Seven For Seven

Here's a quick trivia question for you:

The Ivy League has expanded to seven conference tournaments in the 2022-23 academic year. What is the only school in the league to reach all seven? 

While you're thinking about ... oh, you already know the answer. It's Princeton.

Why would TigerBlog mention it if that wasn't the case? 

In case you're keeping track, that seven sports with league championships now: women's volleyball, men's basketball, women's basketball, men's lacrosse, women's lacrosse, baseball and softball.

There will be three other tournaments next year, when field hockey and men's and women's soccer get in on the fun.

The scoreboard looks like this:

Princeton - 7
Yale - 5
Penn - 5
Harvard - 4
Columbia - 2
Cornell - 2
Brown - 1
Dartmouth - 1

If you bothered counting, you noticed that this list adds up to 27 instead of 28, which would be seven tournaments times four teams. The final spot in the baseball tournament is still up for grabs between Columbia (11-7) and Yale (9-9 after defeating Princeton 7-6 in New Haven.

Columbia finishes the season at Penn this weekend for three. Yale is at Harvard for its final three. Columbia holds the tiebreaker after having swept Yale, so basically any combination of Columbia wins and Yale losses that equals two puts the Lions in the postseason as well.

The softball tournament will be held at Princeton in two weekends. The baseball tournament site is completely up for grabs, as Penn and Harvard are 13-5 and Princeton (three at home against Brown) is 12-6. Harvard has the tiebreaker over both Princeton and Penn, and Penn holds the tiebreaker over Princeton.

The only way the Tigers can host is to finish above, and not tied with, both teams. If they finish in a tie for first, then that would mean a share of the Ivy title. The tournaments only determine the automatic NCAA tournament bid.  

The baseball and softball tournaments will be double elimination events. The lacrosse tournaments are single elimination. 

The Princeton women will play Friday at 4 against Yale at Penn, with the games at Penn Park and not Franklin Field. The big stadium will be hosting the Ivy League Heps outdoor track and field championships.

Princeton went into Saturday still unsure of whether or not it would be in the tournament and then clinched a spot later that day. The curious part is that the Tigers didn't even play Saturday. They needed wins by Penn (over Dartmouth), Yale (over Columbia) and Brown (over Cornell) to secure their bid, and all three of those happened.

Princeton then went out Sunday and took down Harvard 17-13 on Senior Day. Even though the Tigers honored their seven seniors, it was a freshman, Amelia Hughes, who earned an Ivy honor, taking home the Defensive Player of the Week award with her 14-save effort in goal. The Ivy League does not have a Rookie of the Week in women's lacrosse, but this was the third time Hughes won the Defensive honor.

The Princeton men play against Penn Friday at 8:30 in New York City, as that event is being held at Columbia's Lawrence A. Wien Stadium. Can you get to both games? 

Well, the women's game figures to end right around 6 or slightly after. That gives you 2:15 or so to get to Columbia. You can do it. 

On the women's side, the top seed and host, Penn, plays the second game Friday. The Quakers will face Harvard, and that game will start around 7. On the men's side, the top seed is Cornell, and the Big Red take on fourth-seeded Yale at 6, in the first game. 

Whoever advances to Sunday's finals, you won't be able to see both of those games in person. They both start at noon.

By the way, the only time in the last two years that the Ivy League held a tournament and no Princeton team was there was last year in men's lacrosse. How did that work out for the Tigers? 

They made it to the NCAA Final Four instead. That puts Princeton in the very, very strange position of having a team full of players who have played on Championship Weekend but have never played in the Ivy tournament.

Taking You Out To The Ballgames

Today, TigerBlog takes you out to the ballgames.

First, there was the Princeton softball team, which took two of three this weekend from Dartmouth to end up in a tie with Harvard for the Ivy League championship. Because Princeton took two of three from Harvard during the regular season, Princeton will be the top seed and host for the first Ivy tournament, which is in two weekends, in Princeton. 

The Tigers will be joined by Harvard, Yale and Columbia. 

Princeton needed to take two from Dartmouth to get a share of the title because Harvard swept Columbia. The weekend started ominously for Princeton, who lost the first game in Hanover 7-0. Now the Tigers had to sweep a team that had some momentum, which as you know in baseball and softball is only as good as your next pitcher.

