TigerBlog's musical taste has been framed by decades of listening to what is commonly called "Classic Rock" and a few years of listening to Little Miss TigerBlog's preferences.
As a result of the latter, he's gotten to hear more Katy Perry songs that he would have otherwise chosen to, and he'll say this about her: She's no Miley, but she's not awful.
Still, there'd be a long jump between saying that and actually referencing her in an edition of TigerBlog, so clearly today's entry comes from a different member of the TigerBlog family:
This is real, so take a chance
And don't ever look back, don't ever look back.
Those lyrics are part of Katy Perry's billboard #1 song “Teenage Dream.” They're also the story of a Princeton men's swimming and diving team that turned a potential nightmare season into one of the most memorable weekends in program history.
Go back a year, and you'll find a Princeton team that led its competition by more than 100 points at the end of every session. It had won two straight Ivy League titles and was led by a sophomore class that seemed destined for a third soon enough.
Go back a month, and you'll find a team with seemingly more questions than answers. After getting stunned by Harvard at H-Y-P, Princeton saw a home win streak of more than 20 years end at the hands of a Navy team that would eventually win the Patriot League Championship by more than 430 points.
All of a sudden, it was fair to ask if Princeton had a realistic shot at winning a third straight Ivy title. Two regular season losses were in the books, and the Tigers were going to need to defeat the Crimson in its own pool to win the title, a feat unaccomplished since 2002.
With three weeks left to prepare for the biggest weekend of the season, Princeton went somewhere outside the pool to find inspiration.
They went to YouTube.
Freshman swimmer Daniel Hasler, one of the key figures in another strong recruiting class for head coach Rob Orr, had been battling in a far tougher place than the water. Illness ended his season far earlier than anybody hoped, and while prospects for a full recovery and a return to DeNunzio next season are strong, Hasler was left tracking the Ivy championship meet from a hotel room in Philadelphia.
TB has covered swimming for nine years now. Despite the 60 swim lessons his mom paid for during his childhood years, TB knows way more about the swimming culture than, say, the technique of swimming.
The culture of a swim team is as close as any you can find on a college campus, or at least on this campus. If you ever question that, watch the video. If you can't feel it, you missed the point.
(On a side note, it's amazing how easy it is to post hateful words in comments sections when you can hide behind the anonymity of a screen name. Freedom of speech is one of the foundations of this nation, but it was never meant to be freedom without accountability.)
Anyway, you can't call this a unifying event for the team, because a team not unified would never do something like this. But it was a moment out of the water, away from Harvard and Navy and expectations and disappointments. It was something real, something special and something heartfelt.
And something downright hysterical.
A new team, rested and ready, went to Blodgett Pool last weekend and overcame big-time odds to win its third straight Ivy League title. They knew it would be a tight one, maybe even down to the final relay.
But that's usually talk. It never actually comes down to the final relay, right?
Through 20 events, there had been a total of 7,442 points scored between eight teams, and Princeton led Harvard by all of 7.5 points. Winning a relay gives you at least eight more points than anybody in the field, so Harvard was one win away from stealing the team title on its final touch of the wall.
Enter Adam Powell.
Through 300 yards of the 400 free relay, Harvard led Princeton in a meaningless battle for second place. The Crimson needed to win the event, and that meant catching a Columbia team that led by 1.5 seconds.
A week earlier, Princeton's Megan Waters had the same type of deficit and sent the crowd into a roof-raising uproar by catching and surpassing Harvard's final swimmer. Of course, the Tiger women had the title wrapped up by that point, but it was a remarkable moment when both swimmer and crowd combined to make one magic moment.
Harvard freshman Oliver Lee looked to make the same moment. He just picked the wrong opponent. Powell doubled the lead, clinched the battle for Columbia and the war for Princeton, which took the Ivy title by a record low margin of 5.5 points.
It would have been easy, almost understandable, to let regular season disappointments and a teammate's illness provide too great an obstacle to overcome.
But this was real, and the team took a chance. It never looked back.
It created a Teenage Dream, and then a Dream Weekend.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Showing Up
TigerBlog was driving in this morning when the Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb" came on the radio, and TB immediately flashed back to yesterday afternoon, when the same song was playing on his I-tunes.
TB was half-singing when another member of the office came in and remarked that he had no idea what song that was. How, TigerBlog thought, could somebody not know "Comfortably Numb?"
Of course, TB often forgets that he's not quite a kid anymore, and incidents like that serve as harsh reminders. It's like the time a few years ago that TB found out that nobody he worked with realized that there had been a TV show called "Get Smart."
"Comfortably Numb" was a 1979 song on the album "The Wall," and it and the album are among the greatest in the history of rock music. TigerBlog is no huge Pink Floyd fan, but he has known since the first time he heard the song that it was something special.
Once it was determined that, aside from TB, only one other person in the office had even the vaguest knowledge of the song, there was a quick search that revealed that Rolling Stone magazine had ranked the song as the 314th best all-time, a number a bit higher than TB would have guessed.
No. 1, as an aside, was "Like a Rolling Stone," by Bob Dylan. There were only two Bruce Springsteen songs in the top 100, "Born To Run" at No. 21 and "Thunder Road" at No. 86; on the "TigerBlog Top 500," they rank 1-2.
Shortly after the whole "Comfortably Numb" situation drifted away, Director of Athletics Gary Walters walked into the office.
Walters was out sick for most of the week, but he seemed to be in good spirits on his return. TB, who started here at Princeton on the same day that Walters did, couldn't remember a time when the AD had been out sick before, and so he asked him about it.
Walters said that they were indeed his first sick days, which led to the inevitable comment about how Woody Allen said that 80 percent of life is about showing up.
If showing up is indeed 80 percent of it, then Princeton Athletics is 80 percent there of late.
Princeton may be setting some sort of record for the number of teams on the road in a four-day stretch, which for the one that starts today totals 14. The total number of Princeton teams who will be competing is 17, as men's hockey, women's water polo and men's tennis are at home.
To put that in some perspective, former Princeton executive associate athletic director Michael Cross is now the AD at Bradley, which has 13 sports total. Rutgers, in the Big East, has 22 for its entire program, or only five more than Princeton has playing this weekend alone.
Some teams are opening their seasons, like the softball team at UMBC's tournament and the baseball team at LSU.
Speaking of the baseball team, the Tigers waiting for Princeton's Tigers in Louisiana are currently 9-0 and ranked near the Top 10. And Princeton? Well, the weather did break just enough to get some outdoor batting practice in a few times; otherwise, practice has been confined to the pit on E level of Jadwin.
Some other teams are playing huge non-league games in their early season, like the men's lacrosse team at Johns Hopkins and the women's lacrosse team at Duke.
Still others are at the most crucial juncture of their seasons.
The men's and women's squash individual national championships are being held at Dartmouth, where the Princeton men have the No. 1 (Todd Harrity) and No. 2 (David Letourneau) seeds.
The men's swimming and diving championships began yesterday and continue through tomorrow at Harvard, where it figures to be between the home team and the Tigers and also figures to be close the whole way.
The men's hockey team is home in the first round of the ECAC playoffs against St. Lawrence tonight at 7, tomorrow at 4 and then Sunday at 4 if necessary. While it would have been great to get the first-round bye, the up side is the chance to gain some momentum heading into the later rounds - if you can get that far.
And, of course, the men's and women's basketball teams are playing for Ivy League championships of their own this weekend and then possibly Tuesday and even next weekend if a playoff is necessary.
If that's not enough, there's men's track and field, women's track and field, women's tennis, men's volleyball and wrestling on the road and men's tennis and women's water polo at home.
That's 17 teams who are 80 percent there. The other 20 percent should be pretty interesting.
TB was half-singing when another member of the office came in and remarked that he had no idea what song that was. How, TigerBlog thought, could somebody not know "Comfortably Numb?"
Of course, TB often forgets that he's not quite a kid anymore, and incidents like that serve as harsh reminders. It's like the time a few years ago that TB found out that nobody he worked with realized that there had been a TV show called "Get Smart."
"Comfortably Numb" was a 1979 song on the album "The Wall," and it and the album are among the greatest in the history of rock music. TigerBlog is no huge Pink Floyd fan, but he has known since the first time he heard the song that it was something special.
Once it was determined that, aside from TB, only one other person in the office had even the vaguest knowledge of the song, there was a quick search that revealed that Rolling Stone magazine had ranked the song as the 314th best all-time, a number a bit higher than TB would have guessed.
No. 1, as an aside, was "Like a Rolling Stone," by Bob Dylan. There were only two Bruce Springsteen songs in the top 100, "Born To Run" at No. 21 and "Thunder Road" at No. 86; on the "TigerBlog Top 500," they rank 1-2.
Shortly after the whole "Comfortably Numb" situation drifted away, Director of Athletics Gary Walters walked into the office.
Walters was out sick for most of the week, but he seemed to be in good spirits on his return. TB, who started here at Princeton on the same day that Walters did, couldn't remember a time when the AD had been out sick before, and so he asked him about it.
Walters said that they were indeed his first sick days, which led to the inevitable comment about how Woody Allen said that 80 percent of life is about showing up.
If showing up is indeed 80 percent of it, then Princeton Athletics is 80 percent there of late.
Princeton may be setting some sort of record for the number of teams on the road in a four-day stretch, which for the one that starts today totals 14. The total number of Princeton teams who will be competing is 17, as men's hockey, women's water polo and men's tennis are at home.
To put that in some perspective, former Princeton executive associate athletic director Michael Cross is now the AD at Bradley, which has 13 sports total. Rutgers, in the Big East, has 22 for its entire program, or only five more than Princeton has playing this weekend alone.
Some teams are opening their seasons, like the softball team at UMBC's tournament and the baseball team at LSU.
Speaking of the baseball team, the Tigers waiting for Princeton's Tigers in Louisiana are currently 9-0 and ranked near the Top 10. And Princeton? Well, the weather did break just enough to get some outdoor batting practice in a few times; otherwise, practice has been confined to the pit on E level of Jadwin.
Some other teams are playing huge non-league games in their early season, like the men's lacrosse team at Johns Hopkins and the women's lacrosse team at Duke.
Still others are at the most crucial juncture of their seasons.
