Kicking It Off With Yale

TigerBlog had breakfast with Bob Holly yesterday.

Can there be a better way to look ahead to a football game against Yale for a Princeton fan? If you've been following Princeton football for awhile, then you immediately know who Bob Holly is and what his connection to Yale is.

Holly was the quarterback of the Princeton team that defeated Yale 35-31 in 1981, ending a 14-year losing streak to the Bulldogs in the process. Holly threw for 501 yards (still the Princeton record) and four touchdowns before scoring the winning TD with four seconds to play. Derek Graham caught 15 of those passes for 278 of those yards.

Yale came into the game undefeated, with a win over Navy on top of everything else. It was quickly 21-0 Bulldogs before Holly began to engineer the comeback. 

The Tigers would lead 22-21 and then trail 31-22. They trailed 31-29 when they took possession on their own 24 with 1:43 to go. Three plays later, it was fourth and 10 at the same spot. Holly threw to Scott Oostdyk, his high school teammate at Clifton High in North Jersey, and depending on whether you're a Princeton fan or a Yale fan, Oostdyk either got the first down by inches or got a lucky spot from the refs.

Either way, the drive stayed alive. So did Princeton. The rest, literally, is Princeton history. The game was named the best Princeton football game of the 20th Century (okay, TB is the one who did the naming, but still). 

As TB was driving to meet up with Holly yesterday, he realized that it was the 40th anniversary of that game. When he looked it up, he was able to figure out that the exact 40th anniversary will be Sunday. 

Back in 1999, TB wrote a story about that game for the "Game of the Century" edition of Princeton Athletic News. He'll be reposting the story Sunday for the anniversary.

In the meantime, there's the matter of tomorrow's game. If you're a Princeton fan, you'd rather see 1981 history repeat itself, rather than 2019.

It was in 2019 when Princeton started off 7-0 and then lost to Dartmouth. That was followed by a second-straight loss, to Yale, on Powers Field.

This time around things are a bit different. For one thing, the biggest thing actually, there is no Ivy unbeaten with two weeks to go in the season.

The standings now look like this: Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth are all 4-1. Harvard is 3-2.

TigerBlog spent some time going through the Ivy League stats to see how Princeton and Yale might match up. He's concluded that none of it matters.

Basically what you have in the Ivy League this year is unpredictability. Who knows what's going to happen from one week to the next? A team can look awesome one week and then struggle the next. It's why the league race is so wide open with no unbeaten team.

Yale has come the closest to being perfect, as the Bulldogs' lone Ivy loss was a 24-17 score against Dartmouth in an overtime game on Oct. 9. Yale's first two Ivy games were in fact a 23-17 win over Cornell and the 24-17 loss to Dartmouth. The week after the Dartmouth game, Yale a 21-15 game to UConn. There was also an opening week 20-17 loss to Holy Cross. That's a lot of tight games to start the year (not including the 34-0 win over Lehigh).

So what has Yale done since UConn? Score a lot of points, that's what. 

First it was a 42-28 win over Penn. Then it was a 37-30 shootout win over Columbia. Last week it was a 63-38 win over Brown. 

That means that in the last three games, Yale has allowed 32 points per game but has averaged 47.3. Those three games correspond to the increased playing time for sophomore left-handed quarterback Nolan Grooms, who was 20 for 45 for 313 yards with four touchdowns in the first five weeks and is now 56 for 82 for 872 yards and seven touchdowns in the last three weeks.

The challenge for Princeton this week is clear. Grooms has the Bulldogs purring (can canines purr?) offensively. Maybe this game gets to be a shootout. Who can tell this year? 

One thing Princeton definitely must do is turn the page from last weeks' game. Just as the challenge is clear, so are the stakes.

The winner is in first place with one week to play. These are the kinds of games you want to see.

Oh, and TigerBlog picked up the check for breakfast. Why? Because it's the 40th anniversary of your role in one of the greatest moments in Princeton's athletic history, you deserve it.

A Crossover Weekend

TigerBlog was in a store the other day when he saw a man wearing a sweatshirt that said "Union" and had a basketball on it.

If you know much about Princeton men's basketball, you know there's a strong connection to Union. TB could see that the sweatshirt the man was wearing suggested it might be a bit older, and so he thought there was a chance he might have played there. Either that, or maybe his son did?

Of course TB asked him. Did you play there? The response he got was "yeah, about 50 years ago." To that, TB said "then you must know Gary Walters and Bill Carmody."

At that point, the man's face lit up. It was clear he liked the idea that someone could talk about mid-1970s Union College men's basketball.

He went on to say that Gary had been his coach at Union and that he was a teammate of Carmody, who was two years behind him.

He introduced himself as "Ryan." When TB relayed the story to Gary, it turns out his name was "Rein," and he drew two exclamation points from Gary. Small world, right?

The Princeton basketball connection, of course, is that Gary was a basketball player at Princeton who then coached at Union, where his players included Rein and Carmody, one of whom would go on to be Princeton's top assistant under Pete Carril and then head coach for four years, hired by then-Director of Athletics Walters.