In this case, it was Molly Chambers, who pitched all seven innings, allowing one run on six hits while striking out three in a 4-1 win. That set up Saturday's game, and for a while it looked like the Tigers might coast, especially when Allison Ha blasted a grand slam in the fifth inning to give Princeton an 8-1 lead. It became 10-1 by the end of the inning. 

In softball, an eight-run or better lead after five ends the game. Princeton needed three outs — but Dartmouth got six runs, and then one more in the sixth. Suddenly it was 10-9, but that would be where it would stay, as Alexis Laudenslager, who had started the game, came back in for the bottom of the seventh, allowing a single but getting two strikeouts and a ground out to end it. 

For Princeton, it's the 21st Ivy softball championship in program history. 

And then there was the baseball team.

TigerBlog referred to the Princeton baseball team last week as "Bradley's Wallbangers," an homage to the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers.

If you don't know, the ’82 Brewers made it to the World Series, losing in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals. The team made a managerial change in midseason, promoting hitting coach Harvey Kuenn when the team was a game below .500 in June. From that point, the Brewers took off, led by a powerhitting lineup that earned the nickname "Harvey's Wallbangers." 

Apparently, a Harvey Wallbanger is a cocktail made with vodka, Galliano (which also the name of TB's friend Corey's dog when they were kids) and orange juice. The last mixed drink TigerBlog had featured milk and chocolate syrup, but he digresses.

Bradley's Princeton team has more than earned the nickname of "Wallbangers," as it has rewritten the Princeton record book with its home run prowess. Every game it seems like the Tigers have been bashing the ball over whatever fence happens to be around, and the result has been a rise to near the top of the Ivy League standings.

Because of the weather, Princeton played a doubleheader Friday at Yale and led off Game 1 with a home run courtesy of Matt Scannell. Business as usual? 

Hardly. Scannell's homer was the only one Princeton would hit in 18 innings between the two games. It also equaled the total number of runs that Yale would score in the two games combined. One.

In fact, Yale would get only five hits in the game, and all five of those came in Game 1. Princeton's Tom Chmielewski went all the way on a five-hit shut out, striking out 10 and walking none. He threw 104 pitches on the day. Final score: Princeton 8, Yale 0.

Surely that would be Princeton's best-pitched game of the day, right? Well, it might have been. It was a shutout. It was a complete game. What it wasn't was a no-hitter.

That came in Game 2.

Princeton had three pichers combine to hold the Bulldogs without a hit, though the home team did get one run on a sixth-inning sacrifice fly. Jackson Enus, Jacob Faulkner and Justin Kim combined on the no-hitter. Final score: Princeton 9, Yale 1.

That's an amazing day of pitching. That's 18 innings, five hits, one run, 22 strikeouts, four walks. Does it get much better than that? 

Princeton's wins clinched a spot in the upcoming Ivy League tournament. How is that?

Right now, the standings have Penn and Harvard at 13-5 each, followed by 12-5 Princeton. Columbia is 11-7, and Yale is 8-9. The best Yale can be is 12-9 (beating Princeton and sweeping Harvard), which is also the worst Princeton can be, and the Tigers have already secured the head-to-head tiebreaker over Yale with the two wins. Princeton also swept Columbia, so if it comes to be a three-way tie at 12-9 with Princeton, Yale and Columbia, Princeton would have the best record among the three head-to-head.

Of course, a win today creates a three-way tie for the top with one weekend remaining. To end the regular season, Princeton will host Brown, Harvard will host Yale and Penn will host Columbia.

The Weekend In Tiger Lax

TigerBlog rarely writes in the first person, as you can tell from this space every day.

This is strictly a "third-person zone." TB has always thought that maybe it would be better to switch to first person, though he has not done that. 

You know who always writes in first person? John McPhee, and he seems to know what he's doing.

Perhaps you saw the feature story that TigerBlog wrote on goalies yesterday. If not, you can see it HERE.

It was supposed to be a fun story, and so TB decided to go first person with it. He framed the story around what goes into being a goalie in general with Princeton's 22 goalies across nine teams (m/w soccer, m/w water polo, m/w lacrosse, m/w ice hockey and field hockey), along with what it's like to be a goalie's parent. 

