National Coaches Day

TigerBlog has no idea how something becomes "National Whatever Day."

It just seems like every day, there's something incredibly random that is being celebrated. National Donut Day. National Baldness Day. National Small Dog Day. Really. Those were actual days.

Do small dogs have a good communications team at work? How'd they get their own day? Who runs the small dog lobby? 

For the record, by the way, TigerBlog prefers small dogs to big dogs. His general rule is the shorter the legs, the cuter the dog. Hey, maybe he should try to sell that to the people behind the small dog movement.

As for National days, TB could look this up for you, but nah. There are some things that are better left mysterious.

Most of the time, these National days are hardly worth noticing, with all due respect to small dogs and their PR agents. 

Yesterday, though, turned out to be something a bit different. It was National Coaches Day.

There are few professions that make an impact on other people, particularly young people, like coaching can, for better and for worse. Forget the coaches who make millions of dollars a year. The vast, vast majority of coaches are making way less than that but are having a major impact on the lives of the people who come to play on their teams.

Pete Carril, Princeton's Hall of Fame former men's basketball coach, used to say that there was nothing better than a great high school coach. As TB has said before, one of Carril's disciples once bemoaned the fact that a player with great potential had instead had a lousy foundation in the fundamentals of the game and would never be able to catch up. His high school coach, he said, should be "taken into the town square and flogged." It sounds like a medieval England thing.

Princeton has put together an incredible history in athletics, dating back to 1864, when the baseball team played Williams in the first intercollegiate game in school history, and to 1869, when Princeton and Rutgers played the first football game. There were no coaches for those teams, only captains, and it wasn't until around 1900 that teams first started to have actual coaches.

Since then, some of the greatest coaches in the history of their sports have coached at Princeton. The list is long, and it's not worth going down it for fear of leaving someone out.

Coach at Princeton is not for everyone. To be successful, you have to buy into what the University and athletic program are all about. There are no athlete dorms. There are no nights in hotels prior to home games. That's not what student-athlete experience means at Princeton.

No, what Princeton means is having a well-rounded educational experience that values both the student experience and the athletic experience. It's about allowing the people who play at Princeton to succeed at the highest level of both.

What TB has always admired most about Princeton's coaches is that they truly believe this. They don't fall back on the idea that they can't compete against other schools with scholarships or different admissions standards. They use Princeton's perceived disadvantages as advantages and use them to find the right athletes for what they're trying to do. The results through the years speak for themselves.

Because of this, it's not for everyone. Would Nick Saban be a better football coach at Princeton than Bob Surace? No, he wouldn't. 

It's not always easy. You have a large roster, and not everyone can play, even if everyone wants to and thinks they should. You have kids from all over the country and in the case of many teams, internationally. You have wildly different personalities. On some teams, the best player is the hardest worker and best leader. On others, the best player hates to practice. It's all such a difficult dynamic to navigate.

In addition to all of this, Princeton's coaches make a lifelong, lasting impact on their athletes. What's most fascinating is that the impact isn't always immediate. 

TB has spoken to many athletes from 10, 20, 30 or even more years ago who want to apologize to their Princeton coach for not understanding what they were doing as it was happening. Only years later did they see the light, and they have been so grateful for the lessons learned.

So yes, happy National Coaches Day a day late to all of Princeton's coaches, current and former. They are an amazing group of people who do amazing work, and they deserve to be saluted.

Excellent

Congratulations go out to Syukuro Manabe, the Princeton professor who yesterday was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Manabe just turned 90 years old two weeks ago, which means two things. First, it means that this is a pretty nice belated birthday present.

Second, since Manabe was born and raised in Japan, it means he grew up in a country that was at war with the United States and the Allies for much of his formative time. He was a few months past his 10th birthday on the day that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he was just short of his 14th birthday when World War II ended with the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. That's a lot of stuff for a kid to live through in those years.

TigerBlog would love to know what his memories are of his childhood. Maybe he'll get the chance to ask him at some point. 

The news of another Princeton Nobel Prize winner was very exciting, as always. It's hard to say it's routine, but it does speak to what Princeton University is that it's hardly the first time there has been this kind of celebration involving a Princetonian.

In fact, it appears that there have now been 45 Princeton alums or professors who have won the Nobel Prize and another 25 more who at some point had a Princeton affiliation. That's impressive stuff.

Congratulations to Syukuro Manabe for joining that list. TB will definitely be reaching out to him.

