TigerBlog was digging out for about four hours yesterday, trying to figure out how it was possible to have two major blizzards come four days apart and leave Central New Jersey with about 40 inches of snow.
Seriously, TigerBlog kept thinking. How awful is this? So much snow. Nowhere to put it all. TB kept having to carry it further and further away from the driveway just to make any progress. And then there were the 10-pound chunks of ice that had to be carried, because they were too big for the shovel. And of course, TB did snap one plastic shovel in half.
On and on it went. It seemed like it would be endless. And the whole time, TB kept thinking about how much he hated what he was doing.
And then, after awhile, he got past that and went down a different path. He was outside, in the fresh air. Kids were running by with sleds. The snow itself was in many ways very still, very peaceful. And of course, summer isn't that far away.
Around the same time, TigerBlog thought of Lorin Maurer.
And then TB remembered something very important: Value the moment.
Today is the one-year anniversary of when Lorin Maurer was killed in the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407, along with 48 others on the plane and one on the ground. Lorin, for those who don't know, worked in athletic fundraising and development here at Princeton.
Since the crash, much has been learned about the actions of the pilots, as well as the aviation industry's rules and regulations regarding smaller carriers. It's easy now to point the finger at the co-pilot and especially the pilot, but keep in mind that they paid the same price as everyone else on the plane.
In the year that has followed, the families of those killed - especially Lorin's father Scott and boyfriend Kevin Kuwik - have been very active in trying to get the federal government to change the policies that allowed underpaid, questionably trained, overworked pilots to be at the control of that flight. Much more information can be found at the group's website: www.3407memorial.com.
Hopefully, the work of these people will result in changes that prevent a similar crash from happening again. Still, that's not what this anniversary is about.
No, today is about the people who were lost. They came from very different backgrounds, and they included a writer, a women's hockey player, a musician, a 9/11 widow and many others, including our friend Lorin.
She was 30 when she died, far too young of course. At the same time, she packed a lot into her 30 years: a college athlete, a scholar, a graduate degree, a career, plenty of friends, close family, world travel, concerts, parties, sporting events and in the year before her death love.
TigerBlog still has emails that Lorin sent him; TB has her cell phone number still on his list of contacts.
He remembers vividly her smile, her laugh, her face, her personality, how alive she was. He remembers how much everyone liked her, how easy it was to like her.
He remembers the shock of learning that she was gone, that feeling of disbelief. TB had been in a meeting with Lorin the day of her death, and she had walked past his office and flashed her usual silent smile on her way out of the building.
TigerBlog thought back to that face while he was shoveling the snow, and it was that face that gave the moment its perspective.
Lorin certainly didn't waste her moments, her opportunities. She would have found a reason to smile at the snow more than grimace at the shoveling.
There'll be a moment of silence in Lorin's memory at the men's basketball game against Columbia tonight. At the end, fans will be asked to rise and remember Lorin. Among those who do so will be people who graduated in the '60s, the '50s, the '40s even, people who were given more than twice as much time and in some cases three times as much time as Lorin Maurer.
And you don't know which group you're going to be in. Are you going to be an old-timer? Are you going to be taken too soon? Who can say? For that matter, who can say why, even?
So enjoy the moment. Every moment. Don't waste it.
If 20 inches of snow come your way, don't think of the effort to shovel it. Think instead of the beauty or the people around you or the coming of much warmer days.
Lorin Maurer would definitely have done so.
Yesterday, one day short of one year after she left this Earth, Lorin made TigerBlog do so as well.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Pinstripes In Hartford
As TigerBlog sits down to write this entry, Duke is finishing up a victory over North Carolina. Somewhere, TB’s good friend and former co-worker David Rosenfeld is putting his head through the wall.
It’s not that David likes North Carolina. He’s a Terrapin guy. But he hates Duke. Somewhat like TB hates shoveling snow right now, he hates the Dukies.
If you’ve been a regular follower of this blog, you know that the New York Yankees don’t get a whole lot of support from TB Headquarters. David doesn’t like the Yankees, either. If Coach K ever put on a Derek Jeter jersey, Gilman would be looking for a new public relations specialist.
But we are far from the only people with strong feelings towards Duke, or the Yankees, or the Los Angeles Lakers, or the New England Patriots, or Tiger Woods (the pre-Thanksgiving crash one, at least). When you are the reigning dynasty, or have been one for a long enough period, you elicit strong emotions from both sides of the fence. This TB’s father-in-law loves Duke, so its inevitable Sweet 16 loss is always a tough night for him.
Whichever side of the fence you are on about those teams isn’t the issue here. If you follow that sport, you are on one side of the fence or the other. If you love baseball, you may be neutral about the Kansas City Royals. You aren’t about the Yankees.
And none of them have won their last 220 games.
On Feb. 22, 1998, the Harvard men’s squash team won the Potter Cup national team championship. The Crimson defeated Trinity that day. One month later, Titanic won the Oscar for best motion picture.
Since then, you’ve seen Titanic 2,749,281 times on TNT. But you haven’t seen Trinity lose another men’s squash match.
Trinity, a small Division III school in Hartford, Conn., has won 11 straight national team championships in men’s squash, including one last year that came after a 6+ hour 5-4 victory over Princeton in a match TB will never forget. The Bantams have won 220 straight matches, two straight individual national titles and have defeated the next two ranked teams in the country this season by a combined 16-2 score.
David would hate Trinity.
If you want to know how Trinity reached this level of dominance, ESPN.com did a story on it after last season’s championship win (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=3927303). That isn’t the point of this entry. The question here is simple:
Is Trinity good for college squash?
On Saturday afternoon, Princeton will try to do what nobody has since the Bill Clinton administration and defeat the Bantams; to make it tougher, the Tigers will try to do it on their own home court. Princeton is the fourth-ranked team in the country. When fully healthy, though, the Tigers have the top-heavy talent and overall depth to match up with anybody.
Truth be told, they’ve had that for years. From Yasser El-Halaby to “The Amigos,” Princeton was the dominant team in Ivy League men’s squash for the last decade. But it never defeated Trinity, and sometimes, it wasn’t even close.
By dominating international recruiting for a long period of time, Trinity became unbeatable. Princeton has a freshman No. 1 this year named Todd Harrity, who comes from the Philadelphia area and could be the top-ranked player in the country as early as next season.
Harrity is Mr. Exception, not Mr. Rule.
Trinity’s top player is Baset Chaudhry, a prodigy from Pakistan who has the body of an All-Ivy linebacker. It was a Swedish player (Gustav Detter) who knocked off El-Halaby in a 2006 match that was Trinity’s closest near-loss experience since the turn of the century. It was an Indian player (Parth Sharma) who was two points from defeat in last year’s national final.
Trinity forced the rest of the squash community to span the globe for talent. Rochester, which is trying to mirror Trinity’s rise and is led by A.D. George VanderZwaag, a former Princeton assistant A.D., has a strong international corps atop a lineup that can compete with anybody. Yale and Princeton both have their fair share of international stars.
TB predicts that this will all lead to the most exciting team championship weekend we’ve seen in quite some time. Maybe the final won’t match last year’s drama — it’s a near impossible task — but for the first time in recent memory, both of the semifinal matches could be as exciting as the final. Team championship Saturdays have been mere formalities most of the time, especially on Trinity’s side of the draw. This year could be different, and fans of the sport are the biggest winners there.
That doesn’t happen without Trinity dominating the scene. Maybe there are 100 consecutive victories still to come. Maybe there isn’t one. Either way, having this one dominant power has raised an entire sport.
Whether David likes it or not.
It’s not that David likes North Carolina. He’s a Terrapin guy. But he hates Duke. Somewhat like TB hates shoveling snow right now, he hates the Dukies.
If you’ve been a regular follower of this blog, you know that the New York Yankees don’t get a whole lot of support from TB Headquarters. David doesn’t like the Yankees, either. If Coach K ever put on a Derek Jeter jersey, Gilman would be looking for a new public relations specialist.
But we are far from the only people with strong feelings towards Duke, or the Yankees, or the Los Angeles Lakers, or the New England Patriots, or Tiger Woods (the pre-Thanksgiving crash one, at least). When you are the reigning dynasty, or have been one for a long enough period, you elicit strong emotions from both sides of the fence. This TB’s father-in-law loves Duke, so its inevitable Sweet 16 loss is always a tough night for him.
Whichever side of the fence you are on about those teams isn’t the issue here. If you follow that sport, you are on one side of the fence or the other. If you love baseball, you may be neutral about the Kansas City Royals. You aren’t about the Yankees.
And none of them have won their last 220 games.
On Feb. 22, 1998, the Harvard men’s squash team won the Potter Cup national team championship. The Crimson defeated Trinity that day. One month later, Titanic won the Oscar for best motion picture.
Since then, you’ve seen Titanic 2,749,281 times on TNT. But you haven’t seen Trinity lose another men’s squash match.
Trinity, a small Division III school in Hartford, Conn., has won 11 straight national team championships in men’s squash, including one last year that came after a 6+ hour 5-4 victory over Princeton in a match TB will never forget. The Bantams have won 220 straight matches, two straight individual national titles and have defeated the next two ranked teams in the country this season by a combined 16-2 score.
David would hate Trinity.
If you want to know how Trinity reached this level of dominance, ESPN.com did a story on it after last season’s championship win (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=3927303). That isn’t the point of this entry. The question here is simple:
Is Trinity good for college squash?
On Saturday afternoon, Princeton will try to do what nobody has since the Bill Clinton administration and defeat the Bantams; to make it tougher, the Tigers will try to do it on their own home court. Princeton is the fourth-ranked team in the country. When fully healthy, though, the Tigers have the top-heavy talent and overall depth to match up with anybody.
Truth be told, they’ve had that for years. From Yasser El-Halaby to “The Amigos,” Princeton was the dominant team in Ivy League men’s squash for the last decade. But it never defeated Trinity, and sometimes, it wasn’t even close.
By dominating international recruiting for a long period of time, Trinity became unbeatable. Princeton has a freshman No. 1 this year named Todd Harrity, who comes from the Philadelphia area and could be the top-ranked player in the country as early as next season.
Harrity is Mr. Exception, not Mr. Rule.
Trinity’s top player is Baset Chaudhry, a prodigy from Pakistan who has the body of an All-Ivy linebacker. It was a Swedish player (Gustav Detter) who knocked off El-Halaby in a 2006 match that was Trinity’s closest near-loss experience since the turn of the century. It was an Indian player (Parth Sharma) who was two points from defeat in last year’s national final.
Trinity forced the rest of the squash community to span the globe for talent. Rochester, which is trying to mirror Trinity’s rise and is led by A.D. George VanderZwaag, a former Princeton assistant A.D., has a strong international corps atop a lineup that can compete with anybody. Yale and Princeton both have their fair share of international stars.