The men's and women's squash individual national championships are being held at Dartmouth, where the Princeton men have the No. 1 (Todd Harrity) and No. 2 (David Letourneau) seeds.
The men's swimming and diving championships began yesterday and continue through tomorrow at Harvard, where it figures to be between the home team and the Tigers and also figures to be close the whole way.
The men's hockey team is home in the first round of the ECAC playoffs against St. Lawrence tonight at 7, tomorrow at 4 and then Sunday at 4 if necessary. While it would have been great to get the first-round bye, the up side is the chance to gain some momentum heading into the later rounds - if you can get that far.
And, of course, the men's and women's basketball teams are playing for Ivy League championships of their own this weekend and then possibly Tuesday and even next weekend if a playoff is necessary.
If that's not enough, there's men's track and field, women's track and field, women's tennis, men's volleyball and wrestling on the road and men's tennis and women's water polo at home.
That's 17 teams who are 80 percent there. The other 20 percent should be pretty interesting.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Adding It Up
TigerBlog looked at a word problem in Little Miss TigerBlog's math work book and couldn't believe what he saw.
Basically, the problem was comparing two geometric objects, one of which was four feet taller than the other, though they were essentially of the same shape. It then asked for a conclusion about area.
The only problem to TB was that the two objects being compared were the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
This appalled TB for two reasons: 1) the book has to be more than 10 years old and 2) the school sits about two miles away from a 9/11 memorial that honors the spirit of 18 local residents who were killed that day.
Perhaps math hasn't changed much in the last 10 years - or the last 40 or 50 for that matter - but still, is there nobody who has noticed the inappropriateness of using a book that references the World Trade Center, even in such a benign way?
For all TigerBlog knows, he had the same question in the same math workbook way back when.
Math was always one of TB's best subjects, especially geometry. For some reason, the logic of it really appealed to young TB.
He also was a big fan of the probability and statistics class he took his sophomore or junior year, even though it was dominated by the genius kids a year older than he was, including Lenny Ganz, who to the best of TB's memory never got less than a 100 on any test ever and is today a cardiologist. Lenny was always destroying any chance for a curve on the tests in that class, but TB still managed to get a good grade.
Somewhere along the line, TB veered away from the math world and directly into things like literature and history and eventually writing. Still, had it worked out differently, maybe TB could have traded all this for a long, distinguished career as an actuary.
Of course, math comes in handy all the time, especially when it comes to figuring out what is involved as the men's and women's Ivy League basketball races reach the final days of the regular season.
Starting on the women's side, there are three teams mathematically in contention for the championship and NCAA tournament bid: Princeton at 10-1, Yale at 9-3 and Harvard at 8-3.
Princeton hosts Dartmouth tomorrow night and Harvard Saturday and then travels to Penn Tuesday. Between the Princeton game, Harvard is at Penn tomorrow night and at Dartmouth Tuesday. Yale hosts Columbia tomorrow night and Cornell Saturday night.
A win in any of its remaining three games clinches for Princeton at least a share of its second-straight title. Any combination of Princeton wins and losses by the other two totaling two sends Princeton back to the NCAA tournament.
A Princeton win over Harvard alone would eliminate the Crimson. Should Yale win out and get to 11-3, then Princeton would have to win two of its last three to win outright.
The only way for Princeton not to get at least a share of the championship would be to lose all three of its games and have either Harvard or Yale win out as well.
Should there be a three-way tie for first, it could get a bit complicated in terms of who would get the No. 1 seed and avoid the first game in a playoff, but TB will wait until after this weekend to see if that's a bridge that needs to be crossed.
In the meantime, Princeton knows that if it keeps winning, it'll be in the NCAA tournament. Harvard and Yale could both win out and not get a share of the title or get to the tournament.
As an aside, the second-place team in the Ivy League is guaranteed a bid to the WNIT. Should Harvard and Yale tie for second, then Yale would get that bid because of its sweep of Harvard.
The men's race is different than the women's race in two ways: 1) only two teams - Princeton and Harvard - are mathematically still in the running and 2) both know that they would get to the NCAA tournament simply by winning out.
In fact, if Harvard defeats Penn tomorrow night, then Princeton cannot get to the NCAA tournament without beating Harvard a second time, though it might have two chances to do so.
Princeton is currently 10-1, while Harvard is 10-2. Unlike the Harvard women, the men have already completed their two games with travel-partner Dartmouth, so all that's left for the men in the regular season are the home games this weekend against Penn and Princeton.
The Tigers, of course, go to Dartmouth tomorrow, Harvard Saturday and Penn Tuesday.
If Princeton wins all three, it'll be 13-1 and the Ivy League champion. If Harvard wins both of its games, then it'll be 12-2 and guaranteed of no worse than a tie for the title and playoff for the NCAA spot.
If Harvard loses to Penn and Princeton defeats Dartmouth, then Princeton will have clinched a tie for the title and would only need to defeat either the Crimson or Penn to win it outright.
On the other hand, should Princeton go 1-2 in its final three, then Harvard would win the outright title by going 2-0, which means one of the two would have been over Princeton.
There have been many times where Princeton has gotten to its regular-season finale against Penn where the winner would either clinch outright or force a rematch in a playoff game a few days later. This time, the game Tuesday night could be a situation that TB doesn't recall, where Penn could be playing simply to knock off Princeton and give the title to a third team.
Regardless, by as early as tomorrow night for the women and Saturday night for the men or as late as a week from Saturday in a playoff, there will be an NCAA bid for the two Ivy League representatives.
Of the 16 teams who play on both sides, only five are still in the running for those two bids, and two of them are from Princeton.
Should be a fun weekend.
Basically, the problem was comparing two geometric objects, one of which was four feet taller than the other, though they were essentially of the same shape. It then asked for a conclusion about area.
The only problem to TB was that the two objects being compared were the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
This appalled TB for two reasons: 1) the book has to be more than 10 years old and 2) the school sits about two miles away from a 9/11 memorial that honors the spirit of 18 local residents who were killed that day.
Perhaps math hasn't changed much in the last 10 years - or the last 40 or 50 for that matter - but still, is there nobody who has noticed the inappropriateness of using a book that references the World Trade Center, even in such a benign way?
For all TigerBlog knows, he had the same question in the same math workbook way back when.
Math was always one of TB's best subjects, especially geometry. For some reason, the logic of it really appealed to young TB.
He also was a big fan of the probability and statistics class he took his sophomore or junior year, even though it was dominated by the genius kids a year older than he was, including Lenny Ganz, who to the best of TB's memory never got less than a 100 on any test ever and is today a cardiologist. Lenny was always destroying any chance for a curve on the tests in that class, but TB still managed to get a good grade.
Somewhere along the line, TB veered away from the math world and directly into things like literature and history and eventually writing. Still, had it worked out differently, maybe TB could have traded all this for a long, distinguished career as an actuary.
Of course, math comes in handy all the time, especially when it comes to figuring out what is involved as the men's and women's Ivy League basketball races reach the final days of the regular season.
Starting on the women's side, there are three teams mathematically in contention for the championship and NCAA tournament bid: Princeton at 10-1, Yale at 9-3 and Harvard at 8-3.
Princeton hosts Dartmouth tomorrow night and Harvard Saturday and then travels to Penn Tuesday. Between the Princeton game, Harvard is at Penn tomorrow night and at Dartmouth Tuesday. Yale hosts Columbia tomorrow night and Cornell Saturday night.
A win in any of its remaining three games clinches for Princeton at least a share of its second-straight title. Any combination of Princeton wins and losses by the other two totaling two sends Princeton back to the NCAA tournament.
A Princeton win over Harvard alone would eliminate the Crimson. Should Yale win out and get to 11-3, then Princeton would have to win two of its last three to win outright.
The only way for Princeton not to get at least a share of the championship would be to lose all three of its games and have either Harvard or Yale win out as well.
Should there be a three-way tie for first, it could get a bit complicated in terms of who would get the No. 1 seed and avoid the first game in a playoff, but TB will wait until after this weekend to see if that's a bridge that needs to be crossed.
In the meantime, Princeton knows that if it keeps winning, it'll be in the NCAA tournament. Harvard and Yale could both win out and not get a share of the title or get to the tournament.
As an aside, the second-place team in the Ivy League is guaranteed a bid to the WNIT. Should Harvard and Yale tie for second, then Yale would get that bid because of its sweep of Harvard.
The men's race is different than the women's race in two ways: 1) only two teams - Princeton and Harvard - are mathematically still in the running and 2) both know that they would get to the NCAA tournament simply by winning out.
In fact, if Harvard defeats Penn tomorrow night, then Princeton cannot get to the NCAA tournament without beating Harvard a second time, though it might have two chances to do so.
Princeton is currently 10-1, while Harvard is 10-2. Unlike the Harvard women, the men have already completed their two games with travel-partner Dartmouth, so all that's left for the men in the regular season are the home games this weekend against Penn and Princeton.
The Tigers, of course, go to Dartmouth tomorrow, Harvard Saturday and Penn Tuesday.
If Princeton wins all three, it'll be 13-1 and the Ivy League champion. If Harvard wins both of its games, then it'll be 12-2 and guaranteed of no worse than a tie for the title and playoff for the NCAA spot.
If Harvard loses to Penn and Princeton defeats Dartmouth, then Princeton will have clinched a tie for the title and would only need to defeat either the Crimson or Penn to win it outright.
On the other hand, should Princeton go 1-2 in its final three, then Harvard would win the outright title by going 2-0, which means one of the two would have been over Princeton.
There have been many times where Princeton has gotten to its regular-season finale against Penn where the winner would either clinch outright or force a rematch in a playoff game a few days later. This time, the game Tuesday night could be a situation that TB doesn't recall, where Penn could be playing simply to knock off Princeton and give the title to a third team.
Regardless, by as early as tomorrow night for the women and Saturday night for the men or as late as a week from Saturday in a playoff, there will be an NCAA bid for the two Ivy League representatives.
Of the 16 teams who play on both sides, only five are still in the running for those two bids, and two of them are from Princeton.
Should be a fun weekend.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Happy Silver Anniversary
Well, the season ended in the first round of the playoffs for Little Miss TigerBlog and the rest of her basketball team, which was coached by TigerBlog.
