A Pair Of Threes

TigerBlog starts to today by thanking everyone who donated during another wildly successful TAGD yesterday.

When he wrote yesterday about what the investment for TAGD really is about, he saved for today a few thoughts on the people who do the donating. It's a sign of something that Princetonians perhaps take for granted — a loyalty that exists at this institution that is anything but common.

As you probably know, TigerBlog went to Penn. It's a school that has produces proud alums who become lifelong Quaker fans (there are exceptions of course), but TB can tell you first hand that there it is nothing like what he has seen at Princeton.

In fact, when he thinks about any of his friends or family who attended other schools, almost all of whom had excellent experiences, he realizes that they think of those schools mostly in the past tense, as opposed to something of which they are still actually a part. 

That's the difference with Princeton. It never goes away. You always feel like you're a part of it, and that's why things like Reunions, Alumni Day and, yes, TAGD are such successful enterprises.

It starts from Day 1. When TigerBlog went to college, he felt like he was an individual who was surrounded by other individuals. That's not a bad thing. He's still friends with some of those individuals to this day. 

What he never felt like was that he was part of something bigger than his own experience there. At Princeton, you immediately identify with your class year, and that never goes away. In fact, it just builds and builds as the years go on.

So again, thank you to everyone who showed their support again yesterday. And once again, TB isn't surprised. He hope you don't think this happens everywhere though.

With TAGD once again complete, you have a chance tonight to once again see one of the most exciting plays in sports — a missed shot in a Princeton's basketball game. The women's team hosts Seton Hall tonight, while the men are at Bucknell. Tip for both is at 7.

First, TigerBlog should say that's "the 25th-ranked Princeton women." The Tigers moved into the Top 25, again, with a resume that includes a win over Oklahoma, a three-point loss at No. 2 UCLA and a nine-point loss to Indiana.

If you asked TigerBlog 20 years ago to name the basketball statistic in which Princeton would have the third-ranked player in Division I for both men and women, he would have guessed something like free throw percentage or three-pointers per game. It wouldn't have been rebounding.

And yet, that's the case heading into tonight's games. Ellie Mitchell is third in Division I for women at 12.7. Caden Pierce is third in Division I for the men at 11.7.

When TB walked into Jadwin Gym for Saturday's game against Northeastern, he heard one person say "I'm here to see Caden Pierce rebound."

Mitchell leads the Ivy League by 2.2 per game, while only third-best is five behind her. Pierce is also the Ivy League leader, at 11.7 per game. That's 2.6 more than any other player and nearly four better than the third best total.

Mitchell has at least 13 rebounds in four of Princeton's six games. She has 34 — thirty-four — in the last two games, with 18 against Oklahoma and 16 more against Indiana. 

Her 18 rebounds against the Sooners were good for the second-best total in program history, after Margaret Meier had 30 against Villanova in the 1974-75 season. 

Mitchell enters tonight's game with 895 career rebounds. Only five Princeton basketball players (three women, two men) have ever reached 900 rebounds:

Meier 1,099
Bill Bradley 1008
Whitey Fulcomer 995
Bella Alarie 964
Ellen DeVoe 942

If Mitchell maintains her current 12.7 per game average, that would give her 266 more rebounds for this regular season. It would also make her the all-time leader in rebounds at Princeton. To match Meier's record, she would need 204 more rebounds, or 9.7 per game for the regular season. That doesn't count any Ivy League tournament or postseason tournament games.

Pierce stands at 6-6. The two players ahead of him in rebounding are 7-2 (Hunter Dickinson of Kansas) and 6-9 (Sam Alexis of Chattanooga). Pierce is outrebounding Purdue's 7-4 Zach Edey, who is at 11.5.

At his current pace, he'd get to around 1,200 rebounds for his career. Only eight men's players have ever reached even 600 for their careers, and Pierce is more than halfway to that in only 38 games. 

So that's the women at home against Seton Hall tonight at 7, and the men at Bucknell at the same time. Both are on ESPN+.

Let the rebounding begin.

It's TAGD 10

TAGD WEBSITE

It probably didn't come as a shock to anyone that Xaivan Lee was named the Ivy League men's basketball Player of the Week.

Lee might have won it on the strength of his game against Old Dominion alone, a game in which he finished with19 points on 8-for-13 shooting, four rebounds, three assists and one steal. Ah, but the follow up was pretty spectacular too.

The sophomore then put up 30 points on 11-for-21 shooting, with six rebounds, four assists and a block. He started his day by hitting a few three-pointers and spent the rest of it driving to the hoop almost at will. Lee is now the third different Princeton player to win the award this year, along with Caden Pierce and Matt Allocco.

In addition to his time with the Canadian U19 team at the World Championships, Lee also spent some time this summer as a worker in the Office of Athletic Communications. As TigerBlog watched Lee get to 30 Saturday, he started to wonder what the highest single-game total ever for a Princeton basketball/OAC student worker was. 