TB predicts that this will all lead to the most exciting team championship weekend we’ve seen in quite some time. Maybe the final won’t match last year’s drama — it’s a near impossible task — but for the first time in recent memory, both of the semifinal matches could be as exciting as the final. Team championship Saturdays have been mere formalities most of the time, especially on Trinity’s side of the draw. This year could be different, and fans of the sport are the biggest winners there.
That doesn’t happen without Trinity dominating the scene. Maybe there are 100 consecutive victories still to come. Maybe there isn’t one. Either way, having this one dominant power has raised an entire sport.
Whether David likes it or not.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
On The Job
TigerBlog's newspaper days on the college beat were spent covering five schools, with the following basic proportion: Princeton (60% of the time), Rider and Trenton State (15% of the time each), Rutgers (9%) and Mercer County Community College (1%).
Except for a very, very rare trip to an MCCC basketball game, most of TigerBlog's time on the West Windsor campus of the local junior college was spent covering men's soccer, where Charlie Inverso built the Vikings into a national juco power.
Inverso is one of the probably hundreds of coaches that TB wrote about on both the high school and college level. Still, he's always stood out to TB for any number of reasons.
First, he was always so thankful that his team was getting newspaper coverage. Second, his teams were ridiculously successful.
More than that, though, is his personality. Going to see Inverso, even once or twice a year, was like going to see a relative or long-lost friend. He would always greet TB with a huge smile and a laugh about something.
And then there is his ability to imitate people, which could be the greatest of anyone who's ever lived. Rich Little? Andrew Dice Clay? Eddie Murphy? They have nothing on Charlie Inverso.
TB remembers being at a Rider men's basketball event that included the top sports-talk duo of all time, Mike and Mad Dog, back at their absolute peak in the early '90s. The night at Rider (it wasn't a game; it might have been a Midnight Madness type of thing) included a Mad Dog sound-alike contest, and Inverso stunned the whole crowd and the two radio big shots with his imitation of a conversation that the two would have had about how Judas betrayed Jesus (TB's people don't have a great working knowledge of this situation, but there is a basic understanding of what happened). Inverso, as the Mad Dog, went on and on about how appalled he was by Judas, and finally interrupted himself as Mike and said: "hey, Judas was a bad guy; what do you want?"
Anyway, TB remembered all of those times when he read the news last week that Inverso had stepped down after 24 seasons at Mercer. His record with the Vikings was an incredible 434-46-14, with five national championships, nine championship game appearances and 13 final four appearances.
The AP story TB read about Inverso included this information:
"Sixteen of his former players went on to play professionally or in the World Cup. More than 150 went to four-year colleges, and more than 40 went on to coach high school, college or club programs."
The same AP story said he might end up on the staff of new Rutgers coach Dan Donigan, whose sister-in-law Nancy Donigan has been a longtime member of the Department of Athletics at Princeton. Also, the AP story referenced the time Inverso won an ESPN contest at the men's basketball Final Four for his impersonation of Dick Vitale.
Inverso's time at Mercer got TigerBlog to thinking about coaching tenures at Princeton and whose was the longest. Beyond that, how many coaches has Princeton had who lasted as long as Inverso? Keep in mind, being a coach in a competitive situation for a quarter-century or more is a staggering accomplishment.
Right off the bat, TB thought of Pete Carril, who was the head coach of the men's basketball team for 29 seasons. How many coaches could beat that?
Turns out, not many. And who had the longest time here? Well, with no disrespect meant, it was someone TB had never even heard of before.
Princeton has had five or six coaches who have coached a varsity team here for at least 30 years (depending on how you want to count), including two who are active (women's track/cross country coach Peter Farrell and men's swimming coach Rob Orr, both in their 31st seasons).
The questionable member of the 30-year club was Glenn Nelson, who retired last year from coaching men's and women's volleyball. Nelson spent 28 seasons as the head coach of the women's team and 30 as head coach of the men's team, but the men's team was a club team for the first half of that time. No matter what, though, he was here a long time.
The all-time leader in years coached was the men's fencing coach from 1947-82, during which time he put together a record of 258-133-1 with six Ivy League, two IFA and one NCAA title. And, until yesterday, TB had never heard of him. His name? Stan Sieja. TigerBlog, who considers himself a pretty good Princeton athletic historian, apologizes.
The other members of the 30-year club were Jimmy Reed and John Johnston, who coached the wrestling team on back-to-back stints, meaning that Princeton had two wrestling coaches in a 60-year stretch from 1934-1994. Combined, the two went 491-305-23.
Reed, apparently, is also the same Jimmy Reed who has the longest soccer tenure in Princeton history, with 29 seasons and a 136-95-29 record from 1938-66. Richard Vaughan had an similar resume to Reed; Vaughan coached the men's hockey team for 24 seasons and the lightweight football team for 22 (his record in lightweight football was actually better).
In all, Princeton has had 21 coaches equal Inverso's 24 years, including current coaches Bob Callahan (28 years with men's squash), Susan Teeter (26 years with women's swimming, a tenure longer than any other woman who has coached at Princeton) and Chris Sailer (24 years with women's lacrosse).
John Conroy (1946-71) and David Benjamin (1975-2000) weren't quite the Reed-Johnston dynasty in wrestling, but they came fairly close in men's tennis. Conroy, in addition to his tennis role, was also the men's squash coach for 29 years.
Before Teeter, the longest tenure by a woman as a Princeton head coach was 25 years, by former women's tennis coach Louise Gengler.
Princeton currently has 33 head coaches, a number that differs from the number of 38 varsity teams because of several factors, including having Luis Nicolao coach men's and women's water polo and Zoltan Dudas coach men's and women's fencing while Farrell and Samara coach indoor and outdoor track.
Of those 33 head coaches, three (Chris Bates in men's lacrosse, Marty Crotty in lightweight rowing, Bob Surace in football) have yet to coach a single game (or race) for the Tigers. Other coaches are in the infancy of their careers, while others are established veterans.
In all, 10 of the 33 Princeton head coaches have coached three years or fewer here, while 15 of the 33 have coached here for at least 10 years. Of that second group, eight have been here for at least 15 years.
There are eight current head coaches who have coached their program longer than any coach in school history: Farrell, Orr, Samara, Teeter, Sailer, Nicolao, Julie Shackford (15 years for women's soccer) and Lori Dauphiny (14 years for women's open crew).
Except for a very, very rare trip to an MCCC basketball game, most of TigerBlog's time on the West Windsor campus of the local junior college was spent covering men's soccer, where Charlie Inverso built the Vikings into a national juco power.
Inverso is one of the probably hundreds of coaches that TB wrote about on both the high school and college level. Still, he's always stood out to TB for any number of reasons.
First, he was always so thankful that his team was getting newspaper coverage. Second, his teams were ridiculously successful.
More than that, though, is his personality. Going to see Inverso, even once or twice a year, was like going to see a relative or long-lost friend. He would always greet TB with a huge smile and a laugh about something.
And then there is his ability to imitate people, which could be the greatest of anyone who's ever lived. Rich Little? Andrew Dice Clay? Eddie Murphy? They have nothing on Charlie Inverso.
TB remembers being at a Rider men's basketball event that included the top sports-talk duo of all time, Mike and Mad Dog, back at their absolute peak in the early '90s. The night at Rider (it wasn't a game; it might have been a Midnight Madness type of thing) included a Mad Dog sound-alike contest, and Inverso stunned the whole crowd and the two radio big shots with his imitation of a conversation that the two would have had about how Judas betrayed Jesus (TB's people don't have a great working knowledge of this situation, but there is a basic understanding of what happened). Inverso, as the Mad Dog, went on and on about how appalled he was by Judas, and finally interrupted himself as Mike and said: "hey, Judas was a bad guy; what do you want?"
Anyway, TB remembered all of those times when he read the news last week that Inverso had stepped down after 24 seasons at Mercer. His record with the Vikings was an incredible 434-46-14, with five national championships, nine championship game appearances and 13 final four appearances.
The AP story TB read about Inverso included this information:
"Sixteen of his former players went on to play professionally or in the World Cup. More than 150 went to four-year colleges, and more than 40 went on to coach high school, college or club programs."
The same AP story said he might end up on the staff of new Rutgers coach Dan Donigan, whose sister-in-law Nancy Donigan has been a longtime member of the Department of Athletics at Princeton. Also, the AP story referenced the time Inverso won an ESPN contest at the men's basketball Final Four for his impersonation of Dick Vitale.
Inverso's time at Mercer got TigerBlog to thinking about coaching tenures at Princeton and whose was the longest. Beyond that, how many coaches has Princeton had who lasted as long as Inverso? Keep in mind, being a coach in a competitive situation for a quarter-century or more is a staggering accomplishment.
Right off the bat, TB thought of Pete Carril, who was the head coach of the men's basketball team for 29 seasons. How many coaches could beat that?
Turns out, not many. And who had the longest time here? Well, with no disrespect meant, it was someone TB had never even heard of before.
Princeton has had five or six coaches who have coached a varsity team here for at least 30 years (depending on how you want to count), including two who are active (women's track/cross country coach Peter Farrell and men's swimming coach Rob Orr, both in their 31st seasons).
The questionable member of the 30-year club was Glenn Nelson, who retired last year from coaching men's and women's volleyball. Nelson spent 28 seasons as the head coach of the women's team and 30 as head coach of the men's team, but the men's team was a club team for the first half of that time. No matter what, though, he was here a long time.
The all-time leader in years coached was the men's fencing coach from 1947-82, during which time he put together a record of 258-133-1 with six Ivy League, two IFA and one NCAA title. And, until yesterday, TB had never heard of him. His name? Stan Sieja. TigerBlog, who considers himself a pretty good Princeton athletic historian, apologizes.
The other members of the 30-year club were Jimmy Reed and John Johnston, who coached the wrestling team on back-to-back stints, meaning that Princeton had two wrestling coaches in a 60-year stretch from 1934-1994. Combined, the two went 491-305-23.
Reed, apparently, is also the same Jimmy Reed who has the longest soccer tenure in Princeton history, with 29 seasons and a 136-95-29 record from 1938-66. Richard Vaughan had an similar resume to Reed; Vaughan coached the men's hockey team for 24 seasons and the lightweight football team for 22 (his record in lightweight football was actually better).
In all, Princeton has had 21 coaches equal Inverso's 24 years, including current coaches Bob Callahan (28 years with men's squash), Susan Teeter (26 years with women's swimming, a tenure longer than any other woman who has coached at Princeton) and Chris Sailer (24 years with women's lacrosse).