The quest to successfully teach the team of 5/6 grade girls how to run chin was somewhat successful, though it never actually resulted in a basket in a game. Center-forward became the team's staple, signature play, and it was something that resulted in a ton of open layups, some of which actually went in.
The other concept of screening off the ball to free up someone to curl when the ball was tied up on the other side of the court never came close to materializing.
The team started off 1-6 before winning two of its last three in the regular-season. Sadly, any hope of a nice run through the playoffs ended quickly, with a loss to a team that TB's team had beaten during the regular season.
The highlights of the year included back-to-back wins late in the year, the times in practice when things began to click, the time Grace made cookies for everyone for good luck and the time when Paige brought in cupcakes for her birthday.
LMTB actually played on two basketball teams, the in-house team that TB coached and the travel team, which also lost in the first round of its playoffs. There were times during the season when LMTB would have a travel game on a Monday, travel practice on a Wednesday, in-house practice on Thursday and then an in-house game and one or two travel games on the weekend.
Honestly, it was a lot of basketball for the nine girls who played travel and in-house. Of course, TB knows of some of TigerBlog Jr.'s friends who play on three and even four basketball teams in the winter.
Still, TB is pretty sure that his in-house team accomplished most of its goals: get better, have fun, want to play again next year and then, if possible, win. It's the same goal for any 5/6 grade level team, for boys or girls.
With basketball over, LMTB has a few weeks off until her lacrosse season starts.
What's remarkable to TB about LMTB's sports schedule is that it's completely unremarkable. There are millions of girls in this country who play sports, and it's not something anyone really thinks much about anymore.
According to a 2008 report by the Women's Sports Foundation, nearly 70 percent of girls in 3rd to 12th grade play some sort of organized sport, a figure slightly below that of boys (75 percent).
TigerBlog can't remember what youth sports were like for girls when he was a kid, but he can't imagine that the opportunities existed then that exist now. If anything, girls were pushed into being cheerleaders as much as anything else.
Of course, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, not that there's anything wrong with cheerleading, but it's more of a societal statement that girls now have way more opportunities to compete in a variety of sports today than they did a quarter-century or more ago.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of National Girls and Women in Sports Day, which, according to its website: "has been celebrated annually in all 50 states with events ranging from sports clinics to awards ceremonies to triathlons to recognize the achievements, and encourage participation, of girls and women in sports."
Billie Jean King, whom those in TB's age group remember most for beating Bobby Riggs in the Astrodome in a huge moment for the women's movement, was the founder of the Women's Sports Foundation. Also from the website:
“As we celebrate the 25th annual National Girls and Women in Sports Day, we are struck not only by the incredible advancements in girls' participation in sports over the past quarter century, but by the opportunities athletics have offered women in the United States and around the world,” said Women’s Sports Foundation Founder Billie Jean King. “Now, more than ever, sports, health and education programs are needed to lay the foundation to empower active, healthy and confident young women for generations to come.”
As an aside, King may have beaten Riggs in the real tennis match, but she was no competition for him as an actress on the episode of "The Odd Couple" on which they both appeared.
Meanwhile, back at National Girls and Women In Sports Day, the annual celebration of the event here at Princeton will be held Saturday prior to Princeton's women's basketball game against Harvard.
As always, one hour before game time, fans will be invited onto the indoor track area of Jadwin's main floor for an interactive sports fair featuring many of Princeton's women's teams. Girls - and boys - can play games and learn the basics of the sports while meeting the players and coaches.
For TB's money, Princeton's celebration of National Girls and Women In Sports Day is up there with any other event that is done here each year. It's a great opportunity for girls to see first-hand the value and fun of athletic participation, and it's just as important for the boys to see that the girls have the same right to play as they do.
The resulting sight is a panorama of kids, college athletes, parents and coaches, all of whom are having a great time.
And after that, there's the Princeton-Harvard women's basketball game, which will probably have huge Ivy title implications (unless Princeton beats Dartmouth and Penn beats Harvard Friday, but more about that later in the week).
Today isn't about Ivy title scenarios.
It's about girls and sports and how important the two are to each other.
The quest to successfully teach the team of 5/6 grade girls how to run chin was somewhat successful, though it never actually resulted in a basket in a game. Center-forward became the team's staple, signature play, and it was something that resulted in a ton of open layups, some of which actually went in.
The other concept of screening off the ball to free up someone to curl when the ball was tied up on the other side of the court never came close to materializing.
The team started off 1-6 before winning two of its last three in the regular-season. Sadly, any hope of a nice run through the playoffs ended quickly, with a loss to a team that TB's team had beaten during the regular season.
The highlights of the year included back-to-back wins late in the year, the times in practice when things began to click, the time Grace made cookies for everyone for good luck and the time when Paige brought in cupcakes for her birthday.
LMTB actually played on two basketball teams, the in-house team that TB coached and the travel team, which also lost in the first round of its playoffs. There were times during the season when LMTB would have a travel game on a Monday, travel practice on a Wednesday, in-house practice on Thursday and then an in-house game and one or two travel games on the weekend.
Honestly, it was a lot of basketball for the nine girls who played travel and in-house. Of course, TB knows of some of TigerBlog Jr.'s friends who play on three and even four basketball teams in the winter.
Still, TB is pretty sure that his in-house team accomplished most of its goals: get better, have fun, want to play again next year and then, if possible, win. It's the same goal for any 5/6 grade level team, for boys or girls.
With basketball over, LMTB has a few weeks off until her lacrosse season starts.
What's remarkable to TB about LMTB's sports schedule is that it's completely unremarkable. There are millions of girls in this country who play sports, and it's not something anyone really thinks much about anymore.
According to a 2008 report by the Women's Sports Foundation, nearly 70 percent of girls in 3rd to 12th grade play some sort of organized sport, a figure slightly below that of boys (75 percent).
TigerBlog can't remember what youth sports were like for girls when he was a kid, but he can't imagine that the opportunities existed then that exist now. If anything, girls were pushed into being cheerleaders as much as anything else.
Of course, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, not that there's anything wrong with cheerleading, but it's more of a societal statement that girls now have way more opportunities to compete in a variety of sports today than they did a quarter-century or more ago.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of National Girls and Women in Sports Day, which, according to its website: "has been celebrated annually in all 50 states with events ranging from sports clinics to awards ceremonies to triathlons to recognize the achievements, and encourage participation, of girls and women in sports."
Billie Jean King, whom those in TB's age group remember most for beating Bobby Riggs in the Astrodome in a huge moment for the women's movement, was the founder of the Women's Sports Foundation. Also from the website:
“As we celebrate the 25th annual National Girls and Women in Sports Day, we are struck not only by the incredible advancements in girls' participation in sports over the past quarter century, but by the opportunities athletics have offered women in the United States and around the world,” said Women’s Sports Foundation Founder Billie Jean King. “Now, more than ever, sports, health and education programs are needed to lay the foundation to empower active, healthy and confident young women for generations to come.”
As an aside, King may have beaten Riggs in the real tennis match, but she was no competition for him as an actress on the episode of "The Odd Couple" on which they both appeared.
Meanwhile, back at National Girls and Women In Sports Day, the annual celebration of the event here at Princeton will be held Saturday prior to Princeton's women's basketball game against Harvard.
As always, one hour before game time, fans will be invited onto the indoor track area of Jadwin's main floor for an interactive sports fair featuring many of Princeton's women's teams. Girls - and boys - can play games and learn the basics of the sports while meeting the players and coaches.
For TB's money, Princeton's celebration of National Girls and Women In Sports Day is up there with any other event that is done here each year. It's a great opportunity for girls to see first-hand the value and fun of athletic participation, and it's just as important for the boys to see that the girls have the same right to play as they do.
The resulting sight is a panorama of kids, college athletes, parents and coaches, all of whom are having a great time.
And after that, there's the Princeton-Harvard women's basketball game, which will probably have huge Ivy title implications (unless Princeton beats Dartmouth and Penn beats Harvard Friday, but more about that later in the week).
Today isn't about Ivy title scenarios.
It's about girls and sports and how important the two are to each other.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Raising Real Awareness
There are certain words and phrases that didn't exist in their current connotations back when TigerBlog was a kid.
Nobody ever used to say "signage," for instance, when "signs" worked fine.
Above them all, though, TigerBlog can't stand the term "raising awareness" as it's normally applied; that is, to calling attention to diseases or conditions that everybody already is aware are awful.
Too often to TigerBlog, events that are designed to "raise awareness" of those diseases end up being more a way for the people who are involved to give the very public impression that they are doing something critical to help the cause. In reality, quite often those people are in position to do much more in a meaningful - and private - way.
Yes, it's nice that the NFL has everyone wear pink, but couldn't the money spent on all of that (times 1,000, for that matter) go directly to the people who are trying to find a cure?
Still, it's hard to go out and raise real money, the kind that makes a real difference. It's easy to get the public credit for "raising awareness."
This isn't meant as a criticism of everyone and every event. Many of the smaller events that college athletic teams and local community organizations undertake simply don't have the ability to raise those kinds of sums of money for donations.
And in many of those cases, there is legitimate value in the relationships created and the sense of service. But raising awareness for cancer or autism or heart disease? Everyone already knows all about them.
Then there is the whole concept of the rare disease, which is an entirely different situation.
Rare diseases are defined as those that affect 200,000 or fewer people, and there are 7,000 of these diseases, most of which very few people know about.
TigerBlog, for instance, has learned in the last few years about two of those rare diseases.
Ataxia Telangiectasia is a disease that affects about three out of every one million children in this country, which fortunately makes it very rare indeed. The disease, which TB doesn't quite understand, attacks the muscular development of young children, often being mistaken for diseases like cerebral palsey, and then ultimately breaks down the immune system. The mortality rate is nearly 100%, and life expectancy beyond 20 is rare.
Unfortunately, one of the three in a million kids lives about four miles from Jadwin Gym. Derek DiGregorio, whose father Steve was an assistant football coach here and was the freshman coach when current head coach Bob Surace played, is a 13-year-old who has the disease.
