Tigers-Bulldogs

Well, today is Nov. 13, which can only mean one thing. 

It's the day that Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife. 

And so began the opening credits of perhaps TigerBlog's favorite television show of all time, "The Odd Couple." All these years later and he's pretty sure he still has every episode memorized, and why not? He certainly watched them all enough. 

You know who else did? Steve DiGregorio. 

When TB first started at Princeton, he spent a lot of time in the office that DiGregorio, then a Princeton assistant football coach, shared with Don Dobes. At some point, it became clear they were both huge "Odd Couple" fans, and that started years and years of quoting the show at the most random times. 

Ask TB when the last time something happened, and he's likely to echo what Oscar told the housekeeper (a former Army colonel) when she asked him the last time his robe had been washed: "I think it was the Ali-Frazier fight."

DiGregorio — Digger to everyone — passed away five years ago from pancreatic cancer. TB thinks of his friend often and can still hear his voice as he comes up with yet another line from the show: maybe "Kalnikoff know an idiot" or "an American frog? You bet I'll fix him."  

Digger loved a lot of things: his family and friends especially, as well as "The Odd Couple," his hometown of Nutley — and Princeton Football. 

He would have loved to be at Yale Bowl tomorrow for Princeton's game against Yale (kickoff at noon), one that has huge implications for the Tigers. Princeton enters the game tied for first place with Harvard in the Ivy League at 4-1, followed by 3-2 Brown and Dartmouth. 

Yale for its part is 4-4 overall, 2-3 in the league. Don't be fooled though. Yale has a two-game season now, this week against Princeton and next week at Fenway Park against Harvard. 

First, though, there is Craig Sachson's weekly senior feature for goprincetontigers.com and princetontigersfootball.com. It starts out this way: 

Rivalry games mean a little more during your senior year, so when his Clarkston football team fell behind early to Lake Orion during a 2022 showdown, Ethan Clark put the blinders on and just focused on the comeback. 

That gets you wanting more, doesn't it? If you do want more, you can click HERE. Four hundred and ten years? What's that about? 

Just read it. 

Meanwhile, Princeton enters the final two weeks of the season exactly where a team wants to be, with it all in front of the Tigers with this game and a home game next Saturday against Penn. Princeton opened the season with a loss at Bryant but has won six of seven since, with only a loss at Harvard.

Because the Ivy League has an automatic bid to the FCS playoffs, Princeton would need to finish ahead of Harvard (or end up with the tiebreaker in more complicated three-or-more way ties). No matter what else, though, two wins would mean no worse than a tie for the Ivy title. That's not bad for a team that came into this year off back-to-back three-win seasons. 

As for the game, you can start with what would happen if both teams hit their averages. For instance, if both teams score the number of points they average, then the final will be Yale 27.8, Princeton 20.5. On the other hand, if both teams allow the average number of points they do, then the final will be Princeton 24.3, Yale 15.0.

Some other info for you: 

* Yale leads the Ivy League in rushing offense and rushing defense
* Yale's Hugo Djeumeni Kemeni is the league's leading rusher with 1,045 yards, a figure that is 431 more than any other player in the league. If you think it's because he also leads the league in carries, which he does, keep in mind that his average of 5.5 yards per carry is the most of any player in the league with at least 20 carries
* Djeumeni Kemeni averages 130.6 yards per game on the ground; Princeton allows 121.4 per game

It's Nov. 13, which is a day for Digger. It's also the time of year you want to be playing big football games. 

Princeton will be doing just that tomorrow. Kickoff at noon.  

If A Kiss Is Just A Kiss, Can't A Tie Be Just A Tie?

If you think TigerBlog hates the word "loamy," it's not even his least favorite of the week. 

No, that honor belongs to a different word: "shootout."

The Princeton field hockey team continues to have one of the most incredible seasons you will ever see a team have in any sport, thanks to that dreaded shootout rule. Princeton is 13-5 on the year, which doesn't tell a fraction of the story. 

Princeton is 13-0 in games that have finished in regulation or overtime. Princeton is 0-5 in shootouts. It's extraordinary. 

Thanks to Nick Moeller at the NCAA, TigerBlog has learned that no other team in Division I has lost more than two shootouts. Princeton has five — most recently in the Ivy League tournament final against Yale this past Sunday. 