John Conroy (1946-71) and David Benjamin (1975-2000) weren't quite the Reed-Johnston dynasty in wrestling, but they came fairly close in men's tennis. Conroy, in addition to his tennis role, was also the men's squash coach for 29 years.
Before Teeter, the longest tenure by a woman as a Princeton head coach was 25 years, by former women's tennis coach Louise Gengler.
Princeton currently has 33 head coaches, a number that differs from the number of 38 varsity teams because of several factors, including having Luis Nicolao coach men's and women's water polo and Zoltan Dudas coach men's and women's fencing while Farrell and Samara coach indoor and outdoor track.
Of those 33 head coaches, three (Chris Bates in men's lacrosse, Marty Crotty in lightweight rowing, Bob Surace in football) have yet to coach a single game (or race) for the Tigers. Other coaches are in the infancy of their careers, while others are established veterans.
In all, 10 of the 33 Princeton head coaches have coached three years or fewer here, while 15 of the 33 have coached here for at least 10 years. Of that second group, eight have been here for at least 15 years.
There are eight current head coaches who have coached their program longer than any coach in school history: Farrell, Orr, Samara, Teeter, Sailer, Nicolao, Julie Shackford (15 years for women's soccer) and Lori Dauphiny (14 years for women's open crew).
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Spring Ahead
Snow? Again? Are you kidding? Didn't we all just finish digging out around here?
According to accuweather.com, the Princeton area could be in for 12-18 inches of snow beginning tonight. Another forecast says 10 inches. Either way, this comes on the heels of the 10 inches that fell over the weekend.
TigerBlog read another story that this coming storm could end up breaking the record for total snowfall for one winter in much of the Mid-Atlantic region.
Amazingly, this record could fall with basically only three snow events, plus two other times of minor accumulations. The average annual snowfall in the Trenton-Princeton area is 23.4 inches; the record is 76.9 from the winter of 1995-96.
This winter, before the first flake begins to fall later, the area has received, well, a lot of snow. TB hasn't exactly been able to find a site to give him the total for the winter, but it's clearly snowed a considerable amount, especially after last year saw almost no snow.
And on the days when it hasn't been snowing, it's certainly been cold. All in all, it's not TB's kind of winter.
Maybe last summer was a giveaway that we were in trouble. It rarely was oppressively hot and humid, and it rained more than normal. At least that's the way TB remembers it.
Either way, winter isn't quite ready to let go. As the one accuweather story said:
"Snowfall from the next storm Tuesday into Wednesday could make the 2009-2010 winter season the snowiest ever for many mid-Atlantic cities. If not, there is plenty of winter left to make that happen."
Well, not so fast there, winter. Spring, in some ways, is already here.
For starters, the college lacrosse season started last weekend. Yes, last weekend. The big game in Division I men was North Carolina's 11-5 win over Jacksonville in the Dolphins' first game ever. The Tar Heels, a legitimate national championship contender (Princeton is at Chapel Hill March 16), led only 5-3 at the half in front of nearly 5,000 in Florida.
There are seven more games in Division I men's lacrosse this coming weekend (in places like Connecticut, Columbus, Philadelphia and Annapolis, which was buried under nearly three feet of snow last weekend), and the following weekend sees even more teams get underway. The big game for that weekend is, unquestionably, the opening game for two-time defending NCAA champ Syracuse, who hosts Denver in Bill Tierney's debut with the Pioneers.
Northwestern, the defending women's champ (actually five-time defending champ), opened with an 18-6 win over UMass in San Diego last weekend.
Princeton's men and women both open on Feb. 27, with the women at Johns Hopkins and the men at home against Hofstra. That would be a little over two weeks away.
There was a time when basketball season didn't start until Dec. 1 and lacrosse didn't start until March 1, but those days are long gone. To be honest, TigerBlog sees the advantage in starting practice earlier but doesn't really see the need to extend the season into early February for lacrosse. It turns the schedule into a nearly four-month grind for a team that plays deep into the NCAA tournament, and that's when you want to be at your best, not showing wear-and-tear.
On the other hand, with the way the schedule works for teams in leagues, those early games are huge. Princeton, for instance, defeated Johns Hopkins and UMBC early last season, a pair of Top 10 wins that essentially wrapped up an NCAA tournament spot for the Tigers by the first week of March.
Lacrosse is hardly the only spring sport. Baseball and softball? Their openers are one week later, both on the road (baseball in North Carolina; softball in Maryland). Both teams will play in ACC country and in California before playing in the Northeast.
Tennis season has already started. Golf and rowing have a ways to go until they get underway, and track and field needs to finish up indoors before moving outdoors.
And, let's not forget that there are huge winter events still to come, including big games for men's and women's basketball this weekend alone.
Still, we're closing in on our second overlap season, this one involving the 29 teams who play in either the winter or the spring.
Yes, spring sports have started, even if spring isn't exactly on the immediate horizon. Hey, it's a little more than two weeks until the opening face-off for lacrosse at Princeton.
That should be of great comfort to TigerBlog as he's shoveling tomorrow.
According to accuweather.com, the Princeton area could be in for 12-18 inches of snow beginning tonight. Another forecast says 10 inches. Either way, this comes on the heels of the 10 inches that fell over the weekend.
TigerBlog read another story that this coming storm could end up breaking the record for total snowfall for one winter in much of the Mid-Atlantic region.
Amazingly, this record could fall with basically only three snow events, plus two other times of minor accumulations. The average annual snowfall in the Trenton-Princeton area is 23.4 inches; the record is 76.9 from the winter of 1995-96.
This winter, before the first flake begins to fall later, the area has received, well, a lot of snow. TB hasn't exactly been able to find a site to give him the total for the winter, but it's clearly snowed a considerable amount, especially after last year saw almost no snow.
And on the days when it hasn't been snowing, it's certainly been cold. All in all, it's not TB's kind of winter.
Maybe last summer was a giveaway that we were in trouble. It rarely was oppressively hot and humid, and it rained more than normal. At least that's the way TB remembers it.
Either way, winter isn't quite ready to let go. As the one accuweather story said:
"Snowfall from the next storm Tuesday into Wednesday could make the 2009-2010 winter season the snowiest ever for many mid-Atlantic cities. If not, there is plenty of winter left to make that happen."
Well, not so fast there, winter. Spring, in some ways, is already here.
For starters, the college lacrosse season started last weekend. Yes, last weekend. The big game in Division I men was North Carolina's 11-5 win over Jacksonville in the Dolphins' first game ever. The Tar Heels, a legitimate national championship contender (Princeton is at Chapel Hill March 16), led only 5-3 at the half in front of nearly 5,000 in Florida.
There are seven more games in Division I men's lacrosse this coming weekend (in places like Connecticut, Columbus, Philadelphia and Annapolis, which was buried under nearly three feet of snow last weekend), and the following weekend sees even more teams get underway. The big game for that weekend is, unquestionably, the opening game for two-time defending NCAA champ Syracuse, who hosts Denver in Bill Tierney's debut with the Pioneers.
Northwestern, the defending women's champ (actually five-time defending champ), opened with an 18-6 win over UMass in San Diego last weekend.
Princeton's men and women both open on Feb. 27, with the women at Johns Hopkins and the men at home against Hofstra. That would be a little over two weeks away.
There was a time when basketball season didn't start until Dec. 1 and lacrosse didn't start until March 1, but those days are long gone. To be honest, TigerBlog sees the advantage in starting practice earlier but doesn't really see the need to extend the season into early February for lacrosse. It turns the schedule into a nearly four-month grind for a team that plays deep into the NCAA tournament, and that's when you want to be at your best, not showing wear-and-tear.
On the other hand, with the way the schedule works for teams in leagues, those early games are huge. Princeton, for instance, defeated Johns Hopkins and UMBC early last season, a pair of Top 10 wins that essentially wrapped up an NCAA tournament spot for the Tigers by the first week of March.
Lacrosse is hardly the only spring sport. Baseball and softball? Their openers are one week later, both on the road (baseball in North Carolina; softball in Maryland). Both teams will play in ACC country and in California before playing in the Northeast.
Tennis season has already started. Golf and rowing have a ways to go until they get underway, and track and field needs to finish up indoors before moving outdoors.
And, let's not forget that there are huge winter events still to come, including big games for men's and women's basketball this weekend alone.
Still, we're closing in on our second overlap season, this one involving the 29 teams who play in either the winter or the spring.
Yes, spring sports have started, even if spring isn't exactly on the immediate horizon. Hey, it's a little more than two weeks until the opening face-off for lacrosse at Princeton.
That should be of great comfort to TigerBlog as he's shoveling tomorrow.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Riding Time
Back in junior high, TigerBlog spent one season on the wrestling team. At the time, TB was too small for basketball, checking in at around 5-1 and weighing a little under 90 pounds at the age of 13.
The junior high wrestling team had nobody to wrestle at 98 pounds, so the coach asked if anyone would be interested in trying out. TB was the only one who responded, so the spot was his.
The weight classes started in the 70-pound range back then, so TB wasn't the lightest on the team. When everyone else was desperately trying to make weight, TB was trying to gain a few pounds so he wasn't giving away nearly 10 pounds every time out. He'd weigh in wearing his full uniform and wrestling shoes and have no problem making weight.
TigerBlog had never wrestled before, and that combined with the weight disadvantage led to a perfect record - TB lost every single match he wrestled. It was probably somewhere in the range of 0-14.
After awhile, it became TB's goal not to get pinned, so that his effort would be more valuable than simply forfeiting at 98 pounds. TB became pretty good at keeping his shoulders off the mat and tying his opponent up, even scoring some reverses.
It also didn't help that wrestling at the Jersey Shore is big, big, big-time. One of the opponents who had no trouble pinning TB was a kid from Long Branch named Luke Skove, who went on to go 119-1-1 while winning three state high school championships. TB was proud to have actually made it into the second period against Skove.
As for our team, the junior high wrestling team that TB was on produced two New Jersey state high school individual champions. None of them would be TB, who gave up on the sport after his one season.
The experience left TigerBlog with some basic knowledge of the sport and a general interest in it. Through the years, TB has followed other sports much, more closer, but he's never forgotten that he does have some wrestling roots.
On top of that, you can't help but like Chris Ayres, the Princeton wrestling coach, who walked into a situation in 2006 that was not easy. For starters, Princeton wrestling had struggled considerably for years since the glory days under legendary coach John Johnston (as an aside, one of the nicer people TB has met at Princeton).
Wrestling at Princeton dates to 1905 and has produced 11 Ivy League championships (most recently in 1986), but it looked as though the program wasn't going to get a chance to make it to its 90th birthday, as it was on the verge of being discontinued in the early 1990s.
