Deflated

Raise your hand if you're shocked by any of the following:

1) that the Patriots might have cheated
2) that Bill Belichick now claims he didn't know that the footballs in the AFC championship game were deflated
3) that Bill Belichick made Pete Carroll and Richard Sherman into the sentimental favorites for the Super Bowl

Here's what TigerBlog thinks:

Bill Belichick should be banned from the NFL for a year - starting with the Super Bowl next week - and the continued specter of cheating that has hovered over him and quarterback Tom Brady for the entirety of their time together should keep them out of the Hall of Fame in the same way that it has kept out the baseball players who were linked to steroids but who never failed a drug test.

Yes, TigerBlog believes that. Hey, if you can ban a coach in New Orleans for the bounties placed on opposing players, you can ban Belichick for again threatening the integrity of the game.

He also would guess that Belichick is lying through his teeth when he says he had no knowledge that the balls were deflated. He further would guess that last Sunday wasn't the first time this had happened, and he thinks this taints every single thing Brady has accomplished, as it does for a baseball player like A-Rod.

In fact, he can't help but wonder how else these two have cheated through the years. What would surprise you? Anything?

And the idea that the Patriots creamed the Colts anyway doesn't matter. The Patriots didn't set out to cheat with the idea that the game would be a blowout anyway; they did it to get any possible edge in the event the game was close.

Does Belichick think that the rest of the world is so dumb as to believe that he knew nothing about this? He can't be allowed to simply say that and then go on and prepare for the game, as if this is no big deal.

What this is is the latest in a long run of allegations, mostly proven, that suggest that the Patriots and especially their head coach and quarterback feel that the rules do not apply to them, that they can do whatever they want to gain advantage.

To TigerBog, that makes everything they've accomplished no longer matter, as every piece of those accomplishments can be called into question. And to those who say that everyone does it, who else has gotten caught? Anyone?

This is the NFL's worst nightmare. It's the one team with the one coach and the one quarterback that the NFL would least want to see in this situation.

Now it's going to be all about this subject for an entire week prior to the game. With a league already dealing with serious issues related to domestic violence and the physical well-being of its current and former players, now all of the sudden comes another Super Bowl that will be wall-to-wall Patriots cheating.

Let's see how much courage the league has now to drop the hammer on Belichick.

Is he a great coach? In the NFL, you can't be a great coach without a great quarterback, and Belichick never started to win like this until he had Brady. Now fans are left to wonder how much of Brady's edge has come outside the rules.

Belichick, if you recall, bolted from the Jets after being hired as their head coach in 1999. How long did he last? One day. Then he fled for the Pats.

Had Belichick stayed with the Jets, would all of this success have come his way? Hah. Hardly. Now with the litany of quarterbacks that the Jets coaches have been saddled with all these years.

So all of this leaves any casual football fan, like TigerBlog, with two choices come Super Sunday. Root for the Seahawks, who themselves are not easy to root for, or don't watch.

There is still a week until the Super Bowl.

There are still a few more exams to be taken at Princeton, but the winter teams will be returning to play soon enough after what will ultimately be a 13-day break.

It begins with men's and women's track and field here Saturday, as well as women's tennis in Alabama this weekend.

When Princeton was last in Alabama, it was for the NCAA tournament last spring. Princeton, if you recall, defeated Arizona State in the first round and then barely lost to Alabama, the No. 2 team in the country.

This came on the heels of a 7-0 Ivy League season, something that isn't easy to do in women's tennis. It also came without a senior in the lineup.

The event in Alabama is something a four-team kickoff tournament, with Princeton, Alabama, Syracuse and Virginia Tech. Alabama is ranked seventh, while Princeton is 35th. Va. Tech and Syracuse are 56th and 57th.

As an aside, TigerBlog is not a fan of the word "respectively" inserted into obvious situations in sentences like the one he just wrote. It's obvious that Virginia Tech is 56 and Syracuse is 57. He doesn't need to add "respectively." In fact, it's among his least favorite words.

Anyway, the women's tennis team is clearly worth keeping an eye on this spring. The Tigers will play one home match in the next two-plus months, and that is in Jadwin Gym on Feb. 17 against Rutgers. The Ivy League schedule doesn't start until the final day of March at Penn, followed by a home weekend April 3 and 4 against Yale and Brown.

In the meantime, there's the matter of the rest of the winter sports season, which eases back into it this weekend and then begins the all-out sprint to the Ivy title finish line next weekend.

And then there's the Super Bowl.

Go Seahawks.

The Cynic Vs. The Optimist

Though TigerBlog has been known to be a tad cynical at times, he's trying to embrace a more optimistic side these days.

It's not always easy.

Today he offers a mix of the cynical and the optimistic, courtesy of the world of sports.

Let's start out with the cynical side.

There was this little tidbit, about the thoughts of some of the current players on a team that is considering signing Richie Incognito, the former Miami Dolphins offensive lineman who was at the center of the Jonathan Martin bullying situation a year ago:
Both quarterback Josh McCown and defensive tackle Gerald McCoy said Monday that there wouldn't be a problem in the locker room if Incognito is signed.
"I don't care. As long as he can help us win, that's all I'm concerned about. If there's a problem, then we'll deal with it accordingly," McCoy said. "But as long as he's doing what he's supposed to be doing in the building, then I'm not concerned about anything else."

So what does that mean? That they could care less about the bullying, only about the blocking. Cynical.

Then there was Jerry Jones, one of the big egomaniacs on this planet. The owner of the Cowboys was talking about Josh Brent and how he hoped how Brent spent some of the off-season helped him in terms of discipline.

And what did Brent do this off-season? He went to jail. 

Perhaps you remember Brent from the story in 2012 when he was driving drunk and killed teammate and friend Jerry Brown. And what did Jones say about the matter?

As only outspoken owner Jerry Jones could put it, he hopes Josh Brent can be a better football player when he returns to the Dallas Cowboys because of the time spent in jail for the drunken-driving death of teammate Jerry Brown.
"When you on Monday are given a roll of toilet paper and it's got to last you until next Monday, that's a lesson of discipline," Jones said Tuesday in an interview with 105.3 The Fan. "That's a lesson of life. That's what happened to Josh. "When you have someone next door to you that grabs your plate of food and you weigh 340 pounds but you don't mess with him -- he just looks at you, because you know that guy doesn't care if you live or die -- that's a life experience. I think there's a chance that Josh Brent may come out here and have a perspective that none of us have seen before, especially from Josh."

Was that not enough? It gets way, way worse:
"He's had that [life-changing] experience," Jones said. "He deserved that, and some people think he deserved more, but the point is he has been through some eye-opening days. We could really benefit from that as a football team.
"In a totally and completely different way -- and I'm going to make sure everybody understands it is a completely different way, if you understand what I'm saying, Chad Hennings joined the Dallas Cowboys and he had actually flown in Desert Storm single-pilot jets. Had actually had a crash in single-pilot jets. Chad Hennings had developed a discipline and developed a work ethic that made him a man among boys, and he was a major contributor technically [and] physically but, boy, was he a contributor being an example of work ethic and an appreciation for the job you've got.
"It's a shame that all athletes to some degree can't have some of these life experiences and really have an appreciation for what a great opportunity it is to play in the National Football League. But Josh has had that, I think."

What the? So he compares killing someone in a drunk-driving accident with flying jets in combat for the military, essentially saying that the two provide the same kind of "life experiences." And it's a shame that all athletes can't have these "life experiences?"

Is he insane? Seriously? Is there something actually wrong with him?

Cynical.

Then there is the case of USC defensive back Josh Shaw, who suffered two serious ankle injuries from jumping from a second-story hotel balcony to save his seven-year-old nephew from drowning in a pool. For one day, he was hailed as a great hero, and a great USC hero at that, after he acted in the "Trojan Way."

And now? Well, it turns out that it might not exactly be true.

In fairness to Shaw, nothing has been established yet. But hey, why would it turn out to be true? Why wouldn't it be just another charade, designed to make someone feel good about people, only to have it yanked away at the end?

TigerBlog hopes that it turns out that the first story is true. It's just that he'll believe it when he sees it.

Cynical. Very cynical.

And then there was the report about Michael Sam, the first openly-gay player in the NFL, and his shower habits in the lockerroom. Great. Just what this story needed.

Cynical.

On the other hand ...

There is the story of Louis Marx Jr. from the Princeton Class of 1953, who has endowed foreign travel for the men's and women's tennis teams. Every four years (it's an NCAA rule that these trips can be no more frequent than every fourth year), Princeton's men's and women's teams can make a foreign trip courtesy of Marx.

The men's team went to South Africa in June. The women's team is currently finishing its trip to Sweden, Denmark and Spain.

