To The Victors

The victors - in all 30 of their games - were enjoying the spoils yesterday, with more and more media waiting to hear them tell their story.

Among those yesterday were ESPN "College Gameday" and National Public Radio.

As the NCAA women's basketball selection show draws closer - the announcement will be Monday at 7 on ESPN - the excitement for the Princeton women's basketball team will continue to grow. And of course there is one huge, unanswerable question right now:

Will Princeton play at home?

Will Princeton be rewarded for its 30-0 season, the one that makes Princeton the only undefeated team in Division I women's basketball, with a chance to bring the NCAA tournament to Jadwin Gym?

Princeton was all over the women's basketball page on ESPN.com, including a big celebration picture that spent most of yesterday afternoon front and center.

Then there was the bracketology. This was about the only thing that wasn't going Princeton's way of late.

According to the current edition of bracketology, Princeton won't be playing at home. Or anywhere near home.

Nope, according to this, Princeton will be about as far from home as it could possibly be, all the way on the other side of the country. The destination is Stanford, at least as far as ESPN.com was concerned yesterday.

It had Princeton as a fifth seed playing 12th seeded Miami (the one in Florida, not the one in Ohio). For what it's worth, no Ivy team has ever been higher than a nine, which Princeton was two years ago.

And, if TigerBlog is right about the location of the 1998 Harvard win over Stanford, then Stanford is the site of the only win ever by an Ivy League team in the NCAA tournament.

Still, TB can't help but think there will be a little benefit of the doubt given to Princeton when the committee makes its ultimate decision. An undefeated Ivy League team? One that has generated a ton of publicity?

Maybe TB is way off the mark here. But send that team 3,000 miles from home?

It seems 1) not right and 2) unlikely.

So the women's basketball team is the biggest winner right now at Princeton. It's not the only winner.

While Princeton waits for some good news in the women's basketball selections, yesterday was a pretty good day for the wrestling team.

Princeton had three automatic qualifiers to the NCAA wrestling championships after last weekend's EIWA championships. Those three were joined yesterday by two at-large selections.

From the release on goprincetontigers.com:
Juniors Abram Ayala (197) and Chris Perez (149) joined sophomore Jorfdan Laster (141) as automatic qualifiers during last weekend's EIWA Championships, when Princeton finished seventh as a team despite having only nine wrestlers in competition. Sophomore Brett Harner (184), who defaulted from the tournament due to injury, and freshman Jonathan Schleifer (165) earned at-large bids because of the quality of their regular season.

The five wrestlers who advanced to the NCAAs - to be held in St. Louis next weekend - tied the program record for the most ever to advance to the championships.

Also from the release:
The group is just the third five-man Princeton squad to qualify for the NCAA Championships in the same year. In 1975, Dennis Underkoffler '76, Kevin Roesch '78, Randy Schutte '75, Bill Miron '78, and Mike Murburg '77 qualified. In 1978, when Princeton won its most recent EIWA Championship, the quintet of Roesch, Steve Grubman '78, John Sefter '78, Keith Ely '79 and Bill Hawley '80 qualified.

Again, it's hard to overstate how much Chris Ayres and his staff have done to rebuild Princeton wrestling. Sending five wrestlers to the NCAA championships? A few years back that didn't seem possible.

Meanwhile, there are some other victors as well.

Harrison Wagner and Corey Okubo earned spots in the NCAA men's swimming and diving championships, which will be held in Iowa City. Wagner, a senior, has the 16th-best time in the 50 free in the country. Okubo, a freshman, has the 23rd-best 400 IM time - as well as the Ivy League record.

Princeton will also compete in the relay events, and it is up to the Princeton staff to decide which four will swim.

On the women's side, diver Caitlin Chambers will also be in the NCAA championships, these to be held in Greensboro. Chambers will compete on the 1-meter and 3-meter and the platform.

And in women's track and field, Megan Curham earned herself a trip to the NCAA championships this weekend in Fayetteville, Ark. She will run in the 5,000 meters tomorrow night at 8:25.

It's March. NCAA championship time.

For some, their travel is already set.

For the women's basketball team, the hope is that there will be no travel at all.

Weekend Forecast

Snow again? Sigh.

It's enough already. Enough with this winter stuff.

Here's how it's gone around here since Tuesday afternoon. First it started to sleet, which made the ride home really icy. Then it snowed for awhile. Then it sleeted some more as it started to warm up.

Eventually, it got above freezing, so it was just rain. And it rained all day yesterday, on and off at least. Then the temperature fell again, so that snow began.

Of course, every school in the area was cancelled before the snow began. And for awhile, it looked like it might not snow at all. It finally started around 5 AM.

By the time it ends later today, there could be around eight inches on the ground here, though TigerBlog thinks it'll be a little less. And then it's supposed to get cold, record-setting cold single-digit cold.

So, yes. Sigh.

It actually hasn't been that bad of a snow winter around here. Not like it has in Boston, where that city is only two inches away from the all-time record.

There haven't been any complete blizzards in the Princeton area. There's been snow here or there, though never more than five or six inches at once.

What there's been has been cold. Lots of that. It's been below 30 endlessly, for weeks. The normal high right now for Princeton is 47 degrees. The high for this day is 72, in 1991.

Forty-seven? This area hasn't been near that, except for yesterday, when it was in the upper 30s while it rained. Sunshine and a temp in the 40s? Not since December.

Oh well. The 10-day forecast is for a bunch of days like that. Sunshine. 40s. It'll be heavenly.

TigerBlog emailed with his men's lacrosse counterpart at Maryland to tell him that he would be there Saturday. Usual stuff. Media list. Rosters. And parking information.

TB was told that because the Maryland high school wrestling championships will be going on at Cole Field House that he might have to walk a little further than normal. It'll be 43 and sunny? TigerBlog is fine with a little walk.

TigerBlog will be on the road this weekend. So will most of Princeton's athletic events.

The only home events are men's basketball, against Cornell tomorrow night and Columbia Saturday night. And men's volleyball, home with Juniata tomorrow night and NJIT Saturday night. And men's tennis, against Army and Binghamton Sunday in Jadwin Gym.

The men's basketball team is in third place in the Ivy League. Princeton cannot catch Harvard or Yale, who are both 10-2 and tied for first in advance of their showdown tomorrow night in Cambridge.

The Tigers are 6-5 in the league, with the games this weekend and then Tuesday's game at Penn remaining. Cornell, Columbia and Dartmouth are all 5-7. With one win in the last three, Princeton will be no worse than a tie for third.

There are some pretty important events on the road.

The EIWA wrestling championships are at Lehigh this weekend, beginning tomorrow at 10 with first-round matchups; quarterfinal matches and wrestlebacks will start at 12:30. The semifinals will begin Saturday morning at 10, with wrestlebacks scheduled for a 12:30 start. The EIWA Hall of Fame inductions follow, as do the the 1st, 3rd and 5th place matches.