TigerBlog's last days in the newspaper business overlapped with the athletic director search that brought Gary Walters to Princeton in 1994. TB remembers the introductory press conference for Walters, at which he was peppered with questions about what he intended to do about the wrestling program.
Princeton wrestling, with a supportive alumni group, survived under Eric Pearson and Mike New, and now it is Ayres who is rebuilding the program. This would be easier in leagues other than the Ivy League, which routinely produces Top 20 team and has two of the premiere wrestling programs in the nation in Cornell and Penn.
Still, as tough as it is to compete in the league, the message is sent that Ivy League wrestling is legit. With that background, Ayres went about recruiting his first few classes, and the results are now being seen.
So on a weekend when the men's and women's basketball teams both swept their two games to stay unbeaten in the league, the men's hockey team knocked off No. 5 Cornell, the men's track and field team had a strong showing and the squash teams played for Ivy titles, it was the success of the wrestling team that really made TB smile.
Princeton entered the weekend without an Ivy League win since 2003 and with three Ivy wins since the 1992-93 season. The Tigers then went out and defeated Harvard Saturday morning and Brown Saturday afternoon to go to 2-0 on the season, joining Penn and Cornell as Ivy unbeatens. Princeton then defeated Sacred Heart yesterday, giving the Tigers four straight wins over Division I opponents for the first time since 1989.
The team that Ayres puts on the mat is heavy in freshmen and sophomores, and better days appear to be coming for Princeton wrestling. If any team deserves it, it's the wrestling team, which has gone longer than any other Princeton program without an Ivy title and has been through more than most of the other programs have gone through.
This weekend Princeton will host Columbia Saturday at 1 and then Cornell at 6. The Cornell match in Dillon Gym will be the same time as the men's basketball game between Princeton and Cornell, who came out of this weekend as the lone unbeatens in Ivy men's basketball as well.
The basketball game will draw a larger crowd and get much more attention than its wrestling counterpart. And, to be honest, the wrestling team is a prohibitive underdog to the Big Red.
Still, after years of being something of an afterthought, Princeton wrestling had its best day in a long, long time with its two wins on Saturday.
TB, more than 30 years later, remembers everything about his wrestling experience, right down to the smell of the mat itself. It's a different sport, one with a distinct and unique culture.
Chris Ayres is turning Princeton's into a winning culture.
The junior high wrestling team had nobody to wrestle at 98 pounds, so the coach asked if anyone would be interested in trying out. TB was the only one who responded, so the spot was his.
The weight classes started in the 70-pound range back then, so TB wasn't the lightest on the team. When everyone else was desperately trying to make weight, TB was trying to gain a few pounds so he wasn't giving away nearly 10 pounds every time out. He'd weigh in wearing his full uniform and wrestling shoes and have no problem making weight.
TigerBlog had never wrestled before, and that combined with the weight disadvantage led to a perfect record - TB lost every single match he wrestled. It was probably somewhere in the range of 0-14.
After awhile, it became TB's goal not to get pinned, so that his effort would be more valuable than simply forfeiting at 98 pounds. TB became pretty good at keeping his shoulders off the mat and tying his opponent up, even scoring some reverses.
It also didn't help that wrestling at the Jersey Shore is big, big, big-time. One of the opponents who had no trouble pinning TB was a kid from Long Branch named Luke Skove, who went on to go 119-1-1 while winning three state high school championships. TB was proud to have actually made it into the second period against Skove.
As for our team, the junior high wrestling team that TB was on produced two New Jersey state high school individual champions. None of them would be TB, who gave up on the sport after his one season.
The experience left TigerBlog with some basic knowledge of the sport and a general interest in it. Through the years, TB has followed other sports much, more closer, but he's never forgotten that he does have some wrestling roots.
On top of that, you can't help but like Chris Ayres, the Princeton wrestling coach, who walked into a situation in 2006 that was not easy. For starters, Princeton wrestling had struggled considerably for years since the glory days under legendary coach John Johnston (as an aside, one of the nicer people TB has met at Princeton).
Wrestling at Princeton dates to 1905 and has produced 11 Ivy League championships (most recently in 1986), but it looked as though the program wasn't going to get a chance to make it to its 90th birthday, as it was on the verge of being discontinued in the early 1990s.
TigerBlog's last days in the newspaper business overlapped with the athletic director search that brought Gary Walters to Princeton in 1994. TB remembers the introductory press conference for Walters, at which he was peppered with questions about what he intended to do about the wrestling program.
Princeton wrestling, with a supportive alumni group, survived under Eric Pearson and Mike New, and now it is Ayres who is rebuilding the program. This would be easier in leagues other than the Ivy League, which routinely produces Top 20 team and has two of the premiere wrestling programs in the nation in Cornell and Penn.
Still, as tough as it is to compete in the league, the message is sent that Ivy League wrestling is legit. With that background, Ayres went about recruiting his first few classes, and the results are now being seen.
So on a weekend when the men's and women's basketball teams both swept their two games to stay unbeaten in the league, the men's hockey team knocked off No. 5 Cornell, the men's track and field team had a strong showing and the squash teams played for Ivy titles, it was the success of the wrestling team that really made TB smile.
Princeton entered the weekend without an Ivy League win since 2003 and with three Ivy wins since the 1992-93 season. The Tigers then went out and defeated Harvard Saturday morning and Brown Saturday afternoon to go to 2-0 on the season, joining Penn and Cornell as Ivy unbeatens. Princeton then defeated Sacred Heart yesterday, giving the Tigers four straight wins over Division I opponents for the first time since 1989.
The team that Ayres puts on the mat is heavy in freshmen and sophomores, and better days appear to be coming for Princeton wrestling. If any team deserves it, it's the wrestling team, which has gone longer than any other Princeton program without an Ivy title and has been through more than most of the other programs have gone through.
This weekend Princeton will host Columbia Saturday at 1 and then Cornell at 6. The Cornell match in Dillon Gym will be the same time as the men's basketball game between Princeton and Cornell, who came out of this weekend as the lone unbeatens in Ivy men's basketball as well.
The basketball game will draw a larger crowd and get much more attention than its wrestling counterpart. And, to be honest, the wrestling team is a prohibitive underdog to the Big Red.
Still, after years of being something of an afterthought, Princeton wrestling had its best day in a long, long time with its two wins on Saturday.
TB, more than 30 years later, remembers everything about his wrestling experience, right down to the smell of the mat itself. It's a different sport, one with a distinct and unique culture.
Chris Ayres is turning Princeton's into a winning culture.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Colts 34, Saints 24
TigerBlog's three favorite Super Bowls have been the three that the Giants won.
He watched the first two at 336 Taylors Mills Road in Manalapan, in a room filled with people whose last name was Zucker. For the record, there haven't been too many people better to TB in his life than Dorothy and Arnold Zucker, both of whom passed away a few years ago.
Among their other great attributes was the ability to throw a tremendous Super Bowl party, though it didn't hurt that the Giants won both of those. The loss to the Ravens in the Giants' third Super Bowl doesn't sting as much now, knowing that two years ago the Giants pulled off one of the great upsets in sports history in one of the great games in sports history with the 17-14 win over the 18-0 Patriots.
TB does much better with what number each President was rather than what number each Super Bowl was. For instance, he knows off the top of his head that Princeton's own Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the Unites States, but he's not 100% sure which Super Bowl was XXVIII. Only after pausing to look it up did he find out that it was one where the Cowboys thumped the Bills. TB didn't remember this, but apparently Dallas and Buffalo played in consecutive Super Bowls (XXVII and XXVIII), with back-to-back blowout wins for the Cowboys.
TB can list all the Presidents in order, but he's not necessary sure he can list all the Super Bowls in order. Still, he's not without a pretty good knowledge of the big game.
The first one TB remembers watching was Super Bowl III, the one where the Jets and Joe Namath beat the heavily favored Colts. Since then, TB has seen at least some of each Super Bowl, with varying degrees of memories of the finishing touch on the Dolphins' 17-0 season, the Steel Curtain, Terry Bradshaw and Lynn Swann, the Purple People Eaters, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, the Bills and so on.
TB remembers attending a funeral on the day that Dan Marino played in his only Super Bowl (a loss to the 49ers); it was one of the coldest days of all time. He remembers how dull a few games in the ’70s were, especially when the Dolphins and Raiders beat the Vikings in back-to-back years. In one, a 24-7 Dolphins win in VIII, the Dolphins threw only six passes.
One of the best quotes TB has ever heard came from a malcontent, Dallas running back Duane Thomas, who basically said: "If it's the biggest game of all-time, why are they going to play another one next year?"
A famous Super Bowl media day moment - probably the most famous of all time - was the time that Jim Plunkett was asked to clarify what he had said about his parents: “Jimmy, Jimmy, I want to make sure I have this right. Was it dead mother, blind father or blind mother, dead father?” The person who asked that question is described here as a member of the Philadelphia press corps, but he was really from the Trenton Times.
As far as TigerBlog knows, there are only two Princeton alums who have been active players in a SuperBowl: Bob Holly, who was a backup quarterback with the Redskins in XVII (a win over the Dolphins) and XVIII (a loss to the Raiders), and Jason Garrett, who was a backup quarterback with the Cowboys for two Super Bowl wins and with the Giants for their loss to the Ravens.
As an aside, it was during that Raider win over the 'Skins that TB vividly remembers watching the commercial for the original Macintosh computer, the legendary "1984" commercial. TB uses his Mac every day.
Marc Ross, a wide receiver/punt returner for the Tigers in the early ’90s, won a ring with the Giants as a player personnel man two years ago. TB is sure there have been other front office types who have been on Super Bowl teams, and recent alum Blake Williams will be there Sunday as part of the Saints' coaching staff.
It used to be that the NCAA men's basketball tournament championship game would always be a great game and the Super Bowl would always be a blowout, but they seem to have reversed roles in recent years.
In the last decade, there were five Super Bowls that could be called "great," and the last two are probably the two best Super Bowls of all time.
Of the first XXXIII Super Bowls, only eight were decided by seven points or fewer. The last X had six decided by seven points or fewer.
The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament used to play down-to-the-wire classics pretty much every year.
In the decade of the 1980s, here were the winning margins in Super Bowls:
17, 5, 10, 29, 22, 36, 19, 32, 4, 45.
In the same decade, here were the winning basketball tournament margins:
5, 13, 1, 2, 9, 2, 3, 1, 4, 1.
Of those 10 basketball games, at least four and maybe a fifth are among the, oh, 25 greatest college basketball games ever played.
As for the upcoming Super Bowl, TigerBlog can see another close game, one with a lot of points, but it's probably asking too much for another classic. In that case, TB will go with Eli Manning's brother and the Colts, 34-24 (disclaimer - this is all in fun; TB does not condone gambling in any way).