He's pretty sure it was either Maggie Langlas or Kate Thirolf, teammates and 1,000 point scorers in the Class of 2000. One of them, he's pretty sure, had a career best of 27.

And where are they today, more than 20 years later? Maggie is a lawyer. Kate has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Michigan.

That is what post-Princeton success looks like for Tiger athletes. What you can't see on a resume, though, is how much the athletic experience has prepared them, inspired them, challenged them, taught them and made them who they eventually become.

There are senior athlete exit surveys that are done each year. It would be great to be able to gather similar data 20 years later, after all of these former athletes have the chance to really understand what playing at Princeton did for them. 

Today is Tiger Athletics Give Day. It's the 10th TAGD, a 24-hour fundraising challenge that has been overwhelmingly successful in so many areas.

This is from the TAGD website:

The first nine years of TAGD have been incredible successes, yielding more than 67,000 gifts to-date; last year alone yielded a record $3.9 million in gifts across more than 6,700 donors, demonstrating the investment and commitment of our Princeton Athletics community. The response to our call for support year-over-year has been overwhelming, and every student-athlete has been directly impacted by the money that has been raised. These funds have helped fund initiatives such as locker room upgrades, international and out-of- region team travel and advancements in student-athlete resources, to name a few.

Your generosity has and will continue to provide our Princeton varsity student-athletes greater opportunities to achieve, serve and lead and ensure that our Tiger programs are able to compete at the highest level. We sincerely appreciate everything you do to support Princeton Athletics, and hope you will join us again on Tiger Athletics Give Day and make our tenth year memorable.

All of that is true, but it doesn't tell the whole story. It's what you're investing in with your gift that really matters, and the dollars and gifts are only a part of that. These gifts directly impact the student-athlete experience in ways that provide them with the opportunity to learn about themselves, learn about teamwork, learn about putting aside individual accomplishment to focus on the bigger picture of team success, to find out firsthand what culture means to a successful organization. 

You know it as "Education Through Athletics." 

Your gifts are doing way more than just helping the Tigers win games. They're helping fully develop some of the greatest young people you'll see anywhere - the kids who compete in Princeton uniforms.

You're helping develop them into the people they become for long after they graduate. 

You're helping create Maggie Langlas's and Kate Thirolf's — and the hundreds of others are a credit to what intercollegiate athletics is supposed to be all about. 

Everyone at Princeton Athletics thanks you.

Sunshine Hoops ... And It's Almost Time For TAGD

How was your Thanksgiving? 

Hopefully it was good. TigerBlog's was. It included a woman who came late because she is an obstetrician who had to deliver a baby first. TB made sure to ask her if she'd washed her hands when she was finished. 

TB spent a lot of this weekend watching college football games. There were some crazy moments, none crazier than Alabama's 4th-and-31 touchdown in the final seconds against Auburn to win the Iron Bowl. It's not just that Alabama got a touchdown on the play; it's that somehow the receiver was wide open in the back of the end zone.

What else was there? The Iowa-Nebraska game was likewise nuts, especially the last two minutes, especially the fact that Iowa won the game on a last second field goal after Nebraska's clock operator didn't start the clock for 12 seconds a few plays earlier. What the heck? 

By the way, that game featured Tom McCarthy and Ross Tucker on the call on television. They are great together. 

And there was Washington-Washington State. With its entire season on the line and a chance to play to get into the College Football Playoff, Washington went for it in a tie game with 1:11 left from its own 29 and ran a perfect reverse for 26 yards, setting up the game-winning field goal.

Now that the holiday weekend is over, it's time to look ahead to TAGD — Tiger Athletics Give Day, which is now in Year 10. It comes up tomorrow and is a 24-hour fundraising challenge that has become a staple of the Princeton calendar.

TigerBlog will have more tomorrow about TAGD. For now, you can click HERE to get to the TAGD website, but only gifts given on the 24 hours of Nov. 28 will count. 

The Princeton women's basketball team really showed you something on its trip to Florida for the holiday weekend. And, ironically enough, Carla Berube's team may have shown more about itself in the game it lost as opposed to the game it won.

If you didn't pay attention, Princeton played a pair of ranked teams in Fort Myers, first against No. 20 Oklahoma on Thanksgiving Day and then against No. 19 Indiana Saturday. Princeton went wire-to-wire to take down 77-63 against the Sooners before falling to Indiana 72-63.

So why was the Indiana came perhaps the more impressive of the two? It's simple. 

Princeton came into that game already with a Top 20 win. Being assured of a split was already a big accomplishment.

The Tigers then got down quickly against Indiana, falling behind 16-11 after one and then being outscored 25-13 in the second to make it 41-24 at the break. The deficit was pushed to 20 early in the third quarter. 

