Frustrating

So you know how you send a text message and then get the little "delivered" note underneath it?

So what do you do if you you don't get that message? Does that mean it wasn't delivered? Or was it delivered but you just didn't get the little return message underneath it?

What do you do?

Send another message to see if you get the "delivered" this time? What if you don't again but the messages are actually get through? Are you then annoying the person?

It appears that nearly 10 trillion text messages are sent each year. Surely some of them must get lost in the world of the "un-delivered."

Then there's email.

How many times is there this exchange:
"I sent you an email."
"I didn't get it."

This sort of happened to TigerBlog last week. TigerBlog got a phone call from someone who said he'd also emailed, but TigerBlog honestly couldn't remember getting the original email. When he asked him to resend, TB noticed that the email looked exactly like one of the million or so he gets that he immediately deletes.

For the most part though, TB assumes that email gets through and that if someone says it didn't get through, then what they're really saying is "it got through. It asked me to do something. I didn't do it. I'm telling you I didn't get it."

These are 21st century frustrations.

Back in the antediluvian days of the 20th century, those frustrations didn't exist. Back then it was trying to call someone on the phone and having it ring and ring with no answer, or constantly get a busy signal, something that people under 25 or so have never experienced.

In case you don't know what one of those is, it was a "beep, beep, beep" that you would get if the person you were trying to call was already on the phone. Then someone invented call waiting.

Fasting forward to today, what do you do when you're on the phone with someone in a relatively casual conversation and then you get another call, one that you want to answer without hurting the first person's feelings? What if that person is in the middle of a sentence? Interrupt?

So then you let the person keep talking and then call the other person back, only now, 30 seconds later, there's no answer. Frustrating.

TigerBlog used to have no way of knowing who called his office phone if there was no voicemail. Now he gets an email saying there's a missed call and the number of the caller.

Usually it's a number TB doesn't recognize. Of course, the curiosity factor weighs in, so he'll call the number back, which becomes something a reverse situation, where TB doesn't know the person he's calling.

TB got one of those missed calls yesterday, and so he called the number back, to find it was an alum in Connecticut wanting to know who won the women's water polo game.

Unfortunately, the answer was Indiana, not Princeton. The Tigers reached the CWPA championship game, only to lose to the Hoosiers in the final. Princeton had been ranked ninth nationally; Indiana was ranked 12th.

Princeton finishes its season at 31-2, which is the school record for most wins and fewest losses. It was a great year for Tigers, even if they fell a little short of the ultimately goal. By one goal. There's a harshness there that crosses many sports on the college level, when a razor-thin margin separates the team that advances to the big prize and the one that is left to think about how close it came.

It wasn't the greatest weekend for Princeton teams across the board.

There were some good performances, especially in track and field and rowing. And the men's volleyball team competed hard in the EIVA  final at Penn State before falling.

The women's and men's golf teams had very good final rounds, and Kelly Shon earned Ivy League Player of the Year honors for the women, who finished second overall for the second straight year.

The defending-champion men went from seventh to fourth on Sunday, though they did get the award for the best tweet of the weekend. That would be the picture of the Ivy League championship trophy, with the words "We'll be back for you soon."

That's 21st century creativity.

In The Criminal Justice System ...

TigerBlog has been watching "Law & Order" reruns lately.

It's one of his favorite shows of all time. It's a great concept - half the show is about "the police who investigate crimes" and the other half is about the "district attorneys who prosecute the offenders."

It's a rare show that endured for 20 years and had several complete turnovers in its cast and yet managed to survive and thrive. TB can't think of another show that was able to accomplish anything close to that level of upheaval and still maintained its high level of quality. Most shows that have to replace even one key character often disintegrate.

TB likes to DVR the show, which is running regularly these days on WE TV. TB also doesn't get the idea of programming three episodes of "Law & Order" in the late afternoon and early evening on a network that otherwise appears to be devoted to targeting a strictly women's audience, with shows like "Marriage Boot Camp," "Mary, Mary" and returns of "Will & Grace" and "Roseanne," as well as skin care infomercials with Vivica Fox and Cindy Crawford.

And in between all of that is "Law & Order," three times a day.

This week, We has been advertising the coming season premiere of "Joan and Melissa," which TB would only watch if he was given a $100 bill for every minute he could stand it.

WE has also been advertising that this week is "Sopranos meets Law & Order" week. Now that is right in TB's wheelhouse.

Edie Falco has appeared as a public defender. It's easy to pick out Carmela Soprano. Junior appears as a judge. Christopher is a defendant in one episode who comes back as a detective later in the series. Big Pussy is a defendant more than once.

Anyone can see them.