So enjoy the game. And if this one isn't great, well, as Duane Thomas said, they'll play another next year.
He watched the first two at 336 Taylors Mills Road in Manalapan, in a room filled with people whose last name was Zucker. For the record, there haven't been too many people better to TB in his life than Dorothy and Arnold Zucker, both of whom passed away a few years ago.
Among their other great attributes was the ability to throw a tremendous Super Bowl party, though it didn't hurt that the Giants won both of those. The loss to the Ravens in the Giants' third Super Bowl doesn't sting as much now, knowing that two years ago the Giants pulled off one of the great upsets in sports history in one of the great games in sports history with the 17-14 win over the 18-0 Patriots.
TB does much better with what number each President was rather than what number each Super Bowl was. For instance, he knows off the top of his head that Princeton's own Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the Unites States, but he's not 100% sure which Super Bowl was XXVIII. Only after pausing to look it up did he find out that it was one where the Cowboys thumped the Bills. TB didn't remember this, but apparently Dallas and Buffalo played in consecutive Super Bowls (XXVII and XXVIII), with back-to-back blowout wins for the Cowboys.
TB can list all the Presidents in order, but he's not necessary sure he can list all the Super Bowls in order. Still, he's not without a pretty good knowledge of the big game.
The first one TB remembers watching was Super Bowl III, the one where the Jets and Joe Namath beat the heavily favored Colts. Since then, TB has seen at least some of each Super Bowl, with varying degrees of memories of the finishing touch on the Dolphins' 17-0 season, the Steel Curtain, Terry Bradshaw and Lynn Swann, the Purple People Eaters, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, the Bills and so on.
TB remembers attending a funeral on the day that Dan Marino played in his only Super Bowl (a loss to the 49ers); it was one of the coldest days of all time. He remembers how dull a few games in the ’70s were, especially when the Dolphins and Raiders beat the Vikings in back-to-back years. In one, a 24-7 Dolphins win in VIII, the Dolphins threw only six passes.
One of the best quotes TB has ever heard came from a malcontent, Dallas running back Duane Thomas, who basically said: "If it's the biggest game of all-time, why are they going to play another one next year?"
A famous Super Bowl media day moment - probably the most famous of all time - was the time that Jim Plunkett was asked to clarify what he had said about his parents: “Jimmy, Jimmy, I want to make sure I have this right. Was it dead mother, blind father or blind mother, dead father?” The person who asked that question is described here as a member of the Philadelphia press corps, but he was really from the Trenton Times.
As far as TigerBlog knows, there are only two Princeton alums who have been active players in a SuperBowl: Bob Holly, who was a backup quarterback with the Redskins in XVII (a win over the Dolphins) and XVIII (a loss to the Raiders), and Jason Garrett, who was a backup quarterback with the Cowboys for two Super Bowl wins and with the Giants for their loss to the Ravens.
As an aside, it was during that Raider win over the 'Skins that TB vividly remembers watching the commercial for the original Macintosh computer, the legendary "1984" commercial. TB uses his Mac every day.
Marc Ross, a wide receiver/punt returner for the Tigers in the early ’90s, won a ring with the Giants as a player personnel man two years ago. TB is sure there have been other front office types who have been on Super Bowl teams, and recent alum Blake Williams will be there Sunday as part of the Saints' coaching staff.
It used to be that the NCAA men's basketball tournament championship game would always be a great game and the Super Bowl would always be a blowout, but they seem to have reversed roles in recent years.
In the last decade, there were five Super Bowls that could be called "great," and the last two are probably the two best Super Bowls of all time.
Of the first XXXIII Super Bowls, only eight were decided by seven points or fewer. The last X had six decided by seven points or fewer.
The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament used to play down-to-the-wire classics pretty much every year.
In the decade of the 1980s, here were the winning margins in Super Bowls:
17, 5, 10, 29, 22, 36, 19, 32, 4, 45.
In the same decade, here were the winning basketball tournament margins:
5, 13, 1, 2, 9, 2, 3, 1, 4, 1.
Of those 10 basketball games, at least four and maybe a fifth are among the, oh, 25 greatest college basketball games ever played.
As for the upcoming Super Bowl, TigerBlog can see another close game, one with a lot of points, but it's probably asking too much for another classic. In that case, TB will go with Eli Manning's brother and the Colts, 34-24 (disclaimer - this is all in fun; TB does not condone gambling in any way).
So enjoy the game. And if this one isn't great, well, as Duane Thomas said, they'll play another next year.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
No Tournament Necessary
One of the best college basketball games TigerBlog has ever been to - actually, let's call it one of the best sporting events period - was the 1993 Northeast Conference tournament championship game between Rider and Wagner.
Ho hum, you say? No way. Rider defeated Wagner 65-64 on Darrick Suber's length-of-the-court drive to beat the final buzzer. Suber and Wagner's Bobby Hopson turned the night into their own personal game of one-on-one as both topped 30 points, and Suber's winning basket was probably the most replayed highlight of Championship Week, which was a fairly new concept back then.
That's the beauty of the one-bid conference championship game. Both teams are going to be playing all-out every second, and you never know when a classic is going to break out.
Still, for TB, that doesn't make it worth it. Not at all. Had Suber's shot rimmed out, Wagner would have gone to the NCAA tournament, which would have rendered the entire Northeast Conference regular-season meaningless.
TB was drawing a blank on what to offer today, and while procrastinating, he found himself checking to see something on Bradley's website, whose athletic director Mike Cross used to work here at HQ. After that, TB went to see how Bradley men's basketball was doing in the Missouri Valley Conference, which took him to an entire page of Division I men's basketball standings.
It was while scrolling through that page that TB had a reminder of what his least favorite part of college basketball is, everywhere except in the Ivy League, that is.
As it is now February, college basketball is in the heart of its conference season, much like mid-to-late October college football. Unlike the autumn, though, most of these games are essentially meaningless.
Bradley is currently 6-6 in the MVC (11-11) overall. Of the 12 league games, five have been decided by five points or less, while a sixth was decided in overtime. In other words, like most leagues, the MVC is highly competitive.
A bounce here and there and Bradley's regular-season might look much different. And yet what does it really matter? The whole season comes down to the MVC tournament.
Rider's current league, the MAAC, has a fairly dominant Siena team that is 12-0 in the league and 19-4 overall. Iona is in second place, three games back at 9-3. But an off-night for Siena in the MAAC tournament will be disasterous: The Saints are 45th in RPI (and dropping) with a strength of schedule of 148. They would clearly be a bubble team without the league's automatic bid and probably on the wrong side of the fence. Would that in any way be fair?
Coastal Carolina in the Big South, Morgan State in the MEAC, Butler in the Horizon, Northern Iowa in the MVC, Murray State in the Ohio Valley and Charleston in the Southern are all leading their leagues by at least two games. Of that group, Butler and Northern Iowa are Top 20 RPI schools, so they would appear to be safe. The others? They are spending all of January and February proving they are the class of the league, only to have nothing to show for it come March if they lose in the tournament, probably to a team they've already beaten twice.
There are really only two types of schools playing truly meaningful games in terms of getting into the NCAA tournament (seedings are obviously another story): mid-level teams in power conferences and Ivy League schools.
One team playing for its NCAA tournament life every night is Northwestern, which beat Michigan Tuesday night to give the Wildcats a sweep of the season series for the first time since 1966-67. Northwestern's RPI is currently 61, but there are nine winnable games left on the regular-season schedule.
Northwestern is one example, but the power conferences all have teams like that.
The Ivy League? Well, is it fairly obvious to everyone now that there will only be one bid for the league?
Cornell, now ranked 25th in the AP poll and with an RPI of 36, is the clear favorite, but there are two undefeated teams in the league, Cornell and Princeton. The Tigers play at Harvard Friday night and Dartmouth Saturday night before returning home to host Columbia and Cornell the following weekend.
The best part about Ivy League basketball is the way the lack of a postseason tournament impacts each regular season game. There's such a sense of urgency in Ivy League regular season basketball, and TB has experienced it first hand for 25 years. It's often refered to as "the 14-game tournament."
How many great games has Princeton played on Ivy League weekends that have shaped races? How many years did Princeton play with one eye on the Penn score from a different site, or vice versa?
The great drama of the regular season would be lost completely if there was an Ivy League tournament. And for what? To get one game on ESPN?
Rider-Wagner was on ESPN back in 1993, and it was a big deal. Now, every league has any number of games of television.
The real way for a lower league to get noticed is to have its champion win its NCAA tournament game. To do that, you need to send your best team.
If Cornell goes through the next five weekends and comes out champion on the other side (or Princeton or Harvard or anyone else), then that team will have earned its right to take the league's best shot in the NCAA tournament.
TigerBlog would have an issue if it was any other way in this league. In the meantime, enjoy the next five weekends. It's pretty much a slice of college football in college basketball season, one that isn't being duplicated anywhere else.
Ho hum, you say? No way. Rider defeated Wagner 65-64 on Darrick Suber's length-of-the-court drive to beat the final buzzer. Suber and Wagner's Bobby Hopson turned the night into their own personal game of one-on-one as both topped 30 points, and Suber's winning basket was probably the most replayed highlight of Championship Week, which was a fairly new concept back then.
That's the beauty of the one-bid conference championship game. Both teams are going to be playing all-out every second, and you never know when a classic is going to break out.
Still, for TB, that doesn't make it worth it. Not at all. Had Suber's shot rimmed out, Wagner would have gone to the NCAA tournament, which would have rendered the entire Northeast Conference regular-season meaningless.
TB was drawing a blank on what to offer today, and while procrastinating, he found himself checking to see something on Bradley's website, whose athletic director Mike Cross used to work here at HQ. After that, TB went to see how Bradley men's basketball was doing in the Missouri Valley Conference, which took him to an entire page of Division I men's basketball standings.
It was while scrolling through that page that TB had a reminder of what his least favorite part of college basketball is, everywhere except in the Ivy League, that is.
As it is now February, college basketball is in the heart of its conference season, much like mid-to-late October college football. Unlike the autumn, though, most of these games are essentially meaningless.
Bradley is currently 6-6 in the MVC (11-11) overall. Of the 12 league games, five have been decided by five points or less, while a sixth was decided in overtime. In other words, like most leagues, the MVC is highly competitive.
A bounce here and there and Bradley's regular-season might look much different. And yet what does it really matter? The whole season comes down to the MVC tournament.
Rider's current league, the MAAC, has a fairly dominant Siena team that is 12-0 in the league and 19-4 overall. Iona is in second place, three games back at 9-3. But an off-night for Siena in the MAAC tournament will be disasterous: The Saints are 45th in RPI (and dropping) with a strength of schedule of 148. They would clearly be a bubble team without the league's automatic bid and probably on the wrong side of the fence. Would that in any way be fair?