The gift from Marx has enabled nearly a quarter-century's worth of Princeton tennis players to make an international trip. TigerBlog has been on two - both with men's lacrosse - and he can attest first-hand what a great experience it is for the athletes. It's something they will never forget, and it's a huge part of their Princeton athletic careers.

Optimistic. Very much so.

Then there is the preseason national field hockey poll. Princeton is ranked seventh.

A year ago, Princeton reached the NCAA quarterfinals. Two years ago, Princeton won it all, for the first NCAA field hockey title in program history.

This year, Princeton finds itself seventh - as it chases its 20th Ivy League title in 21 years. The Tigers trail Maryland, North Carolina, UConn, Duke, Syracuse and Virginia. That's five ACC teams and the defending champ (UConn).

It's easy to take for granted the overwhelming success of Princeton field hockey, or any Princeton team for that matter. Every now and then it's worth taking a step back and seeing the schools that Princeton competes against year after year, and with such stunning results.

Optimistic.

Then there's Corey Okubo. He'll be a freshman at Princeton this year - just as soon as he returns from the Junior Pan-Pacific Games in Hawaii.

Okubo most recently finished 10th in the 400 IM and 12th in the 200 fly at the U.S. Senior National Championships and from winning 200 fly at the Junior National Championships. Again, it's easy to take for granted that national-caliber athletes like Okubo choose Princeton to compete in college, knowing full well that they do so with an eye on a top education and a top athletic experience.

And they've been doing this for decades and decades.

Optimistic.

Lastly, there is Cosmo Iacavazzi, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and one of the great football players Princeton has ever had. It's been 50 years since he led the Tigers to a perfect season in 1964.

There he was yesterday, talking to this Princeton team after one of its first practices before a season in which the team is the preseason favorite to win the Ivy League title, which it did a year ago as well.

It's about more than wins at Princeton, though. It's about the loyalty and lifelong relationships that are formed as Princeton athletes, and that is on display clearly when someone like Iacavazzi comes back to talk to the current players.

Optimistic.

And the moral of all of this?

You're better off reading goprincetontigers.com than espn.com.

Have A Slice

When TigerBlog was in high school, he could ride his bike (or eventually drive) about a mile to the nearest pizza place. He's pretty sure a plain slice was 80 cents.

During his time in the newspaper business, he'd often get two slices and a medium cherry coke for lunch at a pizza place in West Windsor. He's pretty sure the total bill was $2.40.

TigerBlog has always liked the thicker crust pizza, as opposed to the thin crust, though he always has liked the pizza at Conte's, which is definitely thin crust. He can't figure that out in the same way he's never been able to figure out why he doesn't like peanut butter but likes Reese's peanut butter cups.

When TigerBlog used to take the bus with the Princeton men's basketball team during his newspaper days, the team would often get pizza for the long rides after games. TigerBlog used to get his with mushrooms, and he'd split a pie with the only other person on the bus who wanted mushrooms on his pizza, Sean Jackson, the 1992 Ivy League Player of the Year.

Back then, pizza was cheese, bread, sauce and maybe a topping if you wanted. If you've ever had a pizza, you're familiar with the normal toppings - sausage, pepperoni, onions, peppers. Those are the normal ones.

If you're looking for maybe the greatest movie moment involving pizza, it's hard to beat the opening credits of "Saturday Night Fever," when John Travolta stops off for a slice on his way back to the hardware store in Brooklyn.

TB isn't sure exactly when he first noticed that pizza toppings had gone from simple to ultra-complex.

TB stopped off for a slice yesterday around lunchtime at a pizza place he'd ever been to before, and he was amazed at all the different combinations. He can't even begin to remember them all.

There was buffalo chicken. Caesar salad. One that looked like a salad with artichokes on it. Chicken parmigiana. Cheesesteak. Meat and more meat.

In all, there had to be nearly 20 different kinds of pizza sitting there.

Off in the corner, there was also a plain pie. It made TigerBlog wonder if anyone can ever look at all of those different choices and ask for plain.

Of any place that TB has ever gone that has pizza but isn't a pizza place, the one with the best pizza is Frist Campus Center, by the way.

TB was out of the office yesterday, though he has plenty he needs to get done.

He has to send a bunch of stuff to the Tewaaraton Trophy people for Tom Schreiber, one of the five finalists. He has a ton of stuff to do for the Princeton Varsity Club senior athlete banquet, which is two weeks from today.

That little fact, by the way, guarantees that two weeks from today will be 90 degrees with a chance of thunderstorms.

Because the banquet is so close, it means that the academic year is winding down. The banquet always corresponds with the first day of Reunions, which is followed by graduation, and another year will have come and gone.

There are still athletic events to be contested, of course.

Princeton has a maximum of 19 more competitions, depending on how many teams and individuals qualify for national championships.

This a huge weekend for rowing, with the Ivy League championships for women in Cherry Hill and the Eastern Sprints - which determine the Ivy champ for men's heavyweight and lightweight - in Worcester, Mass.

TigerBlog has never been to Eastern Sprints or to the Ivy women's championships, but he has been to the national championships, which are quite a show. This year's IRA national championships will be May 30-June 1 in West Windsor.

In addition to rowing, there is IC4A and ECAC track and field at Weaver Stadium this weekend.

In fact, other than one NCAA women's tennis singles participant (freshman Alanna Wolf), all of the rest of Princeton's athletic schedule for this year is rowing and track and field.

It ends June 11-14 with the NCAA track and field championships in Eugene, Ore., where Julia Ratcliffe will probably be among the contenders in the women's hammer throw.

And then it'll be summer.

Speaking of which, you know where they have great pizza?

On the boardwalk.

A Big Weekend In Alabama

TigerBlog had an awful shopping cart at the supermarket yesterday.

There are three kinds of shopping carts at the supermarket TB regularly uses. There are the traditional ones, with the deep basket and the place for young child to sit. There are the ones that have a miniature car for the little kids to sit in while the parent pushes from behind fills in the cart in the back.

And then there's the one TB likes. It's smaller than the normal-sized ones, and it has no place for a child to sit. It has a top rack and much smaller bottom rack, and it's about the right size for what TB usually gets.

Yesterday he grabbed the first one in the row of carts that were all stacked together in the corridor between the store and the parking lot and went inside. He didn't even make it to the first row of produce before he realized that this cart was terrible.

It's not just that the wheels weren't aligned. They couldn't even all touch the floor at the same time.

He thought about going back to the stack of carts and getting a new one, but he wasn't getting that much stuff so he figured he could tough it out. That turned out to be a mistake.

As he put things in the cart, it got even worse and more out of balance. Eventually it would only go to the left unless TB sort of picked it up off the ground and redirected it.

Of course, when he was done, he just put it back at the end of the row of carts, leaving it for someone else to have to deal with, as opposed to taking it out back and burying it. 

TigerBlog was wondering how old these carts are - how many miles they have on them, as it were - and how often the average supermarket replaces them.

Years? Decades?

If TB's cart dated back to early 2010, then it was as old as it had been since Princeton had beaten a Top 25 team in women's tennis - until this past Friday.

The women's tennis team had a remarkable weekend at the NCAA tournament. It began with a 4-3 win over No. 25 Arizona State in the first round and then continued with a 4-2 loss to second-ranked Alabama in the second round in a match that could have gone either way when it was 2-2 with a third set in the other three matches.

When you think of the great accomplishments of Princeton teams in the NCAA tournament, this weekend's stay by the women's tennis team probably doesn't leap to mind. That's a shame, because what the Tigers did was extraordinary.

Alabama is the second-ranked team in the country in women's tennis, a sport that has enough teams to justify a 64-team NCAA tournament field. That's something reserved for sports like basketball and soccer on the women's side.

Princeton went toe-to-toe with the Crimson Tide, and did so with a lineup that featured no seniors.

It started with the win over Arizona State, a perennial NCAA tournament participant, one that has played in 27 straight postseasons. Princeton was playing in its fifth all-time and first since 2010.

The win was Princeton's first ever in the NCAA

Alabama is a team thinking national championship, not getting bounced in the second round by a team from the East, let alone a team from the Ivy League. Princeton pushed the Crimson Tide to the brink and did so after going five hours in its match against ASU.

And with the lineup the Tigers have, next year and beyond figure to be exciting.

All in all, it was a remarkable effort by the Tigers. If it had been in, say, basketball, it would have been national news.

Okay, the women's tennis tournament isn't what the basketball tournament are. So what?

That doesn't diminish what Princeton did this weekend.

Maybe it wasn't the 1965 men's basketball Final Four or a lacrosse championship.

It was still a great performance. 