Meanwhile, back in athletics, there is also a history of excellence. Princeton has had by far the most successful athletic program in the Ivy League's history, and the celebration of the 500th championship in 2020 speaks to that. Princeton currently stands at 503, where it was after the winter of 2020 when the pandemic hit.

It'll be most of a decade before another school gets to 500 and it'll be many decades before a third school does. That alone puts Princeton's success in perspective.

The fall of 2021 is just getting going in terms of Ivy League races. It's a fun fact that Princeton's teams are a combined 9-0 in Ivy events to date, but that doesn't really mean all that much so far. 

There is no Princeton team who is the only unbeaten in the league in any sport, and there are either two, three or four unbeaten teams in all of those sports.

To that end, every weekend is big for every team in the league. While none of them have won a league championship or are even close to doing so with so many games left, they all have established that they expect to be playing for championships next month.

There will be two Princeton teams who play games this weekend against other unbeaten Ivies. They'll both do so on the same field as part of a doubleheader, which, unfortunately, won't be in Princeton.

Still, if you want to see some good games and you're going to be in the Providence area, then there is a soccer doubleheader you might be interested in attending. 

It starts at 3 with the women at Brown, followed at 7 by the men's game. You can get something to eat in between. Providence is a great place for a nosh.

Princeton, Brown and Harvard are all 2-0-0 in women's soccer in the league. They're also a combined 24-4-2 overall. They're also all in the top 50 in RPI now. Can all three get to the NCAA tournament? Possibly. The winner of the league gets an automatic bid and doesn't have to worry about such things. 

This weekend is the first of three straight with a game featuring two of these teams. Brown is at Harvard next Saturday. Princeton is at Harvard the Saturday after that.

On the men's side, last week was the first weekend of Ivy games. There are three 1-0 teams (Princeton and Brown joined by Cornell) and two teams who tied last week (Yale-Harvard finished 0-0).

Princeton got a 3-2 win over Dartmouth on Malik Pinto's game-winning goal, which followed his first career goal to make it 2-0 earlier before the Big Green tied it. Pinto, a freshman, was the Ivy League Player and Rookie of the Week.

Pinto, by the way, comes from quite the soccer family. He grew up in Durham, but the Pintos are decidedly more UNC than Duke. His father Hassan played soccer at Carolina, as did his sister Brianna, a three-time All-ACC player who scored 31 goals as a Tar Heel and who now plays in the NWSL. He also has an older brother Hassan who played at Elon. His mother Meleata was a Tar Heel as well, though her sport was softball.

Party Time

If you're looking for someone to plan your next party, you could do a lot worse than Kim Meszaros.

If you don't know who Kim is, she is the assistant to the athletic director at Princeton. She is a fixture in Room 1 of Jadwin Gym.

Kim, who by the way is a past recipient of the Presidential Achievement award at Princeton, has had her fingerprints on pretty much every Department of Athletics celebration of the last few decades. If TB had to guess, he'd think that even though they are a great deal of work to put together, Kim probably missed having them a lot during the pandemic.

Also, keep in mind that Kim's primary responsibilities do not include planning parties. She has a ton of stuff to do to keep the department flowing smoothly, so TB always appreciates the effort that she puts in to these parties, which in turn keep a widely distributed department connected.

Princeton's athletic department has offices in facilities all over the campus. Those who work closely in other capacities with the athletes, coaches and administrators are even further spread out. This is good in many ways, especially since it keeps athletics integrated with the rest of the University.

The down side is that the entire group isn't always able to get together on a regular basis. The social events that Kim makes happen achieve that goal.

The most recent party Kim threw was the pregame "Team Around The Team" tailgate Saturday prior to the football game Saturday against Columbia. Like the rest of her events, there were plenty of the core things that make one of these parties great: 1) lots of refreshments, 2) orange and black, 3) people.

This one was a bit different, though, since it was the first big event since everyone has returned to campus. It was held above the baseball field while the team was having an Orange and Black scrimmage (though TB did not get to see head coach Scott Bradley get behind the plate).

What TB did see were a lot of familiar faces. Because of the Zoom world that everyone lived in for so long, seeing faces was easy. Seeing them in person was a rarity. TB, like everyone else, went months without seeing more than a small handful of people from Princeton actually in person.

Coming back to campus every day was always going to be a bit of a new dynamic. Now that it's here, one thing that TB can 100 percent say for sure is that it's been great to actually be around his colleagues. 