Princeton's five shootout losses are to the teams seeded second, third, fourth, sixth and eighth. For its part, Princeton is the fifth seed and will open the NCAA tournament against Syracuse tomorrow at 2:30 at UConn, who will play Lafayette in the first game in Storrs. The winners meet Sunday at noon for a trip to the Final Four, held this year at Louisville.  

Syracuse, by the way, is 4-1 in shootouts, including back-to-back wins over North Carolina and Boston College in the ACC tournament semis and final.  

As you know, Princeton reached the NCAA final a year ago, falling in double overtime to Northwestern. The Wildcats will look for a third straight championship this year as the top seed, though Princeton won the regular season game between the two.

That game was a 2-1 Tiger win in overtime. Princeton also beat Cornell in overtime. That's seven OT games out of 18, or the most of any season in program history. 

It's the shootouts, though, that are impossible to explain. TigerBlog hates them no matter who wins them, for a bunch of reasons, including: 

* at no point in a field hockey game do you see a breakaway from 23 meters away with no other players involved for eight seconds
* just by observation, it seems that in 75 percent of attempts, the goalie makes a save originally that takes her out of position, leaving an empty cage for a rebound that goes in just before the eight seconds expire
* this somewhat random way to decide a game has an out-sized impact on future fortunes for the teams involved

If the two teams are tied after 60 minutes of regulation and 15 minutes of overtime, then let it be a tie. If it's a postseason game, keep playing until someone scores. Knowing that you need to score to win changes your approach. 

Anyway, that's TB rant on shootouts. As for ties, TB refers you to the UNC-Wilmington women's soccer team. Why is that? It's because UNC-W is currently 11-0-7. If a kiss is just a kiss, can't a tie be just a tie? 

Speaking of women's soccer, Princeton will also be playing in the postseason, in this case the Ivy League tournament at Dartmouth. 

Princeton is the third seed in the ILT and will play today at 3:30 against second-seeded Columbia, with top seed Dartmouth and fourth seed Brown in the other semifinal. The winners play Sunday at 1 for the league's automatic NCAA tournament bid. 

The first goal in the Princeton-Columbia game will be the first between the teams this season, as they played to a 0-0 tie back on Halloween night in New York City. A year ago, Dartmouth won the Ivy tournament at Princeton; the Tigers are trying to reverse that this time around. 

Whatever happens in the tournament, Stella Monberg has already made some history, becoming the first Princeton player and second player in Ivy history to be the league's Offensive Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year.  

Princeton had two other first-team selections, Zoe Markesini and Kayla Wong. Julia Johnson, Dylan Jovanovic and Maddie Recupero were all second-team picks. 

Johnson is the daughter of Sydney Johnson, the 1997 Ivy men's basketball Player of the Year. Has there been another father/daughter All-Ivy combination? TB will have to look into that. 

By the way, the weather at both UConn and Dartmouth doesn't exactly look promising, but hey, that's what the postseason is about. Survive and advance, right?

And no ties.  

40 Down — Former Indianapolis Stadium

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

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

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

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

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

This was the exchange that followed: 

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

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

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

"40 Down — Former Indianapolis Stadium."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Think about it for a few paragraphs.

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

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

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

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

Oh, and your trivia answer: Steven Cook.

Tigers, Wildcats And Loamy

Loamy? 

What the heck kind of word is that? TigerBlog had never heard it before yesterday. Now it's one of his least favorite in the English language. 

What does it mean? Turns out it has something to do with soil. Here's what TB learned:

Loamy soil creates the perfect environment for plants, balancing moisture, drainage, and nutrients for healthy growth.

This soil type combines sand, silt, clay, and organic matter, offering the best qualities of each. 

Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Perfect soil. TB still doesn't like it. 

Why? It was yesterday's "Wordle" word — and TigerBlog didn't get it right. In doing so, he ended a career-best 211-day winning streak. To beat that, TB would have to get every Wordle correct between now and mid-June. Challenge accepted. 

If you win 211 of 212, then you have a winning percentage of .995, which still wouldn't be as good as Lauren Gosselin's career winning percentage as Princeton's women's basketball head coach. 

Okay, her tenure to date has lasted three games, all of which Princeton has won. It's been a pretty impressive three games, one that has seen Gosselin's team rally from fourth quarter deficits all three times. 

