Father And Daughter

TigerBlog received a comment yesterday asking to see the reaction of Bella Alarie and her family after her selection as the No. 5 overall pick in the WNBA draft Friday night.

For those who missed it, here it is again:

What a moment. 💯 pic.twitter.com/5ku521Gsbm

— Dallas Wings (@DallasWings) April 17, 2020

It's perfect, right?

Also yesterday TB mentioned that he had read somewhere that Alarie's selection made her and her father Mark the third father/daughter pair to be NBA and WNBA first-round picks. He tried to find the other two, and he definitely found one: Cheryl Ford, who won thre WNBA titles with the Detroit Shock, is the daughter of Hall-of-Fame men's player Karl Malone, and both were first-round picks.

Who was the other?

Could it be Natalie Williams, a four-time WNBA all-star and the daughter of Nate Williams, who played for eight season in the NBA after being a first-round selection, sort of. Nate Williams was taken in the 1971 Hardship Draft, back when players whose college classes had not yet graduated could only be in a supplemental draft by proving a financial hardship.

Williams was the first player taken in that draft, and the Cincinnati Royals (who started out in Rochester and are now the Sacramento Kings, by way of Kansas City-Omaha) gave up their fourth-overall selection in the first round to take Williams.

Whether or not that counts, the Alaries are certainly on a short list and have clearly made history.

Mark Alarie, by the way, ranks seventh all-time in Duke men's basketball history with 2,136 career points. He then scored 2,432 in his five years in the NBA before knee injuries ended his career.

Between Mark and Bella, they scored 3,839 career points in college. That's a lot of points.

Looking a bit closer, Mark Alarie played 133 college games, while Bella Alarie played 106. In the 1985-86 season, Mark's senior year, Duke played 40 games, reaching the NCAA final before falling to Louisville 72-69, in a game in which Alarie had 12 points and six rebounds in 33 minutes. He also had 12 points and eight rebounds in a 71-67 win over Kansas in the semifinals that season; TB did not realize that current Maryland coach Mark Turgeon was on that Kansas team.

In fact, Alarie started all 133 of his games at Duke. Only one player in program history has ever started more games than Alarie. Any guesses?

Because Mark played so many more games than Bella, it's worth looking at their per-game averages. In this case, they're the same, as both father and daughter averaged 16.1 points per game for their college careers.

Actually, Bella scored 1,703 points in 106 games, an average of 16.066, while Mark scored 2,136 in 133 games, an average of 16.060. If Mark had scored one more point in college, his average would have gone to 16.068, which would have bettered Bella's.

You know. Just in case Bella wants to point that out to her dad every Thanksgiving or so.

Bella, by the way, had the edge in career rebounds (964-833), assists (263-152) and blocked shots (249-104).

Interestingly, according to Duke's online media guide, the Blue Devils have had 67 players reach the 1,000-point mark in their careers, tying with Villanova for fourth place. UNC was No. 1 with 77, followed by Kentucky with 68.

Again, this was prior to the 2019-20 season, so TB can't vouch for anyone who might have gotten there this past season.

Maybe the most interesting thing about that is that Duke would include in its media guide a somewhat not widely known stat in which UNC ranks first.

Before TB forgets, the only player who started more games at Duke than Alarie? That would be current Harvard head coach Tommy Amaker.

Oh, and after spending so much time looking at the Duke record book online yesterday, TB couldn't help but wonder how many times he would have seen the name "Bill Bradley" in that book had Bradley chosen to go to Duke instead of Princeton.

He senses the answer to that is "a lot."

The Duke record for 30-point games in a career is 20. Bradley had more than twice that number (43) in his Princeton career. 

Yes. The correct answer is "a lot."

With The Fifth Pick

Broadway in the 1920s?

That's a great thesis topic. Whose is it?

If you were watching the WNBA draft Friday night, you know the answer to that. It's Bella Alarie.

Of all of the great moments that have occurred in Princeton Athletics in all the time that TigerBlog has been around them, there was something uniquely special about the WNBA draft - for all kinds of reasons.

Unlike the draft in a regular year, this one was being done remotely, which meant all of the interviews and reactions were on video from the homes of the athletes. That isn't quite what TB means.

For starters, this was an actual live event in which the outcome was unknown. It's been awhile since there's been one of those in the surreal spring of 2020.

There have been all kinds of historical events that have been on TV. There have been simulated events that mean to fill the void.

Having something live was a bit different. And very much welcome.