The party Saturday was great on two levels. One, it was fun. Two, it was something else that's been missing that is now doable again. 

TigerBlog saw Peter Farrell, the former head coach of women's track and field, and Kristen Appelget, a rowing Facult Fellow, a huge Princeton sports fan and a the University's Director of Community and Regional Affairs. What do they have in common? They are Notre Dame alums. They were pessimistic Notre Dame alums at that, what with the game the Irish had coming up with Cincinnati. As it turned out, they had reason for pessimism. Cincinnati won 24-13.

Phyllis Chase was there. She used to be the department travel coordinator. She is well-loved still among the group.

He saw Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack, who continues to meet more and more people from campus. There were coaches there. Other administrators. Faculty Fellows. It was just a group of people who are united in their affection for Princeton Athletics, gathering together before a football game, the way people have for a long time.

At one point, he stepped away from the party to look around the tent. What he saw he's seen hundreds of times before. It almost looked like he was looking at pictures from events in the past. 

As with everything else, though, TigerBlog found himself appreciating it this time even more. It's part of how it is now. 

When things were shut down for so long, it's important to recognize that these aren't moments to be taken for granted.

And so what Kim did Saturday meant a bit more than just a pregame tailgate. It was also something of a reminder, of the people and of the moments that make working in the Department of Athletics the special experience that it is. And so for that, TB once again thanks Kim.

The Big Question

The Princeton football team rolled through the first two weeks of the season, outscoring Lehigh and Stetson by a combined 95-0.

What did anyone learn about Princeton in those first two weeks? The Tigers are good. There's no denying that. 

What was the main question for Princeton heading into its third game, against Columbia Saturday afternoon in the Ivy League opener for both? It was simply this: What would Princeton do when things weren't going easily?

It's a fair question. No team rolls through a 10-game season without ever having to answer that question. Princeton's turn came Saturday afternoon. 

Princeton scored the first 10 points in the game, but it seemed like more. Then, in Princeton's "Drago's been cut" moment, Columbia put together a 10-play, 66-yard march in the third quarter to put the first points of the year on the board against the Tigers. Suddenly it was 10-7.

For the record, by the way, the 10 consecutive scoreless quarters to start the season were the most by a Princeton defense since the 1933 team opened with seven straight shutouts. Digging a little deeper, the 10 straight scoreless defensive quarters to start the season were the most against teams that are currently Division I since 1915, when the Tigers shut out Georgetown, Rutgers and Syracuse.

And none of that mattered at all when Columbia made it 10-7. Now the question was in full force. What would Princeton do when things weren't going easily.

Answer? The Tigers turned it up on both sides of the field. 

From that point, Princeton put together two more touchdown drives. From that point, Columbia had five more possessions. Total yards on those five possession? How about 47. Final score: Princeton 24, Columbia 7.

Diving in a bit, Princeton went three-and-out after the Columbia touchdown. The Lions then put together two first downs, the second of which came after a taunting penalty after an apparent stop. Now Columbia had first and 10 at the Tiger 26.

Things were getting dicier.

Columbia gained seven yards on first down and then threw an incomplete pass. Third and three, Princeton 19. The Lions were on the verge of taking the lead. At worst, they were on the verge of tying it. Dicier indeed.

That's when the one of the two biggest plays of the day happened. Jeremiah Tyler fired in from his linebacker spot and disrupted Columbia quarterback Joe Green, who stumbled and fell for an 11-yard loss (Tyler had that sack and two other tackles for loss among his five tackles). The potential tying field goal then became a 48-yard attempt, rather than a 37-yarder, and it went wide.

The other huge play came right at the end of the first half. Princeton had its 10-0, but Columbia was driving, reaching the Princeton 20 with 13 seconds left but with no timeouts. What happened? A sack by Uche Ndukwe (he had 2.5 for the day). That was it, right? Time would expire before Columbia could get the field goal team on the field, right? Nope. Princeton was called for a delay of game, and one second was put on the clock.

Now Columbia had a chance for a field goal to get on the board. Since the Lions would get the ball to start the second half, this was a huge moment. And .... ?

Blocked. By whom? TigerBlog thought Matthew Jester. The box score says Daniel Beard. In true Princeton defensive form, it hardly mattered. One for all and all.