To that end he threw in some of his own experiences with TigerBlog Jr. throughout the piece. He also talked to the parents of two Princeton goalies, and they had similar thoughts to his own. All the while he thought about his friend in Ohio whose daughter has started every game as a freshman in goal for a Division III school, and, well, there's something about being a goalie's parent.

As TB wrote at the end, he seriously thought about trying his hand at being a goalie, possibly at a field hockey practice. And maybe one day he will, though he wouldn't exactly count on it.

You have to be a special breed to be a goalie. Often the difference between winning and losing is the save or two that one goalie makes that another doesn't, and goalies know this full well. It's part of signing up for the position.

Two of the best goalies in the country will be on opposite ends of the field tomorrow, when Princeton plays Cornell in men's lacrosse in Ithaca at noon. For the winner, there is an outright Ivy League championship. For Princeton, it's Michael Gianforcaro, who is second in Division I in save percentage. For Cornell, it's Chayse Ierlan, who is sixth. They're 1-2 in the Ivy League, and Princeton's Griffen Rakower is third.

There are other subplots to the game. Princeton's Coulter Mackesy leads Division I in points per game; Cornell's C.J. Kirst is second. Mackesy figures to be matched against Cornell's Gavin Adler, who could be the No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming Premier Lacrosse League draft.

It's fitting that it's Princeton vs. Cornell for the title. Cornell has won 30 Ivy League championships. Princeton has won 26. Nobody else is close.

The outright championship is a huge prize. There are other prizes down the road, including next weekend's Ivy tournament at Columbia (for tickets, click HERE).

The men's tournament is simple, unlike a year ago, when five teams entered the final weekend of the regular season tied for first. This time around, it's pretty clear, and nobody needs any help from anyone else.

Harvard is at Yale tomorrow, and the winner of that game will be the fourth seed. The winner of the Princeton-Cornell game will be the No. 1 seed and play either Harvard or Yale at 6 next Friday. The loser of Princeton-Cornell will play Penn at 8:30 (Penn is the second seed if it's playing Princeton or the third seed if it's playing Cornell, though that hardly matters).

The winners play next Sunday at noon for the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. 

Easy, right? 

Contrast that with the women, then. So far, only one team (Penn) has clinched a spot, and the tournament will be held at Penn Park. Also, Columbia is mathematically eliminated.

And that's all that's known. In fact, there are 26 different scenarios of what can happen. That's even crazier than last year's men's race.

Princeton hosts Harvard Sunday at noon, so by then all of the Ivy games will have been played, leading to at least some clarity. Where does it stand now?

You can find out HERE, in the preview story on goprincetontigers.com.

 There are multiple scenarios where it could come down to goal differential to get in the tournament. 

Big Weekend At DeNunzio

Without knowing much about college women's water polo, who would be your guess for the top three teams in the current national rankings? 

TigerBlog guessed USC, UCLA and Stanford. It turns out they're ranked first, third and second. TB promises you he didn't look before writing that. 

It's probably not a shock to learn that of the top eight teams in the rankings, seven are from California (those three, plus UC-Irvine, Cal, Long Beach State and Fresno State) and the other is Hawaii. Once you get past those eight, there's a tie for ninth, and those teams are Princeton and Michigan. 

Those two are also the top seeds in the this weekend's College Water Polo Association tournament, which will be held tomorrow through Sunday at DeNunzio Pool.

At stake is an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Princeton is the home team and the No. 1 seed and has a bye into the semifinals Saturday at noon. 

Here is the complete schedule:

Tomorrow at 4 - No. 3 Harvard vs. No. 6 Bucknell
Tomorrow at 6 - No. 4 Brown vs. No. 5 St. Francis

Saturday at noon - No. 1 Princeton vs. Brown/St. Francis winner (semifinal)
Saturday at 2 - No. 2 Michigan vs. Harvard/Bucknell winner (semifinal)
Saturday at 4 - Brown/St. Francis loser vs. Harvard/Bucknell loser (fifth place)

Sunday at 10 - third place game
Sunday at noon - championship game

Michigan, by the way, has won seven straight championships and 12 overall. 