Then there was the fact that Alarie figured to be such a high pick, somewhere in the 8-12 range, as TB wrote last week. She was pretty much a lock to be a first-round pick, something no Princeton player had been before in the WNBA and something only three had been in the NBA.

The show began at 7 with a montage of the top players, and Alarie was featured quite prominently. For Princeton fans, though, the main event still figured to be about an hour away, after the show's introduction and with the selections announced five minutes apart.

The first pick, by the New York Liberty, was obvious. It was Sabrina Ionescu of Oregon, who became the first college basketball player male or female to have at least 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,000 assists. Bill Bradley, by the way, had 2,503 points and 1,008 rebounds at a time when 1) Princeton scored a lot of points and 2) assists were not kept as an official stat.

The second pick was Ionescu's Oregon teammate Satou Sabally, who went to the Dallas Wings. Sabally was the first of three selections the Wings would have among the top seven.

By the way, having the top two picks makes you think Oregon would have been a tough out in the NCAA tournament. 

As for TigerBlog, he was watching Season 4 of "Boardwalk Empire" on his TV while following the draft on his laptop. As the show moved into the third pick, TB felt that it was still a few picks away from Alarie.

The fourth pick was Lauren Cox of Baylor, to Indiana. Then Atlanta selected Chennedy Carter of Texas A&M. Then there was a commercial.

Getting closer, TB thought.

Then the show came back from the commercial. Out of the corner of his eye, TB saw Alarie's face.

She was No. 5? Wow.

He moved the video back to when the commercial ended, and it was true. With the fifth pick, the Wings selected Alarie.

The player that Dallas gets is the all-time leading scorer in Princeton women's basketball history with 1,703 points. One of her strengths is her versatility - she can handle the ball, shoot the three-pointer, pass and break a press, but she's also 6-4, so she can guard bigger players, block shots and rebound.


After she was selected, it was her turn to be interviewed. She spoke about her versatility, and she was also asked the standard "it's a Princeton kid so there needs to be an academic question asked too" question, which in this case was the subject of her senior thesis.

TB doesn't really love those questions, because they can shortchange the athletic aspect of the person (in Alarie's case, she was the fifth pick of the draft) and at the same time devalue the academic aspect of the experience of the other players, none of whom appeared to be asked about their own educational careers.

Still, TB was fascinated by the answer - Broadway in the 1920s.

The reaction from Princeton's other teams and Princeton fans was universal. Alarie, even without ever stepping onto a pro court, has already established herself as one of the most-loved Princeton athletes TB has seen, and she graduates with what TB would believe is a 100 percent approval rating.

It comes from how she's played, as in the skills that made her one of the very best in women's college athletics and also in HOW she played, with a rare combination of grace and grit.

And yet for all of that, TB still hasn't gotten to what was the best part, the one that made it such a special event.

It was the video of her reaction, and the reaction of her family, including her father Mark, himself a former first-round professional basketball selection (the 18th overall selection in the 1986 NBA draft). TB saw a note that said they are now the third father/daughter combination to be first round NBA/WNBA picks.

That reaction video, her emotion that led her to cover her face in her hands surrounded by a family whose pride leapt off the screen, is what elevated that moment into one of the best TB has seen for a Princeton athlete.

Draft Night

Who were the two best Princeton men's basketball players between 2000 and 2005?

If you did a poll, you'd find out that Chris Young and Will Venable would get a lot of votes.

Interestingly, both went on to long careers as professional athletes - though not in basketball. Both Young and Venable were Major League Baseball players, and how many schools can say that their best basketball players ended up being Major Leaguers?

For that matter, Bill Bradley was also a great baseball player in high school and on the Princeton freshman team, though his career in that sport ended there.

Young was a righthanded pitcher, all 6-11 of him. His 13-year career, spent with five different teams,  included an All-Star Game appearance, an American League Comeback Player of the Year award and, best of all, a World Series ring with Kansas City in 2015 in which he was the Game 1 winner with three clutch relief innings in what became a 14-inning victory.

As for Venable, he played almost his entire nine-year career with the San Diego Padres. He finished with a .249 career batting average, as well as 81 home runs and 135 stolen bases. He had at least 22 stolen bases in four straight years; only 18 players in all of Major League Baseball stole 22 or more last year.

TigerBlog has written this before, but Venable might be the most underrated men's basketball player Princeton has had in the 30-plus years he's been following the program. There were so many nights where he was the best player on both ends of the court, and he played with intensity and effort at all times.