Derek's family has been joined by some others who aren't quite ready to give in to Ataxia Telangiectasia without a fight, including former Princeton basketball player and coach and current Mercer County Community College coach Howard Levy, football associate head coach Steve Verbit and Jess Deutsch, who works in the Office of the Dean of the College here at Princeton.
Together, and with others, these people have created Derek's Dreams, an organization that is designed to raise awareness - real awareness - to a disease that almost nobody has ever heard of.
Last year, this group had a fundraiser for the cause, and the event couldn't have been more successful, with some big names in attendance and big memorabilia/sports packages auctioned off.
This year's event will be held April 6 in North Jersey. Much more information is available at dereksdreams.com.
Another rare disease that is now permanently familiar to TB and to the Princeton football and athletic family is Aplastic Anemia, the disease that afflicted Jordan Culbreath nearly two years ago.
Culbreath, coming of a 1,200-yard junior year for the Tigers, struggled through training camp in 2009 with fatigue and other health issues. It wasn't until he had an ankle injury early in the season, though, that the real cause of his problems was discovered - a disease called Aplastic Anemia.
Like those in Derek DiGregorio's camp, Culbreath and his family didn't give in to his disease either. Instead, he fought it head on as well, and the results have been spectacular.
Against all odds, Culbreath was able to regain his health to the point of being able to play college football again this past fall, and he led the team in rushing again.
Beyond that, his teammates and the Princeton Department of Athletics organized several outreach efforts, including a bone marrow drive.
Most recently, Culbreath won an award that he would never have wanted to, the Uplifting Athletes Rare Disease Champion award.
It's a tribute to the man himself that he was able to return to Princeton and the field after coming so perilously close to losing his life in the first place.
Jordan Culbreath and Derek DiGregorio are quite different people in different situations, but they are front and center in the fight against two horrible diseases.
These diseases aren't mainstream ones, and it's going to take a lot more than pink shoelaces to cure them.
Still, these two young people inspire everyone who hears their stories and comes in contact to them.
That's a great place to start.
Nobody ever used to say "signage," for instance, when "signs" worked fine.
Above them all, though, TigerBlog can't stand the term "raising awareness" as it's normally applied; that is, to calling attention to diseases or conditions that everybody already is aware are awful.
Too often to TigerBlog, events that are designed to "raise awareness" of those diseases end up being more a way for the people who are involved to give the very public impression that they are doing something critical to help the cause. In reality, quite often those people are in position to do much more in a meaningful - and private - way.
Yes, it's nice that the NFL has everyone wear pink, but couldn't the money spent on all of that (times 1,000, for that matter) go directly to the people who are trying to find a cure?
Still, it's hard to go out and raise real money, the kind that makes a real difference. It's easy to get the public credit for "raising awareness."
This isn't meant as a criticism of everyone and every event. Many of the smaller events that college athletic teams and local community organizations undertake simply don't have the ability to raise those kinds of sums of money for donations.
And in many of those cases, there is legitimate value in the relationships created and the sense of service. But raising awareness for cancer or autism or heart disease? Everyone already knows all about them.
Then there is the whole concept of the rare disease, which is an entirely different situation.
Rare diseases are defined as those that affect 200,000 or fewer people, and there are 7,000 of these diseases, most of which very few people know about.
TigerBlog, for instance, has learned in the last few years about two of those rare diseases.
Ataxia Telangiectasia is a disease that affects about three out of every one million children in this country, which fortunately makes it very rare indeed. The disease, which TB doesn't quite understand, attacks the muscular development of young children, often being mistaken for diseases like cerebral palsey, and then ultimately breaks down the immune system. The mortality rate is nearly 100%, and life expectancy beyond 20 is rare.
Unfortunately, one of the three in a million kids lives about four miles from Jadwin Gym. Derek DiGregorio, whose father Steve was an assistant football coach here and was the freshman coach when current head coach Bob Surace played, is a 13-year-old who has the disease.
Derek's family has been joined by some others who aren't quite ready to give in to Ataxia Telangiectasia without a fight, including former Princeton basketball player and coach and current Mercer County Community College coach Howard Levy, football associate head coach Steve Verbit and Jess Deutsch, who works in the Office of the Dean of the College here at Princeton.
Together, and with others, these people have created Derek's Dreams, an organization that is designed to raise awareness - real awareness - to a disease that almost nobody has ever heard of.
Last year, this group had a fundraiser for the cause, and the event couldn't have been more successful, with some big names in attendance and big memorabilia/sports packages auctioned off.
This year's event will be held April 6 in North Jersey. Much more information is available at dereksdreams.com.
Another rare disease that is now permanently familiar to TB and to the Princeton football and athletic family is Aplastic Anemia, the disease that afflicted Jordan Culbreath nearly two years ago.
Culbreath, coming of a 1,200-yard junior year for the Tigers, struggled through training camp in 2009 with fatigue and other health issues. It wasn't until he had an ankle injury early in the season, though, that the real cause of his problems was discovered - a disease called Aplastic Anemia.
Like those in Derek DiGregorio's camp, Culbreath and his family didn't give in to his disease either. Instead, he fought it head on as well, and the results have been spectacular.
Against all odds, Culbreath was able to regain his health to the point of being able to play college football again this past fall, and he led the team in rushing again.
Beyond that, his teammates and the Princeton Department of Athletics organized several outreach efforts, including a bone marrow drive.
Most recently, Culbreath won an award that he would never have wanted to, the Uplifting Athletes Rare Disease Champion award.
It's a tribute to the man himself that he was able to return to Princeton and the field after coming so perilously close to losing his life in the first place.
Jordan Culbreath and Derek DiGregorio are quite different people in different situations, but they are front and center in the fight against two horrible diseases.
These diseases aren't mainstream ones, and it's going to take a lot more than pink shoelaces to cure them.
Still, these two young people inspire everyone who hears their stories and comes in contact to them.
That's a great place to start.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Gonna Fly Now
TigerBlog remembers clearly the night he saw "Rocky" for the first time, at the old movie theater in East Brunswick by the ice cream place called "Farrell's."
As an aside, that was the place where all the waiters and waitresses would sing "happy birthday" when it was your birthday and that had the biggest ice cream sundaes that TB has ever seen.
TB wishes he had a videotape or something of the first time he saw the scene where Rocky transforms himself from being "a legbreaker for some cheap, second-rate loanshark" into a fighter who could go the distance with the great Apollo Creed, all while "Gonna Fly Now" plays in the background. Or the scene where Creed knocks him down in the 14th, only to see Rocky get back up, drawing the greatest incredulous look of all-time.
Or, for that matter, the scene where Mickey comes to Rocky's apartment and begs to train him. Or the one where he tells Adrian that all he really wants to do is go the distance with Creed.
If your view of "Rocky" is jaded by having seen it so many times or by seeing all the sequels that followed, then that's a shame, since the movie is one of the greatest in American history. The character development over the first hour of the movie is perfect, and it then morphs into the single most inspirational piece of fiction ever filmed.
Even today (or yesterday, since it was on A&E in the morning), TB watched Rocky sprint up the stairs of the art museum and felt the same breathless feeling he did when he saw it nearly 35 years ago.
The movie was an improbable rags-to-riches story of its own right, and it vaulted Sylvester Stallone to superstardom. Mickey (Burgess Meredith), Paulie (Burt Young) and Creed (Carl Weathers) are three of the great characters in movie history as well.
"Rocky" won Best Picture of 1976 at the 1977 Academy Awards, and Stallone would have won Best Actor - TB believes - had Peter Finch not passed away after filming "Network."
TB used to love to watch the Oscars, back when he saw essentially every movie that ever came out. These days, his trips to the movies are essentially non-existent, and he didn't watch one minute of this year's show.
"Rocky" was honored on March 28, 1977, or just before Peter Farrell came to Princeton to start the women's track and field program and Fred Samara came to Princeton to help oversee a men's program that had been around for just over 100 years by then.
Just as TB wouldn't mind having the videotape to see his first reaction to seeing "Rocky," he also wouldn't mind a tape of a conversation that Farrell and Samara would have had after being told that in 2011, they'd both 1) still be coaching at Princeton and 2) still be winning big.
Princeton's men's and women's indoor track and field teams both won Heptagonal championships yesterday in New York, the men by posting the highest team point total in the history of the event and the women by edging second-place Columbia.
Princetn's men won all but two individual events, led by junior Donn Cabral, who won the 3,000 and 5,000 to earn Most Outstanding Performer honor. Cabral, the NCAA runner-up in the steeplechase a year ago outdoors, won the Heps cross country title last fall.
The women won by five points, and the biggest difference in the meet came in the 3,000, where Princeton's Ashley Higginson, Sarah Cummings and Alex Banfich went 1-2-4 to give the Tigers 22 points in an event where Columbia would get none.
Under Samara, Princeton has now won 13 indoor Heps titles and 11 outdoor Heps titles.
For Farrell, who doubles as the athletic department philosopher, now has coached Princeton to 25 Heps titles between indoor and outdoor track and field and cross country.
The track and field championships came a day after Princeton won the Ivy League women's swimming and diving championship.
Susan Teeter has now coached Princeton to 15 Ivy League championships in the pool. Of the last 12 Ivy League championships, 10 now belong to Teeter and the Tigers.
Princeton won 12 of the 21 events at the meet, and the appropriately named Megan Waters won three individual events and was part of four winning relays to win Most Outstanding Swimmer honors.
For Princeton, the three championships this weekend were the sixth, seventh and eighth of the 2010-11 academic year. Princeton has also won titles in men's and women's cross country, field hockey, men's soccer and women's fencing.
There are still three more Ivy titles to go in the winter, and Princeton is a contender in all three.
The women's basketball team is 10-1 in the league. Harvard and Yale have three losses each, and every other team is mathematically eliminated.
The men's basketball team is also 10-1, while Harvard is 10-2. The other six teams are all mathematically out of it.
The women's basketball team hosts Harvard Saturday, while the men are at Harvard Saturday.
The Ivy League men's swimming and diving championships conclude Saturday at Harvard as well.
This past weekend was a pretty good one for Tiger athletics. The excitement building to next weekend has already begun.
As an aside, that was the place where all the waiters and waitresses would sing "happy birthday" when it was your birthday and that had the biggest ice cream sundaes that TB has ever seen.