And yes, it won't last forever. It did for Eve Kraft, who went 26-0 as she started the Princeton women's tennis program back in the 1970s. It won't for Gosselin, or any other basketball coach. For now, though, it's fun to say that her winning percentage is tied for the greatest of any coach ever anywhere.

Fadima Tall was, not surprisingly, named the Ivy League Player of the Week after averaging 23.7 points and 13.3 rebounds per game. You know what TB would love to be able to easily look up? The last time a Princeton basketball player averaged those numbers of three games. 

To find out, TB asked this question of ChatGPT: Who is the last Princeton University men's or women's basketball player to average at least 23.7 points and 13.3 rebounds over a three-game stretch? The answer that came back? Fadima Tall. 

That's clearly correct. When asked who did so before, ChatGPT said it might have been Ellen DeVoe or Margaret Meier but it couldn't be sure. That made TigerBlog think what a great answer to a test that would be: 

Who was the 14th President? 
It might have been Franklin Pierce, but not completely sure. 

Tall's strongest competition for the Ivy honor might have come from her teammates Skye Belker (28 points) and Olivia Hutcherson (22 points), who both hit career highs of their own in the 76-74 win over Murray State Sunday in Richmond. 

Oh, and by the way, TigerBlog gives a quick salute to his friend and colleague Warren Croxton, who was at the women's basketball win over Richmond Friday night, the football win over Dartmouth Saturday in Princeton and then the Murray State game back in Richmond Sunday. TB said that winning seems to follow Kaitlyn Chen; Warren seems to follow winning, as his weekend record was three wins, no losses, 1,200 miles.

Gosselin's next game is tonight, when Princeton hosts Villanova at 7. The Tigers and Wildcats will play for the 25th time (Villanova leads 13-11) overall and the sixth time since 2021 (Princeton leads 4-1). 

If you think Warren put on a lot of miles lately, how about the Villanova women, who are 0-1 on the season after a 99-75 loss to No. 13 Notre Dame nine days ago. Where was that game played? 

Rome. The one in Italy. The Wildcats should have asked TB for some food recommendations. 

Villanova is led by Jasmine Bascoe, a two-time first-team All-Big East selection and last year's Big Five Player of the Year after averaging 19 per game last year. A junior from Ontario, Bascoe brings 1,201 career points already to the game tonight, including the 26 she scored against Notre Dame. 

She also added nine assists, giving her not surprising numbers given that she led the Big East in scoring and assists a year ago. She's 5-7, and she'll be worth watching tonight. 

This is one of those really intriguing early season games, one that matches two NCAA tournament teams from a year ago. Princeton you know about. Villanova got an at-large bid after reaching the Big East final (something tough to win when you're in UConn's conference) and then lost 57-52 in the NCAA opener to Texas Tech. 

Two years ago? Nova went to the WBIT final. Three years ago? The NCAA Sweet 16. 

These are two teams who are used to winning. It should be a good one, a game that has its root in the loamy soil. 

Tip-off is at 7.   

Sunshine And Smiles On Powers Field

Even for the most physical of sports, there are days for sunshine and smiles. 

This past Saturday afternoon on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium was one of those, at least for Bob Surace and his Princeton football team. 

The Tigers made a huge statement with a 21-14 win over Dartmouth Saturday, improving to 6-2 overall and 4-1 in the Ivy League. With Harvard's 37-0 dismantling of Columbia, the Crimson also improved to 4-1 in the league, with Dartmouth and Brown a game back at 3-2. 

What Princeton did Saturday was ensure that it will go into the final week of the season still with a chance at the league title, regardless of what happens next weekend. That's always a first goal of every season — get to the end and play meaningful games. 

That's exactly what Princeton will do. Princeton, in fact, would win no worse than a share of the championship with wins the next two weekends, at Yale this coming Saturday and then home against Penn in the season finale. Harvard will be at Penn and then at Fenway Park against Yale after that. 

Remember, there is also the matter of the FCS playoffs now. Harvard's win over Princeton would give the automatic bid to the Crimson in the event of a two-way tie, though both Harvard and Yale reached the playoffs a year ago, when the Ivy League first participated. 

That is the backdrop. Where do the sunshine and smiles come in? Well, for TigerBlog, they came from a few miles away from Fenway Park, as he watched the game on ESPN+ and saw nothing but both when it ended. 