The path to the NCAA championships goes through this event.

It's hard to overstate how solid of a job Chris Ayres has done as head coach of the Princeton wrestling program. Keep in mind, this was a program that struggled to win a single match, and it is in the same league as Cornell, who is to Ivy wrestling what Princeton is to Ivy field hockey (minus the NCAA title).

This season, Princeton finished third in the Ivy League. The program produced Jonathan Schleifer, Princeton's first ever Ivy League Rookie of the Year. As in ever.

And now Princeton heads to the EIWA meet with six All-Ivy selections, the most in Ayres' tenure.

In addition to the wrestling, the NCAA fencing regionals are this weekend. Princeton, the NCAA champ two years ago, will be looking to qualify the maximum 12 fencers for the NCAA finals.

TigerBlog has no idea how it works. He'll leave it at that.

If you're going to be in Hanover, N.H., this weekend, you're in luck. You can see the Princeton men's hockey team play at Dartmouth in the ECAC opening round, a best-of-three with games definitely tomorrow and Saturday at 7.

And, if you're there, the women's lacrosse team will play its Ivy opener at 1, also at Dartmouth. It's a chance to see both teams play without ever leaving the same parking lot.

Princeton's women's lacrosse team is off to a 3-0 start and is ranked 10th nationally. The Tigers and Dartmouth usually have played in April, but the game is now the league opener this season.

If you're going to be at Dartmouth, you'll also see a snow-lined field.

Of course, you can come here and do that. It's even worse now than it was last week.

Stop. Already.

Stupid groundhog. TigerBlog is ready for spring.

December Notes

TigerBlog starts the week off with a multiple-choice question.

In the picture below, the woman with TB is: A) his cousin, B) a colleague, or C) an award-winning Broadway actress/singer.

If you guessed "C," you'd be correct. If you can correctly identify her by her picture, well, then TB is impressed.

Linda Eder is the woman's name. For the life of him, TigerBlog cannot figure out why she doesn't have multiple Tony Awards and Grammy Awards on her shelf.

TigerBlog has never met anyone who has heard her sing who doesn't rave about her. He also hasn't met many people who have heard her sing.

It has to be her own choice that she's only been in one Broadway show, the musical "Jekyll and Hyde," for which she won a 1997 Theater World Award for Best Broadway Debut. TB's favorite song of hers, "Someone Like You," is from that show.

TigerBlog has seen two of her concerts, including a recent one in which she sang a mix of Christmas songs, Broadway songs and some of her original songs, of which she has written many. She also has a bunch of albums with all kinds of Broadway songs, as well as some with Christmas music.

TigerBlog has 68 of her songs on his iTunes, which puts her in second place behind Bruce Springsteen, just ahead of Train, Bon Jovi and Southside Johnny. 

TigerBlog compares her to Judy Collins, whom he has also seen in concert, not so much for the types of music that they sing - Collins is mostly a folk singer - but in how powerful their voices are, what an incredible range they have and how the sound overwhelms the audience from the first note.

Linda Eder is also a great self-deprecating storyteller during her shows. She talked about how she wanted to be Maria as a high school senior in "The Sound of Music," only to be cast instead as the Mother Superior of the convent and then singing "Climb Every Mountain."

She talked about her big choreography move was to go from standing up to sitting on a stool. She talked about missing her 14-year-old son's wrestling match because of the concert.

She seemed like someone who loved what she was doing and appreciated her audience, so much so that she said she'd come out to the lobby to say hi, sign autographs and pose for pictures. For as many times as TB has seen the Boss, he's never once done that.

At one point during the show, she described herself as "just a big Minnesota farm girl who still drives a tractor, owns every power tool know to man and knows how to use them all." TigerBlog would describe her more as an extraordinarily talented woman with a great musical gift, and possibly add the parts about the tractor and power tools after that.

With December and Christmas concerts comes a lull in the Princeton Athletics schedule. Princeton has very few teams who still have events for the rest of the calendar year and into the beginning of 2015, after it all shuts down for two weeks for first semester exams.

Then it's the sprint to the rest of the winter, and only a few weeks until the overlap between winter and spring. Hey, TigerBlog sent a tweet yesterday at 1, noting that it was exactly two months until opening face-off of men's lacrosse season. Two months? It's not even Christmas yet.

This weekend was slow to begin with, and it became even slower when the men's hockey team ran into unforeseen difficulties in Linda Eder's home state.

The Tigers flew to Minnesota Thursday and then bussed an hour from Minneapolis to Mankato to take on the third-ranked team in the country, Minnesota State-Mankato, Friday and Saturday. Only it turned out to be only Friday, as the home team would not field a team for Saturday's scheduled game due to a sudden outbreak of the flu.

As a result, Princeton instead found itself in Minnesota with nothing to do on its Saturday night. It ranks up there with a fall water polo game in the indoor pool that was postponed due to lightning as the most unlikely cancellations of the year, TB supposes.

One team that wasn't stopped was the women's basketball team, who defeated Binghamton 96-58 to become the first Princeton men's or women's team to get to 10-0 in a basketball season, as well as the first Ivy women's team ever - and first Ivy team of either gender since the 1970-71 Penn Quakers went 28-0 to start the year.

Next up? At Delaware tomorrow night.

There are 15 events - assuming they all get played - remaining on the athletic calendar for 2014. Of those 15, 11 are away from Princeton.

The only remaining home games are a basketball doubleheader Friday (women's vs. Portland State, men's vs. Lipscomb) beginning at 5:30. There is also a home men's basketball game against Liberty a week from today and then home men's hockey against Quinnipiac on the 28th.

If you're heading to New York Sunday to see the tree and do some Christmas shopping, you can see Princeton wrestling at Madison Square Garden. Anything called "Grapple in the Garden" has to be pretty cool.

In the meantime, Linda Eder's version of "Do You Hear What I Hear" just came onto TB's iTunes.

And so TB will end today where he began, with Linda Eder.

Carmody Visits, Isaac Dominates And A Quiet Weekend At Princeton

It was a fairly gray day yesterday in Princeton, with swirling snow flurries and a brisk wind and only one moment where TigerBlog thought he detected a hint of sunshine, only to have it yanked away as a mirage.

TigerBlog was going about his regular Thursday, when all of the sudden a visitor emerged in his doorway.

This happens quite often in TB's office. His door is almost always open, and someone usually strolls in every five minutes or so.

This time, though, was different. This time, the visitor changed the entire tenor of the day.

This time, it was Bill Carmody.

The last time Bill Carmody was in TigerBlog's office was 14 years ago, when he was the Princeton men's basketball coach, before he left to coach Northwestern.