Women's Lax, Women's Tennis, Track And Field - And Ping Pong

The good people of Dillon Gym are sort of their own subculture.

It's a mix of coaches and campus rec over there, centrally located in the middle of campus. For every one person who wanders into Jadwin Gym, TigerBlog figures 20 or so probably walk into Dillon.

TigerBlog is part of the Jadwin crowd. It's a mix of coaches, administrators and staff over here, a little bit off the beaten path of the University campus, though with much, much better parking.

The Dillon people and the Jadwin people work together in that they are all part of the same department but don't really work together on a day-to-day basis. It's hardly a regular occurrence when one of the Dillonites wanders over to Jadwin or vice versa.

They're not like the Hatfields and the McCoys or anything like that. Far from it. They're just separated by a huge part of the campus, and they don't always get to see each other all the time.

TigerBlog has been a Jadwin person for a long time. In all that time, he can't remember anything like what's currently going on with the McCoys, as it were, where apparently there is a staff ping-pong tournament going on.

TB saw the bracket yesterday, which was Day 1 of the competition, which according to the bracket will lead to a championship match in two weeks. Apparently the big opening round upset was women's volleyball coach Sabrina King's win over men's lightweight rowing coach Marty Crotty.

TigerBlog has only see one of the 27 people in the field play ping-pong. For whatever reason, he'll go with men's soccer coach Jim Barlow to win it all, even though he's one of the 26 he's never seen play. It just seems like something he'd be good at.

He also likes men's lacrosse coach Chris Bates, who would meet Barlow in the semifinals. On the other side, he'll stay with King - though she'd have to get past men's golf coach Will Green - and go with women's lightweight rowing coach Paul Rassam as his other person in the Final Four.

He has no idea if any of these people are actually any good in ping pong.

Women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer isn't in the field. She's busy right now anyway, what with her team at Virginia for this afternoon's opening round game of the NCAA tournament against Penn State. The opening draw is at 4, and the winner plays Virginia Sunday.

Princeton and Penn State are hardly strangers. They meet for the 35th time overall and second time in three weeks, after Penn State won 13-12 in the final game of the regular season.

About two hours before the lacrosse game starts, Princeton will be playing Arizona State in Alabama in the opening round of the NCAA women's tennis tournament.

Laura Granville has the Tigers in the NCAA tournament in her second year. Arizona State coach Sheila McInerney has a little more experience - she's been there for 30 years.

Come to think of it, TigerBlog figures Granville is probably a good ping pong player too.

The other really big event this weekend is Heps track and field, which will take place at Yale.

Princeton's men are the three-time defending champion. The women are looking for their 10th Heps title and first since 2011.

Princeton is loaded with individual contenders among the men and women, most notably Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer throw on the women's side. Ratcliffe has the Ivy League's best throw this season - and the NCAA's best throw, for that matter.

Those are the big events of the weekend.

The ping pong tournament picks up again next week.

Serving Notice

How many Tweets do you suppose are sent out there for the world to see each year?

The people at Twitter don't publish such statistics, so TigerBlog can't vouch for the reliability of what he learned. As near as he can figure it, there are 21,170,000,000 Tweets per year. That's more than 21 trillion.

Of all of those Tweets, it's hard to imagine any will be better than the one sent out by Scott Jurgens over the weekend. Scott, if you don't know, used to the head of marketing at Princeton and is now an Associate Athletic Director at Montana State.

So what did he Tweet to separate himself from the other 21 trillion, give or take? Just this:

"So I have determined that if Barnaby, my dog, would talk that he would talk and act like Johnny Utah from Point Break!"

It's untoppable, right?

First of all, TigerBlog is on record as saying that he thinks Point Break is a great movie. In fact, he wrote this in 2009:
One of TigerBlog's favorite movies is "Point Break," a great action movie with a tremendous plot and some great performances. Okay, it's true. TB admits it. He was even okay with the job that Keanu Reeves did as Johnny Utah. The movie is basically about a young FBI agent (Reeves) with a crusty old partner (Gary Busey) who chase a bunch of surfer/bank robbers led by their leader (Patrick Swayze). It has some great action scenes and chase scenes, and TB was able to forgive the ending.

Okay, Reeves didn't quite win an Academy Award. But Johnny Utah was a great character. A former college football hotshot quarterback who tore up his knee, ending his chances at the NFL, only to resurface in the FBI - where his first big assignment is to learn to to surf.

TigerBlog's only question - well, he has a bunch of questions - is why Barnaby would most take after Johnny Utah if he could transform from canine to human. And TB thought Barnaby and Jurgens already were speaking to each other.

There's a great picture in Gary Walters' office of the women's tennis team after the Tigers won the championship in 2010. It's a picture of the team as it got off the bus, and there on the end are Walters (TB gets that) and Jurgens (TB doesn't quite get that).

TB isn't sure how Jurgens ended up in the picture. He thinks Scott told him once, but he can't remember the story. Maybe he'll ask Barnaby.

That 2010 women's tennis championship was Princeton's second straight. Now, after three years without a championship, the 2014 women's tennis team is back on top of the league and headed to the NCAA tournament.

Princeton defeated Columbia yesterday 6-1 to finish a perfect run through the Ivy League at 7-0, and that's not something that's easy to do. To get to 7-0, Princeton had to defeat three ranked teams - Yale, Harvard and Columbia. The wins over Yale and Columbia were over the teams that shared the league championship a year ago.

Princeton did not have a senior in the lineup yesterday. The six players who played the singles matches included three freshmen, along with a sophomore and two juniors. There was another freshman who played doubles.

Laura Granville is in Year 2 as the Tiger head coach. A year ago, Princeton went 4-3 in the league, with losses to Yale, Harvard and Columbia. In fact, Princeton lost to the Lions 7-0 to end the 2013 season.

This year is another story. Princeton has won 10 straight matches, ending its non-league season by defeating Florida International, Maryland and FDU.

Then, in its perfect league run, Princeton had only one 4-3 match, the win over Yale, which would be Yale's only league loss. The Tigers sealed that win with a three-set victory at No. 1 by Lindsay Graff, a junior.

Princeton clinched at least a share of the league title Friday with its win over Cornell. Columbia, with a loss to Yale, had one league loss, so a Lions' win over Princeton could have set up a three-way tie for the championship.

Instead, this was all Princeton. The Tigers won the doubles point and then five of six singles matches, wrapping up an Ivy title and earning a spot in the NCAA tournament. The draw will be announced next week.

In the process, Princeton had a 13-point swing against Columbia, going from 7-0 down last year to 6-1 up this year.

And keep in mind how young the Tiger lineup is.

Of course, with how competitive Ivy women's tennis is, there are no guarantees. Still, Princeton figure to right there again for the next few years.

This year Princeton sent a message to the rest of the league. Serving notice, as it were.

Princeton women's tennis - 2014 Ivy League champ.

A Week To Remember

It's been quite a few days around these parts, what with the going-away party for one athletic director and the introduction of the new one.

TigerBlog was thinking about the transition from Gary Walters to Mollie Marcoux.

Actually, before he gets to that, he also noticed that autocorrect changes "Mollie" to "Millie," which left him wondering how many times he's going to change it before his phone gets the point.

Anyway, the first person at Princeton to have the designation of Director of Athletics was Ken Fairman, who first assumed that title in 1941 and then held the position until 1973. He actually oversaw Princeton's sports teams beginning in 1939, when his title was graduate manager of athletics.

According to the Princeton Companion - a great reference tool by the way - the athletic administration at Princeton began in the 1800s as an "every man for himself" arrangement - with the emphasis on "man." Each team had a captain, and the captains made all of the administrative decisions.

Then, in 1890, the teams all came together under one athletic umbrella, eventually with oversight from the faculty. This lasted until 1937, when the athletic department - under the leadership of graduate manager of athletics Asa Bushnell - was formed.

Fairman's 32-year run as Director of Athletics is the longest in Princeton history. He was replaced in 1973 by Royce Flippin, who among other things, emailed TigerBlog yesterday about a matter completely unrelated to anything to do with the change in athletic directors, though it did mean that in one day, TB heard from three of the five people to hold the title in 73 years.

Flippin was the AD until Bob Myslik replaced him in 1979 and then ran the department until 1994, when Gary Walters took over.

The first four people to hold the position held it for an average of more than 18 years, with Flippin's tenure the shortest and Fairman's the longest. Should Marcoux hit that average of 18 years, then she figures to be TB's final boss.

TigerBlog remembers his first conversation with Gary Walters after they both started at Princeton, and he remembers that it was sort of like a reverse job interview, where Gary asked him all kinds of questions about his background, his future plans, where he saw himself in 10 years, that sort of thing. He also told him he was lucky that he was hired in between Myslik's last day and his first, because he never would have hired a Penn guy.