Maybe it's because to that point, it had been raining for two straight days in Boston (where he was for the Ivy League field hockey tournament). Or maybe it's because it almost looked like the end of a sports movie. 

Princeton sealed the win with a fourth-down stop, after going up 21-0 and then holding off the Big Green. The Tigers definitely left some points on the field that could have put the game away sooner, but that didn't matter in the end. 

And now with the game ended, every Princeton player was all smiles, as was his head coach, who was wearing a gray hat and a sweatshirt and a huge grin of his own. 

The win was the 90th for Surace as Tiger head coach, moving him past Bill Roper into sole possession of first place for career wins for the program. TB wrote about this last week when Surace tied the record, but he left out that while 90 doesn't seem like an unapproachable number (like Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak), the fact that it stood for 96 years suggests otherwise. In that context, this is something truly amazing. 

Back at the game, Princeton ran for 165 yards and threw for 156, running the ball twice as many times as it threw it. Nearly half of those rushing yards (74) came from Princeton's three quarterbacks (Eli Friend, Wyatt Becker, Ty Ciongoli), two of whom (Friend, Becker) had touchdown runs. 

Josh Robinson caught four passes for 79 yards and one touchdown on a play where he was about as open as a receiver can get. Sometimes with that much time and such an open receiver, the quarterback will think too much and miss. This time, Ciongoli put it right into his hands. Robinson, for his part, looked like he was shocked how open he was. That can be scary for a receiver too. 

The TD made it 21-0 in the second quarter. Was the rout on? No. Dartmouth made it 21-7 at the break and could have had more but it too left some points on the field. 

In the end, it turned out to be a seven-point game. And it turned out to be a Princeton win. 

TB watched the video until the end. Did you? If you did, then you probably smiled, just like TB did, when you saw the sheer joy for everyone in orange and black .

There are two huge games to go. There is a championship to be played for well into November. That is to come. 

Saturday? That was all sunshine and smiles.  

Tigers-Green

While the Ivy League field hockey tournament begins today, the real competition was in the Princeton team hotel yesterday evening. 

The occasion? A team trivia contest, with the Tigers divided into six teams. TigerBlog's team of Josie Bianco, Caitlin Thompson, Lilly Wojcik and strength and conditioning coach Rich Fahsbender maybe won, or maybe tied. TB will go with won. 

He also learned a few things. If anyone ever asks you which country's flag is the only one in the world that is not a rectangle, the answer is "Nepal." If you're wondering which country has the largest amount of coastline, that would be "Canada." What's the only country that is in all four hemispheres? That would be Kiribati.

Anyway, it was fun. Kudos to Ivy Defensive Player of the Year Ottilie Sykes for organizing. And if you want to check out the league semifinals today, it's Harvard-Yale at 11:30 and Princeton-Cornell at 2:30. It'll be pouring at Harvard, apparently. 

The weather tomorrow in Princeton should be much better. In fact, you might even call it "perfect" weather for football, with temps in the upper 50s and a partly cloudy day. 

You can't ask for more for a football game, especially a huge one late in the season. It'll be Princeton and Dartmouth at noon tomorrow on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.  

What makes this one huge? There are three weeks left in the Ivy League season, and the standings look like this:

Princeton/Dartmouth/Harvard 3-1
Brown/Yale 2-2
Columbia/Penn/Cornell 1-3

TB will get back to the game in a second. First, there is the matter of Homecoming. 

If you see a really tall guy with an Australian accent who looks familiar but is wearing green, don't get shaken. If the Cornell game last weekend was Princeton's actual Homecoming for alums, then the game tomorrow will be Homecoming for Elliott Carr, who left Princeton's Office of Athletic Communications to take over the same office at Dartmouth. 

By all accounts, Elliott is doing a great job in Hanover. He is one of those people you never have to worry about in terms of putting in the effort, going above and beyond and doing a consistently high-quality job. 

Also, old friend Bruce Wood — the TigerBlog of Dartmouth — will be in attendance. There aren't many people left who come to cover a game at Princeton who can remember covering games in Palmer Stadium. Bruce is one of them. 

Okay, back to the game. The math is obvious. There's a three-way tie for first with three weeks left, and this is the last remaining game among the teams that are at the top of the standings. Harvard defeated Princeton two weeks ago. Dartmouth defeated Harvard last week. 