Back then, TigerBlog was the men's basketball contact and was for all four of Carmody's seasons as Princeton head coach. TB first met Carmody in the late ’80s back when he was Pete Carril's assistant and TB was in the newspaper business.

To say that Carmody is one of TB's all-time heroes would be a bit of an understatement. The four years that Carmody was head coach were one continuous great moment after another, as in great teams, great wins, great crowds, great media coverage, great players and great trips.

At the fore of all of it was Carmody, who combined an ultra-competitive personality - visible any time TB ever saw him play lunchtime basketball - with a demeanor that suggested he wasn't really taking any of it all that seriously.

Oh, but clearly he was.

Carmody led Princeton to the 1997 and 1998 Ivy League championships and NCAA tournaments and the 1999 and 2000 NIT. He was the head coach when Princeton came from 27 points back in the second half to beat Penn. He was the head coach who took his team past Florida State, Texas and UNC Charlotte on consecutive nights to win the Rainbow Classic in Hawaii.

As an aside, after one of those games in Hawaii, Carmody was asked by the local media about how every member of his team could shoot from beyond the arc. His response: "Everyone on our team can make a three. Our center can. Our SID can."

The good news is that TB has that one on tape. The bad news is that it's on a mini-cassette, and TB has no way of ever playing it again.

TB asked Carmody how he was, what he was up to. Carmody answered and punctuated it with one of those gestures that TB had seen so many times through the years, the one where he bends his elbows at 90 degrees, extends his hands palms up and then moves his hands in opposite directions.

It was great to see him. It always is.

In other tangential Princeton basketball news, TigerBlog watched some of the current group of lunchtime basketballers for a few minutes yesterday.

TB played at lunchtime for about 12 years or so, before he switched to squash. He would refer to his years of playing as the glory days of Jadwin lunchtime basketball.

Having said that, TB can't remember a time when he saw someone dominate at lunchtime the way Isaac Serwanga did for about five minutes yesterday.

Isaac was a wide receiver on the Princeton football team who also spent time on the basketball and track and field teams. He graduated in 2012.

TB wrote a feature about him for the game program his senior year in which Isaac talked about wanting to go to medical school. Somewhere in there his plans appeared to have changed, as he now works in general administration in the athletic department.

Given that he is a little more than two years removed from being a Division I athlete, it's safe to assume that he could have an impact in lunchtime basketball.

But to this extent? TB saw him throw three great passes - including one where the recipient didn't miss the uncontested layup. Serwanga drove for his own made layup and then knocked down a three-pointer.

Then he took the ball away from Jon Kurian - whose excuse after the fact was that he's 42 years old - and drove down the court to finish the game with a lefthanded dunk. All in all, it was fairly impressive.

If you're looking for more basketball in Jadwin this weekend, there's a women's game tomorrow against Binghamton at 2 (not 2:30, as TB said the other day). Princeton will be looking to get to 10-0 in that one, something that no Ivy League women's team has ever done (of course, no Ivy women's team has ever been 9-0 before), no Princeton men's team has ever done and no Ivy men's team has done since the 1970-71 Penn team did it.

There are only five Princeton athletic events this weekend, involving only four teams, and only two of those events are home - both, interestingly enough, against Binghamton. In addition to the women's basketball game, the wrestling team hosts Binghamton at 7 tonight.

Originally Princeton was also supposed to wrestle Sacred Heart as well, but the Pioneers had to reschedule due to a conflict with final exams. TigerBlog is glad to see Sacred Heart putting academics first.

The men's basketball team is on a plane to California today to play at Cal tomorrow. The men's hockey team is in Minnesota to take on the third-ranked team in the country, Minnesota State-Mankato.

Those two opponents are a combined 20-5-0.

Time Flies

Little Mason Sachson went for his first haircut yesterday.

A bit shy of his second birthday, Mason is the son of Princeton Assistant Director of Athletics Craig Sachson, who had the unenviable task of taking him for his first stint in the barber's chair.

Its a very stressful moment, taking a boy for his first haircut. There's no way he's going to be happy, not sitting in a chair, smock on, stranger taking scissors to his hair.

By all accounts, Mason had a typical reaction. His father reported that they made it through okay, even if it wasn't a lot of yucks.

TigerBlog remembers taking his own son to his first haircut like it was yesterday. He had the same experience, unpleasant, but ultimately successful.

It wasn't yesterday, though. Yesterday was Mason's turn. And even if it seemed like TigerBlog Jr. was Mason's age not that long ago, on the actual yesterday, when Mason was getting his first haircut, TBJ was taking his road test for his driver's license.

TigerBlog can report that his son was nervous on the way to the test, antsy waiting for the inspector to finish with the young man who went just before him and ultimately fine once he zipped through the parallel parking.

From first hair cut to driver's license. Time flies. It did for TBJ. It will for Mason too.

Parenting is partly about observing milestones and doing what you can to make sure that they're ready for whatever it is they've just achieved. It goes back all the way to the beginning, when they first roll over, and life becomes a series of steps towards independence - crawling, walking, talking, first day of school, first time on a bicycle, playing sports, going to high school, driving, college, adulthood.

Some are easier to handle than others. The driving one is downright frightening.

As for Mason's dad, he is the sport contact for 12 of Princeton's 38 varsity teams, which makes him one of the busier people in the world of athletic communications. In fact, TB can't imagine there are too many people - if any - who cover more teams in the world of Division I.

Craig is in his second tour of duty with Princeton Athletic Communications. His first was as an intern back in the 1990s, and then, after two years at Cornell, he's been back at Princeton since. Like TB, Sachson's background originally was in newspapers, the same newspaper as TB, for that matter.

When TB thinks back at the way it's evolved around here in his tenure, by far the No. 1 thing has been the advent of the webpage. That alone changed the whole show in so many ways.

For starters, it was the beginning - a dramatic beginning - of the shift from an emphasis on media relations to becoming Princeton's own media outlet. Back when TB started, there was really no way to get directly to the people who wanted the information other than to go through the media, which didn't really help Princeton fans who didn't live in the local area.

In other words, other than perhaps a team newsletter or a very small recruiting guide, there was no way to consistently get information out to, say, a Princeton swimming alum who lived in Texas. All of that changed overnight with goprincetontigers.com.

Before the webpage, very little was done for the teams whose games weren't covered by newspapers, which meant most of the teams. It wasn't that nobody cared about them; it's just that there was little that could be done other than write a short postgame release, fax it out to newspapers and hope they ran a sentence at least.

The web changed all of that. Suddenly there was a limitless opportunity to send out information. This led to the second biggest development in TB's tenure.

When Craig first started, he was an intern who couldn't stay for more than two years if he wanted. Shortly after the launch of goprincetontigers.com (and not related to it, more related to changes in University policy), the internships were eliminated in favor of full-time jobs.