Princeton's defense may not have had a third-straight shutout, but that wasn't important. The Tigers showed more again Columbia than they did in the first two shutouts. This time, the points weren't coming as quickly. This time, there was a greater sense of defensive urgency when Columbia had the ball.

The Princeton D was impressive. The Tigers were, as the coaches love to say, fast and physical. And they were also something else. They were deep. Anyone could be the next one to make a big stop. 

Columbia came in having scored at least 30 in both of its first two games. The Lions were sixth in the FCS with 271.5 rushing yards per game. They'd score seven points, which was one point fewer than the total rushing yards. Princeton has now allowed nine rushing yards all year.

On a per-game average, that's 2.3 points and 3.0 rushing yards allowed per game. Those are winning numbers. 

Up next is nationally ranked Monmouth. After that would be six more Ivy games. Nothing is easy. 

That's why it was important for this team to show what it could do when things got tough.

Ivy Kickoff

 If you mention Joe Greene and football to anyone TigerBlog's age, the first word you'll get back is "mean."

If you're too young to remember, Mean Joe Greene was a two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year and perhaps the best player on the Pittsburgh Steelers' "Steel Curtain" defense that won four Super Bowls in the 1970s. Of course, he's as well known for his completely non-mean persona in the famous Coca-Cola commercial that he was in for the 1980 Super Bowl. 

Sadly, Greene is the only surviving member of that Steel Curtain front four, as Dwight White, L.C. Greenwood and Ernie Holmes have all passed away. If you have to look up any of those four names, then you weren't a 1970s NFL fan, whether you liked the Steelers or not. 

Moving to the present day, if you take away the final "e," you have Joe Green, who is the starting quarterback for the Columbia football team. Green and the Lions will be on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium tomorrow, with a kickoff at 1, in the Ivy opener for both.

Before TB talks about the game, he does want to talk about someone who was long associated with Columbia football and Columbia athletics in general, a person who was decidedly not mean in any way. Bill Steinman was the longtime sports information director at Columbia, and he passed away last week at the age of 76.

TigerBlog knew Bill Steinman very well. He spent many winter nights in Levien Gym watching Princeton-Columbia men's basketball, and he saw Bill at football games, baseball games and Ivy League meetings. He was, as TB said to Columbia Director of Athletics Peter Pilling in an email after Bill's passing, "a wonderful man with a kind heart."

It's so true. He was a kind, gentle soul, and it was always great to see him, and another Bill, the late Bill Shannon on the Associated Press, another Columbia regular who passed away. Steinman was a great old-school sports information director, and his experience in the field dated back to the New York Nets of the old American Basketball Association, after he graduated from Hofstra.

Even though Bill had been in failing health, it was still very sad to hear of his passing. In a perfect world, he would have been getting ready to make the trip to Princeton for the game tomorrow, and TigerBlog would have been happy to see his old friend again. 

As for the game itself, both teams are 2-0 on the young season, and both will learn an awful lot about themselves in this one. If you're looking for one interesting stat heading into things, there is the fact that Columbia is sixth in the FCS in rushing yards per game (271.5) while Princeton is first in the FCS in rushing yards allowed per game (0.5). Columbia has rushed for 543 yards in two games. Princeton has allowed one rushing yard total in two games.

Princeton also comes into the game after back-to-back season-opening shutouts, something it last did in 1933. By contrast, Columbia has scored at least 30 points in consecutive games to start a season for the first time since 1945.

At the same time, the Tiger offensive has also been rolling, putting up 95 points in two games. Cole Smith has looked sharp in his first two career starts, helped by a very deep receiving corps that includes wide receivers Jacob Birmelin, Andrei Iosivas and Dylan Classic, all of whom caught TD passes last week against Stetson, and tight end Carson Bobo.

Princeton has defeated Lehigh and Stetson. Columbia has defeated Marist and Georgetown. None of those four games was closer than 11 points, and the average margin of victory for these two combined has been 32.3 points.

With the start of the Ivy season, the intensity will be ratcheted up considerably.

Of course, early season stats can often be skewed, and they are essentially meaningless heading into this game. TB could go through both teams numbers all day, and they really won't tell you much.

What you do know is that both teams are feeling good after two weeks, and both teams are thinking about being a major factor in the league race come November. To make that happen, getting October off to a good start would be a big help, and only one of them will be able to do so.

The First Weekend Of October

Georgetown's women's soccer team has played 10 games and won five of them. 

Is the Georgetown women's soccer team undefeated? Is this a trick question?