At that point, you're definitely thinking that this was it. Take the split and head home.

Ah, but not these Tigers. They never gave up, and in fact they clawed their way all the way back within six in the fourth quarter. 

Remember, this is against a team that is ranked 19th nationally, a team whose 28-4 record a year ago include a one-point loss to NCAA runner up Iowa.

Yes, Princeton fell short by nine in the end. Yes, Princeton was impressive again.

The game against Oklahoma was a thing of beauty. Princeton never trailed in that one, getting out to a 17-3 lead in the first quarter. The lead was only seven at the half at 38-31, but Princeton put its foot down again in the third quarter, making it a 16-point lead heading into the fourth.

As a reminder, in case you forgot in the last few paragraphs, this came against a team that entered the week in the Top 20.

Keep in mind, Princeton also played UCLA to a three-point game in Pauley Pavilion. That's a UCLA team that is ranked second in the country.

These aren't results that happen accidentally.

Madison St. Rose had 35 in the two games. Kaitlyn Chen had 36. Ellie Mitchell had 34 — rebounds, that is, and TigerBlog will be back later in the week to talk about Princeton's amazing rebounding duo.

Next up for the women's basketball team is a home game Wednesday against Seton Hall. While Princeton was in the Florida sunshine, the Pirates weren't exactly in need of their winter coats; they were in the Bahamas, where they lost to Southern Cal and beat East Carolina. 

Seton Hall also has a loss at Columbia and a win over Rutgers as part of its 4-2 record (the other wins are Iona and Bryant).

And once again, it's a reminder that tomorrow is TAGD. 

TigerBlog will thank everyone who has so generously supported Princeton Athletics all these years as part of the giving challenge. He'll have more on all of that, especially on what the investment is all about, tomorrow.

Have A Great Thanksgiving

The fall/winter crossover season is pretty much over, with only the men's water polo team's NCAA tournament appearance in California next weekend still to be played.

After several weeks of craziness all around, this week is a quite a bit tamer. The Princeton Athletics schedule is pretty quiet, with only six events — and one at home — from this past Monday through this coming Sunday.

This offers all of the people in the athletic department who have been all over the show these last few weeks to finally exhale. You know the names of the coaches and athletes who compete, but the names of those who work behind the scenes to make it all possible are largely anonymous. 

TigerBlog would list them, but he'd leave someone out and doesn't want to risk that. Rest assured that were it not for all of them, there would be no Princeton sports, and again, rest assured that every one of them has worked especially hard the last few weeks to make sure everything is covered.

That home game is Saturday at 2, when the men's basketball team hosts Northeastern in Jadwin Gym. The Tigers also have a game today at 4 at Old Dominion, which you can see on ESPN+ if you're not in Norfolk, Va.

The women's basketball team also has two games, though they are both in the same location — Fort Myers, Fla. Carla Berube's team will play a pair of ranked teams there, first taking on No. 22 Oklahoma tomorrow at 3 and then No. 21 Indiana Saturday at 11 am. 

For its part, Princeton isn't ranked, but it is fourth in the "others receiving votes" category. By the way, UCLA, who beat Princeton 77-74 last week, has moved up to No. 2 in the poll this week. 

The men's hockey team is at Ohio State for games Friday and Saturday, with puck drop at 5 both days. And that is that for this week's schedule.

Why is it so light?

As you know, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

TigerBlog has included these thoughts on the holiday almost every year:

As holidays go, you can't do much better than Thanksgiving. It's got it all, really: a huge meal (with turkey, no less), football, family, history (dates back to 1621), start of a four-day weekend for most people, leftovers. It's even a secular holiday, so every American can dive right in, regardless of religion.
 
The Lions and the Cowboys, obviously, always play at home on Thanksgiving, and the NFL has now added a third game (maybe a little too much). Beyond watching football, how many out there have played their own Thanksgiving football games, all of which, by the way, are named "the Turkey Bowl?"

The holiday may lag behind Christmas in terms of great Hollywood movies, and "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" is no match for "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." Still, there are some great moments in movies and TV shows around Thanksgiving.

Rocky and Adrian had their first date on Thanksgiving – "To you it's Thanksgiving; to me it's Thursday," Rocky said romantically – as did Meadow and Jackie Jr. on "The Sopranos" (it didn't quite work out as well as it did for Rocky and Adrian). "Everybody Loves Raymond" had two pretty good Thanksgiving episodes, the one where Marie makes a low-fat dinner and the one where Debra makes fish instead of turkey. As an aside, TigerBlog's Aunt Regina once made Cornish game hens instead of turkey, so he knows how they all felt. And of course, there was the Thanksgiving episode of "Cheers," which has the big food fight at the end.