TB wishes he had a videotape or something of the first time he saw the scene where Rocky transforms himself from being "a legbreaker for some cheap, second-rate loanshark" into a fighter who could go the distance with the great Apollo Creed, all while "Gonna Fly Now" plays in the background. Or the scene where Creed knocks him down in the 14th, only to see Rocky get back up, drawing the greatest incredulous look of all-time.
Or, for that matter, the scene where Mickey comes to Rocky's apartment and begs to train him. Or the one where he tells Adrian that all he really wants to do is go the distance with Creed.
If your view of "Rocky" is jaded by having seen it so many times or by seeing all the sequels that followed, then that's a shame, since the movie is one of the greatest in American history. The character development over the first hour of the movie is perfect, and it then morphs into the single most inspirational piece of fiction ever filmed.
Even today (or yesterday, since it was on A&E in the morning), TB watched Rocky sprint up the stairs of the art museum and felt the same breathless feeling he did when he saw it nearly 35 years ago.
The movie was an improbable rags-to-riches story of its own right, and it vaulted Sylvester Stallone to superstardom. Mickey (Burgess Meredith), Paulie (Burt Young) and Creed (Carl Weathers) are three of the great characters in movie history as well.
"Rocky" won Best Picture of 1976 at the 1977 Academy Awards, and Stallone would have won Best Actor - TB believes - had Peter Finch not passed away after filming "Network."
TB used to love to watch the Oscars, back when he saw essentially every movie that ever came out. These days, his trips to the movies are essentially non-existent, and he didn't watch one minute of this year's show.
"Rocky" was honored on March 28, 1977, or just before Peter Farrell came to Princeton to start the women's track and field program and Fred Samara came to Princeton to help oversee a men's program that had been around for just over 100 years by then.
Just as TB wouldn't mind having the videotape to see his first reaction to seeing "Rocky," he also wouldn't mind a tape of a conversation that Farrell and Samara would have had after being told that in 2011, they'd both 1) still be coaching at Princeton and 2) still be winning big.
Princeton's men's and women's indoor track and field teams both won Heptagonal championships yesterday in New York, the men by posting the highest team point total in the history of the event and the women by edging second-place Columbia.
Princetn's men won all but two individual events, led by junior Donn Cabral, who won the 3,000 and 5,000 to earn Most Outstanding Performer honor. Cabral, the NCAA runner-up in the steeplechase a year ago outdoors, won the Heps cross country title last fall.
The women won by five points, and the biggest difference in the meet came in the 3,000, where Princeton's Ashley Higginson, Sarah Cummings and Alex Banfich went 1-2-4 to give the Tigers 22 points in an event where Columbia would get none.
Under Samara, Princeton has now won 13 indoor Heps titles and 11 outdoor Heps titles.
For Farrell, who doubles as the athletic department philosopher, now has coached Princeton to 25 Heps titles between indoor and outdoor track and field and cross country.
The track and field championships came a day after Princeton won the Ivy League women's swimming and diving championship.
Susan Teeter has now coached Princeton to 15 Ivy League championships in the pool. Of the last 12 Ivy League championships, 10 now belong to Teeter and the Tigers.
Princeton won 12 of the 21 events at the meet, and the appropriately named Megan Waters won three individual events and was part of four winning relays to win Most Outstanding Swimmer honors.
For Princeton, the three championships this weekend were the sixth, seventh and eighth of the 2010-11 academic year. Princeton has also won titles in men's and women's cross country, field hockey, men's soccer and women's fencing.
There are still three more Ivy titles to go in the winter, and Princeton is a contender in all three.
The women's basketball team is 10-1 in the league. Harvard and Yale have three losses each, and every other team is mathematically eliminated.
The men's basketball team is also 10-1, while Harvard is 10-2. The other six teams are all mathematically out of it.
The women's basketball team hosts Harvard Saturday, while the men are at Harvard Saturday.
The Ivy League men's swimming and diving championships conclude Saturday at Harvard as well.
This past weekend was a pretty good one for Tiger athletics. The excitement building to next weekend has already begun.
Friday, February 25, 2011
TB-Baltimore Talks Caltech And Princeton
Once again, the floor belongs to TB-Baltimore:
Physics was, by far, my least favorite subject in high school (amazingly my 20th reunion is this year, but that’s another story). I never had a great mathematical mind, but somehow I got dragged into honors classes in science and math just like I did in English and history.
Luckily I had some fun in physics class. Mr. Schorr, the teacher, was an amiable guy who had a habit you couldn’t help but notice. When pausing or moving from one thought to another, he’d make a strange ticking noise and tilt his head to the left. One day he was a few minutes late to class, and I got up in front of the room and started on the imitation I’d been working on for weeks. I remember getting some laughs until Mr. Schorr walked in and I quickly bolted for my seat.
The only part of physics itself that I remember enjoying was when Mr. Schorr turned on the VCR (look up here if you’re under 15) and popped in one of the 26 tapes from a series called "The Mechanical Universe."
The series was filmed at Caltech sometime in the 1980s and is sort of a classic of educational television. After the opening credits, you see eager Caltech students entering a lecture hall and finding their seats. In walks the professor, Dr. David Goodstein, who steps to the front table and reads about this week’s topic while the students take notes. At the end of Goodstein’s opening script, we leave the classroom and head into the past.
Actors dressed as Galileo, Copernicus and Newton take us through gravity, motion and energy, aided by computer graphics that were stunning for the time, and it’s all narrated by a guy who could give NFL Films legend John Facenda a run for his money.
I thought about the show when I read that the Caltech men’s basketball team broke a 310-game losing streak in conference games when the Beavers beat Occidental (where President Obama first went to college) by one point in their season finale Tuesday night. The team had last beaten a conference opponent in 1985, maybe around the time they were filming "The Mechanical Universe."
The win set off pandemonium: the school president stormed the court, as did a Nobel Laureate chemist who is a Caltech professor. Some of the players missed class the next day because the school scheduled a celebratory press conference in the gym, which the Los Angeles media attended en masse as if it were the Lakers playing in the NBA Finals.
Somewhere in all this there are two cautionary tales for Princeton fans.
1. Don’t ever forget just how often Tiger teams win. Take the 13 “winter” squads. Of them, a total of 12 have winning records. The combined record of the men’s teams (69-24-2) and women’s teams (70-23-1) are nearly identical; add them together and the teams have basically won 75% of their contests, three out of every four times they compete. Having worked at many different institutions, I can tell you that this isn’t normal. Yet at Princeton it simply has become the norm and sometimes, in good ways and bad ways, the expectation. All of which brings up the next cautionary tale…
2. Don’t ever take that success for granted. The odds are that, even at Princeton, any and every team will take some kind of fall back toward the middle ground or lower at some time. No Princeton team is going to lose 310 straight conference games, but there’s bound to be some kind of losing streak that will have fans shaking their heads and wondering “how does this happen?” The answer is that it’s more amazing how infrequently it happens.
What is the greatest irony surrounding Princeton athletics? It’s the fact that, nationally and even internationally, the Tigers are best known for being underdogs. This stems from one Princeton team and just a minuscule sample of its games through hundreds of years. The truth is of course that, for the thousands and thousands of other times that Princeton teams competed, they were probably the favorites three out of four times.
Caltech’s epic athletic struggles don’t end with the men’s basketball team. The baseball team has lost more than 400 straight conference games and 170 straight games overall. The women’s volleyball team has never won a conference match. The women’s basketball team finished 0-25 this year.
Imagine for a second that your team has never been the favorite in any games it’s ever played. Imagine that your team has every disadvantage it could possibly have compared to its opponent in every game every year and that never changed. Imagine if your school tacitly celebrated this achievement, reminding you that the kids are brilliant and there’s really no point in giving too much thought to athletics because, well, it’s about the lessons learned and not about the result.
Then imagine what it must have been like for the senior playing his last game to make the free throw with three seconds left to end Caltech’s 26-year streak of futility. Then do the math (but not the physics).
Maybe you won’t be nearly as upset the next time Princeton loses a game you’re sure it would win.
Physics was, by far, my least favorite subject in high school (amazingly my 20th reunion is this year, but that’s another story). I never had a great mathematical mind, but somehow I got dragged into honors classes in science and math just like I did in English and history.
Luckily I had some fun in physics class. Mr. Schorr, the teacher, was an amiable guy who had a habit you couldn’t help but notice. When pausing or moving from one thought to another, he’d make a strange ticking noise and tilt his head to the left. One day he was a few minutes late to class, and I got up in front of the room and started on the imitation I’d been working on for weeks. I remember getting some laughs until Mr. Schorr walked in and I quickly bolted for my seat.
The only part of physics itself that I remember enjoying was when Mr. Schorr turned on the VCR (look up here if you’re under 15) and popped in one of the 26 tapes from a series called "The Mechanical Universe."
The series was filmed at Caltech sometime in the 1980s and is sort of a classic of educational television. After the opening credits, you see eager Caltech students entering a lecture hall and finding their seats. In walks the professor, Dr. David Goodstein, who steps to the front table and reads about this week’s topic while the students take notes. At the end of Goodstein’s opening script, we leave the classroom and head into the past.
Actors dressed as Galileo, Copernicus and Newton take us through gravity, motion and energy, aided by computer graphics that were stunning for the time, and it’s all narrated by a guy who could give NFL Films legend John Facenda a run for his money.
I thought about the show when I read that the Caltech men’s basketball team broke a 310-game losing streak in conference games when the Beavers beat Occidental (where President Obama first went to college) by one point in their season finale Tuesday night. The team had last beaten a conference opponent in 1985, maybe around the time they were filming "The Mechanical Universe."
The win set off pandemonium: the school president stormed the court, as did a Nobel Laureate chemist who is a Caltech professor. Some of the players missed class the next day because the school scheduled a celebratory press conference in the gym, which the Los Angeles media attended en masse as if it were the Lakers playing in the NBA Finals.
Somewhere in all this there are two cautionary tales for Princeton fans.