Yes, the Hoyas are unbeaten. They have no losses. They do have five ties to go along with their five wins, which makes their record a very unique 5-0-5 heading into today's game at home against DePaul.

If you look at the English Premier League standings (or should that be table), you'll see that a 5-0-5 record would belong to a .500 team, since it lists wins, draws and losses. If you look at the current table, you'll see both Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspurs listed as 3-0-3, which means three wins, three losses and no draws.

Liverpool, if you're wondering, is the lone unbeaten team in the EPL.

Meanwhile, back at Division I college women's soccer, there is only one unbeaten, untied team, and that's top-ranked Florida State. Georgetown, at 5-0-5, is ranked 23rd. Hofstra, at 9-1-0, is ranked 11th. That's in the United Soccer Coaches' poll, by the way.

Princeton is in the "others receiving votes" category after having been ranked earlier this season. The Tigers are 8-1-1 after a 6-1 pasting of Bucknell Tuesday night behind two goals each from Gabi Juarez and Amy Paternoster, with the tie against Georgetown and a 2-0 loss to Hofstra on Sept. 16.

Since then, the Tigers have been rolling. In fact, in three games since the loss, Princeton has defeated Delaware, Yale and Bucknell by a combined 14-1. 

Being ranked now would be nice. It's not essential, though, for what Princeton is trying to accomplish. It starts with an Ivy League championship, and that's not something that's going to be easy to do, not in the league this year.

Harvard is currently unbeaten at 7-0-1 and ranked 20th. Brown, the defending champion, is 6-3-0. Penn is 5-2-2. Those three, along with Princeton, are ranked in the top 75 in Division I RPI right now. 

No Ivy team is ranked in the bottom 100. Every game in the league is a challenge, especially on the road.

Princeton's next one is at Dartmouth Saturday. The Big Green are 4-3-1 after falling to Brown in their own Ivy opener last weekend. 

Princeton has seven regular season games remaining, and six of those are in the Ivy League. The remaining non-league game is Tuesday, Oct. 19, at Lehigh. The next two weekends feature the long rides to Dartmouth first and then to Brown.

The Princeton-Dartmouth women's game Saturday begins at 1 and is the opening game of a doubleheader that features Princeton-Dartmouth men at 5. Because the men's NCAA tournament begins a week after the women's tournament, the Ivy League season also begins a week later for the men. That means this is opening weekend for men's Ivy games.

Princeton is 3-4-0 after a 1-0 loss to St. John's Tuesday night. Dartmouth enters the game at a very uncharacteristic 0-6-0, but keep this in mind: Dartmouth has played both the No. 1 team in the country (Georgetown) and the No. 2 team in the country (Washington). 

Oh, and Georgetown is unbeaten in men's soccer as well, though this time it's a perfect 7-0-0 record.

The doubleheader, as TB said, is in Hanover. The first October weekend does offer some good events on the Princeton campus as well, with the women's volleyball team home tomorrow and Saturday against Dartmouth and Harvard. The Tigers are 1-0 in the Ivy League after defeating Penn last weekend.

There is home men's water polo against Brown and Harvard Saturday at 10 and 5, so you can go to those before and after the football game against Columbia at 1. The men's water polo also hosts MIT Sunday at 11 a.m.

Meanwhile, the field hockey team is home twice this weekend, against Yale tomorrow at 5 and UConn Sunday at noon.

Yale comes in at 4-3, having won three of its last four, including a 2-1 win over Brown in the Ivy League opener last week. UConn is ranked 16th, one spot ahead of Princeton.

Princeton's dynamic freshman Beth Yeager leads the Ivy League in goals, assists and points and is in the top six in Division I in all three.

The full schedule for Princeton athletic events is HERE.

Happy Birthday Gary

TigerBlog would like to wish a happy birthday (one day late) to Ford Family Director of Athletics Emeritus Gary Walters.

In fairness, TB did reach out to Gary yesterday to say happy birthday. If TB is correct, then Gary is now 76. 

As you probably know, Gary was the AD at Princeton from 1994-2014, a 20-year span that trails only Ken Fairman (1941-1972) in length of tenure among those who have held the position. Not that you need TB to review Gary's resume, but he played for Pete Carril at Reading High School before coming to Princeton and being the starting point guard on the 1965 NCAA Final Four men's basketball team.