Instead of having a different sport contact every two years, every sport now had someone who was going to be around for awhile. With that came institutional memory and familiarity, and with that came way better coverage. And, with the webpage, the supply could finally meet demand.

It's no wonder that the coaches of Craig's 12 sports - and of all the sports that used to be so underreported - love how things are now.

Those two things - a webpage and experienced people to put information on it - did more to connect the athletic department and its fans all over the world than anything TB could have imagined back on his first day here.

Craig's 12 sports are football, men's and women's squash, wrestling, men's and women's volleyball, all four crews and men's and women's swimming and diving.

Back in the day, this would have meant a lot of work with one sport and hardly any with 11 others. Now? Just look at the webpage, where there is a ton of information about all of those teams, with stories, video and everything else.

It's a big weekend for Sachson's teams. The women's swimming and diving team chases another Ivy League championship. Wrestling tries to close out its best Ivy season in decades. Women's squash plays in the Howe Cup national championship tournament.

In the modern era of athletic communications, this keeps him as busy as a football game. And that's a very good thing, for so many reasons. 

Comeback Kids

TigerBlog is in the market for a new cereal.

For essentially his entire life, he's gone with Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies. Actually, way back when, he went with their more sugary counterparts, Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Krispies, something that he chalks up to youth and inexperience.

TB can't imagine how many Flakes and Krispies he's eaten in his life. He imagines that they're in the millions.

For some reason, he woke up a few weeks ago, looked at the Rice Krispies and decided he needed something new. He was still fine with the Corn Flakes, something that was equally as confusing as turning his back on a cereal that had carried him through breakfasts for five decades.

Breakfast has done a pretty good job of marketing itself. While lunch has mostly had catchy jingles about lunch meat and bologna and dinner has been all over the map with everything from frozen pizza to meat loaf, breakfast has kept its promotional efforts simple.

Ask anyone about breakfast, and they'll say it's the most important meal of the day. Even when everyone knows it isn't. TigerBlog ranks them 1) dinner, 2) lunch, 3) breakfast.

TigerBlog loves bacon and eggs, especially on a nice bagel, but he almost never has anything for breakfast other than cereal. And now he was staring at his Rice Krispies and thinking he needed a change.

After Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies, the cereals that TB has had the most are Multigrain Cheerios and Golden Grahams. He went with a box of each to replace the Rice Krispies, and then he decided to branch out.

Ah, but where to go? He tried Crispix, which is a rice/corn cereal. It was okay, but nothing special. He tried Life, which he remembered having as a kid, but that was like eating cardboard.

Then he stumbled on one that seemed okay. Cinnamon Chex. Hey, it was pretty good. He's on his second box of it now, and it looks promising.

If you go to the cereal aisle in the supermarket, you're flooded with all kinds of options. Too many of them are way too sugary, even if that's part of their appeal. TB could eat Cocoa Puffs all day, except for the fact that there are 12 grams of sugar per serving, as opposed to 1.82 grams in Corn Flakes. The Cinnamon Chex have eight grams, which isn't great but is still way better than Cocoa Puffs, even if the fact that Cocoa Puffs can make the milk chocolaty is still pretty cool.

Rice Krispies, by the way, have 3.5 grams of sugar per serving.

A year ago, none of this would have mattered much to TB. Now, he's coming up on the anniversary of being somewhat diet-obsessed, one that has 1) ruined his ability to eat most of the things he loves and 2) had some really positive effects on his weight and overall healthy. It's the trade-off.

TB has hit something of a plateau in weight-loss, which is fine. He still weighs himself every morning though, and he's amazed that his weight can vary plus or minus a pound or two or even more from day to day.

TB was on the middle school wrestling team in eighth grade, but back then, he needed to gain weight, not lose weight, as he was about a 90-pounder wrestling at 98 pounds. It made him, he assumes, a rarity in the sport.

Even though TB wasn't a very successful wrestler and he never wrestled again after eighth grade, he doesn't have to be a genius in the sport to figure out that what Chris Ayres is doing with the Princeton wrestling program is extraordinary.

To say that Princeton wrestling has struggled in the last 20 years is a major understatement. Ayres, now in his eighth season as head coach, has never wavered from his belief that Princeton could be a significant player in Ivy League and Eastern wrestling, and it's starting to come true.

Lately, it's been in highly dramatic fashion.

Princeton rallied to defeat Columbia 18-16 after trailing 16-7 with three matches left last weekend. That followed a rally to defeat Boston University 23-20 after trailing 20-3.

In fact, Princeton is 11-2 overall, winner of six straight, and at 3-1 in the Ivy League assured of at least a tie for second place, behind national power Cornell. The Tigers host Rider Friday and then Penn Saturday afternoon.

At 3-1 in the league with one match left, Princeton is assured of its second winning league record since 1987. Princeton is in double figures in wins and will couple that with fewer than five losses, a combination the program last managed in 1981.

Princeton has had some success through the last decade individually, but it's been awhile since the team has had this much depth and success. It starts with the entire coaching staff, a group with successful backgrounds who have built the program from the ground up.

Ayres, especially, has an enthusiasm and optimism that is infectious. Even during the toughest times during his rebuilding project, Ayres has always been convinced that better days were ahead. It's been obvious in any conversation or interaction with him; he just oozes with positivity.

And now it's all starting to pay off.

Catching Cornell in Ivy League wrestling will never be easy. TB's sense is that Chris Ayres believes it's possible.

In the meantime, one of the best stories in Princeton Athletics is unfolding in Dillon Gym.

Princeton has a great history in wrestling, going back decades. The present is going pretty well also.

Princeton's wrestling revival hasn't been limited to just those two big comebacks.

Overflowing

TigerBlog heard a bad sound coming from the basement the other day.

The washing machine was on, and from upstairs TB could hear a sloshing sound that wasn't quite right. He thought it might be the normal cycle, only to figure out relatively quickly that he'd never heard it before in all the loads he'd done.

When he went downstairs, he immediately saw that there was an issue. The water hadn't stopped filling into the machine even when it went past the point it should have, and it eventually overflowed and starting flooding the basement.

Fortunately, TB figured it out when he did, before it got to be too bad down there.

The moral of the story is that you never want to turn the washing machine on and then leave, figuring you can put the clothes in the dryer when you get back. Had TB done that, the time with the wet vac would have been far longer. In fact, the basement would have been replaced by an indoor swimming pool - inadvertently.

TB counts doing the laundry as one of his best skills. He's certainly one of the great folders of all time.

Doing the laundry is a bit of a pain, and it's one of those chores that never seems to be completely finished. Really, by definition, it can't be, because there's always something that can be washed - towels, sheets, the clothes currently being worn. Everything can't be clean all at once.