As TB thought about it, he wondered why Princeton and Michigan would have such strong programs. In fact, after those two, the next four schools in the rankings are again California schools. These are players who never play indoors, and yet when they come to schools like Princeton and Michigan, there are obviously no outdoor matches. 

Despite that, Princeton is an impressive 8-1 this year against California schools, including a win over Long Beach State (and a loss to UCLA). Princeton and Michigan have split their two regular season meetings, with an 11-9 Tiger win in a game played in Providence and a 7-6 Michigan win in Ann Arbor.

The Wolverines have one player on their roster from the state of Michigan and 13 players from California. There are also two from New Zealand, two from Canada and one from Hungary, as well as one from Illinois.

Princeton's roster also features 13 players from California. There are none from New Jersey, but there are four from Connecticut and one from New York, as well as one from Serbia, one from Australia and one from Canada.

Recruiting from California is a must obviously. It's why teams from the East make so many trips there during the regular season.

This is not a weekend with a great many home events, but the water polo is a big one. So is the women's lacrosse game against Harvard Sunday at noon, as the Tigers, Crimson and four other teams scramble for the three remaining Ivy tournament spots. 

TB is pretty sure a win gets Princeton in no matter what. With the other three league games all on Saturday, there will at least be much greater clarity by the time Princeton and Harvard have the opening draw. 

Remember, that's a noon start Sunday, not Saturday. It's also Senior Day for the seven Tiger seniors.

There is also home rowing, with the open women against Penn and the heavyweight men against Brown. 

You don't have to travel too far from Princeton to see one of the greatest events in college athletics, the Penn Relays. The track and field carnival, held at Penn's Franklin Field, was first contested as a matchup between Princeton and Penn back in 1893 (Princeton won). The first actual Penn relays were held two years later. 

If you've never gone, you should. It's not only for track and field fans. It's a pretty awesome event all around. TigerBlog is pretty sure it's the largest track and field meet in the world, with competitions among all age groups beyond just the collegiate and elite levels.

There are, of course, all kinds of other events involving Princeton teams this weekend. 

For the full schedule, click HERE.

Catching A Draft

 If you read yesterday's entry early in the morning, then you missed the word "enough" in the first sentence. 

It made a big difference. Instead of saying that he couldn't recommend his Kane recovery shoes "enough," TigerBlog said he "couldn't recommend them." One word. Big impact. 

Anyway, it was corrected around 9:30. If you read before then, TB suggests going out and buying your own Kanes. You won't regret it. 

Okay, "enough" about that.

It's the last week of April. The weather is decidedly in the spring mode, for that short period of time between when the last of the cold leaves and the temperature sprints into the 80s. Now? You have chilly mornings and beautiful afternoons and evening. Can't ask for much more than that.

It used to be that spring lasted a few months. Now it's just a few weeks. 

So what should TB talk about during this great spring weather? Football, of course.

For the rest of today's entry, click HERE. TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog.

The Caramel And Black

TigerBlog cannot recommend the Kane shoes that he got from the equipment staff earlier this year.

If you've never seen them, they look like Crocs, but they are a much different shoe. They are called Revive recovery shoes. This is from the Kane website:

A transformative, sustainably designed injection molded sneaker for active recovery.

They're also sustainable. As it says on the website: 

Made in Brazil from sugarcane-based EVA foam.

Whatever they're made of and whatever recovery properties they have, they are incredibly comfortable. They're probably the most comfortable shoes TB has ever had, for that matter. 

There's only one problem that TB has noticed, and it's also on the website. TigerBlog's Kane's are orange and white, perfect Princeton colors. The only thing is that the Kane website calls them "white and caramel."

What the heck? Caramel? 

It's Orange and Black, not Caramel and Black. It's William of Nassau of the House of Orange, not William of Nassau of the House of Caramel. C'mon now. 

Be that as it may, they are great shoes. 

As for the Caramel and Black, there are spring teams who are in their Ivy League tournament, hoping to host their Ivy tournament and hoping to be in their Ivy tournament. 

For the rest of today's blog, click HERE or go to goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. Each day's entry will be available there. 

The Home Run

Has there ever been a baseball stadium that opened with back-to-back home runs by the other team? 