If you want to compare him to someone, he was a slightly less physical and slightly quicker version of Myles Stephens. Like Stephens, they could both guard pretty much any player on the other team regardless of position.

Of course, Venable was also a great baseball player. He crushed more than one home run at Clarke Field that went way past the rightfield fence, and TB remembers hearing about one that he drilled at Penn that landed on some highway somewhere.

These days, he's the third base coach of the Chicago Cubs. His name has already been in the  mix for managerial jobs, this past off-season with the Houston Astros for instance.

He also was a guest on a team Zoom call with the Princeton baseball team the other day.

Princeton Baseball had a familiar face on our weekly Zoom Meeting. Current Chicago Cubs Third Base Coach and Princeton Baseball Alum Will Venable ‘05 took time out of his day to talk about what his time was like at Princeton as well as his experiences in Major League Baseball! pic.twitter.com/6vVDPUcBoE

— Princeton Baseball (@PUTigerBaseball) April 15, 2020

In keeping with the basketball theme of the week and today's look at Princeton basketball players-turned-professional athletes, tonight is the WNBA draft.

You can watch it live on ESPN at 7 Eastern. When was the last time you could watch something live on ESPN?

The interest for Princeton fans, of course, is that Bella Alarie figures to be a first-round pick. Alarie, the all-time leading scorer in Princeton women's basketball history with 1,703 points, should hear her name called relatively quickly if the mock drafts are correct.

Princeton has had one player selected in the WNBA draft before, and that was Leslie Robinson two years ago. Blake Dietrick, undrafted out of Princeton, has played for four different WNBA teams since being the 2015 Ivy League Player of the Year.

The Princeton men's program has produced three first-round NBA draft choices, and Bill Bradley wasn't one of them. Bradley, who won two NBA titles with the Knicks (and in 1973 was on what is still their most recent championship team) was a territorial pick, which meant that prior to the start of the draft (and forfeiting their first round pick), teams could select players who played in college within 50 miles of their home arena. The territorial draft was eliminated after 1965, the year the Knicks took Bradley.

That left Princeton with three first-rounders: Geoff Petrie (eight pick in 1970), John Hummer (15th pick in 1970) and Armond Hill (ninth pick in 1976). 

The three-time Ivy League Player of the Year, Alarie has been touted as a future WNBA player her entire Princeton career. In case you're wondering how much WNBA players make, TB saw this in a story:
Players selected with the first four picks receive a base salary of $68,000. Players chosen fifth through eighth receive $65,250 and the rest of the first-round picks would earn $62,500.

The new CBA also boosted the average salary up to $130,000 and the max to $215,000.

TB has seen a few mock drafts, and they all appear to have Alarie in the nine to 11 range. This is from the ESPN.com mock draft, which had her going 10th:
Alarie finished the season averaging 17.5 points and 8.6 rebounds for the Tigers, who went 26-1. At 6-4, she has guard skills and should be able to fit well into any offense. 

In any event, it's a live event, something to watch on TV tonight. And a chance to see Alarie take the first step towards the next big phase of her basketball career.

Path To Princeton I

Yesterday's trivia involved who had the first made three-pointer in Princeton men's basketball history.
The answer, if you read, was Dave Orlandini. TigerBlog will add to that question today: Princeton had four players make at least one three-pointer in the first game of the 1986-87 season, the first with the three-point shot. How many can you name?

In the meantime, keep in mind that Princeton has made at least one three-point shot in every game it has played since. That's a total of 958 games through this season.

Only one other team in the country has at least one made three-pointer in every game since the rule was enacted. That team is UNLV. Vanderbilt had been on the list until this year, when it had a game with no made three's.

It's hard for TB to imagine a game where Princeton doesn't make one, though there have been a handful of games with only one made three.

The other three players who had at least one made three in that first game in 1986, by the way, were Joe Scott, Bob Scrabis and Mike Harnum. Scott, as you might know, was just rehired as the head coach at Air Force, and he immediately hired Sydney Johnson as his associate head coach.

In keeping with the basketball theme for the week, here's another question for you: Who is the only Princeton men's basketball player ever to be the Ivy League Rookie of the Year and then go on to win Player of the Year later in his career?

There have been nine Ivy men's basketball players who have pulled off that double. Who's the Princeton representative of the group?

Here are some more hints:

He is the only player in program history with 1,000 points, 500 rebounds, 300 assists and 200 three-pointers. His 1,241 points rank 14th all-time in school history, while he also ranks second in assists with 383 and fifth in three-pointers made with 209.