He graduated in 1967 after having his picture, along with teammate Chris Thomforde, on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He then began a career in coaching, which included being an assistant coach to Carril at Princeton for the 1975 NIT championship and coaching future Tiger head coach Bill Carmody at Union before serving as head coach at Dartmouth and Providence.

After coaching, he had a long career in business and television before he came back to Princeton as the AD. 

It's been more than seven years since Gary left that position, which means it's long past the time when any current athletes were here who started during his run. Still, even if they don't know him, they see his legacies every day, whether in some of the facilities whose construction he oversaw and even more so in the "Education Through Athletics" banners that are in those facilities, or in the relationships they've built with their Faculty Fellows.

It was Gary who coined the phrase "Education Through Athletics," which he used to sum up the life lessons that are learned through intercollegiate athletics. One of his favorite things to say was that athletics were "co-curricular," not extra-curricular. He thinks of coaches as teachers and playing fields as extensions of classrooms.

As for the Faculty Fellows, Gary began that program based on his own experiences with then-Princeton sociology professor Marvin Bressler. It has grown since its inception to provide several University faculty and staff members for each of the 37 current varsity teams who are there to give another mentoring voice to each of the athletes on those teams. It has been a wildly successful program that has brought together people throughout the campus and created tremendous relationships that have helped the athletes learn to navigate Princeton.

Gary also has the distinction of having had a direct impact on the careers of three of the eight current Ivy league Directors of Athletics. 

Peter Roby, who is the interim AD at Dartmouth, played for Gary when he was the coach for the Big Green in the late 1970s. In fact, Roby was the senior captain of the 1978-79 Big Green, which was the last of Gary's four years as head coach in Hanover. 

Gary also was the AD at Princeton when Erin McDermott, now the Harvard AD, was here. John Mack, Princeton's current Ford Family Director of Athletics, began his post-Princeton career in 2000 by working in the athletic department under Gary's watch. 

This is something that Gary in which Gary takes a great deal of pride, and he rightfully should.

TigerBlog and Gary started at Princeton on the very same day back in 1994. TB first met Gary earlier than that, during his newspaper days, when he wrote a story in 1990 on the 25th anniversary of the 1965 team's Final Four.

TB most recently saw Gary in the press box at the football game against Stetson Saturday. Gary may be retired, but he is still very much invested in the Princeton athletic program. 

It's amazing to TB how long it's been since Gary was the head of the department. Time flies, right? And it's also amazing to think about how many people work in the department now who were hired in the seven years since Gary left. 

For those who never met him or worked with him, TB would say this: There haven't been too many people who have ever come around who have been as big a fan of the Tigers as Gary has been. For all of his different roles here, that's what he's always been - a Princeton fan, of every team, every sport, every athlete.

After all of the time he's spent at Princeton, that's probably a legacy that he's very comfortable having.

Stat Update

When TigerBlog first started at Princeton, all stats were kept by hand.

In football, this was a particularly arduous process. There were different charts and spreadsheets (the real kind, not the Excel kind), and lots of different colored pencils.

When the game was over, TigerBlog had to go into the office of the late Marge DeFrank, a longtime departmental secretary, and use her somewhat state-of-the-art computer to manually enter the stats into a program that totaled up season cumulative numbers. 

It was a huge pain.

There was also a form that had to be filled out to submit to the NCAA (via fax machine) to have Princeton's stats included in the national leaders. Of course, back then, those national leaders would be available through a service called "Fax On Demand." 

There was a time when Fax On Demand - sort of a primitive way of downloading information - was a really, really important part of college athletic communications. 

The NCAA football form made no sense at all. Every player was assigned a code number, and these numbers were somewhat random. They weren't uniform numbers. They weren't by position. They didn't correspond to alphabetical order. 

Filling out the NCAA football form took forever. Then you had to fax it to the NCAA, only you were doing this at the same time that everyone else around the country was also trying to do this, so you often got something that was known as a busy signal. If you're under 30, do you ever know what that is? 

And, of course, you couldn't leave after the game until you got your little confirmation fax back saying it had been received. It's not like you could do something like, oh, scan it and send it electronically from the laptop you had with you at all times.

Ah, how things have changed. These days, the NCAA form is something that hardly anyone remembers. The NCAA gets its stats automatically when the XML file from a game is generated and uploaded to the goprincetontigers.com website. 

The NCAA provides great team-by-team stats on its webpage. It's easy to find national leaders, where your own players stand, everything that used to be next to impossible to find years ago. And it's all updated pretty much daily. 