But can you also find Father Intintola as a police offer who gets ripped into by Lennie Briscoe in a brief scene, after the murder weapon is found in a drain that the soon-to-be spiritual adviser/creepy stalker of Carmela didn't want to search (though it turned out not to be his fault)?

Or, for that matter, that Profaci - who was a pretty good character who didn't get a big enough role, in TB's mind - was played by the same guy who would play Gigi on "The Sopranos." On a series where many characters had unfortunate endings, nobody had it worse than Gigi - and let's just leave it at that.

Every now and then, there will be a Princeton reference on "Law & Order." In fact, one honor student-turned-bad was referred to as having had a chance to play soccer at Princeton, something that Jim Barlow was never able to confirm.

TB can't think of any Princeton references on "The Sopranos," though Meadow did go to Columbia.

Meanwhile, back at Princeton Athletics, spring break continues for a few more days, which means that several spring teams are spread out around the country.

There are six Princeton teams (technically one is a winter team) who will be competing today, and here are their opponents - Miami, USC, Duke, Tulane, Barton College, Mt. Olive, Pacific.

Actually, here's a fun game. Match the team with the opponent, as Princeton will have events in women's lacrosse, men's basketball, softball, baseball, men's volleyball and women's tennis today. The men's volleyball team has two opponents.

Anyway, it's a pretty interesting mix of opponents.

Let's start with the women's lacrosse game at USC, a program in its second year. Last year, Princeton defeated USC 18-13 on Sherrerd Field as USC went 8-10 in its first season. This time around, USC is 3-2 this year, with a win over Columbia in its most recent game.

It wasn't that long ago that the idea of being able to go to California to find Division I women's lacrosse opponents was unthinkable. Now? The Princeton women are playing two California teams on the spring trip, with a game Saturday against San Diego State. Now in Year 3, San Diego State started out 5-10 in 2012, then went 8-8 last year and now is off to a 6-1 start.

San Diego State has two players from New Jersey on its roster. USC has 11 players from New Jersey on its roster.

Princeton? One New Jersey player.

The baseball team will take on Duke in North Carolina. The softball team takes on a different group of Tigers, the ones from Pacific, in California. The women's tennis team is in Florida to take on Miami.

The basketball team is in New Orleans to take on Tulane in the first round of the CBI.

And the men's volleyball team is also in North Carolina, to take on Mt. Olive and Barton.

Those would be your matching game answers.

Exclamation Point

The monthly "current events" email that comes from Kim Meszaros - the assistant to Ford Family Director of Athletics Gary Walters - showed up last night.

TigerBlog can't remember when Kim first started doing the current events each month. It's sort of a departmental newsletter, with some of the bigger news of the month, birthdays, personnel changes, things like that.

This month's was a particularly good one.

Among the links that Kim included were this one, which is an update on Chris Dittrich, whose mother Mary Beth works in campus recreation. Chris got into a horrible car accident six years ago this week; his road back has been a remarkable and uplifting one.

There was a list of staff members who will be honored at the University's service luncheon, led by Nancy Donigan, compliance assistant, who has been here for 25 years.

Will Green, who coached Princeton to the Ivy League men's golf championship last year, was featured in a podcast, one from which TB learned a great deal about Will. Kim included the link.

Kim chose to embed the video of Fred Samara's appearance on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," something TB touched on last week.

Oh, and each month, there's a trivia question.

Last month's asked how many staff members are Princeton grads. The answer is 20, most of whom are coaches.

This month's trivia question asks what the first two paying jobs Gary Walters had as a kid in Reading, Pa. TigerBlog has no idea what the answer is.

There was also a link to a video about the men's volleyball team's win over Penn State from Friday night.

TigerBlog doesn't pretend to know much about volleyball. Of all the sports that Princeton's OAC keeps stats at, TB would be the most lost behind the computer at a volleyball match.

He does know that men's coach Sam Shweisky is a very upbeat soul, one whose emails routinely are dotted with exclamation points, multiple ones. He's always smiling, always happy.

Even by his standards, Shweisky was the picture of joy at the end of the video, when he talks about what a great night it was for his team. And boy was it a great night.

For starters, Penn State is the dominant Eastern power in men's volleyball and a perennial contender (or winner) for the national championship. For another, Penn State was ranked 10th at the time, and Princeton had never beaten a Top 10 before.

Then there was the history of the rivalry. Princeton defeated Penn State in 1998 to earn its only trip to the NCAA Final Four, held in Hawaii. Since then Penn State had won 35 straight - until Friday night.

The video begins with a pregame meeting with the team and University president Chris Eisgruber. If you watch it and don't come away as a huge fan of the president, then TB will be shocked.