TB didn't realize his scoring numbers were that good, because he doesn't really think of him as a scorer. He means that in the best possible way.

When TB thinks of watching him, he thinks of someone who did everything really well and who made everyone around him much better. The result was a perfect Ivy League season his senior year and a trip to the NCAA tournament. 

Any guesses?

For one more hint, he's the first subject in a new series that debuts today on goprincetontigers.com. It's called "Path to Princeton," and it's going to have a feature each Thursday that will highlight the earliest basketball memories, role models, high school and AAU careers, best moments at Princeton and more through first-hand accounts along with photos.

And who is the first subject?

Spencer Weisz.

The 2014 Ivy Rookie of the Year and 2017 Ivy Player of the Year, Weisz was the leader of the team that went 14-0 in the league season in 2017 and then had two win two more games in the first Ivy League tournament to get to the NCAA tournament. Once there, Princeton fell 60-58 to Notre Dame in the first round.

In that NCAA tournament game, Weisz had one of the most amazing all-around stat lines you'll ever see. He played all 40 minutes against Notre Dame, with a team-high 15 points on 6 for 11 shooting, with five rebounds, four assists, two blocks, a steal and not a single turnover.

That's incredible, no?

Weisz has been playing in Israel since graduation. He talks about that in the piece, as well as how he got into basketball in the first place, his time as a high school standout, where he almost went to college (TB could have told him he was making the right choice among his final two), his time at Princeton, his family, all of it.

The piece is really good. It's definitely worth reading, and it's definitely going to make you want to see the rest of the series.

And that's four basketball stories in four days this week. TB will make it 5 for 5 tomorrow.

Want to know what that one will be about?

While he's been giving out hints all week, here's another one: The WNBA draft is tomorrow night.

Learning Something New

Hey, TigerBlog learned something yesterday that he never even considered.

It turns out there is a reason why Arthur Loeb made 203 of Princeton's 216 foul shots in the 1921-22 season. The rules were different back then.

According to an article on the USA Basketball website, the history of the foul shot in basketball in pretty interesting. When the rules were first written, baskets were worth one point and consecutive fouls by the same team earned the other team another point. Then it was three straight fouls for a point.

Eventually baskets became three points and the point for three straight fouls was still one. Then the free throw was introduced, first at 20 feet and then moved in to 15 feet, where it remains. Keep in mind all of this happened between 1891 and 1895 and all decided on by James Naismith, who wrote the original rules of the game.

When the foul shot came into the game, it was scored the same as any other basket - three points. A year later, in 1896, a basket became two points and a free throw became one.

By the way, a little more research indicates that the three-point shot was used in a handful of college basketball games in the 1940s and 1950s but never became a rule. It wasn't until the American Basketball League in 1961 brought it on before it folded in two years that it became an actual rule, and it was popularized by the American Basketball Association - which played with a red, white and blue ball and was one of the greatest professional leagues ever - starting in the late 1960s. It became an NBA rule in 1979 and across all of college basketball for the 1986-87 season.

Meanwhile, back at the free throw, the point allocations were settled for 1896. At first, though, the rules said that if a team was awarded a free throw, then it was allowed to select which player attempted the shot. That rule changed in 1924 to have the player who was fouled have to attempt the free throw.

This explains why Arthur Loeb made 203 foul shots and his teammates combined to make 13 more in that 1921-22 season. Thanks to Jeff Yellin was sending the story along.

It's always fun to learn new things, right? The entire USA Basketball story is HERE.

If you're interested in a small piece of trivia, who had the first three-point basket in Princeton men's basketball history? That same person ranks first in career three-point field goal percentage at Princeton.

In fact, he also has the single-season record for three-point percentage, which was 54.5 percent in his senior year of 1988. Think about that. He made 60 of 110 three-point shots that season.

How many players could make 60 of 110 with no defense on the court?

That 54.5 percent is the Ivy League single-season record, and it ranks 17th in Division I history. Of the 16 players in front of him, TB had heard of four of them.

The most interesting one is Christian Laettner of all people, who was 54 for 97 (55.7 percent) in 1992. TB would have guessed JJ Redick would have Duke's best percentage, but Redick never shot better than 42.1 percent in a season.

Others on the list include Steve Kerr, the head coach of the Golden State Warriors now, who shot 114 for 199 (57.3 percent) in 1988 for Arizona. Also, former Monmouth head coach Dave Calloway was 58.5 percent in 1988 as well.