The Woody Allen movie "Hannah and Her Sisters" starts and ends on two different Thanksgivings. "Miracle on 34th Street" is a Christmas movie, but it does start with the Thanksgiving parade in New York City.

And of course, there is the best of all Thanksgiving movies: "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." It'll make you laugh a lot and cry a little, and it ends on Thanksgiving.

TB wishes everyone a great holiday and hopes that maybe you take a few minutes to think about what you really are thankful for these days.

Catching Up From The Weekend

It's Thanksgiving Week, which means that today is a good day to catch up from last weekend:

* 

When TigerBlog saw the women's basketball final score of UCLA 77, Princeton 74, Friday afternoon, he thought back to another Princeton-UCLA basketball game — and not the one from the 1996 NCAA tournament.

This one was on Dec, 28, 1969, and though it is largely unknown to the modern Princeton basketball fan, you can make the case that it was actually a greater accomplishment than the one of the 1996 Tigers, who took down UCLA in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

In 1996, UCLA was the defending champion. In 1969, UCLA was in the middle of the most extraordinary run in college basketball history. The Bruins would win 10 NCAA titles in 12 years, starting in 1964 and ending in 1975. There would be seven straight from 1967-73, and so the program was right in the middle of that run when Princeton came to Pauley Pavilion early in the season.

The final that night was UCLA 76, Princeton 75. Sidney Wicks, who would be the Most Outstanding Player at the NCAA Final Four the following March and who played in the NBA for 10 years, hit a buzzer-beater to give UCLA the win. 

That game, by the way, matched Princeton's Pete Carril against UCLA's John Wooden. TB has written this before, but he defies anyone to prove to him that Wooden was a better coach than Carril. 

The women's score Friday was similar to that 1969 game. It was a great near-miss for Princeton against UCLA, who is ranked third in the country.  

The Tigers bounced back quickly, knocking off a good University of San Diego team 62-51 Sunday in the second game of the California State swing. Kaitlyn Chen, from San Marino, had 24 points against UCLA and 13 more against San Diego, and freshman Skye Belker, from Los Angeles, had 20 against the Bruins.

*

Speaking of California, the men's water polo is headed there for the NCAA tournament at USC next weekend. 

The Tigers are the fourth seed — yes, the fourth seed. Just to have accomplished that is incredible.

The field has eight teams, the top four of whom are seeded. Princeton and Fordham are the only two non-California teams in the tournament.

Princeton's first game will be Friday, Dec. 1, at 5 Eastern, against UC-Irvine, a team Princeton defeated 11-9 at Irvine in the regular season. The winner of that game gets the winner of the game between top-seeded UCLA and Biola University, while the other half of the bracket has No. 2 Cal against Fordham and No. 3 USC against San Jose State.

Princeton earned its spot in the NCAA tournament by taking the Northeast Water Polo Conference title this past weekend, defeating host Harvard 8-5 in Sunday's final. Roko Pozaric had five for the Tigers in that game, moving the junior past the 200 mark for his career.

*

The women's basketball loss Friday came as the opener of the "oh what might have been" day for Princeton women's athletics. The women's soccer team, playing in the NCAA tournament second round at No. 4 Texas Tech, fell in penalty kicks after 110 scoreless minutes. Princeton outshot the Red Raiders 16-9 in the game.

The game drew a facility-record 2,346. It was the kind of game that you dream of being a part of as a college athlete, even if you come up just short. Just ask head coach Sean Driscoll:

"What a fantastic endorsement for college soccer. What a crowd, what an atmosphere, and I know even one percent was rooting for us, but still, such a great atmosphere. It was really, really intimidating in a lot of ways, but so amazing."

Texas Tech lost Sunday in the Round of 16 to North Carolina, 1-0. All four Ivy teams were eliminated in the second round after going 4-0 in the first.

* The men's cross country team finished 11th in the country at the NCAA championships in Virginia Friday. It tied the best finish in program history, set in 2012.

The Tigers finished the fall with an Ivy League Heptagonal championship, an NCAA Regional championship and a tie for the best NCAA finish the team has ever had (as well as the top this season by an Ivy school). 

That is a pretty good fall right there. 

Ring The Bell

The Princeton football defense celebration after forcing a turnover? That rings a bell.

TigerBlog will get back to that in a moment. 

Around 3 or so this past Saturday afternoon, or an hour before Princeton finished off its season with a 31-24 win at Penn, TB sat in one of the last places the sun still reached at Franklin Field and watched the last 10 minutes of the game between Yale and Harvard.

Which team was he rooting for in that one? Dartmouth.

With Princeton eliminated from the Ivy League football race one week earlier, TigerBlog wanted to see Dartmouth win a championship. Never has an Ivy team deserved one more, after what the Big Green went through the entire off-season and into the season after the horrific injury and subsequent death of its beloved coach, Buddy Teevens.