Coastal Carolina in the Big South, Morgan State in the MEAC, Butler in the Horizon, Northern Iowa in the MVC, Murray State in the Ohio Valley and Charleston in the Southern are all leading their leagues by at least two games. Of that group, Butler and Northern Iowa are Top 20 RPI schools, so they would appear to be safe. The others? They are spending all of January and February proving they are the class of the league, only to have nothing to show for it come March if they lose in the tournament, probably to a team they've already beaten twice.
There are really only two types of schools playing truly meaningful games in terms of getting into the NCAA tournament (seedings are obviously another story): mid-level teams in power conferences and Ivy League schools.
One team playing for its NCAA tournament life every night is Northwestern, which beat Michigan Tuesday night to give the Wildcats a sweep of the season series for the first time since 1966-67. Northwestern's RPI is currently 61, but there are nine winnable games left on the regular-season schedule.
Northwestern is one example, but the power conferences all have teams like that.
The Ivy League? Well, is it fairly obvious to everyone now that there will only be one bid for the league?
Cornell, now ranked 25th in the AP poll and with an RPI of 36, is the clear favorite, but there are two undefeated teams in the league, Cornell and Princeton. The Tigers play at Harvard Friday night and Dartmouth Saturday night before returning home to host Columbia and Cornell the following weekend.
The best part about Ivy League basketball is the way the lack of a postseason tournament impacts each regular season game. There's such a sense of urgency in Ivy League regular season basketball, and TB has experienced it first hand for 25 years. It's often refered to as "the 14-game tournament."
How many great games has Princeton played on Ivy League weekends that have shaped races? How many years did Princeton play with one eye on the Penn score from a different site, or vice versa?
The great drama of the regular season would be lost completely if there was an Ivy League tournament. And for what? To get one game on ESPN?
Rider-Wagner was on ESPN back in 1993, and it was a big deal. Now, every league has any number of games of television.
The real way for a lower league to get noticed is to have its champion win its NCAA tournament game. To do that, you need to send your best team.
If Cornell goes through the next five weekends and comes out champion on the other side (or Princeton or Harvard or anyone else), then that team will have earned its right to take the league's best shot in the NCAA tournament.
TigerBlog would have an issue if it was any other way in this league. In the meantime, enjoy the next five weekends. It's pretty much a slice of college football in college basketball season, one that isn't being duplicated anywhere else.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Women's Basketball: History, And Current Events
The first women's basketball game in Princeton history was played 38 years ago yesterday, Groundhog Day 1972. Princeton, for the record, lost to Centenary 42-28 to start a 3-4 season that included a win over Villanova and a loss to Trenton State College.
Three years later Princeton would win the first Ivy League women's basketball championship - and then win the next three as well. Back then, the title was not awarded as a result of regular-season round-robin but instead by an Ivy League tournament, which was actually held in midseason.
It was in 1979-80 that each team in the league played all of the other teams once each during the season, but the league champion was still the team that won the tournament (which moved to the end of the year). The 1982-83 season was the first that saw a double round-robin regular-season schedule to crown the league champion, though Columbia did not compete in women's basketball until the 1986-87 season.
Those four championships that Princeton won in those four early Ivy League tournaments eclipses the total that the program has won in the 31 seasons that have followed, when Princeton has won the championship in 1985, 1999 and most recently in 2006. The Tigers have never played in the NCAA tournament.
When Richard Barron left as Princeton head coach to become an assistant at Baylor (he's now at N.C. State), the all-time record for Princeton women's basketball was 442-442. TigerBlog, being a math genius, knows that that's somewhere around .500.
Right now, Princeton's all-time record stands at 478-481, three games under .500. Don't be fooled by that, though.
Courtney Banghart went 7-23 in her first season as Tiger head coach and 4-9 to start her second season. Since that 11-32 start, she is 25-7. That is the second-best 32-game stretch in school history and the best since the program went 27-5 overlapping the end of 1976-77 and then most of 1977-78.
Princeton's leading scorer is a freshman, Niveen Rasheed, who averages 15.5 points per game. There are four players averaging in double figures: a freshman (Rasheed), two sophomores (Lauren Edwards, Devona Allgood) and a junior (Addie Micir).
Princeton's 71.8 points per game leads the Ivy League in scoring offense; the 52.5 points per game allowed lead in scoring defense.
Princeton ranks in the top 10 (of 332 teams) in Division in four team statistical categories: scoring defense (sixth), field goal percentage defense (sixth), won-loss percentage (eighth) and scoring margin (ninth).
The Tigers also received four votes in the AP poll this past week, which would leave them ranked 32nd if the rankings extended that far. Princeton is ranked fifth in ESPN's mid-major poll.
Last weekend was the annual Pink Zone event, which is a national initiative of the women's basketball coaches to raise awareness for the fight against breast cancer. The result was a crowd of 1,304 for Saturday night's game against Yale, which Princeton won 69-42 to run its record to 15-2 overall, 3-0 in the Ivy League (all three league wins have been by at least 21 points).
TigerBlog understands that the Pink Zone event helped drive attendance, but the 2010 event drew 500 more people than the one a year ago. Can this all be attributable to the event, which features free admission for those dressed in pink, as well as free pink cookies and cupcakes with pink icing?
Or does it have to do with an awareness of what the women's basketball team is starting to put together?
Perhaps this weekend will shed some light, as the two most accomplished programs in Ivy League women's basketball history come to Jadwin Gym. Harvard and Dartmouth haven't dominated Ivy women's basketball like Princeton and Penn have on the men's side, but it is close. As for Dartmouth, Banghart was a big part of the Green's recent dominance, as both a player and then assistant coach.
The Tigers host Harvard Friday night and Dartmouth Saturday night. Princeton is alone in first place right now at 3-0, while Harvard and Dartmouth have one loss each (as does Columbia, who lost to Harvard and beat Dartmouth last weekend).
In fact, Princeton's next three games are against the three teams with one loss each, as the Tigers are at Columbia Friday, Feb. 12. By the time those three games are played, the Ivy League race could have any number of different looks to it.
Should these four teams be playing down to the wire, well, then the end could be wild, as Princeton hosts Columbia on Feb. 27 before making the Dartmouth/Harvard trip and then finishing with Penn on March 9, the same night Dartmouth is at Harvard.
The prize for the winner, of course, is a spot in the NCAA tournament, something that Princeton has never experienced.
The current women's basketball bracketology (TB is fascinated by the concept and how it's taken off) on ESPN has Princeton as a 13 seed, playing No. 4 seed Florida State in Tallahassee on March 20.
Yes, there's a long way to go between now and then, and the race could look completely different come Sunday morning.
Still, there's a lot more going on at women's basketball games these days than just pink icing.
Three years later Princeton would win the first Ivy League women's basketball championship - and then win the next three as well. Back then, the title was not awarded as a result of regular-season round-robin but instead by an Ivy League tournament, which was actually held in midseason.
It was in 1979-80 that each team in the league played all of the other teams once each during the season, but the league champion was still the team that won the tournament (which moved to the end of the year). The 1982-83 season was the first that saw a double round-robin regular-season schedule to crown the league champion, though Columbia did not compete in women's basketball until the 1986-87 season.
Those four championships that Princeton won in those four early Ivy League tournaments eclipses the total that the program has won in the 31 seasons that have followed, when Princeton has won the championship in 1985, 1999 and most recently in 2006. The Tigers have never played in the NCAA tournament.
When Richard Barron left as Princeton head coach to become an assistant at Baylor (he's now at N.C. State), the all-time record for Princeton women's basketball was 442-442. TigerBlog, being a math genius, knows that that's somewhere around .500.
Right now, Princeton's all-time record stands at 478-481, three games under .500. Don't be fooled by that, though.
Courtney Banghart went 7-23 in her first season as Tiger head coach and 4-9 to start her second season. Since that 11-32 start, she is 25-7. That is the second-best 32-game stretch in school history and the best since the program went 27-5 overlapping the end of 1976-77 and then most of 1977-78.
Princeton's leading scorer is a freshman, Niveen Rasheed, who averages 15.5 points per game. There are four players averaging in double figures: a freshman (Rasheed), two sophomores (Lauren Edwards, Devona Allgood) and a junior (Addie Micir).
Princeton's 71.8 points per game leads the Ivy League in scoring offense; the 52.5 points per game allowed lead in scoring defense.
Princeton ranks in the top 10 (of 332 teams) in Division in four team statistical categories: scoring defense (sixth), field goal percentage defense (sixth), won-loss percentage (eighth) and scoring margin (ninth).
The Tigers also received four votes in the AP poll this past week, which would leave them ranked 32nd if the rankings extended that far. Princeton is ranked fifth in ESPN's mid-major poll.
Last weekend was the annual Pink Zone event, which is a national initiative of the women's basketball coaches to raise awareness for the fight against breast cancer. The result was a crowd of 1,304 for Saturday night's game against Yale, which Princeton won 69-42 to run its record to 15-2 overall, 3-0 in the Ivy League (all three league wins have been by at least 21 points).
TigerBlog understands that the Pink Zone event helped drive attendance, but the 2010 event drew 500 more people than the one a year ago. Can this all be attributable to the event, which features free admission for those dressed in pink, as well as free pink cookies and cupcakes with pink icing?
Or does it have to do with an awareness of what the women's basketball team is starting to put together?
Perhaps this weekend will shed some light, as the two most accomplished programs in Ivy League women's basketball history come to Jadwin Gym. Harvard and Dartmouth haven't dominated Ivy women's basketball like Princeton and Penn have on the men's side, but it is close. As for Dartmouth, Banghart was a big part of the Green's recent dominance, as both a player and then assistant coach.
The Tigers host Harvard Friday night and Dartmouth Saturday night. Princeton is alone in first place right now at 3-0, while Harvard and Dartmouth have one loss each (as does Columbia, who lost to Harvard and beat Dartmouth last weekend).
In fact, Princeton's next three games are against the three teams with one loss each, as the Tigers are at Columbia Friday, Feb. 12. By the time those three games are played, the Ivy League race could have any number of different looks to it.
Should these four teams be playing down to the wire, well, then the end could be wild, as Princeton hosts Columbia on Feb. 27 before making the Dartmouth/Harvard trip and then finishing with Penn on March 9, the same night Dartmouth is at Harvard.
The prize for the winner, of course, is a spot in the NCAA tournament, something that Princeton has never experienced.
The current women's basketball bracketology (TB is fascinated by the concept and how it's taken off) on ESPN has Princeton as a 13 seed, playing No. 4 seed Florida State in Tallahassee on March 20.