Folding clothes for babies is a nightmare. Everything is so small that one load can have about 10,000 items in it. Well, not really, but you get the point.

TB's kids have reached the point where they do their own laundry, which is very helpful. As for TB, his own laundry needs are on hold, at least until this afternoon, when the washing machine is being fixed.

Or at least he hopes it's being fixed. What he wants to hear is that some hose came loose somewhere. What he doesn't want to hear is this: "It's an old machine and isn't worth fixing so go buy a new one."

Less than a week before Christmas isn't the right time to have to purchase major appliances.

TB loves the car commercials where the husband gives the wife the small box and then watches as she opens it, finds a set of keys and gives him a quizzical look. He then points to the driveway, where the brand-new car with the big ribbon is sitting (always in the snow; people in Florida don't do this?).

The implication is that he's just bought his wife a very expensive gift. TB's take is that they needed a new car anyway and so he's really cheap and getting away without buying a real gift.

From TigerBlog's view out of his office door, it's hard to miss the fact that Christmas is around the corner.

Softball coach Lisa Sweeney and her assistant Jennifer Lapicki went around putting wrapping paper on several doors on the Jadwin balcony, including TB's. Beyond the door is the railing, which for the first time in TB's memory has Christmas lights on it.

The railing stretches the length of the balcony, from Courtney Banghart's office on one end to the mailroom on the other. There is one strand of lights that is wrapped around it, with colored lights, not the white ones. TB prefers the colored ones.

TB assumed it was the work of the softball coaches, but it turns out it was actually done by Gary Walters, who has never done that before.

Christmas and New Year's Day are both on a Wednesday this year. It makes the work weeks a bit fuzzy, with the big holidays and Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. TB assumes he won't see too many people around here for the next two weeks.

It's not all that crowded right now, what with people out shopping (or getting their washing machines fixed).

There is only 10 athletic events remaining for Princeton Athletics in the calendar year, and of those 10, almost all - nine - are on the road. There are two men's basketball games in Las Vegas this weekend, two women's basketball games next weekend at UVa, two men's hockey games in Florida after Christmas and three days of wrestling that weekend as well.

The only remaining 2013 home event is a New Year's Eve afternoon men's basketball game at noon against Kent State. TB is interested in seeing what attendance for that game will be.

And so, before TB runs out of here to get the washing machine taken care of, he leaves you with this question:

The basketball game against Kent State is the last home athletic event in 2013. How many home athletic events did Princeton have in 2013 across all sports?

This takes into account all home events that counted, so exhibition games and scrimmages are not on the list. Also, if the men's heavyweight rowing team had a home event with three schools competing across five different boats, that all counts as one.

Brad Pottieger, Princeton's Manager of Intercollegiate Programming, very nicely took the time to figure this out for TB this morning.

Give up? TB's guess was 252, and he wasn't that far off.

The answer is 226.

As in 225 down, one to go, 12 days from now.

And with that, it's time to find out if TB will have a new washing machine by then. He hopes not.

What's Up This Weekend

TigerBlog has never seen a college football game involving two BCS schools when one of the schools wasn't Rutgers except for the time he covered Georgia Tech-Penn State in the 1991 Kickoff Classic at Giants Stadium.

In other words, he's never seen a BCS-level game on a campus other than Rutgers and not since long before Rutgers redid its stadium.

As cool as it would be to go one of the very biggest-time games on somebody's campus - or even to experience the game-day traditions at some of the next level big-time conference schools - if you asked TB what one college football game he'd most want to see in person, he wouldn't even have to think about it:

Army-Navy.

The game leaps out of the television each year with how hard every player on both teams plays on every down, regardless of how their seasons are going or what the score of the game is.

In general, TB loves to watch Navy run its option offense, and he's long thought that Navy (and Army to a lesser extent) is as close in college football as Princeton was in college basketball back when Princeton was the only team to run the Princeton offense.

The 113th meeting between Army and Navy is tomorrow at 3 at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. Among the venues that at one time hosted an Army-Navy game? Princeton's Osbourne Field, which was the site of the 1905 game.

Sadly, TB will be unable to watch much of tomorrow's game, as he'll be watching Princeton-Drexel men's basketball instead. Tip-off at Jadwin Gym is at 2.

In addition to the game, the NCAA-champion field hockey team will be honored at halftime. 

There are only four basketball games remaining to be played on Carril Court at Jadwin Gym in the calendar year of 2012.

The Princeton-Drexel game is one of three men's home games remaining on the December schedule, along with a Dec. 20 game against Rider and a Dec. 22 game against Bucknell. Princeton is also at the new Barclay's Center in Brooklyn next Saturday at 2:30 to take on Fordham.

The only women's home game still to be played this month is also against Drexel, and like last year, the Princeton-Drexel women's game will be played on New Year's Eve afternoon. The women will be busy between now and then though, beginning Sunday with a game at Delaware.

It was a year ago that unbeaten Delaware and unbeaten Princeton met on Carril Court in a game that turned out to be a  showcase of the glorious all-around ability of Elena Delle Donne.

The Delaware star was so impressive that TB immediately began to think that this must have been what it was like to see Bill Bradley come to town back when he was at Princeton.

This time, Delle Donne might not play against Princeton, as she has only played once this year due to the same illness that slowed her two years ago, when she missed the game against the Tigers.

And this raises today's ethical question of: If you're Princeton, do you want her to play or not?

Princeton's chances of defeating the Blue Hens clearly go way up if Delle Donne doesn't play. Still, TB would much rather have Delle Donne on the court, because why would Princeton want to play Delaware when she's not there? It won't be nearly as much fun, win or lose.

Princeton is at Villanova Wednesday and then plays DePaul and Illlinois State before Christmas on a trip to the Midwest.

What else is there this weekend?

The men's hockey team is home for the third time this year and final time in 2012 when it hosts Quinnipiac tomorrow at 4. The teams meet tonight in Hamden, Conn.; the women reverse that, with a game here today at 4 and then another one tomorrow in Connecticut.

Quinnipiac, by the way, is ranked 13th nationally.

Princeton will be playing its 11th and 12th men's hockey games in the 44 days since the season began. After this, Princeton is off for three weeks before playing two games in an event at Vermong Dec. 29-30 and then have five home games in January, with home weekends Jan. 4/5 and Jan. 11/12.

There's also the chance this weekend to see the No. 1-ranked (and defending national champion) Princeton men's squash team take on No. 4 Rochester. The wrestling team is home today, and there is a track and field meet here Sunday.

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

Put another way, there are 12 events this weekend involving Princeton teams. After this weekend, there are 13 more for the rest of the month.

Of those 12, seven are at home. For the rest of the month, there are just four more home events (two men's basketball, one women's basketball, one wrestling).