The line then was 19 feet, nine inches. It stayed that way in the men's game until 2007, when it backed up a foot, and then two years ago, when it moved back to 22 feet, 1 3/4 inches, which is the international distance.

The women's college game, by the way, didn't add the three-point line until a season after the men did.

The person who holds the Princeton record finished his career with 975 points. He also was part of the 1988 team that was probably the best in the Ivy League but was derailed by three straight one-point losses in midseason. The Tigers did finish the season with a 21-point home win over Cornell, which had already clinched the Ivy title that year. Princeton then won the next four championships.

And the answer to the trivia question?

Dave Orlandini.

The Loeb Rules

If you read yesterday's blog, then the name Arthur Loeb might ring a bell.

Loeb was the leading scorer on the 1921-22 Princeton men's basketball team. In fact, Loeb accounted for 325 of the team's 700 points that season, when the Tigers went 20-5 and won the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League championship.

Loeb became the program's second player to be a two-time All-American. The first was Cyril Haas in 1916 and 1917.

Who was the third?

Also, Loeb set records for foul shots made in a game and season that stood for a long time. In that 1921-22 season, Loeb had 203 made free throws among his 325 points.

The math would indicate that with no three-point for several decades to come, Loeb scored 122 points on field goals, which would mean he made 203 foul shots and 61 field goals that season.

Did they call things really tightly back then? Was he the Michael Jordan of his time, getting the whistle every time he went to the basket? Did they have the "Loeb Rules?"

Whatever the answer, Arthur Loeb held the record for free throws made in a season until Bill Bradley came along. Bradley still has the top three single-season free throw totals, but Loeb to this day still ranks fourth, meaning that no other player has ever made more foul shots in a season other than Bradley than Arthur Loeb did nearly 100 years ago.

Bradley, by the way, would be the program's next two-time (and then three-time) All-American. No other Princeton players other than Haas, Loeb and Bradley have ever been multiple time All-Americans. 

The team leader this year was Jaelin Llewellyn, who made 85 foul shots. In fact, the top three players on the team this year - Llewellyn, Richmond Aririguzoh and Ryan Schweiger - had 192 between them.

What was it about the game back then? Or about Arthur Loeb's ability to get the foul line.

It had to be something about Loeb. Guess how many foul shots every other remaining Princeton player had combined in 1921-22?

If you guessed "13," you'd be right.

That's 13 total. Not that the next highest total was 13. The next highest total was five, which both Edgardo Correa and Alexander Brawner both had.

In fact, Arthur Loeb still ranks eighth all-time at Princeton in career free throws made, with 342. In the last 25 years, the only Princeton player with more than Loeb was Ian Hummer, who had 349.

TigerBlog tried to find out more about Arthur Loeb and what happened to him after his Princeton basketball days. He could find absolutely nothing, though he did find an obituary for Henry Alfred Loeb, who presumably was Arthur's brother.

Henry's obituary was from Jan. 2, 1998, and it said that he was 90 when he died. It mentions that he went to Horace Mann in New York City and was the youngest of four children.

Henry was a member of the Princeton Class of 1929.

It doesn't mention the names of his siblings, but it does say his father was named Carl Loeb. There was also a Carl Loeb who played basketball at Princeton, so TB will go with the idea that it was Carl Jr. and that Arthur was another brother.

As for Henry, his obit said he was a financier and philanthropist. This was from his memorial page on the Alumni Weekly:
Henry's remarkable philanthropic career included leadership of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, and he was a life trustee of the New School (which gave him an honorary law degree), president of the Mt. Sinai School of Nursing, and a board member of the National Urban League, the Institute for Research on Deafness, and many other charitable organizations. At the start of WWII, Henry volunteered in the Army and became a first lieutenant and tank officer, participating in the Omaha Beach landing. He received a Bronze Star and five battle stars.

That's a remarkable life.

TB will try to find out more about Arthur, both his life and why he shot so many foul shots.

His team made 216 foul shots and he made 203 of them? Seriously, that's about as wild a stat as TB has ever seen from a Princeton team.

Jimmy Darmody ’20

TigerBlog saw a funny Easter-centric meme yesterday.

It was a take-off of the famous "Last Supper" painting by da Vinci, though it had Jesus in a larger portion of the picture and then six disciples in their own boxes across the top. The line was: "We'll give the others another a few minutes to join us."

Clearly, it was a take-off on the Zoom phenomenon.