What TB would really like to do is go back to that moment and ask Gary about his future plans, about where he thought he would be in 10 years. Or if he thought he'd still be the AD in 20 years.

Now those 20 years have flown by. And now it's Mollie Marcoux's time to take over.

What will her future be at Princeton? Will there be a big party for her in 2034 after her 20 years, and if so, will it be in Jadwin Gym, or will it be in the new facility that she spearheaded?

With such a massive changing of the guard, it's easy to think in such big-picture terms these days.

At the same time, the games keep going.

There was a huge one last night, when Princeton beat Penn 9-5 in women's lacrosse. With the win, Princeton has the inside track on at least a share of the Ivy League title and a chance to host the Ivy League tournament.

In fact, Penn has been the only host of the Ivy women's tournament in the four years the event has been held. Now, after the win last night, Princeton would host the tournament with either a win Saturday against Dartmouth (on Sherrerd Field at 1) or a loss by Penn in any of its final three league games - against Columbia, Cornell and Brown.

Princeton is now 5-1 in the Ivy League, followed by Penn at 3-1. Harvard and Cornell have two losses each; Dartmouth is 2-3.

A win Saturday would also mean at least a share of the league title. Another team that can clinch a share - or even an outright - league title this weekend is the women's tennis team.

Princeton is currently 5-0 in the league, with two matches left. The Tigers are at Cornell (0-5 in the league) tomorrow, and a win there would mean at least a share of the Ivy League championship.

Then there is Sunday, when Columbia is at Princeton. The Lions are in second place at 4-1, and they play another 0-5 team, Penn, Friday. Should both Princeton and Columbia win, then the match Sunday would be something of a showdown, though not winner-take-all.

Columbia has already lost to Yale, who lost to Princeton. There can still be a three-way tie for the title, or Princeton can win it outright. There's also the NCAA bid at stake.

On the one hand, it's a week that in many ways is historic in Princeton athletic history. The end of the Walters era, so elegantly celebrated Saturday night. And the arrival of the new AD, the first woman to hold the position.

On the other hand, it's just another week in mid-April, which means big games with big stakes. This weekend, they're coming to campus, for women's lacrosse Saturday and women's tennis Sunday.

The Pre-Tournament Begins

TigerBlog isn't sure if Tuesday night's Princeton-Lehigh men's lacrosse game was the most exciting in Division I this season or just the second-best one played that day.

If you thought Princeton's 10-9 double overtime win over Lehigh was wild, what with the whole tying it with 2.7 seconds left in regulation and all, how about the Sacred Heart-Holy Cross game? Sacred Heart trailed 11-3 in the fourth quarter - the fourth quarter - and then ripped off eight goals to tie it and before winning 12-11 in overtime.

So what's better, a relatively unheard of comeback or a game that goes to two overtimes without ever having either team lead by more than one?

In the case of Princeton's game against Lehigh, the score was tied at 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5, 6-6, 7-7, 8-8 and finally 9-9.

Getting to 9-9 wasn't exactly easy.

Princeton trailed 9-8 with 1:10 to go, Lehigh with the ball, out of a timeout. TigerBlog always thinks the team with the ball in that situation hurts itself by calling timeout, since the defense can come out the timeout ready to pounce on the ball, rather than scrambling while play is ongoing.

In this case, the Tigers doubled the ball and trapped it in the corner, gaining possession and clearing it to Tom Schreiber, whose shot was saved by Lehigh's outstanding goalie Matt Poillon. The game might have been over there, except that Poillon's outlet pass shorthopped its target near midfield, allowing Schreiber and Will Reynolds to converge and get it back. Schreiber's next shot hit a foot in front of the goal and bounced back near midfield, where Mike MacDonald picked it up and got it to Kip Orban, who beat Poillon and the clock with 2.7 seconds to spare to send it to overtime.

And then another overtime.

And then Schreiber got the ball free about 10 yards in front of the goal after slipping a screen and, well, he was never going to miss from there. And he didn't.

For Princeton, it was a great win. Hopefully for the Tigers it doesn't become the highlight of the year.

With three weeks to go in the regular season, Princeton is trying to make its push for the two big tournaments, first the Ivy League one and then the NCAA one. This weekend starts the three-game pre-tournament.

The schedule has Princeton at home tomorrow (1) against Dartmouth, a team that beat the Tigers in Hanover 10-9 last year in a game that did a great deal to haunt Princeton come NCAA selection night.

Next week is a trip to Harvard, who just happens to be the last unbeaten team in Ivy League men's lacrosse. And then it's off to Long Island to take on Cornell in what is called the Battle of Bethpage April 26.

Right now, Harvard is 3-0, followed by Cornell at 2-1, Penn and Yale at 2-2, Princeton and Brown at 1-2 and Dartmouth at 0-3. This weekend starts the sorting out, with Yale at Brown tonight and Harvard at Penn tomorrow, in addition the Tigers and Big Green and a non-league game of Cornell and Hofstra.

It's actually tough for a Princeton fan to know which teams would help the Tigers by winning. Princeton obviously wants Lehigh to win out and at least get the Patriot League final against Loyola.

Princeton has already beaten Penn and Hofstra, so the better they do, the better Princeton's win is. On the other hand, a Penn loss to Harvard means Princeton's win isn't as good as it would be if Penn keeps winning, but it could help Princeton get into the Ivy tournament and make a potential win over Harvard be better should the Tigers pull that off next week.

The same logic applies to Hofstra-Cornell. The win over Hofstra gets better with a win over Cornell; a Cornell win gives Princeton a top 10 or even top 5 opponent to go against on Long Island. 

And it's probably better for Princeton if Brown beats Yale, since Yale figures to be battling Princeton for an at-large NCAA bid should neither get the NCAA bid. But then that all depends what would happen after that, as Brown still has to play Cornell and Yale still have to play Harvard.

Princeton can solve all of its own problems by winning out.  It desperately needs a win against Dartmouth after a season where two wins (Hofstra, Manhattan) were followed by two losses (Hopkins, Carolina) and then two more wins (Penn, Villanova) and then two more losses (Yale, Brown) and now two more wins (Rutgers, Lehigh).

Princeton has never lost consecutive games to Dartmouth and is 30-1 all-time in Princeton against the alma mater of head coach Chris Bates.

That game is not the only home event this weekend.

The men's golf team hosts the Princeton Invitational tomorrow and Sunday, and there is home women's tennis against Harvard (tomorrow) and Dartmouth (Sunday), home men's and women's track against Monmouth, St. John's and Vermont (fairly random group) and men's lightweight rowing against Cornell.

By the way, speaking of golf, TigerBlog hasn't played since 2000 or so, but he'd like to get out at least once this summer. He's adding that to his other goal of catching a fish.

It's still spring, though. It's actually early spring, but time is running out on the lacrosse season.

The game Tuesday was a great one. The one tomorrow is a huge one, the first of at least three in a row.

Princeton is hoping for much more than that.

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.

It's Quiet

TigerBlog opens today with a little more on the NFC championship game.

First, to those who are okay with Richard Sherman's postgame rant, TB would quote Pete Carril: "When you lower your standards, they turn around and attack you."

It's not that Sherman is dumb. Hardly. It's not that he's a thug. Hardly.

It's that this is what society is all about these days. The more outrageous, the better. A week ago, how many people had heard of Richard Sherman, as good a player as he is? Who's the Seahawks other corner? Who are the Broncos corners?

And if you heard of him before, was it because of his play or because of his social media?

Richard Sherman? Household name now. In contemporary America, that's mission accomplished. Whatever it takes to achieve it.

Oh, and NaVorro Bowman, the 49ers linebacker and leading tackler this season who appeared to intercept a pass near the goal line, only to have the play be non-reviewable because it was ruled a fumble and a recovery by the Seahawks and such a play is not reviewable?

Well, Bowman tore his ACL and MCL on the play, which brought up another Pete Carril moment.

As Bowman was on the ground, at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that he'd gotten possession of the ball for his team - until someone went over and told him that he didn't and that it wasn't reviewable.

It reminded TB of the time at lunchtime basketball in Jadwin when an assistant football coach drove to the basket, only to tear his knee along the way. Carril, who was playing at the time, walked out over to where the football coach was on the ground, writhing away, while someone had run to get an athletic trainer.

And what did Pete say? Only this: "Now might be the best time to tell you you traveled."

Anyway, how could that play not be reviewable? Justice was served, of course, by a turnover on the net play that gave San Francisco the ball anyway.