While the Big Green were taking down Harvard, Princeton was having a massive, possibly season-changing, come-from-behind 21-20 win over Cornell. The Tigers will finish the regular season at Yale and home against Penn after the game tomorrow. 

Harvard has Penn at home and Yale on the road. Dartmouth has Cornell away and Brown at home. 

Obviously if one of the three teams wins out, it will have no less than a share of the league championship. Dartmouth would be assured of the league's automatic bid to the FCS playoffs with three ore wins. Princeton and Harvard would both need to win out and get a little help, at least to get the automatic bid.  

Those are the stakes. What do the stats say about the game? 

Well, they suggest that the team that best stops the other team's running game will be in good shape. Dartmouth is third in the league in rushing offense. Princeton is fourth in rushing defense. Princeton is fifth in rushing offense. Dartmouth is seventh in rushing defense. 

Ah, but the teams rank 7-8 in the league in passing offense. Stop the run and make them throw. That's probably written on both team's game plans. 

What else jumps out? Dartmouth is 10th in the FCS and Princeton is 11th in fewest penalties per game. Both teams are tied for fourth in the FCS in fewest turnovers, as both have lost one fumble and thrown five interceptions (three of Dartmouth's five came last week against Harvard, who in turn threw five in the game; that's a lot of interceptions). 

Princeton-Dartmouth. Kickoff at noon on Power Field.  

Thursday Round-Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, RIP Dale Brown. 

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

*

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

* 

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

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

*

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

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

*

The complete weekend schedule is HERE. 

Standing Tall

Well, that's a wrap on the 2026-27 Princeton women's basketball season. 

Not really, obviously. Still, how else are the Tigers going to top what happened Monday on opening night in Jadwin Gym against Belmont? 

Specifically, TigerBlog is referring to two things. 

First, there was the 63-52 final score, which gave Lauren Gosselin her first win as Princeton head coach. That's a memory that will stay with her forever. 

It's a big adjustment to go from being an assistant coach for as long as Gosselin was to being the head coach, in so many ways. And if you ever talk to a young head coach, he or she will tell you that this is true as much or more for the off-the-court stuff as the actual coaching. 

There's media, for starters. These days, there's content creation. There's speaking at alumni events and at meetings on campus. You're now the face of the program. It can be a lot to get used to when you're new to it. 

As for the on-court piece, practices are probably a bit different but not that radically, especially if you surround yourself with a strong staff. It's on Game Night where it feels (and is) different.

You're in the first chair. You can stand up, something assistants are not supposed to do. You can talk to the refs, another thing assistants aren't supposed to do. 

More than anything else, the final say on decisions, subbing, play-calling and everything else now is in your hands. It's a big change, something that Gosselin is only starting to experience. To start your career with a win over Belmont, a team that went 20-12 last year and 26-13 while reaching the WBIT final two years ago, had to feel great. 

The First Of Many! Congratulations to @Coach__LB on her first career victory! #GRIT🐯🏀 https://t.co/jAENhKb5KE

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) November 3, 2026

And why did Princeton win the game? That's the second item that will be really tough to match the rest of the season — or the rest of the decade for that matter. 

TB speaks of the performance by Fadima Tall, which was somewhere in the neighborhood of otherwordly. How's this for a stat line? 

* 37 min, 9 for 20 FG, 2 for 7 three-pt FG, 9 for 9 free throws, 29 points, 22 rebounds (seven offensive, 15 defensive)

That's crazy. Twenty-nine points and 22 rebounds?  

Guess who that ties her with for number of games with at least 29 points and 22 rebounds? How about Bill Bradley, who only did it once (first game against Columbia in 1964). 

Speaking of a long time ago, there are two women's players who can say they did it: Margaret Meier and Ellen DeVoe. Meier played in the 1970s. DeVoe did it in 1985. 

So what to make of this performance on Day 1? Tall has already established herself as one of the top players in the league, with a resume that includes back-to-back second-team All-Ivy selections. Oh, and do you remember last year's Ivy League tournament? Tall was the Most Outstanding Player. 

Okay, maybe that's not a wrap on the women's basketball season. There's a lot to be seen obviously, especially as it comes to Tall's ceiling.  

Both the 29 points and the 22 rebounds were career bests for Tall. She obviously won't approach 29/22 on a regular basis, or maybe ever again, but it'll be interesting to see what her numbers are a few months from now. 

