy and was commissioned in 1995. She served on active duty until 2004, when she entered the Reserves. She joined Kellogg, Brown, and Root, an American engineering and construction company and worked in Iraq as a private contractor. In 2006, she returned to active duty with the Marines and was deployed to Iraq as a public affairs officer with the I Marine Expeditionary Force. Major Megan McClung was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery on December 19, 2006. Her headstone bears a phrase she coined while training military personnel on how to conduct interviews with the press: "Be Bold. Be Brief. Be Gone." 

Sergeant First Class Jason Lee Bishop was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He was killed January 1, 2006, when his patrol came under fire. They were called in to investigate a report of a suspicious vehicle in a ravine. He got within 150 meters; the engine revved up and then blew up. SFC Bishop was killed because he stepped in front of a suicide bomber and saved his fellow soldiers. SFC Bishop graduated in 1993 from Holmes High School in Covington, then went to Fort Knox for training, eventually becoming a drill sergeant. For over 12 years, SFC Bishop served his country. He was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star posthumously following his death. A proud father, SFC Bishop loved his daughter and son fiercely. He was known for his strong sense of humor, and often had jokes to tell his loved ones. He was a loyal friend, who made sure to tell his friends before he deployed to remind his children what he was like if he didn't return. He is survived by his wife Katrina, his daughter Morgan, and his son Matthew. 

This is what college athletics is supposed to be — actual students who are competing athletically at a high level and trying to be the best they can be at both. 

It's why TB has always been happy at Princeton and couldn't imagine being anywhere else. 

Twas The Day After Christmas

How was your Christmas? 

Did you get any good presents? TigerBlog did — an air fryer from his children. He's already used it, with great results. It will get a lot of use going forward. 

Hopefully everyone else was as excited when they opened their presents. 

Among the other highlights of TB's Christmas Day was the halftime show of the Lions-Vikings game. Snoop Dog, Lainey Wilson and Andrea Bocelli? Something for everyone.

Can you look much cooler than Bocelli did in a white suit with sun glasses in a domed stadium while he sang "White Christmas?" Maybe Steve McQueen on a motorcycle at the end of "The Great Escape." Maybe Telly Savalas in any episode of "Kojak." That's about it. 

By the way, unless you count some leftover snow in parking lots, it was not a white Christmas in Princeton. It figures to be a white "day after Christmas," with 3-5 inches forecast, with an unhelpful layer of ice on top of that.  

Back at the football game, Minnesota won 23-10 to knock Detroit out of playoff contention. It made TB think back to September, when he made these not-so-accurate preseason NFL predictions:  

AFC Championship Game: Buffalo over Cincinnati
NFC Championship Game: Detroit over Washington
Super Bowl: Buffalo over Detroit

He can still be right about the Super Bowl champ. The other three teams won't even be in the playoffs. In fairness, Cincinnati and Washington did loose their quarterbacks for most of the year, and they were the main reason why TB had them where he did. 

He also wrote this:  

If he's right, he'll remind you in February. If he's wrong, you'll have long since forgotten.  

And yet he's bringing it up again.  

Also, TB thought Drew Brees was pretty good as an announcer. TB didn't like the extended in-game interviews Netflix had with former greats. 

The first game yesterday was Dallas at Washington, two teams who were already mathematically out of the playoffs. The last game was Denver at Kansas City. That makes six teams who played yesterday, five of whom will not be in the playoffs. 

Chris Oladokun was the starting quarterback for Kansas City. Can you name the three colleges at which he had played? Hint - they all start with an "S." 

Meanwhile, back at Princeton Athletics, you're down to two more athletic events for the calendar year of 2025. 

The first of those two is Sunday, when the men's hockey team hosts Brown at 2 pm. Keep in mind that this game is not an official ECAC or Ivy game. Princeton last played on Dec. 6, has a 7-4 record to date and fell to Brown 2-1 in Providence on Nov. 7 and will play the Bears again on Hobey Baker ice on Feb. 7. 

The other will be Tuesday at 1, when the men's basketball team hosts Vermont. Princeton played a wild game earlier this year with Vermont in Florida that ended with a 79-74 win for the Catamounts. Princeton went from down 23 in the second half all the way back to take the lead before Vermont pulled it out.  

After those games, the next games will be in 2026, though that's not that far in the future. There will only be two days with no events until January's schedule kicks off with a women's/men's hockey doubleheader at home a week from today. 

As is now a TigerBlog tradition, he will be offering up some year in review stuff next week. What was the top story of this year? There are way too many to choose from, and TB would probably get any number of different answers if he asked 10 or 20 others their thoughts. 

It's been a year of incredible success for Princeton teams. It'll be a lot to go through it all — and that of course is a great problem to have. 

Also, since it's the end of 2025, TB is contemplating another review for next week, one that goes over the top moments in Princeton Athletics in the first quarter of this century. If you think there are a lot of contenders for 2025, how about for a quarter of a century? 

Stay tuned.  

Oh, and as for where Oladokun played in college? The answer is South Florida, Samford and South Dakota State.