But isn't the point of replay to correct awful mistakes? Games can be delayed interminably in the second quarter of Week 3 over microscopic analysis to see if a receiver had both feet in bounds or not, but an obviously incorrect call in the NFC Championship Game?

Oh well. Now we're on to Seahawks-Broncos, which can only mean two things - a lot of Richard Sherman and two weeks of talk about how many people want the weather to be awful.

Why do people want the weather to stink? Isn't a good thing that the Super Bowl is in this area? It's something different, but it's not like the NFL has never played postseason games in bad weather before.

TB is astounded by the number of people who want the weather to be below zero. TB gets people who want to see it snow, because that's cool. But freezing?

Why? Would the Super Bowl be anymore about corporate greed and excess if it was held in Hawaii? Nope.

Week 1 of the Super Bowl hype corresponds with the final week of first semester exams here at Princeton. As of today it's been nine days since Princeton had a sporting event, which makes this the longest stretch of the year without any competition - even with the rest of the week to go.

Princeton's next athletic events are this weekend, with men's and women's track and field, men's and women's tennis and men's basketball all in action.

Beginning Saturday, with both tracks and women's tennis, there will be at least one Princeton athletic event every day through the day of the Super Bowl. Some of those will be bigger events than others, with none bigger than the basketball games against Harvard (women here, men at Harvard) on Jan. 31.

For now, it's very, very quiet around here.

Elsewhere in college athletics, especially hockey and basketball, this is about as busy as it gets. Schools are back from exams and holiday breaks, and conference games dominate in January.

Creighton buried Villanova last night in men's basketball 96-68, shooting 21 for 35 from three-point range along the way. It was the seventh conference game for Creighton.

A bunch of schools - including every one in the MAAC - have played eight league games. In the Ivy League, every team, men's and women's, has played one.

One team that has played six league games, and won them all, is American's men's team. American is coached by Princeton alum Mike Brennan, and he has fellow Tiger Scott Greenman as an assistant coach.

Anyway, during exam break, teams here do not have formal practices. They have informal ones, featuring whoever can get down to work out as a break from studying.

That all ends soon enough. The games will be restarting and come next month, the winter/spring overlap will begin.

For today, though, it's much more relaxing. And it leaves TB to look out the window and wonder about issues other than Princeton athletics.

Like how do they know no two snowflakes are alike?

On The Open

TigerBlog's introduction to sportswriting came in the form of numerous Fridays and Saturdays at high school games. He assumes this is how all the greats got started.

Not that TB is one of the greats, of course. Well, maybe he is. Depends whom you ask.

For instance, his grandmother Judy certainly thought he was one of the greats. Judy Roder was MotherBlog's mother. Standing roughly 4' 10", she was the taller of TB's two grandmothers, edging out FatherBlog's mother by about an inch or two.

Judy and her husband Joe ran a driving school, called Roder Auto School. It was on Lefferts Boulevard, in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, not far from Kennedy Airport.

Louis, the official toy poodle of TB's youth, used to spend his summers with Judy and Joe and would bark in his friendly way at the would-be drivers. When it came time for TB to learn to drive, Joe taught him how, just as he did TB's other cousins.

They were snowbirds, Judy and Joe, as they would spend much of their winters in Florida for years and years. Their apartment on the third floor at 8300 Talbot Street (TB thinks that was the address) was adorned with photos from their time in the Sunshine State, as well as every conceivable picture they could find of their two children (MotherBlog and her older brother Larry) and their four grandchildren.

Judy and Joe lived on Mountain time, or maybe even Pacific time. Up at 4. Breakfast at 5. Lunch at 10. Dinner at 4. In bed at 8, Joe always with his transistor radio.

To the visit with them was to eat, eat and eat. Until you couldn't eat anymore. Until you were so stuffed with chicken soup, brisket, deli, bagels and lox and whatever else she was serving - all washed down with YooHoo of course - that you couldn't eat another bite, something that when informed of she would always say the same thing: "What's the matter? You don't feel good?"

Joe passed away in 1991; Judy followed three years later. Both lived well into their 80s and were married for, as TB remembers it, 64 years.

TB is pretty sure the last time he had an extended stay in his grandparents apartment was when he covered the 1985 U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing Meadows, also not far from Kew Gardens.

TB spent two weeks with his grandparents. He covered matches all day and night and then returned to their apartment, where he'd be greeted by Judy and a late meal. This was late by any standards; by Judy's, it was probably closer to early than late.

The 1985 U.S. Open winners were Hana Mandlikova on the women's singles side and Ivan Lendl on the men's singles side. TigerBlog's biggest memories of the tournament were 1) sitting next to Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press in his pressbox seat and 2) the graciousness and class of women's runner-up Martina Navratilova, who became an instant TB favorite.

As for Albom, he would talk about how competitive the newspaper war in Detroit was between the Free Press and the News, and TB would try to get him to understand that the one between the Trenton Times and Trentonian was even wilder, given how much smaller Trenton is than Detroit.

The two Detroit papers merged in 1989. Amazingly, shockingly, both the Trenton Times and Trentonian continue to be published every day. In the world of newspapers, there is little than can match up to that, even if nobody outside this area could care less or even knows about it.

TigerBlog hasn't been back to the U.S. Open since. In fact, he isn't nearly into tennis as much as he used to be; these days he prefers his racket to be slightly smaller and the ball to be black and hardly bounce.

Because the Trenton Times and Trentonian are still publishing, he was able to see that Princeton women's tennis coach Laura Granville has been doing radio at the current Open in New York.

Though Granville has no previous radio or TV experience, she seems to be enjoying her debut.

And it has to be great for her to be back at the U.S. Open, a tournament in which she competed regularly when she was one of the top professionals in the world. Maybe not a top 10 player, but an established, successful pro tennis player.

Granville is entering Year 2 at Princeton. The college tennis season is a long one, with 24 separate dates of competition listed on the schedule for the fall alone.

Granville is as accomplished an athlete as any current Princeton coach.

She was a two-time NCAA champion at Stanford, and she then had her professional career before returning to Palo Alto to get her degree. Princeton is her first coaching stop, and her team went 12-7 overall and 4-3 in the league in her first season.

When the Open is over, she'll be back to getting ready for Season 2. In the meantime, she's definitely enjoying her time behind the mic.

TB has done enough radio to know that if you know your stuff and have some personality, then you can be pretty good on the radio. He hasn't heard Granville, but he assumes that she's pretty good.

TB hasn't had that many conversations with her in the last 12 years, but she's a very friendly, very funny person. She's got the kind of sharpness that translates well to broadcasting.

And to coaching.

Princeton women's tennis is in good hands.

What A Racket

Three young men holding four pizzas each walked into Jadwin Gym yesterday at 5 pm or so.

They were headed for the women's tennis match, one that would turn into a big win both for Princeton and for direct marketing.

About 27 hours earlier, women's assistant coach Sadhaf Fath peered around the corner during an OAC staff meeting and dropped off a flyer, printed on basic white copy paper, inviting everyone to the match, with the words "FREE PIZZA" in all caps.

As the young men with the pizzas made their way down to the courts on E level in Jadwin, they found themselves with a much-larger-than-normal crowd waiting for them.

Doing a little estimating, if 100 people come for the pizza and even a third stay for the match, then attendance has gone up.

The women's tennis team defeated Temple 6-1 yesterday in the dual meet opener for both the 2013 season and the career of head coach Laura Granville, who appears to be following the same marketing strategy of her predecessor, Megan Rose, who was famous for bringing bagels to matches.

Up next for the 73rd-ranked women's tennis team (the top 75 are ranked) is a trip this weekend to Akron to take on 52nd-ranked Missouri and the home team. There are also trips to Duke, Syracuse, Denver and Colorado and finally Loyola Marymount - and home matches against Rutgers, Seton Hall, Binghamton and DePaul - before the Ivy season begins March 30 against Penn.

By then, squash season will be long over.

The top three stories on goprincetontigers.com this morning featured people holding rackets, and the tennis match was the third one in.

The first two were squash, after a hugely successful night for the men and women here at Jadwin, just one floor up from where the tennis match was going on.

Princeton is the top-ranked team in the country for both the men and the women, though that doesn't necessarily make both teams prohibitive favorites to run the table in the league or national championships. This year appears to be the most balanced year for squash on both sides in years.

Both of Princeton's teams beat Penn 9-0 last night, and that was a much bigger surprise on the women's side than the men's. The Quakers were ranked third in the women's poll, which means that the Tigers have now defeated No. 2 (Harvard) and No. 3 (Penn).

Next up is Yale this Saturday in New Haven at noon, for both the men and women. Yale is very, very tough at home, especially on the four-glass-walled court that will only be used for the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 matches for the men.