The game against Belmont put her over 10.0 points per game for her career. She averaged 13.0 per game a year ago. What is this season's trajectory? 

She now has 736 career points, this after having 45 points as a freshman. If she matches last year's point total of 281, she'd finish with 1,017. If she averages what she did against Belmont, she'll finish the regular season with 1,548. TB will go with something in between. 

Either way, it was just an incredible opening performance by Tall, the result of which was Win No. 1 for Gosselin. 

Next up? A trip to Richmond, for games against the Spiders Friday and Murray State Sunday.  

Two Championships

Today is Election Day.

TigerBlog endorses voting for candidates who run on a platform of removing every lawn sign within 24 hours of the big day, whether they win or lose. 

And please, no more political commercials for a long time. 

"My opponent voted to take your dog away."
"Oh yeah, well my opponent was mean to a kid on the playground when he was six."

If you are a political candidate, or an NFL team, or speech and debate squad or pretty much any entity anywhere that is looking to win, you might want to call up Kaitlyn Chen and get her on your side. TigerBlog will say this again, as he has so many times before:

WINNING FOLLOWS KAITLYN CHEN EVERYWHERE SHE GOES

If you need more proof, TigerBlog refers you to the recently completed WNBA playoffs, in which the second-year Golden State Valkyries defeated the Atlanta Dream in seven games to win the title. Guess who is on Golden State? That would be Kaitlyn Chen. 

A winner everywhere she goes. Congratulations to Kaitlyn Chen ‘24 and the @valkyries on winning the @WNBA Championship! #ThisIsBallhalla ⚔️ https://t.co/Hgyrr2kN6G

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) November 1, 2026

So with that, here is Chen's most recent six seasons of basketball:

2022: Princeton - Ivy League Champion/Ivy tournament champion, NCAA tournament second round
2023: Princeton - Ivy League Champion/Ivy tournament champion, NCAA tournament second round
2024: Princeton - Ivy League Champion/Ivy tournament champion, NCAA tournament first round
2025: UConn - NCAA Champion
2025: Golden State Valkyries - WNBA expansion team (makes playoffs)
2026: Golden State Valkyries - WNBA Champion 

Given that she went from UConn to her rookie season within a few months, that means that in the last five years she's played on three teams and won five championships.  

That's a lot of winning. And in case you think she's just along for the ride, she 1) is the only player in any sport ever to be a three-time Ivy tournament Most Outstanding Player, 2) started every game for UConn's national championship team and 3) is one of the top players off the bench in the WNBA. 

Her minutes weren't as high in the playoffs as they had been in the regular season, but that didn't matter.  She also has to be just about the best teammate there's ever been. If you watched any of Golden State's games, you could clearly see that. TigerBlog thinks that Chen's incredible enthusiasm actually fuels her teams and is part of why they always seem to win. 

Elsewhere in "Princeton Women Win Championships" news, the women's cross country team won its third straight Ivy League Heptagonal title this past Friday as the meet made it way to Attleboro, Mass. 

Unlike the Valkyries, who were pushed to the absolute limit to win their title, the Heps women's race was completely one-sided. Princeton had runners finish 2-3-5-10-13, finishing with 33 points, or 39 fewer than second-place Penn. 

 This is from the story on goprincetontigers.com: 

Emma de Jong was the first Tiger across the finish line, taking the runner-up spot with a time of 20:25.1. This is her third-consecutive Heps she has scored in, moving up six places from her eighth-place finish last year. Last year's individual champion Anna McNatt followed right behind de Jong at 20:28.5 in third for the 2-3 finish. Both runners' times made it onto the all-time top 6,000-meter records list with de Jong in 15th and McNatt tied at 19th. They were each awarded First Team All-Ivy honors. The next runner to score for the Tigers was Caroline Barton clocking in at 20:36.5 to secure a fifth-place finish for the second year in a row. First-year Lux Burgin was the fourth Tiger across the finish line, making an impressive Heps debut with a time of 20:45.4. Burgin kicked out 22 runners from 2K-6K to finish in 10th place. Hannah Riggins rounded out the Tiger scoring with a time of 20:53.3, securing a 13th place finish.

And hey, speaking of winning, does the name "Burgin" ring a bell? Lux Burgin is the younger sister of men's lacrosse senior Wilder Burgin. The women's cross country championship was the fourth Ivy title in family history, which also includes an NCAA championship from this past spring. 