By the way, also back then, the two worst stats kept were tackles in football and face-offs in men's lacrosse. Today, if you add up the number of face-off wins and face-off losses for everyone in college men's lacrosse, it'll come to the same number. Every face-off has one winner and one loser. 

The home team is responsible for keeping official stats. Back then, each team did their own stats, so both teams could record a face-off win on the same face-off if they wanted. TB would guess that if you added up total face-offs won and total face-offs lost for every team in, say, 1995, you'd find out that 55 percent were wins and 45 percent were losses.

Football tackles were even worse. These days, you can only enter two players for tackles on any given play (you can enter zero or one, but not more than two). Even on one of those plays were it seems like seven guys converge on the ball carrier, only two can get credit.

Back when TB first started, tackles during the game weren't official. Instead, the coaches would review the film and give you the tackle stats on Monday, and then it was back to the computer to reenter them.

Of course, coaches could give as many tackles per play as they wanted to, and many often did. TB once saw an unnamed opponent's coaches tackle sheet from the game against Princeton the previous week, and it had more than three times as many tackles as Princeton had run plays. For its part, the NCAA didn't even count tackles as an official stat until 2000.

Anyway, the whole point of this is to call your attention to THIS page. You can find so much information there that it'll keep you busy all day. It has current stats, national leaders, active career leaders, pretty much everything. You can select the year, the sport, whatever you want.

Are you as into this as TB, or is he just a bit different when it comes to stats?

Highly Defensive

In deference to Bill Carmody, TigerBlog did not look up the last time the Princeton football team had consecutive shutouts and opened a season with consecutive shutouts.

What does Princeton's former men's basketball coach – in fact he was the head coach when current head coach Mitch Henderson was a junior and senior – have to do with the 2021 Princeton football team? 

Well, Carmody believed strongly in something he called "The Whammy," which essentially means "don't jinx anything." Looking up a stat like consecutive shutouts before it happened would fall squarely in "The Whammy" camp.

As it turned out, TB did look it up, right at the start of the fourth quarter of Saturday's 63-0 win over Stetson on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. And as it turned out further, the answers were this:

* consecutive shutouts? That would be 1965, when Princeton shut out Colgate and Penn back to back. If you go back a year earlier, Princeton actually had four straight on its way to a perfect 1964 season.

* consecutive shutouts to start a season? That goes back a bit further, all the way to 1933, when Art Lane captained the team to a 9-0 record and the national championship. 

Princeton shut out Amherst and Williams to start that 1933 season. TB doesn't like the current Tigers' chances of matching the 1933 team's mark after that, as those Tigers actually pitched shutouts in the first seven games of that season.

Princeton's defense through two weeks has been insanely good. Princeton's shutout this week followed last week's 32-0 blanking of Lehigh in the season opener. Between the two games, Princeton's opponents have rushed the ball a total of 48 times. How many yards rushing did they have between them? One.

That's one yard. That's 36 inches. That's actually 109 yards gained and 108 yards lost. Keep in mind, in college football sacks count as negative rushing yards, while in the NFL they count as negative team passing yards. 

Through two games, Princeton has sacked the opposing quarterback 12 times, for a loss of 80 yards. Even taking that away, Princeton's numbers against the run would be 36 opponent attempts for 81 yards, or 2.3 yards per attempt.

Maybe TB's favorite early-season stat for the Tigers is that no player on the team has more than eight tackles. How insane is that? 

There is so much balance and depth that nobody needs to be the dominant player. As a result, they all are, at least collectively as a unit. In all 35 different players have made at least one tackle. They all swarm, and do so quickly and aggressively. It's fun to watch them.

Offensively, it is more of the same. At one point early in the third quarter, Princeton had only two starters on the field – right guard David Hoffman and right tackle Connor Scaglione. The Tigers had five different quarterbacks play in the game. There were 12 different players who carried the ball at least once and seven different players with at least one reception, including a touchdown reception for each of the Big Three of Jacob Birmelin, Dylan Classi and Andrei Iosivas.

Princeton led 35-0 at the half on Saturday. In the second half, Princeton ran the ball on 31 of 35 plays, including 16 of 17 in the fourth quarter. Part of this was that there was no need to pass. Part of this was to play things closer to the vest. 