There has been now. Princeton was a very rude guest in Cornell's brand-new Booth Field. About the only pitch that was safe from the Tigers was the one Mr. Booth threw out to open the new facility. 

Matt Scannell and Eric Marasheski got the party started with blasts in the first two at-bats in the new stadium. By the end of the weekend, Princeton had hit 11 in all, running their season total to a program-record 49. Kyle Vinci pushed his single-season record total to 16, and he had himself a 14-RBI weekend.

The Tigers won all three games against Cornell, running their Ivy record to 10-5 with three games left at Yale and home against Brown. The team is very much in the hunt for a spot in the first four-team Ivy tournament, not to mention winning the league title and grabbing the host spot that goes along with that.

The theme of the weekend was the home run, both the literal and figurative type. 

For the rest of today's entry, click HERE or go to goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog, where the blog can be read every day.

Beneath A Bigger Picture, There Are Ivy Titles To Be Won

For anyone who is an Ivy League sports fan, the news about Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens hits hard. 

There are some things that are bigger than rivalries and games and championships. Ivy League athletics are unique, and the people who compete in them, coach them, administrate them and root for them buy into a different brand of college athletics than exist anywhere else.

Teevens, if you missed it, was involved in a terrible bicycle accident in Florida. His wife announced earlier this week that Teevens has had one leg amputated and has suffered spinal chord injuries as well.

The Princeton-Dartmouth football rivalry has been a great one in recent years. Teevens and Princeton head coach Bob Surace threw out the first pitch at a Yankees game in 2019, before the teams played at Yankee Stadium to commemorate the 150th anniversary of college football. The 2018 game between the teams in Princeton is one of the greatest Ivy football games ever played.

There is no one at Princeton, or anywhere in the league, who isn't rooting for Teevens. TigerBlog has never met him, but the people he knows who know him have only good things to say about him. 

This is a quote TB saw from Eli Manning: 

"Thoughts and prayers are with Coach Teevens and his family. I have known Coach since I was 12 years old when I attended Tulane football camp. There is not a better man."

For the rest of today's TigerBlog, click HERE. TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog.

Baseball Record, Softball Showdown

If you're going to set a record, you might as well do it in style.  

Isn't that right, Kyle Vinci? 

The Princeton record for home runs in a season had stood for 27 years until Vinci came along this spring. Vinci, a high school teammate of New York Yankees' shortstop phenom Anthony Volpe at Delbarton, went into yesterday's game against Rider tied for the single-season record with Mike Ciminiello. He came out of it with the record all his own.

He did so in the biggest way possible, too, blasting a grand slam in the eighth that took the Tigers from down one to up 9-6, which would be the final score. As TigerBlog said, you might as well do it in style.
TB's day started with a voicemail asking Princeton to take it easy on Rider. 

Who was the caller? 

To read the rest of today's entry, click HERE. TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog.

Big Wednesday In Philly

TigerBlog's post yesterday on the birth of Wyatt Madalon brought a lot of feedback, most of it on one subject.

What were TB's diapering tips, especially for boys? 

First, in general, if you have a television in your bedroom, leave it on, with the sound turned off, all night long. That way, when the baby wakes up, you won't have to turn the lights on for feeding and changing and such, so the baby starts to get a sense of the difference between night and day. Also, you can watch the TV while you're feeding the baby. Win-win.

As for a boy, create a flap about 1/2 inch wide at the top of the diaper and then fold it back towards the baby's tummy. Trust him on this one. It'll come in handy one day.

Any other random advice TB can offer? Just let him know what subjects you want covered. Maybe he could start a side blog on the art of child-raising.

Having a newborn is not easy. Having one when your other children have moved past the baby stage is even harder. You forget all the things that went into the first year or two of child-raising.

Ah, how long ago it was. When Miss TigerBlog came along, three years after her brother, TB had no idea how to put the infant car seat back in the car and a bunch of stuff like that. And now? She is in Canada making some sort of presentation about an aerospace subject TB wouldn't understand in a million years. 

It goes by really, really quickly.

MTB's former team, the Princeton women's lacrosse team, has itself a big game tonight at Penn, with the opening draw at 7.

For the rest of today's entry, please click HERE and be redirected to goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. The full blog is available each day on the main website.