For the Big Green to get that championship, it needed to beat Brown and Yale needed to beat Harvard. If those two things happened, then there would be a three-way tie for the title between the Green, Crimson and Bulldogs. If Harvard beat Yale, then Harvard would have the 2023 championship all to itself.

Princeton-Penn began at 1, an hour after Brown-Dartmouth and Harvard-Yale. The first time TB looked at the scores, it was 28-7 Dartmouth and 10-6 Yale. Okay, he thought. Dartmouth is rolling — and the Big Green would win 38-13.

That only left Yale and Harvard. It was certainly a great game. First Yale was up in the fourth quarter (17-12). Then Harvard (18-17). Then Yale had a chance to take the lead but turned it over. Then Harvard had a chance to put the game away but turned it over. Then Yale took the lead (23-18). Then Harvard drove down the field but turned it over on downs near the Bulldog goal line. Then Yale punted. Then Harvard threw an interception, and it was over. 

As cold as it became when the sun disappeared behind the hotel past the old stadium, TB got a warm feeling for Dartmouth.

It was the third two-loss championship in Ivy history, along with 1969 and 1982. How close did the two teams on Franklin Field get to being part of it, or even being the lone champ?

Consider this: Princeton and Penn played six OT games between them and went 1-5. Also, Princeton beat Harvard. Penn beat Yale. Princeton lost to Dartmouth on a late field goal. Penn lost to Dartmouth in overtime.

That's how close they came. 

There was still something to play for on Franklin Field, though. Princeton was looking to avoid a losing season, which would have been its first since 2011. And it was one of the 10 games on the schedule, which makes them all hugely important, regardless of championship aspirations. 

Penn dominated statistically, with big edges in yards, plays run, first downs and time of possession. Oh, and in turnovers.

There were lots of them. A total of seven from the Quakers, to be exact. That was seven times that Princeton's D took the ball away. That's seven times someone got to ring the bell.

Princeton did not turn the ball over at all. Has a team ever had a 7-0 edge in turnovers and lost a game? TB doesn't have a way to look that one up, but he's going to go out on a limb and say it's unlikely. 

He does know for sure that the seven turnovers Princeton forced are not the single-game record. The Tigers forced eight in a 44-14 win against Columbia in 1995, and there are probably others out there as well. 

Nasir Hill certainly had himself a day for the Tigers. The sophomore from South Jersey had a career-high three rings (that should be a stat), two on interceptions and one on a fumble recovery. His second INT ended Penn's chance at a miracle comeback that saw the Quakers score a touchdown with 44 seconds left and then get the ball back on the most perfectly executed onsides kick ever, only to have Hill swipe the last pass of the day on the Tiger 18.

No other Tiger had more than one ring. Tahj Owens had an interception at the goal line and a 29-yard return, not to mention 10 tackles. Collin Taylor, a defensive lineman, had an interception off a tipped pass from Jake DelGarbino. Ozzie Nicholas and Ryan Savage also had fumble recoveries.

Nicholas finished the year with 103 tackles, becoming the first Tiger since Jon Olafsson in 2010 to reach the 100-mark. Bob Surace won his 78th game at Princeton, tying Steve Tosches for second all-time for Tiger coaches, 11 away from Bill Roper's all-time record.

There were other individual accomplishments. There will be several All-Ivy League selections this coming week.

The one-word epitaph for the 2023 season will be "close," as in just how many close games Princeton played. The Tigers just played an entire season, 10 games, without either the Tigers or any opponent ever with more than a 14-point lead at any time. That's crazy.

And "close," as in just how close Princeton came to a championship again. 

And "close," pronounced differently, as in "It's always nice to close the season with a win."

Friday Catch Up

This week's catch-up comes a day later than usual:

* So TigerBlog made two bad mistakes the other day.

First, he said that before Wednesday night, Princeton's last game against Duquesne was in the 2020-21 season. It was actually in the 2019-20 season.

The second is a by-product of the first. He wrote that no Princeton player had played against Duquesne and that head coach Mitch Henderson had neither played nor coached against the Dukes. That was clearly wrong as well. 

Consider this a TB correction.

Henderson was actually 1-0 against Duquesne at the time. Now he's 2-0 after the Tigers won 70-67 in Pittsburgh Wednesday. 

It was a career-high night for two Tigers: Matt Allocco (23 points, 10 for 13 shooting) and Xavian Lee (20 points). Blake Peters did what he does (three three's, four steals) on a night when Caden Pierce "only" had eight rebounds.

Lee seems to have taken a major jump in his game from a year ago to now, and his time with the Canadian U19 team this past summer clearly has helped. Princeton basketball history is filled with players who were supporting players as freshmen who then became huge contributors as sophomores.