The rest of the video shows some key moments in the match, with points won by both teams. The Tigers won 3-2, taking the fifth set 15-11.

The video also showed just how into it the overflow crowd of 1,565 at Dillon Gym was. The place was jammed, and loud, and it was a festive, party atmosphere.

At the very end of the video, there are some still shots of Princeton players and fans, younger and older.

TigerBlog followed the match on Twitter. When the final point pushed the Tigers to the win, the entry from @putigers had seven exclamation points.

TigerBlog accidentally will use an exclamation point instead of a question mark when texting sometimes. Other than that, it's been decades since he's used one in actual writing.

He's not a fan.

In this case, though, it was very fitting.

It was a huge night for Princeton volleyball, and for its decidedly exclamatory head coach, Sam Shweisky.

No other punctuation mark could have properly captured the moment.

Taking A Hammer To A Chocolate Bunny

You know those big chocolate Easter bunnies, the ones that are solid throughout the body but hollow in the ears?

The really big ones?

TigerBlog loves the littler ones. The big bunnies are far too problematic.

For starters, when he bites into the ears, they collapse all over the place. And when he bites into body, well, it goes nowhere. If he tries to break off a piece of the body, all he gets are really little pieces until ultimately he has to almost take a hammer to the bunny to get any sort of worthwhile reward.

When TB was a kid, his grandmother used to buy him and BrotherBlog the little bunnies, which came like 10 to a package. Now that was quality chocolate - even for a Jewish kid.

TB's connection to Easter isn't quite like that of some other members of his religion, like, say, Judah Ben-Hur, who witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus - after Judah had been through a lot, including a stint with the Roman Army's rowing team and some horseback riding.

This Sunday is Easter Sunday, which means the supermarket was flooded with holiday candy. TigerBlog went into this in depth a year ago.

A few years ago, TB also wrote about the dilemma that the Ivy League has in scheduling athletic events around religious holidays, especially Easter, which always falls on a spring Sunday, which would mean Ivy baseball and softball.

As TB said four years ago, there's nothing the league can do. It can't start deciding which religious holidays are worthy of having no events and which ones are okay.

As a result, the weekend that begins with Good Friday and lasts through Easter is stocked with huge athletic events.

Maybe the biggest is tonight, when Princeton hosts Penn State in men's volleyball.

TB doesn't know much about volleyball, including how to keep stats at a match.

What he doesn't know is that Penn State is always good and Princeton has spent most years looking up in the standings at the Nittany Lions.

One exception was 1998, when Princeton defeated Penn State and advanced to the NCAA tournament, which in men's volleyball consists of four teams. In 1998, it sent Princeton to Hawaii.

This year, Princeton is on a roll, having won five straight EIVA matches, including last night's win over St. Francis. The Tigers are now 8-2 in the league, while Penn State comes to Dillon at 9-1.

Princeton hasn't beaten Penn State since 1998, and the closest the Tigers have come was last year at Dillon, when the Nittany Lions fought off eight match balls to win the fifth game 37-35.

This year? A win and the teams are tied. A loss and Penn State is in control for the regular season title, but Princeton is already headed to the EIVA playoffs.

Tomorrow is a big rowing day at Princeton, with all four crews at home, something that will result in racing all morning.

There is a big men's lacrosse game on campus, as Princeton hosts Brown. The Tigers are 1-1 in the league, and both games have been one-goal games, while Brown is 1-0 with a win over Harvard. Brown is playing its third game in six days; Princeton hasn't played in eight days, since the 10-9 win over Yale last Friday.

A good side note - only twice in the last 30 years (1991, 2002) - have both Princeton and Brown reached double figures in a game against each other. This year, both average more than 12 goals per game.

The women's lacrosse team is at Cornell tomorrow in another big Ivy early-season game.

And the men's tennis Ivy opener against Penn.

And then there's baseball and softball, who have their home openers tomorrow and Sunday, with Yale and Brown here.

In other words, it's a fairly busy weekend.

All of those events, and all except for men's lacrosse completely free.

Happy Easter to all.

Snow Job

TigerBlog spent a week in Costa Rica and saw all kinds of great displays of nature, basically everywhere he looked.

There were mountains and rivers and flowers and wild looking bugs and birds and even some lizard-type fellow who strolled across the pool deck where Nick Bates and TigerBlog Jr. were swimming.

You know what TB didn't see in Costa Rica? Snow.

Okay, it was June. Still, TB has a feeling that even if he went back in December, he wouldn't exactly see the ground covered by a blizzard.

TB could just picture Diego and Victor and the rest of the people who showed their home country to the Princeton men's lacrosse team last June, all being amazed that a World Cup Qualifier - a game of unreal importance - was being played in a snowstorm in Denver last week.