So you may have to miss out on the Army-Navy game.

But you'll be done in plenty of time for "Homeland" Sunday night.

A Flying Leap

Apparently, it takes the Earth 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds to make one complete revolution around the sun.

At least that's what Wikipedia says.

Back a long time ago, there was a slight miscalculation of all this, and Pope Gregory XIII led the reform to fix it in 1582.

At least that's what Wikipedia says.

As such, we have today, the 29th of February. A year from today, it'll be March 1. A year ago today, it was March 1. Today, though, is Feb. 29.

As everyone knows, today is Leap Day, part of Leap Year, which sees every fourth year have 366 days.

Why Feb. 29? Why not make a month with 30 days have 31? Why not June 31st? Or July 32nd?

Apparently, there is no leap day in years that are divisible by 100, such as 1800 or 1900, unless they are also divisible by 400, which is why there was a leap day in 2000. There will not be one in 2100.

At least that's what Wikipedia says.

TigerBlog doesn't know anyone who was born on Feb. 29. A scan of Wikipedia reveals that a few athletes and other moderately famous people - and the infamous serial killer Aileen Wuornos - were all born on Feb. 29.

On the one hand, it'd probably be pretty cool to say that Feb. 29 is your birthday. On the other hand, you'd spend most years celebrating it on March 1, which isn't really your birthday.

TB didn't need Wikipedia to know that the whole idea of being born on Feb. 29 plays prominently into the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "The Pirates of Penzance," which TB and BrotherBlog saw with Kevin Kline as the Pirate King on Broadway circa 1981 or so.

TB also has "I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General" on his iTunes, which includes the kind of lyrics that are rarely written today, such as "About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lotta news, with many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse."

The month of February has flown by, another month of this "winter" gone by without TB's ever having worn his heavy coat. In fact, this February had many more days of temperatures in the 50s than 30s, and TB and many others wore shorts more than once this past four weeks.

Also during the month of February, no matter how busy everything around here got, there was always the "the first weekend of March is going to be way busier" vibe that was present.

And so it is.

As an aside, it's a weekend that will go off flawlessly, TB is sure, because of the work of a lot of people behind the scenes, especially the event staff of Karen Malec and Mike Doto.

Beginning tomorrow with Day 1 of the Ivy League men's swimming and diving championships and continuing through Sunday with the EIWA wrestling championships, the Princeton campus is going to be a busy place.

Among the events at Princeton:

* the Princeton men look for their fourth straight Ivy League swimming title, something Princeton hasn't accomplished since 1989-92. The Tigers and Harvard are, as usual, the favorites with perhaps a slight edge to Princeton. The event runs tomorrow through Saturday

* the EIWA (that's Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association) championships will be held Saturday and Sunday in Jadwin Gym. At stake will be 46 automatic bids to the NCAA championships, the second-most behind the Big 10, which makes this a huge event in the sport. Princeton could qualify several wrestlers, and though the Tigers will not win the team championship (the last Princeton EIWA title was in 1978), the goal is to finish in the top half of the standings, which would be a huge accomplishment.

Cornell should win the team title, and there are two reigning NCAA champions (one from Cornell, one from Lehigh). In fact, Lehigh heavyweight Zach Rey and American's Ryan Flores met in the EIWA and the NCAA final a year ago, as Flores won at the EIWA and then Rey won at the NCAAs. They rank 1-2 this year.

Cornell's Kyle Dake is a two-time NCAA champ at 141 and 149, and he's wrestling at 157 this year. He could see Princeton's Daniel Kolodzik in the EIWA final; Kolodzik was the first nationally ranked recruit to come to Princeton under Chris Ayres.

* the wrestling mats will have to be picked up quickly to get ready for Princeton-Brown men's basketball Saturday, with tip-off at 7:30. Princeton also hosts Yale Friday at 7. Of the eight league teams, Princeton is the only one that will not playing at least one game this weekend that will help decide whether the champ will be Penn, Harvard or both - though the Tigers host the Quakers Tuesday night in a game that is likely to be huge.

* the men's lacrosse team, off to a fast 2-0 start and having scored 25 goals in two games after averaging 7.1 per game last year, hosts No. 2 Johns Hopkins Friday at 5. Princeton has beaten Johns Hopkins three straight times; Princeton has never beaten Johns Hopkins four straight times

* the women's lacrosse team hosts third-ranked Duke Saturday at 1. Princeton also has its home opener tonight at 6 against Rutgers. Princeton, who won the Ivy League tournament title last year, looked outstanding in its season-opening 16-3 win over Villanova.

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.

Get On The Bus

Back when TigerBlog played high school tennis, his team once had to play at a neutral site against another team from the same school district.

For reasons that TB never bothered to find out about, the two teams took the same bus to and from the site, stopping first at TB's school and then at the other on the way over and then reversing it on the way back.

It was a bit awkward, two teams that were about to play each other and then ultimately two teams that just had.

Of course, the time that the two teams were together on the bus was about 10 minutes each way, so it wasn't quite the end of the world.

Imagine, then, what it must have been like on the Albany men's basketball bus yesterday.

Did you see this story?

Albany is playing at Xavier tonight, and the Great Danes couldn't get their flight out to Cincinnati because of the blizzard. Instead, Albany decided to take a 10-hour or so bus ride.

That story wouldn't have made national news had it not been for one other piece of the situation. Mark Lyons, Xavier's second-leading scorer, lives in Schenectady, which is 10 minutes from Albany, and he too couldn't get back for the game.

So what happened? Xavier's coach called Albany's coach and asked if Lyons could ride on the Albany bus, a request that was granted.

Xavier's two leading scorers, Lyons and Tu Holloway, were supposed to go with Albany, but Holloway couldn't get from Long Island to Albany for the ride and had to find another way.

And that left Lyons to travel by himself with the team that his team is playing tonight. For 10 hours.

In the often cut-throat world of college athletics, where coaches agonize over every little detail as if changing shootaround times or something will give one team an advantage, it was a really nice story to see how Albany took Lyons with them.

“He was no different than any one of our guys," Albany coach Will Brown said. "The minute he got on the bus, he put his head phones on and whipped out his phone and within an hour he was out cold."

Holloway, by the way, took a bus to Pittsburgh, where a friend drove him the rest of the way.

It'll be interesting to keep an eye on the game, which is tonight at 7.

Another team on a long bus ride is the Princeton women's basketball team, whose early-morning flight to North Carolina this morning was canceled, also because of the storm.

The result for the Princeton women was a 10-hour ride of their own, from Central Jersey to Davidson, N.C., a ride of a mere 600 miles.

Princeton plays Davidson tomorrow night and then at Wake Forest on New Year's Eve. The 8-3 Tigers lost their last game in two overtimes to St. Joe's, but they have had 10 days to get over it. Davidson is 4-4 on the season; Wake is 7-5 before playing Appalachian State tomorrow.