With no offense to Lehigh or Stetson, the stakes will be raised considerably this weekend, when 2-0 Columbia comes to Powers Field for the Ivy League opener. After that is a non-league Top 20 team in Monmouth (on the road) and then six more Ivy League games.

The first two games have been a great opportunity to come back from a year off and play a lot of players. It's been a great chance to see what a new quarterback can do (Cole Smith is 45 for 65 for 637 yards and six touchdowns with no interceptions). 

For the next game, it's back to 0-0, both on the scoreboard and the record. The same is true for Columbia, which also goes back to 0-0. Harvard and Yale already have impressive league wins. There have been strong non-league performances. In the Ivy League, no game will be easy. 

On the other hand, every game in the league will also be exciting. There's a long way to go until November, and the goal is to play meaningful games when you get there.

The road to that begins at home this coming Saturday.

The Home Opener

TigerBlog begins today with a quick field hockey note.

As Princeton prepares for this afternoon's Ivy League opener at Penn, it does so with sophomore Bridget Murphy back in the lineup. If you were at the season-opening game against North Carolina, you saw Murphy suffer what appeared to be a season-ending injury just six seconds into the game. This was after her freshman season was lost to the pandemic.

Instead, she was able to come back in far, far less time than anyone would have imagined. She made her collegiate debut this past Tuesday at Maryland, and she made a huge impact immediately.

You can read her story HERE.

The field hockey team has games today and Sunday (home against Rutgers at noon). In between, the football team has its home opener tomorrow at 1 against Stetson.

When that game was originally scheduled, it was to be a homecoming day of sorts for former Princeton head coach Roger Hughes, who led the Tigers to the 2006 Ivy League championship. Hughes coached Stetson from the program's inception in 2013 until last year, when he left to become the president of his alma mater, Doane College.

Actually, it wasn't the inception of the program. Stetson had a football team all the back in 1901, but the program was dropped in 1956. Stetson played in the 1952 Tangerine Bowl (which TB believes is now the Citrus Bowl), defeating Alabama State 35-20. 

The final game the Hatters played before dropping the program was a 64-0 win over the University of Havana. At least that's what it says on Wikipedia.

The current Stetson team is 2-0, with big wins over Warner and Ave Maria, a pair of NAIA schools. Stetson had last week off.

Princeton, on the other hand, made its debut last week and shut out Lehigh 32-0. Tiger quarterback Cole Smith won the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week award, and why not? This was his stat line: 30 for 41, 412 yards, three touchdowns. Those are Pat Mahomes numbers.

Smith's 412 yards were the 12th-best single-game total in program history. TigerBlog, being the historian he is, wondered if that was the record for a Princeton quarterback in his first start.

When he checked the games above Smith, the only one that might have been better was Doug Butler's 417 in 1983. There were two issues with this.

First, those 417 yards came against Bucknell in Week 2 of the 1983 season, and TB was pretty sure Butler didn't start in Week 1. Once he confirmed that, he saw something interesting. 

In some places he looked, Butler had 417 passing yards in the game. In others, Butler had 411.

Why the discrepancy? TigerBlog isn't sure, but he would guess it has something to do with the hand-kept stats back then. Perhaps in the final stats, someone had trouble distinguishing the "1" and the "7?"

So now what? Seriously, what are the odds that the 412 yards Smith threw for would fall in between the two totals TB saw listed from Butler in the game 38 years ago? 

TB tried to find the box score in the archives room, but that's the only game that wasn't in the folder. Again, what are the odds. He'll reach out to Bucknell to see what they have.

Meanwhile, Princeton is looking to improve from last week's effort, as team's often do from Week 1 to Week 2. Yes, a 32-0 win is convincing, but the Ivy League looks strong and there are challenges in every week to come. And there were certainly things that needed to be cleaned up from last week. It was the kind of opener coaches love. A big win, with some clear areas that need to be addressed. 

One of the areas is not depth. Princeton may have its deepest team ever this year.

Beyond Stetson is the Ivy League opener against Columbia next Saturday, also on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. The final non-league game is at Monmouth on Oct. 9, and Monmouth is a top 20 team.

Princeton is not. No Ivy team is ranked, partly because of the late start and partly because there was no Ivy football last year. That's going to change as the season goes along. Who will move into the rankings? It could be any one or two or three in the league. 

Princeton only has four home games this year (though there are still two more away games within an hour drive). The weather tomorrow in the Princeton area is supposed to be perfect. The team is certainly worth checking out.

Kickoff is at 1. See you there.