Oh, and Diego's father, Don Carlos? He probably took it the hardest.

TB isn't quite sure what to think about it, even after FIFA announced that the 1-0 victory by the U.S. would stand, despite protests by the Costa Ricans.

During the men's lacrosse trip, TB and about 15 other members of the group went to the WCQ between Los Ticos and El Salvador, in the first round. It was a ridiculous experience, a fervor that TB has never seen in an American sporting event.

And here was an even more important game, being played in driving snow, between a nation where snow is routine and another where it never falls. Oh, sure, most of the Costa Rican players play in cold weather in Europe.

But still, such an important game? Played in those conditions?

On the one hand, each WCQ game is so significant that TB figures they should be played in as optimal conditions as possible. On the other hand, how is playing in snow in Denver any different than having the U.S. go and play in 100 degree weather. 

Anyway, he's still rooting for Costa Rica to make the World Cup, and he likes their chances.

As for snow, there wasn't that much of it around here this winter. There were flurries, and sometimes there was enough snow to cover the grass, though it rarely stuck to the roads. TB can't remember a time he was all that inconvenienced by a storm this winter, and certainly there was no major event with a foot or more.

What there was around here this winter was cold weather. Lots and lots of it. It never got bitterly ridiculously cold, like around zero and all, but even as late March rolls around, it's been weeks and weeks of temperatures in the 30s.

Princeton has played seven men's lacrosse games, six of which have been played in extremely cold weather and one of which was played in 65 degree sunshine in Chapel Hill. And that doesn't even mention the practices for spring teams, all of which have caused everyone to put on layers and break out hand warmers.

Until this week. Actually, this week began with a threat of 5-8 inches of snow, which turned out to be nothing but a few wet flakes and a lot of rain.

And now? It appears that the week, and March itself, will be going out like a lamb.

And it's just in time for that.

This weekend marks the home openers for baseball and softball, with Ivy League doubleheaders Saturday and Sunday against Yale and Brown.

The forecast is for temps to be in the mid-50s both days.

Because of mid-terms and spring break, Princeton has had almost no home events the last three weeks. That changes dramatically this weekend, with 16 home events on the schedule between tonight and Sunday.

The softball team is the only Ivy League team over .500 to this point, with a record of 14-8. Princeton is batting .321 as a team and has hit 18 home runs to just six for its opponents.

The games this weekend will be the first at home for first-year head coach Lisa Sweeney and assistant coach Jen Lapicki.

In Ivy League baseball, three teams are better than .600 overall while the other five are below .400. Dartmouth is 12-1. Still, in baseball and softball, all it takes is a few timely hits one way or another to radically change the races.

In addition to baseball and softball, there's also men's lacrosse, rowing, men's volleyball and men's tennis on campus this weekend.

In fact, all four crews are home this weekend, which is a real rarity.

And no snow.

It appears that spring is finally showing up around here.

It's about time.

Today, No Segue

The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament is a bizarre animal.

There's the whole impact of the one-and-done philosophy - especially at Kentucky - and the over-saturation of the event by the media, which is willing to discuss to no end a player's length or anoint a coach as a certifiable genius - as if winning at Kentucky and Kansas is somehow difficult - and yet not ask a single question on subjects like, say, if the one-and-done mentality is in any way consistent with what college athletics are intended to be.

For that matter, TigerBlog has heard and read a great deal about the last NCAA championship game meeting between Bill Self (who comes across as a pretty down-to-Earth, normal guy) and John Calipari (who doesn't.) What he hasn't heard and read a great deal about is how Memphis (Calipari's old team) had to vacate that game, which wasn't a first for Calipari.

The only reference to any of it that TB has heard came when Calipari suggested that Duke and Carolina are also "one-and-done" teams and sort of wondered if they were bad for college basketball too. It reminded TB of when MotherBlog used to say "if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?"

Oh, and then there's one of the parts of the tournament that TB loves. How many players on either team in the final can you name, and of that group, how many had you heard of two weeks ago?

For all that, though, the wildest part of the tournament is how it gets progressively duller.

The Selection Show is awesome. The first two rounds (not the play-in games, but the first two actual rounds) are even better.

The first Thursday and Friday of the NCAA tournament are two of the best five sports days of the year.

The next two rounds? They're okay, but not as good, especially when the darlings of Thursday and Friday hit the reality of Saturday/Sunday - see Norfolk State and Lehigh this year and Princeton in 1996.

The Sweet 16 games are good, and the regional finals to see who gets to the Final Four are pressure-packed.

And then the Final Four? Eh. The semifinals are hardly memorable, and even the memorable championship games are few and far between.