TB would guess that maybe 90 percent of his readers have been on a Zoom video call at some point in the last four weeks. He'd also guess that maybe 75 percent of them had never been on one prior to that. TB, for one, had not.

As the holidays of Easter and Passover have overlapped again, TB is also guessing that a lot of families who couldn't physically be together used Zoom to connect virtually. It's a great way to keep families close, and in some ways it allows the time that families (or friends) are spending together to be more valued.

The weather for your Easter Sunday was nearly perfect in the Princeton area. In fact, it has not been lost on TigerBlog that the weather has been extremely cooperative this late winter and spring, especially on the weekends.

In fact, going back further, this is one of the most mild winters that has ever happened around here. Best of all, there was almost nothing in the way of snow. As winters go, you can't ask for more.

TB has said a few times that he has been following the simulated men's lacrosse games that a website is doing - and getting annoyed by the fact that he is (and even more annoyed if Princeton isn't doing well). To that you can add that he also has been checking the weather for the locations where games were to have been played as well.

It's all part of the surreal world of the spring of ’20.

That's 2020, by the way.

The spring of 1920 was surreal in its own way, what with prohibition having just become the law of the land.

TigerBlog has been watching "Boardwalk Empire" again, and he forgot just how great a show it is. Perhaps it was overshadowed by "The Sopranos," but the show set in the 1920s in Atlantic City is in the top tier of series that TB has ever seen.

Princeton University features prominently in the show since one of the main characters, Jimmy Darmody, attended the University before dropping out to enlist in World War I. It never really clarifies what his class year was, but the suggestion is made that he was only there for a year.

Since the United States got into the war in 1917, perhaps Darmody would have been a member of the Class of 1920? Also, he dropped out just before he was expelled for punching out the professor who made a pass at his mother, but TB doesn't want to give too much of the plot away.

There is one flashback episode to Darmody's Princeton days, one that includes scenes of a campus that has very few buildings and a train that runs directly through the campus. That train line used to add extra cars on football game days to pack Palmer Stadium, which would have been in its infancy whenever Darmody was there, as it was built in 1914.

Also, in one episode, one of the characters is reading a Philadelphia newspaper that has a headline that says "Penn 5 To Face Lafayette." Because of where the story was at the time, the season had to be the 1920-21 season.

Clearly this referred to basketball. Most people probably didn't notice the headline. TB did. And what did he do?

He went straight to Penn's website to see if there was a 1920-21 game between Penn and Lafayette. The answer?

Yes, the Quakers did. In fact, Penn claimed the 1921 Helms National Championship, something that TB had never heard of before. And en route to a 21-2 record that year, Penn defeated Lafayette 37-12 on Jan. 29.

TB will forgive the fact that he doesn't think the scene was set in January, but hey, close enough. Had there not been a Penn-Lafayette game that year, TB would have really wondered how in the world they picked that for their fictional headline.

Also, in the 1920-21 season, Penn defeated Princeton 33-22 and 27-20, which are more like contemporary football scores. A year earlier, by the way, Penn also claimed the national championship with a 22-1 record that included a 20-0 start. The 20th win came over Princeton 26-23 - in four overtimes.

Penn finished that season with three games against Chicago, the first a loss in Chicago and then wins at home and on a neutral court in Princeton of all places.

Somewhat fascinating is that the Princeton records have the same scores for all of those games. Also, the 1921-22 Tigers played Penn three times, losing the first 20-18. That put Princeton a game back of Penn heading into the last two games of the regular season, both against the Quakers.

Princeton won the second game 34-24 to set up a one-game playoff for the league championship. Back then, the league was the Eastern Intercollegiate League, and there was no co-champion back then, as Ivy League rules today are written.

As a result, the teams played on March 28, 1922, for the championship, and Princeton won that game 28-23. Arthur Loeb had 20 of the 34 in the game to set up the tie and then 12 of the 28 in the playoff game, not to mention 325 of Princeton's 700 points for the season.

So what was TB saying?

Oh yeah. Watch "Boardwalk Empire." It's awesome.

The Big Picture

FatherBlog has a best friend from when he was a little kid named George.

The two grew up together in Brooklyn, rising from having very little to having very successful careers. In George's case, he is a lawyer.

Yesterday was George's 59th wedding anniversary with his bride Bunny. The two have always been very nice to TigerBlog in his lifetime, and they are both warm, caring, wonderful people.

Unfortunately, the nearest they got to each other on their anniversary was a hospital lobby. Both are battling medical issues, and though neither has the coronavirus, they were not permitted to be any closer to each other than across a lobby.