1. Don’t ever forget just how often Tiger teams win. Take the 13 “winter” squads. Of them, a total of 12 have winning records. The combined record of the men’s teams (69-24-2) and women’s teams (70-23-1) are nearly identical; add them together and the teams have basically won 75% of their contests, three out of every four times they compete. Having worked at many different institutions, I can tell you that this isn’t normal. Yet at Princeton it simply has become the norm and sometimes, in good ways and bad ways, the expectation. All of which brings up the next cautionary tale…
2. Don’t ever take that success for granted. The odds are that, even at Princeton, any and every team will take some kind of fall back toward the middle ground or lower at some time. No Princeton team is going to lose 310 straight conference games, but there’s bound to be some kind of losing streak that will have fans shaking their heads and wondering “how does this happen?” The answer is that it’s more amazing how infrequently it happens.
What is the greatest irony surrounding Princeton athletics? It’s the fact that, nationally and even internationally, the Tigers are best known for being underdogs. This stems from one Princeton team and just a minuscule sample of its games through hundreds of years. The truth is of course that, for the thousands and thousands of other times that Princeton teams competed, they were probably the favorites three out of four times.
Caltech’s epic athletic struggles don’t end with the men’s basketball team. The baseball team has lost more than 400 straight conference games and 170 straight games overall. The women’s volleyball team has never won a conference match. The women’s basketball team finished 0-25 this year.
Imagine for a second that your team has never been the favorite in any games it’s ever played. Imagine that your team has every disadvantage it could possibly have compared to its opponent in every game every year and that never changed. Imagine if your school tacitly celebrated this achievement, reminding you that the kids are brilliant and there’s really no point in giving too much thought to athletics because, well, it’s about the lessons learned and not about the result.
Then imagine what it must have been like for the senior playing his last game to make the free throw with three seconds left to end Caltech’s 26-year streak of futility. Then do the math (but not the physics).
Maybe you won’t be nearly as upset the next time Princeton loses a game you’re sure it would win.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Fun With Ace And Nicky
When the subject turns to great mob movies, the conversation almost always starts with "The Godfather," "The Godfather Part II" and "Goodfellas."
It rarely gets around to including "Casino," which is sort of "Goodfellas Part II."
To those who never saw it, "Casino" is set, obviously, in Las Vegas. Like "Goodfellas," "Casino" was a Martin Scorsese movie that starred Robert DeNiro as Ace Rothstein and Joe Pesci as Nicky Santoro.
Also like "Goodfellas," it's based on a true story (though not as directly) and is told in the same extremely violent and gritty way. DeNiro and Pesci are awesome again in "Casino," as in Sharon Stone as DeNiro's wife (she won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for the role).
The rest of the cast includes people who never let you down, like Frank Vincent (who played Phil Leotardo on "The Sopranos"), Alan King, James Woods and Kevin Pollack (TB always confuses him with Kevin Spacey). And that group doesn't even include the great Don Rickles in a rare dramatic role.
Yes, there is some over-the-top feel to the violence, and the movie does, according to Wikipedia, use a certain word 432 times, a record for movies to that point.
Still, it's a great movie, with great character development and storylines, and it's extraordinarily well-acted and well-filmed.
Had "Casino" been done before "Goodfellas," then TigerBlog is pretty sure that their reputations would be reversed.
When TB is flipping around and sees "Casino" is on, he is pretty much locked onto it, especially for his favorite scenes are coming up, which would basically be any of the scenes involving Pesci.
Last night, "Casino" went head-to-head with "The Godfather Part II," and TB spent equal time on both, and not as much time on Georgetown-Cincinnati basketball, which was also on at the time.
The basketball game didn't hold TB's attention because 1) it was against two of his favorite movies, 2) Georgetown was losing and 3) the game meant, essentially, nothing.
And that's the annual problem with college basketball at this time of year.
College basketball has been on TV basically every night since early November. By now, almost every game has essentially started to look the same, and it's impossible to get excited about any of them.
For a team like Georgetown, there is no chance at a No. 1 seed and no doubt about an NCAA berth and pretty good seed. It's way more important to a team like the Hoyas to have a good draw than a good seed anyway, so if that means being a fourth seed instead of a third seed but getting more favorable matchups, that's much better.
As for the one-bid leagues, none of those games matter much either, because the whole thing is going to come down to the conference tournaments that start in a few days. And of those leagues, some team's No. 1 team is going to get bounced in the tournament, which will be stolen by the third-place team or someone like that, who will then get thumped in the NCAA tournament in a game that the regular-season champ might have had a chance to win.
By virtue of its postseason structure, college basketball has completely devalued its regular season. There are a handful of teams out there on the bubble, but honestly, unless you have a direct connection to a Richmond or Northwestern, for instance, who could care about those teams?
It all comes back to TigerBlog's long-standing belief that the Ivy League's position as the only Division I league without a conference tournament should be emulated.
Consider what's going on on both the men's and women's side in the league.
On both sides, the race is essentially between Princeton and Harvard (Yale still has the tiniest chance on the women's side).
Of the 16 teams who compete in men's and women's basketball, in reality only five have earned the right to be competing for the two spots in the NCAA tournament during the games of the last two months.
So why would the league want to risk not sending its best teams to the tournament? TB said the same thing a year ago, when Cornell's men's team was clearly the best team in the league and then went out and reached the Sweet 16 (though nobody - or no statistical analysis - will ever convince TB that that team was better than the great Princeton or Penn teams of the 1990s).
In women's basketball, Princeton is at Cornell tomorrow and Columbia Saturday and then home next weekend with Dartmouth and Harvard before finishing the season at Penn on March 8. Harvard is home with Brown and Yale this weekend before the trip to Penn and Princeton and a season-finale on March 8 at Dartmouth.
For the men, the schedules are all reversed, except that Harvard has already completed its season series with Dartmouth.
Princeton is 8-1 in women's basketball, followed by Harvard at 7-2 and Yale at 7-3. No other team is over .500 in the league.
Harvard is 9-1 in men's basketball, followed by 8-1 Princeton. Penn is the only other team over .500 at 5-4.
By the end of this weekend, there could be all kinds of different directions to both races, but there can't help but be a strong sense at this point that a week from Saturday will be a huge one with the two Princeton-Harvard games. In fact, it's possible that by this Saturday night, every team on both sides will be mathematically eliminated except for Princeton and Harvard.
As for ECAC hockey, this is the final weekend of the men's regular-season. Princeton can finish no lower than sixth, which means that there will be a home playoff series at Baker Rink.
There is still a chance it could be in the quarterfinals in two weeks rather than in the first round next week, but it won't be easy for the Tigers. First, they have to take care of their own business at RPI (currently fifth, one point ahead of Princeton) and Union (currently first, playing for the championship) and get some help from the rest of the league to move up on some combination of Dartmouth, Cornell and RPI to get into the top four.
It rarely gets around to including "Casino," which is sort of "Goodfellas Part II."
To those who never saw it, "Casino" is set, obviously, in Las Vegas. Like "Goodfellas," "Casino" was a Martin Scorsese movie that starred Robert DeNiro as Ace Rothstein and Joe Pesci as Nicky Santoro.
Also like "Goodfellas," it's based on a true story (though not as directly) and is told in the same extremely violent and gritty way. DeNiro and Pesci are awesome again in "Casino," as in Sharon Stone as DeNiro's wife (she won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for the role).
The rest of the cast includes people who never let you down, like Frank Vincent (who played Phil Leotardo on "The Sopranos"), Alan King, James Woods and Kevin Pollack (TB always confuses him with Kevin Spacey). And that group doesn't even include the great Don Rickles in a rare dramatic role.
Yes, there is some over-the-top feel to the violence, and the movie does, according to Wikipedia, use a certain word 432 times, a record for movies to that point.
Still, it's a great movie, with great character development and storylines, and it's extraordinarily well-acted and well-filmed.
Had "Casino" been done before "Goodfellas," then TigerBlog is pretty sure that their reputations would be reversed.
When TB is flipping around and sees "Casino" is on, he is pretty much locked onto it, especially for his favorite scenes are coming up, which would basically be any of the scenes involving Pesci.
Last night, "Casino" went head-to-head with "The Godfather Part II," and TB spent equal time on both, and not as much time on Georgetown-Cincinnati basketball, which was also on at the time.
The basketball game didn't hold TB's attention because 1) it was against two of his favorite movies, 2) Georgetown was losing and 3) the game meant, essentially, nothing.
And that's the annual problem with college basketball at this time of year.
College basketball has been on TV basically every night since early November. By now, almost every game has essentially started to look the same, and it's impossible to get excited about any of them.
For a team like Georgetown, there is no chance at a No. 1 seed and no doubt about an NCAA berth and pretty good seed. It's way more important to a team like the Hoyas to have a good draw than a good seed anyway, so if that means being a fourth seed instead of a third seed but getting more favorable matchups, that's much better.
As for the one-bid leagues, none of those games matter much either, because the whole thing is going to come down to the conference tournaments that start in a few days. And of those leagues, some team's No. 1 team is going to get bounced in the tournament, which will be stolen by the third-place team or someone like that, who will then get thumped in the NCAA tournament in a game that the regular-season champ might have had a chance to win.
By virtue of its postseason structure, college basketball has completely devalued its regular season. There are a handful of teams out there on the bubble, but honestly, unless you have a direct connection to a Richmond or Northwestern, for instance, who could care about those teams?
It all comes back to TigerBlog's long-standing belief that the Ivy League's position as the only Division I league without a conference tournament should be emulated.
Consider what's going on on both the men's and women's side in the league.
On both sides, the race is essentially between Princeton and Harvard (Yale still has the tiniest chance on the women's side).
Of the 16 teams who compete in men's and women's basketball, in reality only five have earned the right to be competing for the two spots in the NCAA tournament during the games of the last two months.
So why would the league want to risk not sending its best teams to the tournament? TB said the same thing a year ago, when Cornell's men's team was clearly the best team in the league and then went out and reached the Sweet 16 (though nobody - or no statistical analysis - will ever convince TB that that team was better than the great Princeton or Penn teams of the 1990s).
In women's basketball, Princeton is at Cornell tomorrow and Columbia Saturday and then home next weekend with Dartmouth and Harvard before finishing the season at Penn on March 8. Harvard is home with Brown and Yale this weekend before the trip to Penn and Princeton and a season-finale on March 8 at Dartmouth.
For the men, the schedules are all reversed, except that Harvard has already completed its season series with Dartmouth.