Nope. This is the rare athletic event where the beginning far eclipses the end.

TB is going to say that tonight's championship game will be forgotten as well, something to the tune of Kentucky 81, Kansas 63.

Beyond that, TigerBlog offers no actual segue from the NCAA basketball tournament to what had to be the best event of a pretty good weekend for Princeton athletics.

It wasn't the men's lacrosse game, a 13-2 domination of Brown that gave the Tigers their fourth straight win as they head to the Carrier Dome to take on Syracuse.

It wasn't in baseball, where the Tigers opened the Ivy League season by winning three of four at home against Dartmouth and Harvard. In what might be a first, all four Gehrig Division teams have winning records on the Monday after the first weekend, though Penn and Brown haven't played yet and Cornell and Dartmouth only got one game in.

It wasn't in softball, where Princeton swept Dartmouth to open its season Friday before being swept Saturday by Harvard.

It wasn't in rowing, where the season is finally starting to get into full swing.

Nor was it in tennis, where the men and women are 1-0 in the Ivy after defeating Penn.

Nope. It was in men's volleyball. Even in a loss.

Princeton took on Eastern power Penn State, a perennial threat to win the NCAA championship.

Penn State had beaten Princeton 3-0 for seven straight years before Friday night's epic in Dillon Gym, where the Tigers actually had eight match balls before falling 37-35 in the fourth game and then 15-12 in the fifth and deciding game.

As TB said last week after his experiences at Yale for men's lacrosse, the beauty of working in college athletics is that you never know when you're going to stumble across an event like the Princeton-Penn State volleyball match.

TB wasn't there, but he's been in Dillon Gym for volleyball enough to know that the place had to have been completely rocking.

It's what intercollegiate athletics is supposed to be all about. Not one-and-dones with coaches who are made out to be above mere mortals.

Oh wait. Was that a segue?

Let It Melt, Let It Melt, Let It Melt

When TigerBlog first started working here, he was able to look out his office door and through the giant windows in Jadwin to see directly into Palmer Stadium.

These days, the view doesn't go directly into Princeton Stadium, since Weaver Track is in the way. Still, he can see the upper deck of the football stadium, as well as the press box, while also seeing the grass on the field at the track.

Since the day after Christmas, the view has also included snow, which has been sitting on the grass each of the last 53 days, ever since the first storm of the winter. At one point, the snow was packed five or six feet deep in some spots, and that was before the layer of ice fell on it.

A year ago, the people who go to the Princeton Athletics events meetings had an informal pool - no money involved - to guess the last day there'd be snow on the ground visible from the Jadwin balcony. TB guessed sometime in April, and he came closer than he would have liked, though late March was the winner.

This year, the snow fell much earlier and more frequently, though not in the absurd quantities of last February. There were, in fact, seven snowstorms between Dec. 26 and early February, and the result was snow piled everywhere around the area, with drifts 15-20 feet high in some places.

Of course, there's still plenty of time for more snow this winter, and TB isn't ready to say that the groundhog was correct when he predicted an early spring two weeks ago.

Still, looking out the window today, TigerBog can see almost all grass at the track, except for a diagonal path of snow that appears to be about 10 feet wide and stretches from Caldwell Field House to the tunnel near the Princeton football lockerroom. TB has no idea why that path hasn't melted, especially since it closely mirrors the path most people take to cut across.

Today's high temperature in Princeton is supposed to be 60, followed by tomorrow's high of 63. That should take care of much, but probably not all, of the snow left on the ground.

The 10-day forecast has no day in which the high temperature is below 40, though none that are above 45. More importantly, there is no snow listed either, but again, TB's hunch is that there's at least one more major blast out there, just waiting its turn.

The spring sports season has sort of started (quite alliterative, TB realizes), as the tennis teams have both played matches in Jadwin so far. Still, the first outdoor events are a little more than a week away, with the men's lacrosse team at Hofstra and the women's lacrosse team home with Johns Hopkins next Saturday, Feb. 26.

As an aside, there are 17 Division I men's lacrosse games scheduled for this Saturday and six more - including Denver at Syracuse - scheduled for Sunday.

As for Princeton, the coming spring season means that Tiger athletics are heading into their busiest time of year, the winter/spring crossover. This weekend, before the spring teams start to play, is astonishingly busy on its own, with seven teams at home for a total of 15 events, including the national championships in women's squash.

Jadwin Gym will be an extraordinarily busy place on its own.

The Howe Cup begins tomorrow, with 38 women's squash teams competing in five different flights. The top eight play for the national championship, and Princeton's quarterfinal match against Penn will be tomorrow at 2.