The world these days is filled with stories like that, ones that are either heartwarming or heartbreaking or both at the same time. Everyone has heard a few just like that, and most people have their own stories like that they could share.

There are so many people who are giving so much to try to fight this pandemic. Evan Garfein, the former Princeton men's lacrosse player and now plastic surgeon in New York City who put himself in danger by working 12-hour ER shifts and contracted the virus himself, appears to be doing much better, TB is happy to report.

The world needs people like him to end this situation. And they're out there, doing everything they can in every way they can.

They're heroes.

TB had one thought yesterday though. Where does that leave everyone else?

Not everyone can do something to specifically fight against the coronavirus. For most of the world, it means simply staying home, isolating, social distancing at all times.

It got TB to thinking about what he should be thinking about things like the cancelling of spring sports in the face of everything else that is going on. How upset can he be about it in the face of all of the suffering and sacrifice going on in the world?

The answer, he believes, is that it's okay to miss it.

TB speaks for all of his colleagues when he says everyone misses it. The whole point of working in college athletics is to do what you can to help the coaches succeed and the athletes have the best possible experience.

That's always first and foremost. And the best part of that is seeing how it all plays out on the public stage of the games.

No matter what, TB has always loved the games. He finds the competition to be revealing in so many ways, and he's always loved his view of it, from the perspective of knowing the principals involved, seeing what goes into putting teams together, understanding how much preparation has gone into a gameday.

Plus they're just fun.

So can he miss that, in the face of everything going on in the world?

Yes. He can.

And so can the athletes. It doesn't matter if you're a professional athlete whose season may not be played to conclusion or a college athlete whose spring has been turned upside down or a high school or even youth player who won't get on the field this year.

It's okay to feel badly about that and not have to feel like you're missing the big picture.

There will be a next year for most, but not all, of the athletes whose 2020 seasons would not be finished. They can be upset about it, and rightfully are.

This experience will also give them a chance to learn some things, about themselves and about life in general. To borrow a letter from the "Be A Tiger" performance model, this can be a very growth-minded moment for them.

Like all of them, TB would love to be spending his weekend watching spring sports compete. That is not possible in these surreal times.

The big picture suggests that there are more important things in the world to worry about right now. It also suggests it's okay to feel badly about what might have been.

"Game Ball"

"The football peeks out from a crowded corner of my cluttered desk."

Those words were written by Joe Masi, Princeton Class of 1952. They're part of a poem entitled "Game Ball."

TigerBlog has never been a huge fan of poetry. If you asked him what his favorite things written in verse form (and not set to music) have been, he'd probably say "The Cat In The Hat" and "Casey At The Bat."

If you wanted him to say that in verse, he'd say:
His favorite poem is
The Cat In The Hat
His second favorite would be
Casey At The Bat

He's pretty sure that he's still scarred by having to read "Beowulf" and "The Canterbury Tales" in Ms. Nastaj's high school English class. As he thinks back to it, though, he was pretty lucky to have the English teachers in high school that he had. In fact, he'd put his high school English teachers up there with any teachers he had in his educational career, which, of course, includes that college in West Philadelphia.

Pete Carril always talked about the immeasurable value of great high school teachers and coaches. He himself started out as one, and he always had the greatest respect for those who excelled on that level. He's also not the only Princeton coach TB has heard talk about how much better prepared to excel in college the athletes who had the better high school teachers and coaches were.

And that's all he'll say about that now.

For today, he'd like to talk about "Game Ball."

TigerBlog was introduced to the poem from an email that was forwarded to him by Joe's son Brad. Joe, it turns out, passed away on Jan. 11 of this year one week shy of his 90th birthday.

From the obituary that TB read in the Denver Post, he learned that Joe Masi was a cum laude graduate of Princeton who then went into the Navy as an officer before embarking on a long and successful career in management.

You can read the entire obit HERE.

Brad's email says that his father was diagnosed with cancer in June of 2019 and that from then on, he worked with his dad to put together an anthology of his poems, which they entitled "Depression Baby."

HERE is the link for more information.

Masi was a three-time letterwinner in track and field at Princeton, but the poem "Game Ball" refers to his time with the Tiger football team.

He happened to come along at a time when Princeton was in what was probably its most glorious era. The 1950 and 1951 Tigers both went 9-0, and the team was led by the only player in program history to win the Heisman Trophy, Dick Kazmaier.

Princeton was coached by Hall-of-Famer Charlie Caldwell. The 1950 team is the most recent of Princeton's 28 national championship teams.