In addition, Yale defeated Princeton 5-4 in both men's and women's squash in the Ivy scrimmages back in November, so obviously nothing is certain.

On the women's side, Princeton and Yale are both unbeaten in the league. If there is a divide between the top four teams in the league, then Princeton would have seem to have a little more margin for error than Yale.

Should Yale win, the Bulldogs still have to play both Penn and Harvard, who has only one loss and would possibly be playing to force a three-way tie for the league title when it met the Bulldogs.

Should Princeton win, it would be 4-0 in the league with wins over the other top three schools and with matches against Brown, Columbia and Cornell remaining to play. Oh, and Trinity, but that of course has nothing to do with the Ivy race.

Meanwhile, on the men's side, the 9-0 win over Penn was accomplished without losing a single game.

The standings are the same for the men - Princeton and Yale are the lone unbeatens, and Harvard, with its loss to Princeton, has one loss. So does Cornell, a legitimate threat to beat one of the top teams as well.

After Saturday, Princeton has Cornell remaining. Yale has Harvard remaining. The winner in New Haven will have the inside track to the championship, or at least a share of it, or even a three-way piece of it.

This weekend will be the first trip to New Haven for the men's and women's squash teams. The second will next month for the national championships.

In the squash world, winning the Ivy title is like winning the SEC title in football.

The winners this weekend between Yale and Princeton will have taken a huge step in that direction.

Running On Empty

TigerBlog was driving back from the men's lacrosse game in Massachusetts when he realized that he was lower on gas than he thought.

The little counter that says how many miles he can go before he's empty was below 10, more like seven or so, when he got off the highway to fill up.

When he got to the top of the exit ramp, there was no little sign for gas pointing him in a specific direction, so he wasn't sure what to do. Randomly, he thought "left" and headed into that town.

Only it was a few miles until he got there, and once there, it was obvious there was no gas station in this town. When he saw a police car sitting in a speed trap, TB went over and asked him where the nearest station was. Back on the other side of the highway, TB was told.

So now the mileage counter was down to one, and that quickly turned to zero, as TB headed back the five or six miles to the highway.

Having never run out of gas, TB wasn't quite what to expect. Plus, he was on one of those little Massachusetts two-lane roads with no real shoulder, so if he stopped suddenly, he had no place to go anyway.

Eventually, he saw the highway and then, about a half-mile beyond it, a Sunoco station, one he would have found earlier had he simply gone "right" and not "left," as TB usually does.

When TB finally reached the station, he'd gone 5.4 miles since the counter went to zero. Like Kramer in an episode of "Seinfeld" during its not-as-funny period, TB wondered how far he could go before he would actually run out.

It was that kind of weekend for Princeton athletics, where most of the excitement was on the road.

Let's look at three teams, two of whom were on the road this weekend.

The baseball team entered the weekend tied with Penn on top of the Gehrig Division, and TB wrote last week that if those two got to the fourth game with one team having won two of three (as opposed to three of three), then that game would be huge.

Princeton lost Game 1 on Friday and then came back to take Game 2, setting up yesterday's second doubleheader.

With a lineup more suited for Little League, Princeton in Game 3 had Mike Ford pitching and batting fourth - and with good reason. Ford gave up two first inning runs and then blanked the Quakers the rest of the way, and he snapped a tie game with a double in the top of the seventh to give Princeton the 3-2 win. He ended the game with back-to-back strikeouts.

Game 4 was the nine-inning game, and that wasn't enough on this day, as Princeton needed 10 innings to get a 4-2 in. Ryan Alpert, who had homered earlier, doubled in two runs in the top of the 10th.

The result is that Princeton is 9-3 in the division, which leads Penn by two games and Columbia by three. Cornell is in fourth at 3-9.

The Tigers, who in fact have the best record in the league as Yale leads the Rolfe Division at 8-4, host Columbia for four games this weekend, including two on Easter Sunday and then play two at Cornell and two home against Cornell. Penn plays Cornell four times this weekend and then plays two home and two away against Columbia.

A wild part of the weekend? Princeton won three of four games but was outscored by the Quakers. After losing 12-4 in the first game, Princeton won two one-run games and one two-run game.

If you're looking for truly wild in Ivy sports this spring, you have to go to tennis.

On the women's side, there are two league matches to be played, with Dartmouth at Harvard and Yale at Brown. Should the home team win both, then there would be a five-way tie for the championship between those four and Princeton.

The Tigers are already done with the league schedule at 5-2. Yale and Dartmouth are 5-1; Brown and Harvard are 4-2.

In other words, with two matches left, there will either be an outright championship, co-champions or a five-way tie.

Should there be the five-way tie for the title, then all five teams would have to be 2-2 against each other and 3-0 against Penn, Cornell and Columbia, which would mean that none of the tiebreakers apply and, if TB is correct, the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament would have to be determined by a random draw.

Of course, the men's side has been equally as wacky this season.

Of the 21 matches played so far, 16 have been decided by a 4-3 score. Unfortunately for the Tigers, they were on the short end of the one they needed yesterday in Ithaca.

It was an event as excruciating as any played by a Princeton team since, oh, the men's squash team lost to Trinity in the 2009 national final and the men's hockey team lost to Minnesota-Duluth in the NCAA tournament that same year.

Princeton and Cornell were both unbeaten heading into the match yesterday. Princeton lost two of the three doubles matches to Cornell in tiebreakers, and the Big Red won three singles matches in straight sets, though two included tiebreakers.

As a result, Cornell will represent the Ivy League in the NCAA tournament and be at least co-champion. Still, the Big Red have to play Columbia this weekend, and a Lions win would give Princeton a share of the title.

Standing Up

As TigerBlog pulled into Lot 21 today, he saw it was blocked off near the fence by Finney Field, just short of the circle around Caldwell Field House and DeNunzio Pool.

Pothole repair. In case you haven't been in that part of Lot 21 lately, you missed out on one of the great potholes of all time.

Anyway, the tarry smell of the repair took TB back, as that smell always does, to his first day of classes in college. As he walked down Spruce Street to the University Museum opposite Franklin Field, TB smelled the same kind of street repair going on, and all these decades later, he can still close his eyes and remember the moment.

Back then, there was no internet or anything, which meant that the majority of information that TB got came out of a newspaper, specifically a sports section.

For as far back as TB can remember, FatherBlog would bring home the New York Post every day, and TB would read through it, amazed that going to games was actually some lucky person's job.

One of the main attractions of reading the paper every day was the opportunity to check the standings, regardless of what sport.

TB was originally fascinated by the concept of "games behind," especially for those rarest of moments when the team in first place was actually a half-game behind the team in second. TB learned some basic mathematics from reading the standings, such as calculating percentages and figuring out magic numbers.

There were many years were TB could tell you with pretty good accuracy who was were in any sport.

Today? Forget it.

TigerBlog hardly ever looks at the standings in any professional sport other than the NFL anymore. And, actually, the English Premier League, where he hopes Blackpool can avoid relegation and either Tottenham or Liverpoool or even Everton can catch Chelsea and knock the Blues out of the Champions League.

Oh, every now and then, he'll check to see who's where, but for the most part, he has no idea.

He knows the Knicks and Sixers are tied for sixth in the Eastern Conference, but he has no idea where anyone is in the NHL. By two weeks from now or so, he'll completely lose track of the Major League Baseball standings.

Why is this? TB would chalk it up to the innocence of youth if he thought it was true, but that's not the case. It's probably more about how much money professional athletes make and how much that turns TB off.

And, it's also about the fact that college sports have become more important to TB, both because he works in college athletics and because they're more interesting.

Except the NFL, which TB presumes will be up and running again in time for kickoff in September.

Anyway, speaking of checking out the standings, let's look at a few around the Ivy League:

Baseball
Princeton has won seven straight games, including a 4-0 start in the league with a sweep of Yale and Brown last weekend. Earlier this year Princeton knocked off then-unbeaten LSU on the road.

In many years, the Rolfe Division (Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Brown) was much stronger than the Gehrig Division (Princeton, Penn, Cornell, Columbia), to the point where the winner of the Gehrig would have essentially the same record as the third or even fourth place team in the Rolfe.

This year, Princeton is 4-0 - and only tied for first in the division with Penn, who is also 4-0. Columbia is 2-2, and Cornell is 1-3. On the other side, Dartmouth and Yale are tied for first at 2-2.

Coming up this weekend, Princeton is at Harvard (0-4 in the league, 3-20 overall) and Dartmouth, where, amazingly, the weather is going to be sunny and 60 both days.

Men's Tennis
The highly competitive Ivy League, with four teams ranked in the top 75 nationally, has two teams without a league loss and three others with one.