Yes, there's a long way to go between now and then, and the race could look completely different come Sunday morning.
Still, there's a lot more going on at women's basketball games these days than just pink icing.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
To The Groundhog
TigerBlog understands that not every movie made is trying to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In that vein, he's never understood the complete disdain so many people have for the movie "Groundhog Day."
TB saw it in the movies when it came out in 1993, and he's seen it about a thousand times since. It's a perfectly harmless, funny, at times charming, certainly inoffensive movie, and yet there are so many people who flat out hate it.
As an aside, TigerBlog was always confused as a kid by Groundhog Day, as six weeks after Feb. 2 takes you to March 16 (or March 15 in a leap year), which is still winter. He never quite understood the whole "six more weeks of winter" thing. Shouldn't it be more like 10 more weeks of winter if the point is that figuratively speaking spring will be late to arrive?
So what was the point?
Oh yeah.
Nah.
Don't say it.
Leave it alone.
Just leave it alone.
Don't say it.
Too late:
TIGERBLOG CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE.
For starters, let TB say that he's happy for the Cornell men's basketball program, which moved into the Top 25 yesterday after its convincing 36-point win over Harvard Saturday night left the Big Red at 18-3 overall, 4-0 in the Ivy League.
What Cornell is doing this year is great for the Ivy League. On top of that, TB has never had a bad dealing with anyone associated with Cornell men's basketball, and the current group of players and coaches for the Big Red have always come across as classy players who are great representatives of their school and the league.
Having said that, TigerBlog could not believe the onslaught of stories last week that sort of ignored, oh, 50 years of Ivy League basketball history.
You couldn't go anywhere in the world of sports media late last week without stumbling upon the anticipation of the Cornell-Harvard game (TB saw it coming a mile away on PTI), which was fine with TB, who understood that here were two teams with strong records.
The problems that TB had were this: 1) the certainty that there as no doubt that Cornell and Harvard were the class of the league, before Princeton (who finished second last year) had played a minute in the conference and 2) that the Ivy League had never seen anything like this before.
The Wall Street Journal article proclaimed:
"For the first time—arguably ever—the Ivy League has two legitimate NCAA Tournament-caliber teams." Uh, no.
The Sports Illustrated piece shouted:
"So it is that when Harvard visits two-time defending Ivy champ Cornell this Saturday, it will be the most anticipated conference game in decades.' Uh, no.
For starters, before 1975, conferences were not permitted more than one bid. There were all kinds of years in the 1950s and 1960s and into the early ’70s when the Ivy League had two teams deserving of bids.
Take 1969, for instance. Princeton went 14-0 in the league and reached the NCAA tournament for the first time under Pete Carril. That same year, Columbia, with the great Jim McMillian, went 20-4 and reached No. 14 in the AP poll. With a 65-team field, Columbia would have been a lock.
Take 1959, for instance. Dartmouth (with Rudy LaRusso) and Princeton (coached by Cappy Cappon) both went 13-1 in the league, but Dartmouth defeated Princeton 69-68 in a playoff. Princeton was 19-5, with two losses to Dartmouth and one each to Lafayette, Ohio State and Michigan. Princeton, a Top 20 team, would have been in a 65-team tournament.
Take 1972, for instance. Penn went 25-3 under Hall-of-Fame coach Chuck Daly and won the Ivy League, rising to No. 2 nationally in the rankings. Princeton went 20-7, was a two-point early-season loss at Dartmouth away from tying Penn for the league title and ranked 14th in the AP poll. Again, in a 65-team field, Princeton was in.
Take 1999, for instance. Princeton had non-league wins over Texas, Florida State, UNC Charlotte and UAB, as well as one over Ivy champ Penn. Princeton was clearly a bubble team before not getting into the field; the result was a trip three rounds deep into the NIT.
Those are just a few examples of times when the Ivy League has had two legitimate NCAA contenders. Yes, in recent years, that hasn't been the case, and yes, Cornell and Harvard have reasonable non-league portfolios. Still, as the season goes along, both teams will see their RPIs start to fall by virtue of playing the other league schools, which includes three teams with RPIs greater than 300 and a fourth at 274.
And then there's the idea that this was the most anticipated conference game in decades. Yes, there was a lot of anticipation for this game, but that's because it didn't involve a team named Princeton against a team named Penn.
Princeton and Penn played games of this value with this anticipation twice a year pretty much every year since Ivy League basketball began. For those who don't remember:
* Princeton and Penn represented the Ivy League in every NCAA tournament from 1963 through 2007 except for three years (1968, 1986, 1988)
* Both Princeton and Penn have reached the NCAA Final Four
* The Ivy League's breakdown of NCAA tournament appearances by team goes this way:
1. Princeton/Penn 23 each
3. Dartmouth 7 (most recent in 1959)
4. Cornell 4 (won the last two)
5. Yale/Columbia 3 (Yale's last was 1962; Columbia's last was 1968)
7. Brown 2 (last in 1986)
8. Harvard 1 (1946)
In other words, Cornell or Harvard could win each of the next 15 Ivy League titles and still not approach the historical legacy of Princeton and Penn.
Now, you could make the point that nobody cares about the past and that the big question is the future. True, but TB likes where Princeton is right now, and with Cornell and Harvard both facing huge graduation losses, the league should actually be pretty wide open next year.
As for Penn, somehow TigerBlog thinks the Quakers will be back.
Ivy League men's basketball has been through the years somewhat like the movie "Groundhog Day." Year after year, it was Sonny and Cher (or Princeton and Penn) who sang "I Got You Babe." Then, after it seemed that it would always be like that, one day it was a different morning show on the radio, one that in this case involved Cornell and Harvard.
And hey, Cornell's big win Saturday night vaulted the Red into the Top 25, which is great for them.
It just doesn't change the historical record.
TB saw it in the movies when it came out in 1993, and he's seen it about a thousand times since. It's a perfectly harmless, funny, at times charming, certainly inoffensive movie, and yet there are so many people who flat out hate it.
As an aside, TigerBlog was always confused as a kid by Groundhog Day, as six weeks after Feb. 2 takes you to March 16 (or March 15 in a leap year), which is still winter. He never quite understood the whole "six more weeks of winter" thing. Shouldn't it be more like 10 more weeks of winter if the point is that figuratively speaking spring will be late to arrive?
So what was the point?
Oh yeah.
Nah.
Don't say it.
Leave it alone.
Just leave it alone.
Don't say it.
Too late:
TIGERBLOG CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE.
For starters, let TB say that he's happy for the Cornell men's basketball program, which moved into the Top 25 yesterday after its convincing 36-point win over Harvard Saturday night left the Big Red at 18-3 overall, 4-0 in the Ivy League.
What Cornell is doing this year is great for the Ivy League. On top of that, TB has never had a bad dealing with anyone associated with Cornell men's basketball, and the current group of players and coaches for the Big Red have always come across as classy players who are great representatives of their school and the league.
Having said that, TigerBlog could not believe the onslaught of stories last week that sort of ignored, oh, 50 years of Ivy League basketball history.
You couldn't go anywhere in the world of sports media late last week without stumbling upon the anticipation of the Cornell-Harvard game (TB saw it coming a mile away on PTI), which was fine with TB, who understood that here were two teams with strong records.
The problems that TB had were this: 1) the certainty that there as no doubt that Cornell and Harvard were the class of the league, before Princeton (who finished second last year) had played a minute in the conference and 2) that the Ivy League had never seen anything like this before.
The Wall Street Journal article proclaimed:
"For the first time—arguably ever—the Ivy League has two legitimate NCAA Tournament-caliber teams." Uh, no.
The Sports Illustrated piece shouted:
"So it is that when Harvard visits two-time defending Ivy champ Cornell this Saturday, it will be the most anticipated conference game in decades.' Uh, no.
For starters, before 1975, conferences were not permitted more than one bid. There were all kinds of years in the 1950s and 1960s and into the early ’70s when the Ivy League had two teams deserving of bids.
Take 1969, for instance. Princeton went 14-0 in the league and reached the NCAA tournament for the first time under Pete Carril. That same year, Columbia, with the great Jim McMillian, went 20-4 and reached No. 14 in the AP poll. With a 65-team field, Columbia would have been a lock.
Take 1959, for instance. Dartmouth (with Rudy LaRusso) and Princeton (coached by Cappy Cappon) both went 13-1 in the league, but Dartmouth defeated Princeton 69-68 in a playoff. Princeton was 19-5, with two losses to Dartmouth and one each to Lafayette, Ohio State and Michigan. Princeton, a Top 20 team, would have been in a 65-team tournament.
Take 1972, for instance. Penn went 25-3 under Hall-of-Fame coach Chuck Daly and won the Ivy League, rising to No. 2 nationally in the rankings. Princeton went 20-7, was a two-point early-season loss at Dartmouth away from tying Penn for the league title and ranked 14th in the AP poll. Again, in a 65-team field, Princeton was in.
Take 1999, for instance. Princeton had non-league wins over Texas, Florida State, UNC Charlotte and UAB, as well as one over Ivy champ Penn. Princeton was clearly a bubble team before not getting into the field; the result was a trip three rounds deep into the NIT.
Those are just a few examples of times when the Ivy League has had two legitimate NCAA contenders. Yes, in recent years, that hasn't been the case, and yes, Cornell and Harvard have reasonable non-league portfolios. Still, as the season goes along, both teams will see their RPIs start to fall by virtue of playing the other league schools, which includes three teams with RPIs greater than 300 and a fourth at 274.
And then there's the idea that this was the most anticipated conference game in decades. Yes, there was a lot of anticipation for this game, but that's because it didn't involve a team named Princeton against a team named Penn.
Princeton and Penn played games of this value with this anticipation twice a year pretty much every year since Ivy League basketball began. For those who don't remember:
* Princeton and Penn represented the Ivy League in every NCAA tournament from 1963 through 2007 except for three years (1968, 1986, 1988)
* Both Princeton and Penn have reached the NCAA Final Four
* The Ivy League's breakdown of NCAA tournament appearances by team goes this way:
1. Princeton/Penn 23 each
3. Dartmouth 7 (most recent in 1959)
4. Cornell 4 (won the last two)
5. Yale/Columbia 3 (Yale's last was 1962; Columbia's last was 1968)
7. Brown 2 (last in 1986)
8. Harvard 1 (1946)
In other words, Cornell or Harvard could win each of the next 15 Ivy League titles and still not approach the historical legacy of Princeton and Penn.
Now, you could make the point that nobody cares about the past and that the big question is the future. True, but TB likes where Princeton is right now, and with Cornell and Harvard both facing huge graduation losses, the league should actually be pretty wide open next year.
As for Penn, somehow TigerBlog thinks the Quakers will be back.