It was a great time to be a Tiger.

It was also a tough time to be trying to get playing time.

And that's what the poem is about.

Masi talks about his experience with the football team, including three parts that really stand out. One, he was the subject of a five-page story in Life Magazine in 1950 about what it was like to go against a championship football team as the quarterback of what today would be known as the scout team.

Back then, it was the B team, or the scrubs. And so he talks about how he had hoped to open his locker and see a black jersey, symbolizing that he was no longer to be a scrub and instead was to be Kazmaier's backup, only to see a white jersey, relegating him to another season as the scrub quarterback instead.

And of course, there was the whole reason the poem ended up being called what it was.

TigerBlog never actually read the poem. He didn't have to. He got to see Joe Masi read it.

You can too. THIS IS THE LINK.

Maybe it's because so many of the themes from what he's speaking about still resonate today. Maybe it's because his storytelling is so well done. Maybe it's because TB has read so much about the 1951 football season.

For whatever reason, the video is extraordinary.

And if you're going to watch "Game Ball" at the 13:00 mark, go back about two minutes and check out the one before it. That one reminds you of what it was like for the guys on that 1951 team to be growing up with the events of a decade before.

TB is sorry he never got to meet Joe Masi. He's glad he got a chance to hear him read his poems.

Happy 70th

TigerBlog was still a college student the first time he interviewed Pete Carril.

It was for the Penn student radio station. He remembers it well. It was at the Palestra, at the bottom of an entryway outside Princeton's locker room.

It was a bit intimidating. It's been awhile since TB has felt intimidated by interviewing anyone, but he can remember being intimidated by Carril. Perhaps when it was over, Carril thought to himself: "nice kid; can't wait until he's on our side?"

It's too bad he can't go back to that moment to remember what he was thinking. It certainly couldn't have been "four years with these guys, and then it'll be a lifetime with the other guys."

Beyond anything else, he does remember thinking that Carril was, well, sort of old. At the same time, it dawns on TB that he is now older than Carril was on that day when he first interviewed him. And TB does not consider himself old at all.

Perspective, right?

TB has co-workers in their 20s and early 30s. Do they think TB is old?

When it comes to feeling old, TB thinks that working on a college campus all these years has actually helped him stay young.

So when is someone considered old these days? Again, it's all relative.

When TB was a kid, he probably thought anyone who was 50 was old. That's ridiculous now. Hey, he knows a guy who is 89 who can ride his bike more than 11 miles like it's nothing.

Maybe what would be considered old has changed through the years. Or maybe TB has just gotten older and sees it differently?

Not everyone who is the same age is the same age, as it were. In other words, not all 70 year olds are created equal.

In fairness, when TB saw that Fred Samara had turned 70, he thought he was actually 47. You can take that two ways.

First, Samara has won 47 Ivy League Heptagonal championships as Princeton's head coach of men's track and field. If you factor in all of the Ivy League titles Princeton track and field has won since he arrived as a coach (including his time as an assistant), TB believes that number is 64.

Second, he has the energy of what you would consider to be the average 47 year old.

Ah, but he's 70 now. TB knows this by the video that some of his many, many alums made and then posted to the Princeton track and field Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

Join us in wishing the 🐐 of Princeton Track a very happy 70th birthday!

A post shared by Princeton University T&F (@princetontrack) on Apr 6, 2020 at 12:52pm PDT

That's pretty good, right?

Actually, that's better than good. That's a lot of heartfelt emotion for a coach who has meant a lot more than just championships to his athletes.

TigerBlog has written a lot through the years about the dynamic that exists between athletes and coaches the life lessons that are learned through participating in intercollegiate athletics. A lot of these lessons come directly from the coaches.

The video doesn't begin to capture the quantity of people who have been touched by Fred Samara here. As TB said, what sticks with those who competed for him - and still do - aren't the championships.

The video where they wish their coach a happy birthday reflects all of that. 

But wait. There was more than just that post from the track and field team. There was this one too:

View this post on Instagram

Hold on... We have one more special birthday message for Coach Samara from @miketyson 🥊

A post shared by Princeton University T&F (@princetontrack) on Apr 7, 2020 at 12:58pm PDT

Yup. Mike Tyson.

 And so that leads to this sentence, one that TB never really imagined he would ever write:

"Fred Samara, TB joins Mike Tyson in wishing you happy 70th birthday."

He'd also add "stay young," but he doesn't actually need to do that.