Princeton is on top of the standings now at 3-0, while Cornell is unbeaten at 2-0. This week's opponents are Dartmouth and Harvard at home; both of those teams are 1-1. The season winds up next weekend with a home match against Columbia and then, on Sunday the 17th, with a trip to Cornell.

Women's Tennis
Princeton is the two-time defending champion, but getting a third won't be easy. Still, Princeton may have saved its season with a win over Yale last weekend.

Brown - who defeated Princeton 6-1 - is 2-0 in the league, along with Dartmouth and Harvard. Princeton, at 2-1, is at Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend. The math here is fairly easy.

Women's Lacrosse
The Big Three of Ivy women's lacrosse is Princeton, Penn and Dartmouth, and you have to go back to 1992 to find a year when at least one of those three didn't either win the title outright or earn at least a share.

This year will be no different. The question is who or how many of three it will be.

Princeton, Penn and Dartmouth are a combined 9-0 against the rest of the league.

The three games between the teams will take place in eight-day stretch, beginning when Penn hosts Dartmouth April 16 and continuing two weeks from today with Princeton at Penn and then the concluding Saturday, April 23, with Princeton at Dartmouth.

The Ivy League women's lacrosse tournament will feature the top four teams in the league, and Princeton appears to be a lock to get there. The tournament winner gets the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Men's Lacrosse
As much as Princeton's season has been a struggle, the Tigers still could get to the NCAA tournament in one of two ways. Both would require some big performances during the second half of the season, but it's certainly possible.

First, Princeton could win any four of its remaining five regular-season games and then win its first-round Ivy tournament game. Doing so would leave Princeton at 7-6 and essentially lock up an at-large bid, because 1) there would be at least two Top 5 wins (Johns Hopkins and either Syracuse or Cornell) on the Tigers' resume should this happen and 2) the Tigers would be at least .500 prior to the tournament.

Should that not happen, then Princeton would need to win the Ivy League tournament to get the league's automatic bid.

Of course, Princeton has to get into the Ivy tournament, which means finishing in the top four in the regular season.

Right now, Cornell is the lone Ivy unbeaten at 3-0, followed by three teams with one loss each (Penn, Harvard and Dartmouth). Princeton, at 1-2, is tied for fifth with Yale, ahead of 0-2 Brown.

Princeton still has league games against Dartmouth, Harvard and Cornell, and wins in two of those three will almost surely mean a spot in the Ivy tournament, as only three times in the last 25 years has a 3-3 team not finished in the top four (though last year was one of those three, as four teams were 4-2).

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.

Marketing 101

Back when TigerBlog was in college, he used to love to get mail. TB lived in a large group of dorms under one common structure as a freshman and sophomore, and there was a large mailroom near the main gate.

Usually when something was in the mailbox, it was a bill or junk mail. Even in those cases, there wasa great anticipation when there was something staring back at you when you looked into the little window by your box. And then there were those moments when TB - in the pre-email/texting/facebook days - would get an actual letter, or even better, a package. Those days were great.

At some point each morning here at HQ, the day's mail is dropped off in the mailroom, up on the balcony of Jadwin.

When you need a break from whatever you're doing, there are worse ways than sorting the mail. There are rows of mailboxes in the mailroom, which at one time were in alphabetical order but now are almost random. The key is to know where, say, the marketing stuff goes or the men's swimming or whatever without having to stop each time and look.

The office that gets the most mail, by far, is football, which sometimes has so much that it needs its own mail bins on the floor for the overflow.

As for TB, the feeling of looking into the mailbox isn't quite the same as it was more than a quarter century ago in West Philadelphia. Still, it's always fun when something different beyond the usual University publications or invoices shows up, whether it is an odd request or the newest edition of Inside Lacrosse or a handwritten note (usually from older alums either praising or criticizing something).

Earlier this week, TB saw something a little different. It was a small piece of orange paper, regular copy paper, with simple printing on it. The paper was an invitation to come see the Princeton women's tennis team play in its two matches yesterday, and it included a reference to free bagels and coffee. Women's tennis coach Megan Bradley had put one in each of the boxes in the mailroom.

As an aside, TB has never had a cup of coffee.

Anyway, the first match was at 10 a.m. Sure enough, beginning at 9:45 or so, there was a mass exodus from the balcony down to E-level, as everyone went to get a bagel and check out the tennis. Some stayed longer than others, but clearly everyone had gotten the invitation, read it and acted on it.

What's the lesson? Well, it has something to do with not making things more difficult than they need to be.

TigerBlog isn't sure what story he read or where it was or even what it was about, but he does remember a Princeton student who was quoted as basically saying that the most effective way to get information on events is through the little table tents they have in the dining halls.

In other words, you can have the most sophisticated marketing plan in the world, but it doesn't necessarily mean much. The key is getting the basic information that people want to them, and doing it in a manner that will stick.

Here at HQ, we have tried almost everything in terms of marketing. We have identified target audiences (students, faculty/staff, local families with kids). We have tried focus games. We have tried basically every combination of ticket pricing, ticket availability, ticket packaging.

We've spent thousands of dollars printing ticket brochures. We've been in schools, in the Valpack, online, in emails, in text messages, on facebook. We've had huge mailings and no mailings. We've had a billboard on the New Jersey Turnpike and our events listed in calendars everywhere.

Slogans have been big. We've gone through a few, and those slogans have been meant to convey messages that have run from wanting fans to be part of the great athletic tradition of Princeton to understanding how close, welcoming and affordable Princeton athletics are.

Our basic pattern is to try something and give up on it quickly in favor of the next idea. Among our problems is that we have no way of measuring success, because there are so many variables. What crowd sizes are considered good and what are considered bad?

For football, there is a small sample of home games each year. Then, if you put one on a Thursday or Friday night for TV, the sample gets smaller. Then there's the weather. Or start times. And we have no vehicle for market research.

So where does that leave us?

Well, TB feels that marketing moving forward is similar to what media for us has become. We have the ability to go directly to our fan base, rather than going through a middle man (advertising in another outlet, for instance). Also, printed materials aren't the way to go.

Our efforts may be best served by developing databases by sport, by fan type (families? faculty/staff? local corporation), by any number of categories and then going directly to them via email or text or Twitter. Perhaps we're better off creating simple, emailable (or through mobile apps) reminders of upcoming events, not for every time there is a game, because these would end up getting deleted, but a few times a year.

In this way, our marketing focus can reach across most of our 38 sports and not just for our five ticketed sports.

As for those ticketed events, our pricing is already so affordable that the answers extend beyond that. Maybe instead of only season-ticket plans by sport, we should institute a way to buy a certain number of tickets, which can be used across all different sports. Fans could buy a 10-ticket plan and then use four for football, two for men's hockey, two for women's basketball and two for lacrosse. Our all 10 for men's basketball. Or any other combination.

Tie-ins with local sponsors is another way to go. In this way, sponsors get an extra bonus for being part of Princeton athletics, and Princeton gets to introduce people to be part of something they might not otherwise have thought of. Or maybe it's Hamilton night or Lower Bucks night or Hopewell night?

All of these efforts then get tied into providing the right atmosphere and experience once fans are in attendance. This is something that TigerBlog thinks Princeton does a great job with already.

And then we need to not overlook the obvious. In this era of the highest speed, highest sophistication, multiple platform ways of communicating, there is a place for something really simple, like an invitation on a small piece of orange paper.

As the parade of people to the tennis match Wednesday morning proved, sometimes simple sells best of all.

Shades of Blue

It's been a week of contemplation for some of Princeton's coaches, and family seems to be the big winner.

Last week, Princeton lost one of its most lauded mentors in any sport when Bill Tierney chose to be closer to three of his four children and take an opportunity in Denver. Just yesterday, the man who many thought would be the obvious choice to replace Tierney, longtime assistant David Metzbower, came to the same realization and opted not to assume the role of the man he'd assisted for almost 20 years at Princeton.

Now comes more unexpected news when Kathy Sell, after five years as Princeton's head women's tennis coach, felt the pull of family ties and decided to head to North Carolina. Her parents and sisters now live in the Tar Heel State.

Clearly, home has been a strong motivator for Sell. She was a Moorestown, N.J. resident before playing collegiately at Duke (making her favorite shade of blue a darker one than most of her future neighbors) and then spending time at the University of Oregon to pursue a graduate degree and begin her coaching career.

Soon, Sell came home and took the job at Princeton, just a short trip up I-295 from Moorestown. Now that home has moved, so too does Sell.

Sell's departure makes it four sports without a head coach as the summer begins in earnest, and all three sports that were eligible have won an Ivy League title in the last couple years. Glenn Nelson, the head coach of men's and women's volleyball, was the first to end his Princeton career just a year after helping the women's team to a 2007 Ivy title (there is no Ivy League men's volleyball), and Tierney's decision came just weeks after his team won an Ivy championship.