Next up for the women will be the NCAA Regional meet, which will be held at Lehigh a week from Friday.  

Record Tied

This was the second straight weekend in which TigerBlog set his clock back an hour. 

Twice? How's that? 

The first tine was last Saturday/early Sunday in Italy, which turned its clocks back one week earlier than the United States. This was especially helpful since the bus for the airport left at 6 am. 

The second time was obviously this Saturday. TigerBlog can tell you from long-ago experience that it's not a great morning for parents with babies and toddlers, who don't quite understand what having an extra hour of sleep is supposed to mean. 

So yes, that was how TB came to set the clock back twice in one year. That's a record for him.

It's because of a different record that TB will put off for a day talking about a pair of championships from this past weekend. 

No, today belongs to Princeton head football coach Bob Surace. 

When TigerBlog thinks about unbreakable Princeton records, the first that comes to mind is Bill Bradley's 2,503 career points in basketball. Despite the fact that he did it in three years with no three-point shot, Bradley's record hasn't come close to being touched in the 60-plus years since he did it. 

Then there is Michael Sowers in men's lacrosse. Sowers had 302 points. To put that in perspective, Coulter Mackesy is in second place, 54 points back of Sowers. Nate Kabiri enters his senior year 95 away; nobody has ever had more than 90 in a season, and that was Sowers. And if someone does get that many points, they won't be close to his points per game of 6.423. That's nearly two full points per game more than anyone who has ever played at Princeton. 

If you look at pro sports, there are certain records that will stand forever. Cy Young won 511 games. Nobody will come close. Look up how many assists Wayne Gretzky had. In case you didn't know, it's 1,963, which just happens to be more any other player has points. Again, no one will come close. 

One record that has always fascinated TigerBlog is Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941. That's 85 years ago, and nobody has ever had a longer streak than Pete Rose's 44 in 1978. Why does this fascinate TB? It's because it wouldn't take years or decades to do it. All you need is 57 games, and yet nobody has come close. 

And this is what brings him to Bob Surace. This past Saturday, Surace's team rallied to defeat Cornell 21-20 in a thriller on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. The win was huge for the Tigers, who got the help they needed Friday night when Dartmouth beat Harvard 24-14. 

As such, the Ivy standings now have a three-way tie at the top with Princeton, Harvard and Dartmouth all at 3-1. And guess who comes to Princeton this coming Saturday? That would be Dartmouth, who will be here for a kickoff at noon. 

Princeton won the Cornell game despite 1) having only 14 rushing yards, 2) being out-first-downed 27-15 and 3) losing the time of possession stat basically 40 minutes to 20. Princeton won the game with three Josh Smith touchdown receptions, including the game-winner with 1:33 to go. 

Princeton had two quarterbacks who both threw for at least 124 yards and had at least one touchdown pass. When was the last time that happened? Maybe in the Harry Nakielny/Brock Harvey days, when they'd rotate series by series? 

TB will try to look that up.  

In the meantime, that win Saturday was the 89th for Surace, tying a 96-year-old record for wins by a Tiger football coach. Surace, who is now tied with Bill Roper, got a game ball from Equipment Manager Clif Perry. 

It’s Brotherhood. @CoachBobSurace | #JUICE 🍊🥤 https://t.co/1SRms4VmwU

— Princeton Football (@PrincetonFTBL) November 1, 2026

What you see there is what you get with Bob Surace. 

To TB, this is sort of like DiMaggio's record. It takes more than 57 games obviously, but it also doesn't require a 40-year career either. This is only the 16th season of Surace's career at Princeton. 

If you look at the roster of Princeton head coaches, you'll see Hall of Famers, leaders of multiple Ivy championship teams, innovators in the sport's history. What you don't see, or didn't see, until Saturday was someone who could match that "89" of Roper's. 

And now Bob Surace has done that. It's even more impressive considering that he started out 2-22 before turning it around. Since then, he is 87-46 since, with four Ivy League championships. 

TB texted Surace after the game with his congratulations, and Surace came back with a thank you text of his own. Maybe this was a bigger deal to a historian like TB. 

Or maybe Surace was just too busy turning his attention to Dartmouth and the games after that, at Yale and home against Penn, with an Ivy title to be chased.