At the same time, Smith will be playing Boston College in a Flight D match, just to give you a sense of the variety of teams that will be in attendance. Where else could a Big East power school like BC play a tiny all-woman Division III school?

The national final is Sunday at 1:30. Admission is free.

Below the squash, there will be women's tennis on E-level Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the ECAC championships (the men will be in the same event, only at Harvard). On the women's side, the field features seven of the eight Ivy schools (minus Penn) and NJIT and basically runs all day each of the three days.

Princeton's first match will be against NJIT tomorrow at 6 p.m.; the Tigers are the top seed.

While all that is going on below ground, the main floor of Jadwin will feature the men's and women's Princeton Invitational track and field meets all day Saturday.

And, of course, when the track meets are over, there will be just enough time to set up for women's basketball's game against Brown, which happens to be the Pink Zone game. The Tigers also play Yale Friday night in a game that matches the first-place team (Princeton) and second-place team (Yale) in the Ivy standings.

There are other events on campus as well, though you will have to go across Washington Road.

The wrestling team is home with Hofstra and Boston University Saturday afternoon in Dillon Gym, while the men's volleyball team is home with George Mason tomorrow night at 7, also in Dillon.

And then there's Baker Rink, which will see Princeton play host to Brown tomorrow night and Yale Sunday afternoon (on ESPNU, no less).

None of that includes the other teams on the road, like men's basketball and women's hockey. It also doesn't include a home men's lacrosse scrimmage against Albany.

It's only another week until lacrosse and then two more until almost every other spring sport starts. That's when things will really get busy around here.

Until then, weekends like this one will have to do.

Check Out Who Crashed The Party

Relegation. It just sounds bad.

It’s there in European soccer, where a team can drop from Level A to Level B after a particularly unsuccessful season. It might make certain American professional sports more exciting as well; just think how tough the Pittsburgh Pirates would be this year in the Mexican winter leagues.

But TigerBlog is only aware of relegation in one American sport: EIVA volleyball.

Since there is no Ivy League in men’s volleyball, Princeton competes with the likes of Penn State, George Mason, Saint Francis and other programs in an all-Eastern conference of a mostly Western dominated sport. It has maintained a position in the top division (the Tait) for the last decade, though it hasn’t ended a season as the champion during that time frame.

The last 12 months have seen as much change as any for the program, which lost the only coach it ever had last spring when Glenn Nelson retired. Four starters graduated, and hopes for a successful 2010 season were, at best, flickering.

A young, enthusiastic head coach named Sam Shweisky was brought into the mix. A heralded freshman class joined the program, and the youngest of three Liljestrom brothers, all of whom played volleyball under Nelson, was about to begin his first year as the starting setter.

To make matters even trickier, the Tait Division lost one team in East Stroudsburg; that squad would have been the clear frontrunner for relegation had it competed this spring.

Shweisky, ever the optimist, showed a very realistic side to TB days before his first season began. Sure, he liked the work ethic in his guys, but with several established programs in the league and no real idea of just how his team would react in tight match situations, he feared the worst possible scenario.

“I just don’t want my first year to be the one we get relegated.”

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to relegation.

Tomorrow night in Rec Hall on the campus of Penn State, this mixture of preseason inexperience and unanswered questions will compete in Princeton’s first EIVA final since 1998. The Tigers will be a significant underdog to Penn State, which has won 11 straight league titles and hasn’t lost to Princeton since the Clinton adminstration.

It’s been the wildest journey of any of the 20 different volleyball seasons — men and women — that TB has witnessed. Princeton won four Tait home matches, and each went five sets. More than once, Princeton found itself trailing in the fifth game, which is all sprint, no marathon. At the 50-meter mark, the Tigers were done. At the 75-meter mark, they were resilient. Somehow, at the finish line, they were ahead.

There is plenty of credit to go around. Shweisky earned the EIVA Bob Sweeney Coach of the Year award as much for his preparation off the court as his management on it. His scouting of opponents has been incredibly detailed… his match binder with color-coated zones in different rotations makes no sense to TB, but it seems to work. It could be worth 5-6 points per match.

This season, that is worth two, maybe three, wins.

This season, that is the difference between second place and the Hay Division.

He has also done a good job finding volunteer assistants to work specifically with different players. This isn’t a high-budget program like the best volleyball schools in the country, but Shweisky found a way to get his players individual attention when they needed it most. From Ryan Hennesy to Pawel Kadlubowski to Princeton’s former All-East middle, Mike Vincent, this team has gotten comprehensive leadership throughout the season.

And those players have responded. This team is a little like the 2004 Detroit Pistons squad that won an NBA title. There isn’t the one or two superstars leading the way; instead, it’s been seven players who excel at their own role.