Sell's team wrapped up its first Ivy League title since 2000 on April 19, and less than two months later, Sell is gone.

Princeton's women's tennis team had a winning Ivy League record in all five of Sell's seasons and never saw its Ivy winning percentage decline with her as coach. The Tigers went 4-3 in the league in each of her first two seasons, 5-2 in each of the next two seasons and 6-1 in 2009, the team's best record since a 7-0 season in 2000. The team's overall record was above .500 every year, culminating in a program record 18 wins this past spring. Under Sell's leadership, Princeton returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time since that 2000 season and came closer to winning an NCAA team match than it had ever come, losing to Florida International 4-3 on the last singles bout of a sweltering afternoon in Miami last month.

Events like these give us at TigerBlog HQ a chance to reflect on how much has changed in just a handful of years. Since longtime women's tennis coach and Sell's predecessor Louise Gengler retired after the 2004 season, 15 other programs have seen coaching changes. Out of 38 sports, considering all the different personalities involved, that more than 60% of Princeton's coaches are still at their posts five years later says a lot for the draw of being a head coach here. It means that the people behind the title of "coach" have decided to set down roots here, that many have chosen to remain rather than pursue other opportunities.

For the almost 40% that have moved on, certainly there were a variety of reasons why. Family, as we have seen this week, is a big motivator. Perhaps a desire for a different geographical location or a general change of scenery are others.

Whatever the reason, everyone at TigerBlog HQ has the same wish for all those who follow their own path away from Princeton: Whatever your pursuits, good luck.

Novick-Casaceli-Aboff-Ashley Tournament Time

There have been a few posts on TigerBlog about Princeton's success across many sports, leading to the unofficial Ivy League all-sports title.

This weekend is the start of the payoff for all that success. Four Princeton teams will are NCAA bound, starting today.

Here's your four-day NCAA menu...

Thursday
Golfer Susannah Aboff gained a berth in the NCAA East Regional, the first round of which is Thursday. Aboff is the first Tiger women's golfer to appear in an NCAA regional since 2005, which was the last time Princeton won an Ivy League title and nabbed the league's NCAA automatic bid. The course is the University of Florida's home turf, Bostick Golf Course, and Aboff will have to finish as one of the top two scorers who are not on one of the top eight teams (of 21, plus two other individuals) in order to advance to the NCAA Championship. Her tee time is 7:30 a.m.

Friday

For the first time since 2000, the women's tennis team is in the NCAA tournament and Florida International is Princeton's first-round opponent in Miami, Fla. Sophomore Blakely Ashley plays sixth singles for the Tigers, a young team on which all six singles starters are juniors or younger. Three of the top four players (Ivy League Rookie of the Year Lauren McHale, fellow Ivy first-teamer Hilary Bartlett and Ivy second-teamer Rachel Saiontz) on Princeton's singles ladder are freshmen. First serve on the University of Miami's courts for the Tiger cubs is 10 a.m.

Aboff will be back on the golf course Friday for her second round, which begins at 11:40 a.m.

Saturday

If things go well for the women's tennis team Friday, they'll be battling the Miami-Army winner at 1 p.m. Saturday in the second round. Princeton is 0-2 all-time in the NCAA tournament, but those results are relatively ancient history since the two losses were in 1983 and 2000. It was only three years ago that Penn was the last Ivy team to win an NCAA match, and Harvard has advanced to the Round of 16 this decade.

Aboff's third and final round at the NCAA East Regional will begin at 7:30 a.m. Saturday.

Sunday

The weekend's final day will belong to the laxers at Class of 1952 Stadium. The women's team, with senior Christine Casaceli as one of five 20+ goal scorers along with newly crowned Ivy League Player of the Year Holly McGarvie, will look to win a first-round NCAA game at home for the second straight year when the eighth-seeded Tigers meet Georgetown at 1:30 p.m. Tickets, which can be purchased here, are $10.

Later Sunday, at 5 p.m., the fourth-seeded men's lacrosse team, of which Tim Novick is one of a nine-member senior class that includes Mark Kovler as a first-team All-Ivy honoree, will be at home for the NCAAs for the first time since 2006 to host Massachusetts. The game will be televised live by ESPNU, but if you're in the area, come on out to '52 Stadium and make sure the bleachers are packed. Tickets can be purchased here and are $10.

Thoughts For Late August, er, April

A guy named Vinnie used to work here in the Office of Athletic Communications, and no, this isn't a joke.

Anyway, the OAC didn't used to have working air conditioning, and during one particularly brutal summer stretch, Vinnie called OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Heath Administration) to complain that it was about a million degrees here. When they suggested starting with his department head, Vinnie replied: "I'd ask him, but I can't chisel the ice off his door from his room air conditioner."

Times have changed since then. Here it is in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave for April, and the air conditioning has been turned on here on the balcony level of Jadwin Gym. This wasn't the case yesterday or over the weekend, which made the OAC and the other offices on the balcony oppressively hot. By contrast, today is an extraordinarily pleasant one here.

Ah, but as the temperatures soar above 90, it's important to remember that it's still the spring here. Spring sports are reaching the end of their schedules, though some have a chance to make their springs roll closer to summer:

* the baseball team is at Cornell tomorrow in a one-game playoff for the Gehrig Division championship. In a deja vu deal, the Tigers were just there Sunday for two games, and they came agonizingly close to winning it until a two-run eighth for the Big Red forced the one-game playoff. So, back on the buses the Tigers go, heading back to Ithaca for nine more innings. For the winner there is a trip to Hanover for the weekend to take on Dartmouth in the best-of-three Ivy League Championship Series. The Big Green went 16-4 in the league in the regular season to win the Rolfe Division by a game over Brown at 15-5, while Princeton and Cornell tied at 10-10 each. Dartmouth went 4-0 against Cornell/Princeton during a weekend earlier this month, winning each game by at least three runs. The winner of tomorrow's game, though, will have some momentum, as well as rested pitchers, for the ILCS. The team with the better regular-season record doesn't always win the ILCS.

* speaking of Gehrig and Rolfe, have many players on Princeton, Cornell and Dartmouth can identify who Gehrig and Rolfe were? The divisions were named for Lou Gehrig, who played at Columbia before becoming one of the greatest hitters in Major League Baseball history with the Yankees, and Red Rolfe, Gehrig's Yankee teammate who played at Dartmouth and then returned to Dartmouth as athletic director after his Major League playing and managing career. Ask any current college baseball player who the "Pride of the Yankees" was, and they're likely to say Derek Jeter. As long as they don't say A-Rod, then it's probably okay.

* the women's tennis team find out its NCAA tournament assignment today. Selections are on ESPNEWS at 5:20 this afternoon.

* the women's lacrosse team is headed to the NCAA tournament, but first there is the last home regular season game tomorrow night against Loyola followed by a game at Maryland Saturday. NCAA women's lacrosse selections are Sunday evening at 8. The first-round will be on Mothers' Day.

* the men's lacrosse team plays its Ivy League "co-championship" game Saturday against Brown at Class of 1952 Stadium at 1 as the winner will share the league title with Cornell. Should Brown win, it would earn the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament; should Princeton win, Cornell would get the automatic bid. Even without the bid, it's likely that all three Ivy schools will be in the field of 16 when it is announced Sunday at 9 on ESPNU. This is a contrast to last year, when Princeton and Brown played a "co-championship" game in Providence that saw the Bears win, the final goal of the game scored by Princeton goalie Alex Hewit and neither team make the NCAA tournament.

* the Ivy League championships in men's and women's track and field will be decided at Heps on May 9-10 at Penn. The Ivy League championships for men's rowing will be decided at Eastern Sprints on May 10 in Worcester, while women's open Ivy rowing will be decided on May 17 in Camden.

* finally, a story about sportsmanship that has nothing to do with Princeton. TigerBlog Jr. was playing lacrosse (5/6 grade level) last Saturday in a tournament, and after the first game, which TBJ's team won 4-2, the players were going through the handshake line. The best player on the other team was No. 10, a big attackman. No. 10 had a difficult time against TBJ's team's best defender (a big kid named Matt Anderson). As the two reached each other in a line that otherwise included the requisite "good game, good game, good game" pounding of gloves, No. 10 suddenly stopped and said to Matt: "You are really good." Matt said to him: "You are a tough player." Then they shook hands, as opposed to just bumping gloves against each other. Hopefully these 11- or 12-year-old kids won't give in to the constant barrage of images of chest-pounding me-ism that surrounds them.