Princeton is 8-1 in women's basketball, followed by Harvard at 7-2 and Yale at 7-3. No other team is over .500 in the league.
Harvard is 9-1 in men's basketball, followed by 8-1 Princeton. Penn is the only other team over .500 at 5-4.
By the end of this weekend, there could be all kinds of different directions to both races, but there can't help but be a strong sense at this point that a week from Saturday will be a huge one with the two Princeton-Harvard games. In fact, it's possible that by this Saturday night, every team on both sides will be mathematically eliminated except for Princeton and Harvard.
As for ECAC hockey, this is the final weekend of the men's regular-season. Princeton can finish no lower than sixth, which means that there will be a home playoff series at Baker Rink.
There is still a chance it could be in the quarterfinals in two weeks rather than in the first round next week, but it won't be easy for the Tigers. First, they have to take care of their own business at RPI (currently fifth, one point ahead of Princeton) and Union (currently first, playing for the championship) and get some help from the rest of the league to move up on some combination of Dartmouth, Cornell and RPI to get into the top four.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
To Go To Togo
TigerBlog's first work-study job in college was in the psychology department basement at 37th and Walnut Street.
Back before there were copy machines that collated and stapled, TB would spread out sheets of paper all over this big room with books lining the walls and eventually staple them together. His co-worker at the time was Fran McCaffery, now the head men's basketball coach at Iowa.
After working there for two years, TB essentially moved over to the General Counsel's office, though that didn't last long, as his newspaper career began roughly at the same time. About the only thing TB remembers from that experience was having a big crush on a co-worker there, only to see her marry an eye doctor.
Here at Princeton athletic communications, good student-workers have been hard to find and keep. Part of the problem is that there aren't many Princeton undergrads who are looking to get into athletic communications after graduating, so they aren't looking for the kind of experience that they could get here.
There was a time in the late ’90s when the OAC had an army of women's basketball players who worked here, and the glory days of student workers here also included Grant Wahl, who now writes for Sports Illustrated, and Nate Ewell, whose resume includes college sports information work and a long run with the Washington Capitals' communications office before he left recently to work at College Hockey Inc.
Recently, the OAC has had almost no success recruiting student workers for the office, though there are several who work at games.
Finding a good student worker is hard, and there is a big investment of time in training them once they are hired. Still, when there is a student who can, say, update bios on the webpage or do any of those kinds of tasks, it's a huge help for the OAC staff.
Our most recent student worker who could do those types of things was a woman named Liz Stevens, who graduated last spring. Liz is currently working on her master's at Albany, and she is headed into the Peace Corps shortly.
TB wrote her a letter of recommendation for the Peace Corps last spring. Eventually, she was accepted to the program, and it wasn't until recently that she found out her destination.
Yesterday, out of nowhere, Liz wandered in to say hi to the OAC group. She also said that, beginning in June, she'd be spending two years and three months in Togo.
Like everyone else in the office, TigerBlog knew Togo was in Africa but could never have found it on the map. A quick search later, and there was Togo, a narrow country in the western part of the continent that borders Ghana to its west, Benin to its east, Burkina Faso to its north and the Atlantic Ocean to its south.
Liz was genuinely excited about the coming adventure, which will include large stretches without electricity or indoor plumbing.
Hey, in the nation's service and the service of all nations, right?
Liz was a high jumper for the women's track and field team, before injuries essentially ended her career. At one point, though, she was a point scorer in the event at the Heptagonal championships.
If TigerBlog is counting correctly, then 16 of Princeton's 38 varsity teams will be competing this weekend.
Among the events are ECAC women's hockey playoffs, huge hockey and basketball regular season games, the opening of men's and women's lacrosse season and the men's squash national championships.
The big three this weekend, though, are the men's and women's track and field indoor Heptagonal championships and the women's Ivy League swimming and diving championships.
The Heps events will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Armory in New York City, which is around 169th Street on the West Side.
The women's swimming and diving championships will be held at DeNunzio Pool tomorrow through Saturday.
Princeton is the defending champion for all three events, which were won on the same weekend a year ago.
In women's track and field, Princeton, Columbia and Cornell combined have the best marks in 13 of the 17 events. Those three teams finished 1-2-3 a year ago.
On the men's side, Princeton returns six athletes who won at Heps a year ago: Austin Hollimon (400m), Russell Dinkins (500m), Peter Callahan (800m), Trevor Van Acker (mile), David Slovenski (pole vault) and Craig Pearce (weight throw).
As for the swimming and diving, Princeton won last year, but by a very narrow margin over Harvard and Yale. Those three figure to compete for the top spot again this year.
TB has always been fascinated by how differently Ivy League championships are won across sports. In some cases, it's a grind over months, like in hockey, basketball or football.
In others, it's a one-weekend - or one day - sprint, such as in track and field, cross country, rowing, fencing, swimming and diving.
Some are round-robin. Some are double round robin. Some are split into divisions. Some are championship meets.
A team can win an Ivy title in cross country in about 20 minutes; in hockey the season runs from October through this weekend.
Of course, they all result in having a designation of "Ivy League champion," which will always be special to the team that wins, no matter how many times they've done so in the past.
This weekend will see three more teams earn that distinction. Well, mathematically at least, it's possible that one team could clinch at least a share of the men's basketball championship this weekend, but it's highly unlikely.
So let's say three Ivy titles are up for grabs, beginning tomorrow night at here at the pool.
Good luck to all, with hopefully a little more luck going to the Tigers.
Back before there were copy machines that collated and stapled, TB would spread out sheets of paper all over this big room with books lining the walls and eventually staple them together. His co-worker at the time was Fran McCaffery, now the head men's basketball coach at Iowa.
After working there for two years, TB essentially moved over to the General Counsel's office, though that didn't last long, as his newspaper career began roughly at the same time. About the only thing TB remembers from that experience was having a big crush on a co-worker there, only to see her marry an eye doctor.
Here at Princeton athletic communications, good student-workers have been hard to find and keep. Part of the problem is that there aren't many Princeton undergrads who are looking to get into athletic communications after graduating, so they aren't looking for the kind of experience that they could get here.
There was a time in the late ’90s when the OAC had an army of women's basketball players who worked here, and the glory days of student workers here also included Grant Wahl, who now writes for Sports Illustrated, and Nate Ewell, whose resume includes college sports information work and a long run with the Washington Capitals' communications office before he left recently to work at College Hockey Inc.
Recently, the OAC has had almost no success recruiting student workers for the office, though there are several who work at games.
Finding a good student worker is hard, and there is a big investment of time in training them once they are hired. Still, when there is a student who can, say, update bios on the webpage or do any of those kinds of tasks, it's a huge help for the OAC staff.
Our most recent student worker who could do those types of things was a woman named Liz Stevens, who graduated last spring. Liz is currently working on her master's at Albany, and she is headed into the Peace Corps shortly.
TB wrote her a letter of recommendation for the Peace Corps last spring. Eventually, she was accepted to the program, and it wasn't until recently that she found out her destination.
Yesterday, out of nowhere, Liz wandered in to say hi to the OAC group. She also said that, beginning in June, she'd be spending two years and three months in Togo.
Like everyone else in the office, TigerBlog knew Togo was in Africa but could never have found it on the map. A quick search later, and there was Togo, a narrow country in the western part of the continent that borders Ghana to its west, Benin to its east, Burkina Faso to its north and the Atlantic Ocean to its south.
Liz was genuinely excited about the coming adventure, which will include large stretches without electricity or indoor plumbing.
Hey, in the nation's service and the service of all nations, right?
Liz was a high jumper for the women's track and field team, before injuries essentially ended her career. At one point, though, she was a point scorer in the event at the Heptagonal championships.
If TigerBlog is counting correctly, then 16 of Princeton's 38 varsity teams will be competing this weekend.
Among the events are ECAC women's hockey playoffs, huge hockey and basketball regular season games, the opening of men's and women's lacrosse season and the men's squash national championships.
The big three this weekend, though, are the men's and women's track and field indoor Heptagonal championships and the women's Ivy League swimming and diving championships.
The Heps events will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Armory in New York City, which is around 169th Street on the West Side.
The women's swimming and diving championships will be held at DeNunzio Pool tomorrow through Saturday.
Princeton is the defending champion for all three events, which were won on the same weekend a year ago.
In women's track and field, Princeton, Columbia and Cornell combined have the best marks in 13 of the 17 events. Those three teams finished 1-2-3 a year ago.
On the men's side, Princeton returns six athletes who won at Heps a year ago: Austin Hollimon (400m), Russell Dinkins (500m), Peter Callahan (800m), Trevor Van Acker (mile), David Slovenski (pole vault) and Craig Pearce (weight throw).
As for the swimming and diving, Princeton won last year, but by a very narrow margin over Harvard and Yale. Those three figure to compete for the top spot again this year.
TB has always been fascinated by how differently Ivy League championships are won across sports. In some cases, it's a grind over months, like in hockey, basketball or football.
In others, it's a one-weekend - or one day - sprint, such as in track and field, cross country, rowing, fencing, swimming and diving.
Some are round-robin. Some are double round robin. Some are split into divisions. Some are championship meets.
A team can win an Ivy title in cross country in about 20 minutes; in hockey the season runs from October through this weekend.
Of course, they all result in having a designation of "Ivy League champion," which will always be special to the team that wins, no matter how many times they've done so in the past.
This weekend will see three more teams earn that distinction. Well, mathematically at least, it's possible that one team could clinch at least a share of the men's basketball championship this weekend, but it's highly unlikely.
So let's say three Ivy titles are up for grabs, beginning tomorrow night at here at the pool.
Good luck to all, with hopefully a little more luck going to the Tigers.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Howard's Team
TigerBlog is nearly 20 years removed from his newspaper days and almost 30 years away from his first assignment in the business, which happened to be covering Pennington at Academy of the New Church on a September afternoon a long time ago.
When TB thinks back to his days at the paper, the first team that pops into his mind is the Princeton men's basketball team. TB had the unique opportunity to cover the Tigers during the Kit Mueller years, and it seems like yesterday that TB was on the bus riding around the Ivy League with them.