The Princeton men were lucky in two respects.

First, their flight to Orlando for the Central Florida Holiday Classic wasn't canceled. Second, the weather has improved in Florida from where it was over the weekend (in the 30s) to the 60s or low 70s while Princeton is there.

Princeton, at 9-3, plays a 4-6 Northeastern team in the first round, and if the Tigers can get past that one, then the final would probably mean a matchup with the host team.

And, without looking, how good to do you think UCF is right about now?

How many guessed that UCF is currently 11-0 and ranked 19th in one poll and 21st in the other? In other words, a Princeton win tomorrow would set up a very nice game on Thursday.

There are three other Princeton teams who play this week, before the end of 2010.

The men's hockey team is at the UConn tournament, where it plays Bowling Green tomorrow and then either UConn or Holy Cross Thursday. The Tigers will be ending an 18-day layoff with this tournament, which is one of three breaks in the schedule of at least 10 days for the team.

The wrestling team is also in North Carolina (TB isn't sure how the Tigers got there) for the Southern Scuffle in Greensboro tomorrow and Thursday.

The women's hockey team plays the last home event of the calendar year when it faces Boston College on New Year's Eve at noon.

Riding Time

Back in junior high, TigerBlog spent one season on the wrestling team. At the time, TB was too small for basketball, checking in at around 5-1 and weighing a little under 90 pounds at the age of 13.

The junior high wrestling team had nobody to wrestle at 98 pounds, so the coach asked if anyone would be interested in trying out. TB was the only one who responded, so the spot was his.

The weight classes started in the 70-pound range back then, so TB wasn't the lightest on the team. When everyone else was desperately trying to make weight, TB was trying to gain a few pounds so he wasn't giving away nearly 10 pounds every time out. He'd weigh in wearing his full uniform and wrestling shoes and have no problem making weight.

TigerBlog had never wrestled before, and that combined with the weight disadvantage led to a perfect record - TB lost every single match he wrestled. It was probably somewhere in the range of 0-14.

After awhile, it became TB's goal not to get pinned, so that his effort would be more valuable than simply forfeiting at 98 pounds. TB became pretty good at keeping his shoulders off the mat and tying his opponent up, even scoring some reverses.

It also didn't help that wrestling at the Jersey Shore is big, big, big-time. One of the opponents who had no trouble pinning TB was a kid from Long Branch named Luke Skove, who went on to go 119-1-1 while winning three state high school championships. TB was proud to have actually made it into the second period against Skove.

As for our team, the junior high wrestling team that TB was on produced two New Jersey state high school individual champions. None of them would be TB, who gave up on the sport after his one season.

The experience left TigerBlog with some basic knowledge of the sport and a general interest in it. Through the years, TB has followed other sports much, more closer, but he's never forgotten that he does have some wrestling roots.

On top of that, you can't help but like Chris Ayres, the Princeton wrestling coach, who walked into a situation in 2006 that was not easy. For starters, Princeton wrestling had struggled considerably for years since the glory days under legendary coach John Johnston (as an aside, one of the nicer people TB has met at Princeton).

Wrestling at Princeton dates to 1905 and has produced 11 Ivy League championships (most recently in 1986), but it looked as though the program wasn't going to get a chance to make it to its 90th birthday, as it was on the verge of being discontinued in the early 1990s.

TigerBlog's last days in the newspaper business overlapped with the athletic director search that brought Gary Walters to Princeton in 1994. TB remembers the introductory press conference for Walters, at which he was peppered with questions about what he intended to do about the wrestling program.

Princeton wrestling, with a supportive alumni group, survived under Eric Pearson and Mike New, and now it is Ayres who is rebuilding the program. This would be easier in leagues other than the Ivy League, which routinely produces Top 20 team and has two of the premiere wrestling programs in the nation in Cornell and Penn.

Still, as tough as it is to compete in the league, the message is sent that Ivy League wrestling is legit. With that background, Ayres went about recruiting his first few classes, and the results are now being seen.

So on a weekend when the men's and women's basketball teams both swept their two games to stay unbeaten in the league, the men's hockey team knocked off No. 5 Cornell, the men's track and field team had a strong showing and the squash teams played for Ivy titles, it was the success of the wrestling team that really made TB smile.

Princeton entered the weekend without an Ivy League win since 2003 and with three Ivy wins since the 1992-93 season. The Tigers then went out and defeated Harvard Saturday morning and Brown Saturday afternoon to go to 2-0 on the season, joining Penn and Cornell as Ivy unbeatens. Princeton then defeated Sacred Heart yesterday, giving the Tigers four straight wins over Division I opponents for the first time since 1989.

The team that Ayres puts on the mat is heavy in freshmen and sophomores, and better days appear to be coming for Princeton wrestling. If any team deserves it, it's the wrestling team, which has gone longer than any other Princeton program without an Ivy title and has been through more than most of the other programs have gone through.

This weekend Princeton will host Columbia Saturday at 1 and then Cornell at 6. The Cornell match in Dillon Gym will be the same time as the men's basketball game between Princeton and Cornell, who came out of this weekend as the lone unbeatens in Ivy men's basketball as well.

The basketball game will draw a larger crowd and get much more attention than its wrestling counterpart. And, to be honest, the wrestling team is a prohibitive underdog to the Big Red.

Still, after years of being something of an afterthought, Princeton wrestling had its best day in a long, long time with its two wins on Saturday.

TB, more than 30 years later, remembers everything about his wrestling experience, right down to the smell of the mat itself. It's a different sport, one with a distinct and unique culture.

Chris Ayres is turning Princeton's into a winning culture.

The Quiet Foundation

Unless you're on that island in LOST, you can't just experience a flash of light and be whisked into the future. (OK, apparently you can only get whisked into the past on LOST ... TigerBlog admits to spending one confused hour per week trying to figure it out).

Anyway, if head wrestling coach Chris Ayres could get that opportunity, he believes that he'd see a far more formidable Tiger squad on the horizon. After two winless seasons to start his first head coaching tenure, Ayres has guided Princeton to a pair of wins this season, despite forfeiting two weight classes most of the time.

While two wins won't turn many heads, a closer look at the program does reveal hope. Of the eight wrestlers who will compete for Princeton in this weekend's EIWA championships at The Palestra, four are freshmen. One of those freshmen, Kurt Brendel, could earn an eighth-seed after an impressive first year. Another freshman, Daniel Kolodzik, spent about two months, ranging from preseason through mid-December, trying to compete at a weight that really didn't work for him. Since moving to 149, he has begun to show the promise that Ayres believes could make him a potential NCAA qualifier in years to come.