Here are a few examples. Can you name who the players are? TB will ask you at the end:

Player 1
Fr. - 18 total minutes, three total points
So. - 33.2 minutes per game, 9.7 points per game, second on the team in points, assists, rebounds

Player 2
Fr. - 14.6 minutes per game, 5.5 points per game, 2.4 rebounds per game
So. - 27.7 minutes per game, 12.5 points per game, 4.6 rebounds per game

Player 3
Fr. - 4.4 points per game, 29 percent three-point shooting, 27 assists
So. - 11.3 points per game, 40.3 percent three-point shooting, 118 assists

Princeton is at Monmouth tomorrow at 2.

*

If you find yourself in Lubbock, Texas, this evening at 7 Eastern time, then TB invites you to attend the Princeton-Texas Tech NCAA tournament second-round women's soccer game. Princeton, who defeated Michigan 1-0 in the first round, is the No. 7 seed in this portion of the bracket. Texas Tech is the No. 2 seed in the bracket and fourth-ranked team in the country.

The day starts with the game between the third-seed in the bracket, North Carolina, and the sixth-seed, Alabama. The winners plays Sunday, and one of the four teams will advance on to the quarterfinals.

The Ivy League went 4-0 in the first round of the tournament, which means Princeton's league did better than Texas Tech's, as the Big 12 advanced three teams. That means nothing, of course, since Texas Tech was easily the Big 12's best.

The Red Raiders are 16-1-2 this season, including an 8-0-2 run through the league and an 11-0 record at home. On the other hand, the team's last eight games have all either been ties or decided by one goal, including the lone loss for the year (a 1-0 decision against Texas in the final game of the regular season) and the first round of the NCAA tournament (a 1-0 win over Florida Gulf Coast).

*

There is home men's hockey this weekend, as the Tigers host Colgate tonight and Cornell tomorrow, with face-off at 7 both nights. It's way too early to make any definite conclusions about what February and March will bring, but the Tigers have been really good to date. 

And really exciting, as in four ECAC games, three OTs, one shootout and one regulation one-goal game.

Princeton is 2-1-1 in its those ECAC games, with the only loss 5-4 to Dartmouth on the road. Princeton also has a shootout win over Harvard and the two OT wins last weekend at home, against Brown and Yale. 

Colgate is 1-2-1 in the league. Cornell is 2-1-1.

* 

Looking for something to see on campus? There's home swimming and diving tomorrow, as the Tiger men and women host Cornell and Penn at DeNunzio beginning at 11 am, and home men's and women's squash Sunday (11 and 2).

Looking for something to do in New Haven? Princeton plays Brown in the first round of the Ivy women's volleyball tournament at Yale today at 4, followed by Yale-Harvard at 7. The winners play tomorrow at 7 for the league's NCAA bid.

Looking for something to do in Los Angeles? It's Princeton at No. 3 UCLA in women's basketball today at 5:30 Eastern time (and Princeton at the University of San Diego Sunday at 5 Eastern).

Looking for the full schedule? Look no further: HERE it is.

*

The 2023 football season ends at Penn tomorrow at 1. Neither the Tigers nor Quakers will win the Ivy League championship, but this figures to be a fun one. 

If the rest of the season is an indicator, it also figures to be a close one. At no point of this season, not for even one play, has a Princeton game had a larger margin than 14 points. 

*

The answers? 

Player 1 was Kyle Wente. Player 2 was Myles Stephens. Player 3 was Gabe Lewullis. There are countless others. 

Cross Country And Water Polo

TigerBlog starts today by wishing his cousin Janet a happy birthday. 

He starts with that because while she reads the blog every day, she is really not all that interested in anything to do with Princeton Athletics. That makes her loyalty even more impressive.

Rather than make her read the entire thing, he says "Happy Birthday" at the top so she can get on with her big day. She is still, by the way, two years older than TB, no matter how many years go by. 

And now that she has gone off to do other things, TB can tell you that the first NCAA cross country championship meet was held in 1938 and was hosted by Michigan State.

Who won? 

Hint - this school won again in 1940, tied in 1942 and hasn't won since. This school is not one of the 31 teams who will compete for the 2023 championship Saturday and finished eighth at its conference meet this year.

Michigan State won the 1939 championship, also at home. In fact, East Lansing was the host every year until 1965, when it was held at Kansas.

This year's event will be hosted by Virginia, at its picturesque Panorama Farms course. The women's race will begin at 10:20, followed by the men at 11:10, and both will be shown on ESPNU.

By the way, this is the second time that UVa will be the host. The other times was 1987.

Panorama Farms is actually in Earlysville, which is about 10 miles north of the UVA campus off a Route 29. It's also about six miles away from where the only Civil War fighting in Albemarle County occurred, and this was a minor, forgotten skirmish that resulted in no actual casualties and only some property damage. The Union General who commanded? George Custer.

And the first NCAA champion in cross country? That was Indiana.