The two roles most critical in this late-season surge belong to the seniors. Jeff McCown developed from a serviceable second middle to a first-team All-EIVA standout by being Princeton’s most consistent hitter and blocker at the position. Classmate Carl Hamming overcame a couple weeks of struggle to play his best volleyball since mid-April, and his two matches against George Mason are major reasons Princeton will play tomorrow night.

So what are the expectations for tomorrow night? This will be a different Princeton squad than any Penn State has seen in recent years. TB didn’t always think Princeton believed it could beat Penn State in recent seasons, and maybe that was even true two months ago.

But tomorrow night, rest assured of one thing. This team will take the court with the absolute belief it can win.

It’s possible that Penn State, with scholarship talent, championship experience and an always-enthusiastic home crowd on its side, will prove too much for Princeton. That won’t do a thing to mar this 2010 season, which already owns a spot among the best, the most memorable, in program history.

But should this team, which has made its season out of handling adversity, find a way to get one of those first two sets… well, nobody had Detroit over L.A. in 2004, either.

The Next Step In Princeton Volleyball

For the first time in as long as TB has been working with volleyball (which dates back to the 20th century), the dartboard is gone from the coach's office.

Yes, a new era in Princeton volleyball has begun.

Jolie Ward steps into the unenviable position of following Princeton legend Glenn Nelson, who guided the women's program to 11 Ivy League titles and the men to a historic 1998 NCAA semifinal berth before retiring last spring.

Part of the new era includes two head coaches for the two programs, which hasn't happened since 1981. Ward will coach the women's program, and her assistant coach will also serve as the head men's coach. In TB's opinion, this move was a necessity because of the importance of both recruiting and off-season practicing. In truth, Nelson was able to work with the men's program full time in the spring because assistant coach Sabrina King was a full-time spring coach and also handled the heavy majority of recruiting duties.

Ward's bio looks good. She earned several team and league honors as a player and posted winning records in her first two stops; in one year at Manhattan, she turned a program that finished 10th the previous season into a playoff contender and missed the four-team postseason on the final day of the conference schedule.

Realistically, though, Princeton wasn't going to hire a coach without the credentials. So what did TB learn about Jolie Ward in the first 24 hours that he thought would serve her and the program best?

GoPrincetonTigers.com has a two-part video chat that will run this week with Ward, where she discusses her own career, her goals for her players and her view of the overall program. In the second part, which will air tomorrow, she specifically talks about the history of the Princeton program. The first thing she did was mention Glenn Nelson.

There were two ways to go about this. One is to just begin your own legacy; the fact of the matter is, within a couple years, your incoming recruits probably won't know who the former coach was anyway. She could have talked about what she wanted the program to become and left it at that.

To specifically mention Nelson, and then to talk about how failure of either program is, in her wording, "unacceptable" because of Nelson's legacy, says more than anything else about Ward. She didn't lower the bar for herself.

And because she didn't lower it for herself, she certainly won't lower it for her players. Without question, there will be a different aura around this program. It isn't necessarily better or worse; right now, zero matches into Ward's time here, it is only different.

But by also specifically crediting Nelson for the program's success, and by challenging herself to maintain his lofty standards, TB also believes that she is inviting the volleyball alumni -- who have known only one face around this program -- to stay on board. Again, this was a smart move; maintaining the alumni base, which is especially strong in Nelson's home-away-from-home of California, will keep the strong ties of the program alive and ideally be a way to locate young talent on the opposite coast.

TB would like to believe the alumni will give Ward a chance. While Nelson was truly one-of-a-kind, his professional passions were the sport and the Princeton players who worked at it. Those will be Ward's as well, and like Nelson, she seems eager to work at bringing the highest level of volleyball to Princeton University.

It may take a couple weeks for the current players to get comfortable with a new coach after knowing only Nelson's method of doing things, but maybe that isn't so bad. With four starters leaving and only one, Sheena Donohue, with more than a year of starting experience, an uncomfortable, difficult preseason may lead to the highest level of work and position competition.

When the league season rolls around Oct. 3, we'll have a better sense of what the 2009 squad will be like. There were few around Princeton who were bigger fans of the previous regime than TB, but there are also few who are more excited and, after the last 24 hours, optimistic for the current regime.

I Dreamed A Dream...

So you've probably seen Susan Boyle somewhere on the internet and her brilliant version of Fantine's haunting "I Dreamed A Dream" from Les Miserables.

On the day when Princeton's all-time winningest coach, Glenn Nelson, prepares for what could be the final match of his brilliant career — and will definitely be the final home match of his career — is it possible to dream the dream that this could be the most magical ending ever?