This wouldn't be the first year that Princeton has had multiple freshmen experience success. Last season, 174-pounder Travis Erdman became the first All-Ivy honoree at Princeton since 2005, and 125-pounder Tony Comunale was possibly one turned ankle away from earning an NCAA appearance in his first year. Comunale missed all of this season with injury, so he still has three more years to help rebuild this program.

You can't see the structure of the upcoming wrestling teams yet. With another solid class coming in and the much-needed combination of determination and optimism, Ayres can only imagine what it might look like in 2011 or 2012.

But he can see the foundation. His name is Marty Everin.

Whatever becomes of this program during Ayres' tenure, Everin's contributions must never be overlooked or forgotten. He came to Princeton from Ann Arbor Pioneer High School with a career record of 149-31. He was once one of the bright freshmen, but he sufferered through some dark times: A coaching change. Winless seasons. Injury upon injury. Attrition.

The attrition has occurred gradually and consistently over the last three years, and is why this team started most of its dual matches in an immediate 12-0 hole. Because Princeton couldn't field wrestlers at the 133- and 141-pound weight classes, there was little to no hope that the Tigers could really contend against some of the big boys in the EIWA.

Everin knew that. He knew this team was at the beginning of a rebuilding process when Ayres came prior to the 2006-07 season, but he prepared himself for the best possible season and was elected team captain. He knew it before last season, when an offseason knee injury cost him the year. He could have stayed in school, earned his degree and been finished with the collegiate wrestler's lifestyle (which does not end when practice concludes, because of the consistent weight requirements). Instead, he withdrew and rehabbed so he could give it one final go.

His final go came this season, when he was named captain once again.

"He is the most changed wrestler, for the better, that I've ever worked with in my life," Ayres says. "That includes my time at Lehigh. He listened to us, and then he walked the walk. Sometimes we have to tell guys 100 times before they really hear it. With Marty, we told him once what it would take. He did the rest."

That walk led to a 16-win season and a potential sixth seed at this weekend's EIWA championships. Again, that may not move mountains at schools like Cornell and Lehigh, but it matters here. He was already a leader off the mat and in practice, but now he was showing the talented youth in the locker room that the hard work and dedication Ayres preaches leads to the one thing they all want.

Wins.

Everin wrestles in a weight class with both the defending NCAA champion, Cornell's Jordan Leen, and a potential NCAA champion in Harvard's J.P. O'Connor. The odds of Everin becoming Princeton's first EIWA champion since Greg Parker '03 are significant. But he could have a run in him, and an upset or two could land him in the NCAA Championships, which would be a Princeton first under Ayres.

Regardless of Everin's outcome this weekend, his greatest contribution to the program has already been planted. If this program continues an upward march over the next three years, names like Brendel, Comunale, Kolodzik and Erdman will be the familiar ones.

And within all of them, the example of Marty Everin will be the guiding force.

When A Win Is More Than Just A Win...

Over the last couple of weeks, the win-or-else nature of big-time college athletics has been on display. Longtime Tennessee head coach Phil Fulmer brought a national title to the Volunteer State, developed a quarterback named Peyton Manning (you might have heard of him) and posted only two losing seasons since 1992. He's looking for work.

He's not the only big-time coach in American collegiate athletics who has been fired for a bad season -- or pressured to resign -- nor will he be the last. If any B.C.S. football coach ever went his first two seasons without a win, he'd probably want to keep his resumé updated.

That brings us to Chris Ayres, head coach of Princeton wrestling. Over the weekend, his Tigers picked up a 25-14 EIWA win over Franklin & Marshall. It didn't exactly shake up the national landscape of college wrestling, but it matters here. It was Ayres' first win since taking over in the summer of 2006, and it's something the program has been building towards since he came here.

It didn't have to be this long. It wouldn't have been outrageous to schedule a couple of Division III opponents just to get a win on his record. But Ayres felt that his kids knew it wouldn't be the same as defeating a true Division I opponent, and he kept that as the goal. He stuck to his guns this year. Part of that security comes from the administration's belief in Ayres and his staff. If AD Gary Walters and his staff wasn't on board with the direction of the program, there might have been a bit more pushing to change the schedule a bit. But everybody was united in the belief that a win was less important than a sturdy foundation.

If you aren't a big fan of college wrestling, you might not be fully aware of the individual/team dynamic of the sport. One top recruit won't make you great overnight. A star running back, an ace pitcher and a hot goaltender can win games on their own. A superb wrestler can make sure you lose 54-6 instead of 60-0. However, bringing in one or two top competitors each year will draw others, and a once-stagnant program starts to gain momentum. Last year, 125-pound freshman Tony Comunale was an EIWA placewinner and stood about a minute away from NCAAs. Classmate Travis Erdman earned All-Ivy honors, the first for a Princeton wrestler in years.

On Saturday, two more freshmen picked up key wins. 141-pounder Daniel Kolodzik, who was hurt in the offseason and made his debut that day, picked up a technical fall victory. He was a two-time state champion in Ohio, a terrific area for high school wrestling, and was a nationally-ranked recruit. Classmate Kurt Brendel won both matches at 184 pounds, including a major decision at 184 pounds.

There are other talented competitors, but this is just an example of a group of underclassmen who could be legitimate scorers for Princeton over the next three years in 40% of the team's matches (a college wrestling match has 10 weight classes). Then you try to get a couple more freshmen who are immediately ready to compete, and you find a couple of upperclassmen who have figured it out and reached their potential... and you've found yourself a foundation to build upon. And win upon.

(One more thing about the F&M win. Wrestlers like Nikhil Pereira, Danny Scotton, Mike Alvarez and senior captain Marty Everin -- athletes not recruited Ayres -- picked up big wins. They have bought into the program, even though the better days will likely come after they graduate. That kind of character and leadership will only benefit the rest of the locker room and is to their credit.)

Winning simply hasn't been an option for Princeton. First of all, without enough wrestlers to fill all 10 weight classes, Princeton has been starting matches down 12-0 over the last two seasons. Unless you're loaded with All-Americas the rest of the way (and we're not), you aren't coming back. Princeton forfeited one match this weekend because heavyweight Stephen Turner was injured, but the Tigers overcame it. When Turner returns, and assuming (hoping?) the rest of the lineup stays healthy, Princeton will have a full 10 starters when it gets into the heart of the Ivy League season.

By no means is this team ready to challenge the likes of Cornell and Lehigh just yet. But maybe this year Princeton adds an Ivy League win. Maybe it will come next year. But TigerBlog was impressed with Ayres in 2006, and nothing has changed.

One win does not a program make, but it is another step forward. Not the only step forward in two and a half years. Just another one.

For more on Chris Ayres, Daily Princetonian writer Vikram Rao did a nice piece on the Tiger head coach last week. You can read it here.