On the men's side, Northern Arizona has won six of the last seven (BYU was the lone interrupter). On the women's side, North Carolina State has won the last two. Northern Arizona enters the weekend as the top-ranked team in the country for both men and women.

The Princeton men come in ranked 10th nationally. What is Princeton's best all-time finish? That would be an 11th place finish in 2012. 

Only eight times in Ivy history has a team finished in the top 10, and nobody has done so since Dartmouth finished ninth in 1989. That's 34 years ago.

Princeton comes into the meet having run away from the field to win the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional last Saturday at Lehigh. The Tigers had five of the top 12 finishers — Nicholas Bendtsen fourth, Jarrett Kirk sixth, Connor Nisbet eighth, Anthony Monte 11th and Daniel O'Brien 12th — for a total of 41 points, well ahead of second-place Villanova, who had 73.

The current rankings have Princeton 10th, Villanova 11th and Harvard 12th. Princeton edged out Harvard to win the Ivy League Heps championship last month on Harvard's home course.

It should be a fascinating race. If you're planning on going, HERE is information about parking and tickets. 

While the men's cross country team runs at Virginia, the men's water polo team will be swimming at Harvard. The Crimson will host the Northeast Water Polo Conference tournament this weekend, with seven teams on hand to chase the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

The first round will see fourth-seeded Iona take on fifth-seeded MIT in Friday's quarterfinals, with the winner to take on top-seeded Princeton, who has a bye to the semifinals. The other side of the bracket has second-seeded Harvard against seventh-seeded Connecticut College and third-seeded Brown against sixth-seeded Long Island University.

Princeton will play its semifinal match Saturday at noon, and the championship match will be Sunday at 1. 

Princeton, with a record of 25-5, is the No. 7 team in the country right now. The Tigers have had a great season, with three wins over Top 10 teams from California, a one-goal loss to No. 4 Pepperdine and a two-goal loss to No. 1 UCLA.

Princeton went 4-0 against Iona and MIT this season, with each game decided by at least five goals. Harvard and Princeton both went 9-1 in the league, splitting their games with each other. They are the heavy favorites to meet again Sunday.

The NWPC tournament games can be seen on ESPN+. The NCAA championships will be held at USC's Uytengsu Aquatics Center Dec. 1-3.

Tipping In Pittsburgh

When TigerBlog was talking yesterday about Caden Pierce and his 26-point, 15-rebound outing against Hofstra, he forgot to include this:

Bill Bradley had 17 games in his Princeton career with at least 26 and 15. Yes. Seventeen.

Pierce is also the first Princeton men's basketball player with back-to-back games of at least 15 rebounds since Bradley did so. Bradley had 15 or more rebounds in back-to-back games five times in his career, and on one of those occasions he did it three times.

Bradley does not, however, own the longest streak in program history of consecutive games with at least 15 rebounds. That would be Al Kaemmerlen in the 1961-62 season.

Pierce has 15 rebounds in both of Princeton's games this season. He had 16 in the NCAA second-round win over Missouri last March.

Pierce is currently third in Division I in rebounds per game. Ellie Mitchell of the women's team is fourth in Division I, with 14.0 per game. 

At some point this year, TigerBlog will sit down with them to talk about their philosophies on getting loose balls. In the meantime, he'll just marvel at how well they do it.

Pierce gets a chance to match Bradley's longest streak and get halfway to Kaemmerlen tonight, when Princeton is at Duquesne. The game tips at 7 and can be seen on ESPN+.

The winner of the game will take the lead in the all-time series, such as it is. Princeton and Duquesne have played four times previously, with each team's having won twice.

The most recent game was Princeton's 2020-21 season opener, a game the Tigers lost 94-67 after leading by five at the half. That game seems like a long time ago, though not nearly as long as the first between the teams, which came in the 1952 NCAA tournament opening round, a game Duquesne won as well (60-49).

That, by the way, was Princeton's first NCAA tournament game ever. 

The two Princeton wins came in the 1973 Holiday Festival in Madison Square Garden (72-62) and the 2010 College Basketball Invitational at Jadwin (65-51). The Holiday Festival win came one year before perhaps the most famous Duquesne player began his career, and that would be longtime Los Angeles Laker Norm Nixon.

In other words, no current Princeton player has ever played against the Dukes, and Mitch Henderson has neither coached against them nor played against them.

Duquesne comes into the game 3-0 on the young season, with wins over Cleveland State, the College of Charleston and Stony Brook. The College of Charleston, you may recall, went 31-4 a year ago and reached the NCAA tournament, and, as you probably don't recall, beat Iona in its opener this season. Duquesne won that game by 18 (90-72).

The Dukes followed that win by taking down Stony Brook 85-63. The score of the opener against Cleveland State was 79-77.