Because Pete Carril took so long in the lockerroom after games, TB could write his entire story and then just plug in a quote or two before sending it to the paper from his old Radio Shack word processor. As a result, he never kept the team waiting, so he was allowed to ride on the bus.
Those trips - or the home games - came on weekends, obviously, as they still do. During the week, TigerBlog would cover some of the other local teams, usually Rider or Trenton State (now the College of New Jersey) and every now and then Mercer County Community College.
Mercer's campus is in West Windsor, which borders Princeton Township, meaning that it's about a 15-minute ride from the heart of the Princeton University campus to the community college. Located next to Mercer County Park, MCCC has 13,000 students who are either full-time or part-time.
TigerBlog covered about five Mercer events each year while at the paper, usually in men's soccer or basketball.
He'll never forget the time that an excitable guy named Bud Livingston was the Vikings' basketball coach. Livingston reacted to a call that went against his team by storming down the end of the bench and kicking the door to the outside, which snapped back quickly, locking him outside. About two minutes later, Livingston came running back inside the front entrance, since it's a long way around the athletic building back to the gym.
That might have been the last time TB was at Mercer for a game before last night, when he went to see the Vikings play Morris in the first round of the Region 19 playoffs. Mercer would win 60-47.
The lure for TB was the current Mercer head coach, who is none other than Howard Levy, the all-time leader in field goal percentage at Princeton.
Levy came to Princeton from Suffern, N.Y., with great size and with a head coach - Carril - who guaranteed that he would turn the big man into a player. As it turned out, he was right.
Levy was listed as 6-11 when he played, and he has half-joked to TB through the years that had he been listed as 7-0, he would have stuck with the Nets instead of being the last player cut after he graduated in 1985.
Instead of playing in the NBA, Levy played in the CBA, where his coach would be Phil Jackson, before his time with the Bulls and Lakers.
Levy is a law school grad (George Washington) who coached at Trenton State and GW and built a business in New York City before joining Bill Carmody's staff at Princeton in 1996. He would stay with the Tigers through the tenures of Carmody, John Thompson and Joe Scott.
His first head coaching job is the one at Mercer, and he is in Year 3 there now.
Watching him coach his team last night only reconfirmed what TB has known for years, which is that Levy's competitive fire burns intensely.
He's a combination on the sideline of his college coach and the three Princeton coaches he worked with. He talks like Carril. He makes Carmody's hand gestures. He smiles sarcastically at bad calls like Thompson as he works the refs. He stomps like Scott.
He runs his own version of the Princeton offense, which in the first half last night resulted in 15 wide open three-point shots, only one of which actually went in.
The results were that 1) the Vikings trailed 29-16 at the break and 2) the guy sitting in front of TigerBlog said "the Princeton offense stinks."
Of course, in fairness to the guy, he did clarify, sort of, that he meant it stinks because you need guys who can make shots.
The second half was an entirely different story. Morris' best player, No. 3, went out with a split lip or bloody nose, but even had he been in, he wouldn't have made much of a difference.
Mercer outscored Morris 44-18 in the second half and shot 50% from the field. At one point, after a pass went into the post and a cut opened up a wide-open look from three-point range for one of Mercer's players, who drained it, TB said to the guy in front of him "that's the Princeton offense." When the guy turned around, he saw TB's "Princeton Athletics" sweatshirt and laughed.
The result of the win is that Levy's team advances to play top-seeded Lackawanna Friday.
Carmody, of course, coaches in the Big 10 now, with a Wildcat team on the verge of breaking through. Thompson is in the Big East with one of the top programs in the country. Scott is in the Sun Belt, with an eye on the NCAA tournament. Carril has spent 15 years in the NBA.
As for Levy, he's coaching the local community college. It'd be easy to point out the contrasts between his world and the ones of the coaches he worked for at Princeton, or Princeton itself, for that matter.
But why bother? They're so obvious. Levy's team will be in a few vans to head to Scranton for the next game, not on a big bus or a plane. His gym is tiny. His games don't have TV or radio - or even media timeouts, for that matter.
And who out there needs TB to tell the difference between a 13,000-student commuter junior college and Princeton, one of the best universities in the world?
Still, watching the game, none of that mattered to TB. It was a basketball game, an entertaining one, with players who gave maximum effort and coaches who worked every angle they had.
When it was over, the nearly seven-foot coach was all smiles. He talked about how much he liked how his team's second-half effort, how they had come out of the lockerroom with nearly eight minutes left on the clock, how good Lackawanna is.
Coaching at a place like Mercer can be humbling, especially to someone who has been to as many NCAA tournaments and NITs and won as many Ivy titles as Levy has, as both a player and coach at Princeton.
In his case, though, it doesn't come across that way, not in all the times TB has talked to Levy about the experience and certainly not watching it in person.
Maybe it's proof that he's most like Carril, the coach who believed in him all those years ago, the one for whom it was never about the frills or the money or the ego or any of that.
To Carril - and to Levy, TB is pretty sure - it's always about one thing and one thing only: Those two hours each day in the gym with the guys.
Last night, those two hours were a lot of fun to watch.
When TB thinks back to his days at the paper, the first team that pops into his mind is the Princeton men's basketball team. TB had the unique opportunity to cover the Tigers during the Kit Mueller years, and it seems like yesterday that TB was on the bus riding around the Ivy League with them.
Because Pete Carril took so long in the lockerroom after games, TB could write his entire story and then just plug in a quote or two before sending it to the paper from his old Radio Shack word processor. As a result, he never kept the team waiting, so he was allowed to ride on the bus.
Those trips - or the home games - came on weekends, obviously, as they still do. During the week, TigerBlog would cover some of the other local teams, usually Rider or Trenton State (now the College of New Jersey) and every now and then Mercer County Community College.
Mercer's campus is in West Windsor, which borders Princeton Township, meaning that it's about a 15-minute ride from the heart of the Princeton University campus to the community college. Located next to Mercer County Park, MCCC has 13,000 students who are either full-time or part-time.
TigerBlog covered about five Mercer events each year while at the paper, usually in men's soccer or basketball.
He'll never forget the time that an excitable guy named Bud Livingston was the Vikings' basketball coach. Livingston reacted to a call that went against his team by storming down the end of the bench and kicking the door to the outside, which snapped back quickly, locking him outside. About two minutes later, Livingston came running back inside the front entrance, since it's a long way around the athletic building back to the gym.
That might have been the last time TB was at Mercer for a game before last night, when he went to see the Vikings play Morris in the first round of the Region 19 playoffs. Mercer would win 60-47.
The lure for TB was the current Mercer head coach, who is none other than Howard Levy, the all-time leader in field goal percentage at Princeton.
Levy came to Princeton from Suffern, N.Y., with great size and with a head coach - Carril - who guaranteed that he would turn the big man into a player. As it turned out, he was right.
Levy was listed as 6-11 when he played, and he has half-joked to TB through the years that had he been listed as 7-0, he would have stuck with the Nets instead of being the last player cut after he graduated in 1985.
Instead of playing in the NBA, Levy played in the CBA, where his coach would be Phil Jackson, before his time with the Bulls and Lakers.
Levy is a law school grad (George Washington) who coached at Trenton State and GW and built a business in New York City before joining Bill Carmody's staff at Princeton in 1996. He would stay with the Tigers through the tenures of Carmody, John Thompson and Joe Scott.
His first head coaching job is the one at Mercer, and he is in Year 3 there now.
Watching him coach his team last night only reconfirmed what TB has known for years, which is that Levy's competitive fire burns intensely.
He's a combination on the sideline of his college coach and the three Princeton coaches he worked with. He talks like Carril. He makes Carmody's hand gestures. He smiles sarcastically at bad calls like Thompson as he works the refs. He stomps like Scott.
He runs his own version of the Princeton offense, which in the first half last night resulted in 15 wide open three-point shots, only one of which actually went in.
The results were that 1) the Vikings trailed 29-16 at the break and 2) the guy sitting in front of TigerBlog said "the Princeton offense stinks."
Of course, in fairness to the guy, he did clarify, sort of, that he meant it stinks because you need guys who can make shots.
The second half was an entirely different story. Morris' best player, No. 3, went out with a split lip or bloody nose, but even had he been in, he wouldn't have made much of a difference.
Mercer outscored Morris 44-18 in the second half and shot 50% from the field. At one point, after a pass went into the post and a cut opened up a wide-open look from three-point range for one of Mercer's players, who drained it, TB said to the guy in front of him "that's the Princeton offense." When the guy turned around, he saw TB's "Princeton Athletics" sweatshirt and laughed.
The result of the win is that Levy's team advances to play top-seeded Lackawanna Friday.
Carmody, of course, coaches in the Big 10 now, with a Wildcat team on the verge of breaking through. Thompson is in the Big East with one of the top programs in the country. Scott is in the Sun Belt, with an eye on the NCAA tournament. Carril has spent 15 years in the NBA.
As for Levy, he's coaching the local community college. It'd be easy to point out the contrasts between his world and the ones of the coaches he worked for at Princeton, or Princeton itself, for that matter.
But why bother? They're so obvious. Levy's team will be in a few vans to head to Scranton for the next game, not on a big bus or a plane. His gym is tiny. His games don't have TV or radio - or even media timeouts, for that matter.
And who out there needs TB to tell the difference between a 13,000-student commuter junior college and Princeton, one of the best universities in the world?
Still, watching the game, none of that mattered to TB. It was a basketball game, an entertaining one, with players who gave maximum effort and coaches who worked every angle they had.
When it was over, the nearly seven-foot coach was all smiles. He talked about how much he liked how his team's second-half effort, how they had come out of the lockerroom with nearly eight minutes left on the clock, how good Lackawanna is.
Coaching at a place like Mercer can be humbling, especially to someone who has been to as many NCAA tournaments and NITs and won as many Ivy titles as Levy has, as both a player and coach at Princeton.
In his case, though, it doesn't come across that way, not in all the times TB has talked to Levy about the experience and certainly not watching it in person.
Maybe it's proof that he's most like Carril, the coach who believed in him all those years ago, the one for whom it was never about the frills or the money or the ego or any of that.
To Carril - and to Levy, TB is pretty sure - it's always about one thing and one thing only: Those two hours each day in the gym with the guys.
Last night, those two hours were a lot of fun to watch.
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