First of all, some parameters. This dream is that Princeton reaches its first EIVA championship match in 11 years. The one of winning that title — at the expense of reigning NCAA and all-but-1998 EIVA champion Penn State — might be as wild a dream as the one Dorothy had during a bad storm in Kansas.

But is getting there, from the sixth seed, such an impossibility? Can this team take Nelson on one more wild ride?

It starts tonight at 7 p.m. in Dillon Gym. Princeton has to host an extra postseason match because it didn't earn one of the top four seeds in the EIVA playoffs. It's a fair punishment for a team that just didn't get the job done at home throughout the middle of the season. This team — a senior-laden one — knows it.

So we start with Rutgers-Newark, the Hay Division champion after last Friday's win over Harvard (not too many other sports where Princeton misses a Harvard matchup because of Rutgers-Newark). The Scarlet Raiders are a well-coached, scrappy team, but Princeton beat them in four sets earlier this season and went on to lose three of its next four home matches; in other words, the team wasn't exactly playing its best ball.

A Princeton win would send the team to Saint Francis for the EIVA quarterfinal round. The Red Flash has been among that second tier of league teams for a while (Tier 1 is Penn State), but Princeton has matched up very well with the Flash this season. In two matches, Princeton has actually won more overall points than Saint Francis (262-253); both teams won a 3-2 decision on the road. Princeton hasn't won too many road matches, but the Tigers are coming off a big road win at George Mason last weekend and have already won at Saint Francis.

Would they be the favorite? No. Would they be a big underdog? No.

So let's say Princeton pulls off that one. Now the Tigers would get the important first EIVA semifinal match. What makes it important? Here's a hint... the second one involves a certain Blue and White team. The first semifinal would send Princeton against Juniata, which has its best team in years and deservedly earned the second seed. But the last time the Tigers played Juniata, they lost in five sets and were in two that they lost. The only other meeting was the EIVA opener for both teams.

How would either team react with a shot at the championship match on the line? With four seniors and two juniors on the roster, you'd have to at least give Princeton a shot.

Would they be the favorite? No. Would they be a big underdog? No.

Princeton, led by Glenn Nelson, defeated Penn State en route to the 1998 EIVA championship. It's the only time Happy Valley didn't house the league title in men's volleyball.

So could Nelson's final match be one more EIVA title match against Penn State. The road is long and filled with obstacles, but it's manageable. Three big-time efforts could land the Tigers in that magical position, in the championship match against the ultimate Goliath.

Would they be the favorite? No. Would they be a big underdog?

As Fantine sang, "I dreamed a dream in times gone by..."

For You, Muh-NISH

For those who read the Star-Ledger, you might recognize the byline "M.A. Mehta" from his coverage of Rutgers women's basketball, Georgetown men's basketball (for any reason at all) and outstanding feature writing (TigerBlog does not say this casually; M.A. is one of the best sportswriters TB has ever read).

What you might not know is that M.A. Mehta is actually Manish Mehta (pronounced "mah-NEESH" by the rest of the world and "muh-NISH" by Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson). Before he was ever M.A. the sportswriter, Manish was simply Manish, a member of the Princeton Office of Athletic Communications staff.

Back in those days, Manish was the volleyball contact, a distinction that earned him a trip to the 1999 NCAA men's final four in Hawaii. As is the case with anyone who came in contact with retiring coach Glenn Nelson, Manish was immediately drawn to him.

Now that Nelson has announced his retirement, Manish sent an email looking for funny Glenn Nelson stories for a feature that he wants to write. TigerBlog (this TigerBlog, not the TigerBlog who has spent way more time around Glenn) responded that most of the ones he had weren't fit for print in the Star-Ledger, but TB would try to come up with something.

As an aside, the first thought TB had about Nelson is that despite the fact that he walks with a limp, he still moves faster all the time than perhaps anyone TB has ever been around. But that's not what Manish was after.

So, here are this TigerBlog's two best printable Glenn Nelson stories:

One, ironically, has to do with when Manish was the volleyball contact. Back then, computer stats were new to sports information, and the volleyball version of the stat program is by far the toughest. Seeing that Manish was struggling with the program, Nelson called timeout. Why? So his sports information guy could get caught up.

The second story has to do with Nelson and his long, long, long-time tennis partner, Pete Carril. When Carril left to become an assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings, Nelson badgered him for years to get him some Kings gear. Finally, one day, years later, Carril showed up with a bag in hand for Nelson. The next day, Nelson saw Carril again on the balcony in Jadwin and said: "Hey, Coach. You know those Kings shorts you gave me yesterday? Your wallet was in the back pocket." He then flipped Carril his wallet.