Princeton has been more than Pierce's rebounding, obviously. There's Matt Allocco, who like Pierce averages 17 points per game through two games but who is shooting .636 from the field and .400 from three-point range. Xaivian Lee has averaged 31.5 minutes in the first two games after averaging 13.4 a year ago. Blake Peters continues to make it look like he's going to make every three-pointer he attempts. 

Of course, it's only two games. There are weeks to go until the Ivy League season begins and months to go until the Ivy tournament at Columbia in March. Who knows what will happen by then? Who knows what directions the season will take? 

This is a time for interesting non-conference games, like the one tonight in Pittsburgh. It's also the time to do some experimenting with rotations, combinations, philosophies — all to be peaking at the right time, as Henderson's team did a year ago as it reached the Sweet 16.

It's fun to keep writing that every time TB talks about the men's basketball team. "The Tigers went to the Sweet 16 a year ago." 

Yes, that's a great sentence to be able to write. 

It's the Tigers and Dukes tonight in Pittsburgh.

Next up for Princeton after this game will be a shorter trip, to Monmouth for a game Saturday at 2.

Two Questions

 TigerBlog starts your Tuesday with two questions: 

1) When was the last time a Princeton men's basketball player had at least 26 points and 15 rebounds in a game before Caden Pierce put up those numbers Friday night in a 74-67 win at Hofstra? 

Pierce, not shockingly, was named the Ivy League Player of the Week. He is currently third in Division I in rebounding at 15.0 per game, and the 6-6 Pierce trails only a pair of 6-11 big men — North Carolina's Armando Bacot and Penn State's Qudus Wahab.

2) When was the last time the Ivy League had four teams win games in an NCAA tournament?

The answer to No. 2 is easy. Or at least recent. It was in 2022, when four teams won games in the opening round of the NCAA men's lacrosse tournament. You may remember Princeton was one of those four, and the Tigers ended up in the Final Four.

Why ask? This past weekend, the Ivy League had four teams compete in the NCAA women's soccer opening round — and all four won. That's an extraordinary statement on the quality of the sport in the league. 

Actually, the four wins might not be the most impressive part. The fact that all four played at home might be even more amazing.

It's been a little more than a week since the four teams — Princeton, Harvard, Brown and Columbia — played in the Ivy League tournament. TB can't even remember who won (Columbia, he thinks), because all four were guaranteed NCAA spots anyway. And to be among the 32 teams who played at home? 

Of those 32 teams, by the way, the record was 30-2, with home losses by only UCLA (to UC-Irvine) and Tennessee (over Xavier). The brackets were seeded 1-8; can you imagine a men's basketball tournament where 30 of the top 32 seeds reached the Round of 32? 

If TigerBlog may digress, UCLA women's soccer has now gone first round loss as a No. 1 seed, NCAA title, first round loss as a No. 1 seed in the last three tournaments. You'd take that for your team, right? Maybe Purdue men's basketball can do something like that this year. 

Back in the Ivy League, Princeton took down Michigan 1-0 Friday night on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium to get the Ivy party started. Harvard knocked off Maine and Brown knocked off Quinnipiac Saturday, and Columbia made it four for the league by beating Rutgers Sunday.

Princeton's goal came in the 80th minute, when Lexi Hiltunen pounced on a loose ball in the box and tucked inside the near post. If you saw the highlight, then you saw the great crowd reaction from the fans behind the goal. 

All four teams are on the road for the second (and possibly third) round this weekend, with Harvard-Michigan State at Stanford, Brown-Mississippi State at BYU, Columbia at Clemson and Princeton at Texas Tech.

If that last matchup sounds familiar, Princeton played in Lubbock in the 2018 NCAA tournament. For Princeton, the win over Michigan marked the fifth time in its last six NCAA trips that it has won at least one game; the lone exception was its first round game at Texas Tech.

The Princeton-Texas Tech game will be Friday at 7 Eastern, after the North Carolina-Alabama game starts the doubleheader. Those winners meet Sunday for a spot in the quarterfinals.

As for Question No. 1, TigerBlog is pretty sure the answer is Bob Roma, who had 29 points and 18 rebounds in a 67-65 loss at Seton Hall on Dec. 6, 1978. 

Roma almost won the game for the Tigers at the very end, as he was fouled going to the basket in the final seconds, only to see his shot roll out (there was no three-point shot yet). He then went to the foul line with one second remaining, making the first and missing the second intentionally before Seton Hall controlled it as the buzzer sounded.

Seton Hall's leading scorer that night was Dan Callandrillo, whose name should be familiar to basketball fans from that era. Callandrillo, who scored 21 against the Tigers that night, was one of the great scorers in Big East history, finishing his career with 1,985 points and winning Big East Player of the Year as a senior in 1981-82 after averaging 25.9 points per game, against without the three-point shot.

Oh, and the coaching matchup that night?

It was Pete Carril and Bill Raftery.