Ivy League men's basketball has been through the years somewhat like the movie "Groundhog Day." Year after year, it was Sonny and Cher (or Princeton and Penn) who sang "I Got You Babe." Then, after it seemed that it would always be like that, one day it was a different morning show on the radio, one that in this case involved Cornell and Harvard.
And hey, Cornell's big win Saturday night vaulted the Red into the Top 25, which is great for them.
It just doesn't change the historical record.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Fun With Clark, The Hoyas, The President - And Rob Rizick
When the news that J.D. Salinger had passed away reached TigerBlog at the end of last week, TB's first thought was "hadn't he been dead for years?" No, it turned out; Salinger lived his later life as a recluse before his death at age 91.
Salinger, of course, wrote "The Catcher In The Rye," which is up there with "The Great Gatsby" and "A Prayer For Owen Meany" as the best novels that TB has ever read.
TB remembers vividly the day more than 30 years ago in Mr. Ridley's English class when TB first read "The Catcher In The Rye." As in most English classes, this one saw a portion of the book assigned as homework, with discussion the following day. This discussion often included reading passages in the class.
There is one part of the book where our protagonist, Holden Caufield, is just starting to feel good about life when he walks outside the museum and sees a profanity (the big one) scribbled on the side of the building. For Holden, this led back to total disillusionment. It's one of the most important passages in the book.
When Mr. Ridley called on Rob Rizick to read this part, he told him to read the obsenity as "the profanity." TB remembers thinking that Mr. Ridley meant to read it as it was written and not censor it, but what he actually meant was to substitute the actual profanity with the words "the profanity." Unfortunately for ol' Rob Rizick, he thought the same as TB; the rest is Manalapan High history.
TB has been known to curse, a trait he learned from MotherBlog, whose theory was there are way worse things than cursing, as long as you aren't offending anyone by shouting it at, say, the refs at a game. Princeton Athletics has long been vigilant about cursing by fans at athletic events, especially by students, because 1) there are a great deal of families with kids at the games and 2) because it's simply not right.
That's why TB was heartened to read in a recap of the Georgetown-Duke game that one student who was cursing was reprimanded by a fellow student, who reminded him: "Dude, the President of the United States is here."
TigerBlog's pecking order in non-Ivy League men's Division I basketball goes something like:
1. Georgetown
2. Northwestern
3. everyone else with a Princeton connection
4. Rider
5. everyone else
343. Duke
So it was great fun Saturday afternoon to see the Georgetown-Duke game turn into a runaway on the part of the Hoyas, who couldn't possibly have asked for more out of a basketball game played in January.
For starters, the Hoyas ran the Blue Devils out of the Verizon Center with an offense run to perfection - or at least 71.2% perfection, which was the highest single-game team shooting percentage in Division I this season.
And then there was the part where the President of the United States was at the game, sitting in the front row next to the Vice President and surrounded by several advisers. Early in the second half, President Obama joined the CBS on-air crew of Verne Lundquist (TB has met him several times, and it doesn't get too much more gentlemanly than Verne Lundquist) and Clark Kellogg (who is one of TB's favorites).
As an aside, and this is not meant as political commentary from the moderate TigerBlog, but if Mr. Obama's poll numbers go up this week, it'll be because of his appearance at the basketball game. He came across as just another guy who has a tough job and a family who was relaxing at a basketball game on a Saturday, as opposed to a politician trying to seem like a man of the people. When he left the building with a few minutes remaining, he stopped a shook Georgetown coach John Thompson's kids' hands and then gave a kiss on the cheek to Monica Thompson, the wife of the coach. He might as well have been saying: "tell John I'll talk to him later" as he left a family gathering or something.
During his time on CBS, Mr. Obama and Kellogg talked about a game that the President's brother-in-law, two-time Ivy League Player of the Year Craig Robinson, had played for Princeton against Kellogg's Ohio State team.
TB wasn't really familiar with the game, and from listening to Kellogg and Mr. Obama, it sounded like Kellogg and Robinson (now the Oregon State coach) had both had huge games but that Kellogg was just too much for the Tigers.
TB checked the box score first thing this morning and found that it wasn't exactly what happened. The game was from Dec. 19, 1981, and it was a 59-55 OSU win at Madison Square Garden. Princeton led by eight at the half before Ohio State built as much as an eight-point lead of its own in the second half. The Buckeyes that year had three players who would go to the NBA: Kellogg, Granville Waiters and Tony Campbell.
Neither Kellogg nor Robinson led his team in scoring; actually, both would have the game points (nine) and rebounds (12). Ohio State was led by Campbell, who had 18, and Waiters with 13. Princeton was led by Gordon Enderle's 22 points; no other player was in double figures.
Princeton's starting five that game? Enderle, Robinson, Neil Christel, Gary Knatt and Bill Ryan. Rich Simkus had eight points off the bench, while Jeff Pagano and Kevin Mullin came off the bench but did not score.
TigerBlog can't help but think that if the three-point shot was in existence back then, Princeton might have won. The three-point shot didn't come to college basketball until 1986; Thompson was a junior that year and a high school freshman at Gonzaga Prep in D.C. when that Princeton-Ohio State game was played.
To top everything else off about the Georgetown win over Duke, it was the 200th of Thompson's coaching career.
So that means that it was 189 wins ago that Princeton beat Penn at the Palestra in Thompson's first year as Princeton head coach, back in the dream season of 2000-01, when an unheralded Tiger team won the Ivy League title.
After that game, in the crowded media room at the Palestra, Justin Feil of the Princeton Packet asked Thompson where that win ranked.
Thompson replied quickly: "Well, I only have 11 of them, so this one definitely ranks in the Top 10."
TB reminded Thompson of that after the win over Duke Saturday.
"That was a pretty good line," Thompson said.
Salinger, of course, wrote "The Catcher In The Rye," which is up there with "The Great Gatsby" and "A Prayer For Owen Meany" as the best novels that TB has ever read.
TB remembers vividly the day more than 30 years ago in Mr. Ridley's English class when TB first read "The Catcher In The Rye." As in most English classes, this one saw a portion of the book assigned as homework, with discussion the following day. This discussion often included reading passages in the class.
There is one part of the book where our protagonist, Holden Caufield, is just starting to feel good about life when he walks outside the museum and sees a profanity (the big one) scribbled on the side of the building. For Holden, this led back to total disillusionment. It's one of the most important passages in the book.
When Mr. Ridley called on Rob Rizick to read this part, he told him to read the obsenity as "the profanity." TB remembers thinking that Mr. Ridley meant to read it as it was written and not censor it, but what he actually meant was to substitute the actual profanity with the words "the profanity." Unfortunately for ol' Rob Rizick, he thought the same as TB; the rest is Manalapan High history.
TB has been known to curse, a trait he learned from MotherBlog, whose theory was there are way worse things than cursing, as long as you aren't offending anyone by shouting it at, say, the refs at a game. Princeton Athletics has long been vigilant about cursing by fans at athletic events, especially by students, because 1) there are a great deal of families with kids at the games and 2) because it's simply not right.
That's why TB was heartened to read in a recap of the Georgetown-Duke game that one student who was cursing was reprimanded by a fellow student, who reminded him: "Dude, the President of the United States is here."
TigerBlog's pecking order in non-Ivy League men's Division I basketball goes something like:
1. Georgetown
2. Northwestern
3. everyone else with a Princeton connection
4. Rider
5. everyone else
343. Duke
So it was great fun Saturday afternoon to see the Georgetown-Duke game turn into a runaway on the part of the Hoyas, who couldn't possibly have asked for more out of a basketball game played in January.
For starters, the Hoyas ran the Blue Devils out of the Verizon Center with an offense run to perfection - or at least 71.2% perfection, which was the highest single-game team shooting percentage in Division I this season.
And then there was the part where the President of the United States was at the game, sitting in the front row next to the Vice President and surrounded by several advisers. Early in the second half, President Obama joined the CBS on-air crew of Verne Lundquist (TB has met him several times, and it doesn't get too much more gentlemanly than Verne Lundquist) and Clark Kellogg (who is one of TB's favorites).
As an aside, and this is not meant as political commentary from the moderate TigerBlog, but if Mr. Obama's poll numbers go up this week, it'll be because of his appearance at the basketball game. He came across as just another guy who has a tough job and a family who was relaxing at a basketball game on a Saturday, as opposed to a politician trying to seem like a man of the people. When he left the building with a few minutes remaining, he stopped a shook Georgetown coach John Thompson's kids' hands and then gave a kiss on the cheek to Monica Thompson, the wife of the coach. He might as well have been saying: "tell John I'll talk to him later" as he left a family gathering or something.
During his time on CBS, Mr. Obama and Kellogg talked about a game that the President's brother-in-law, two-time Ivy League Player of the Year Craig Robinson, had played for Princeton against Kellogg's Ohio State team.
TB wasn't really familiar with the game, and from listening to Kellogg and Mr. Obama, it sounded like Kellogg and Robinson (now the Oregon State coach) had both had huge games but that Kellogg was just too much for the Tigers.
TB checked the box score first thing this morning and found that it wasn't exactly what happened. The game was from Dec. 19, 1981, and it was a 59-55 OSU win at Madison Square Garden. Princeton led by eight at the half before Ohio State built as much as an eight-point lead of its own in the second half. The Buckeyes that year had three players who would go to the NBA: Kellogg, Granville Waiters and Tony Campbell.
Neither Kellogg nor Robinson led his team in scoring; actually, both would have the game points (nine) and rebounds (12). Ohio State was led by Campbell, who had 18, and Waiters with 13. Princeton was led by Gordon Enderle's 22 points; no other player was in double figures.
Princeton's starting five that game? Enderle, Robinson, Neil Christel, Gary Knatt and Bill Ryan. Rich Simkus had eight points off the bench, while Jeff Pagano and Kevin Mullin came off the bench but did not score.
TigerBlog can't help but think that if the three-point shot was in existence back then, Princeton might have won. The three-point shot didn't come to college basketball until 1986; Thompson was a junior that year and a high school freshman at Gonzaga Prep in D.C. when that Princeton-Ohio State game was played.
To top everything else off about the Georgetown win over Duke, it was the 200th of Thompson's coaching career.
So that means that it was 189 wins ago that Princeton beat Penn at the Palestra in Thompson's first year as Princeton head coach, back in the dream season of 2000-01, when an unheralded Tiger team won the Ivy League title.
After that game, in the crowded media room at the Palestra, Justin Feil of the Princeton Packet asked Thompson where that win ranked.
Thompson replied quickly: "Well, I only have 11 of them, so this one definitely ranks in the Top 10."
TB reminded Thompson of that after the win over Duke Saturday.
"That was a pretty good line," Thompson said.
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