Carmody would go on to coach at Northwestern, where he would hire as an assistant coach a former player of his own at Princeton, Mitch Henderson, who of course is now the head coach of the Tigers. The lineage of the Tiger men's basketball coaching position from Cappy Cappon through Mitch Henderson is one of the more uniquely Princetonian parts of the school's athletic history. 

Henderson's team started its 2021-22 season with an easy win over Rutgers-Camden Tuesday night. The challenges get stronger quickly, as the Tigers leave this morning for Asheville, North Carolina, where they will play South Carolina tomorrow night at 9:30 (on ESPNEWS) and then either Minnesota or Western Kentucky Sunday at 5 or 7:30 on either ESPNU or ESPN2.

The men's basketball team then comes back home Wednesday to take on Marist before heading out for two road games of varying lengths. The first is to Oregon State on the 21st. The second is closer than even the ride to the airport for the Oregon State game, as the Tigers will be at Monmouth on the 24th.

This will be an extremely busy weekend for Princeton Athletics, beyond just watching the men's basketball team on television. Tomorrow alone features NCAA postseason events (women's soccer at home against Vermont at 6; men's and women's cross country regionals at Lehigh afternoon) and home events in women's hockey and women's volleyball with a short drive to Delaware for women's basketball if you want to see that game.

By the end of the weekend, there will be, among other events, a huge football game against Yale (Saturday at 1, matching two of the Ivy League's two 4-1 teams), a home women's basketball game (Sunday at 1 against Boston University, swimming and diving (women home tomorrow, men home Saturday), men's hockey against LIU (Saturday at 6, after the teams play at LIU tomorrow) and the final regular season game for the outright champion and NCAA-bound men's soccer team (against Yale, Saturday at 4).

The women's soccer team, by the way, will be making its 14th NCAA appearance. The Tigers are 14-2-1 on the season as they take on the America East tournament champion Catamounts, a team with whom they share one common opponent (Dartmouth, whom Princeton defeated 3-0 and whom Vermont lost to 2-1). 

When TB talks about "crossover season,"  he's talking about weekends like this one. It's a challenge for the behind the scenes people who have to make sure every event is covered, and that's not always easy.

At the same time, there's nobody around here complaining about it. This is way better than last fall, and it's not even close.

Conversing With Carla

TigerBlog had his first "Conversation With Carla" for 2021-22 yesterday.

The Carla in question is Carla Berube, the head women's basketball coach. Carla's team opens its season tonight at Villanova (tip is at 7).

Now, if you're listening to the podcast today, keep in mind that it was recorded yesterday, so every time Carla says that the game is "tomorrow," she really means it's today. 

Of course, when TB created the Zoom link to speak with Carla, he originally entered Carla Tagliente in the email address line instead of Carla Berube. Carla Tagliente is the field hockey coach. Carla Berube is the women's basketball coach. Crossover season is everywhere now.

Before TB gets to women's basketball and everything else going on now, he does want to mention the field hockey team. There has never been a team that has come closer to making the NCAA tournament and winning the league title without actually doing so than the Tigers did this year. 

They lost to Harvard in a penalty shootout, costing the league title and automatic NCAA bid. They lost seven times, five times to teams ranked in the top 11 in the RPI and in the NCAA field. Two of those games were in overtime, to Maryland and Louisville, both in the top five. You're talking about a team that could play with anyone.

The good news for Princeton is that the team had no seniors on it. Not one. Every player will be back, which will include five All-Ivy selections. Among those will be Beth Yeager, the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year after setting the program record for goals by a freshman with 16, despite missing the last three games due to injury.

As for defender Gabby Andretta and midfielder Hannah Davey, if anyone is a team-first player, it's those two - Andretta played almost every minute of every game and never had one individual stat, while Davey moved from an offensive to defensive position this season and saw her goal totals go from 10 to one.

While the field hockey team had its season end earlier than it would have hoped, the women's soccer team found out Monday afternoon that it would be home in the NCAA tournament, hosting Vermont Friday at 6 on Sherrerd Field. 

Princeton comes into the NCAA tournament with a 14-2-1 record that includes five straight shutouts. Vermont won the America East tournament to get the league's automatic bid; the winner of the Princeton-Vermont game plays the winner of TCU-Prairie View A&M. Where would that game be? Rutgers, where else?

It's an extraordinarily busy weekend for Princeton Athletics, especially at home. TB will get into that more tomorrow.

For today, there was the Conversation With Carla, the podcast that TB and Carla (Berube) do during the women's basketball season. Again, the Tigers open their season tonight at Villanova at 7 (not tomorrow), beginning an NBA-like stretch of three games in five days that sees the Tigers head to Delaware Friday night and a Sunday home game at 1 against Boston University. In all, Princeton will play six games in November.

These are new-look Tigers obviously, with Bella Alarie having graduated to the WNBA ranks and Carlie Littlefield now playing at North Carolina (Littlefield had 15 points in her Tar Heel debut last night) after leading Berube's first team to a 26-1 record before Covid cancelled the 2020 NCAA tournament. That's a lot of missing points and a lot of missing leadership.

The cupboard is hardly bare, though. And Princeton hasn't put together the amazing women's basketball run that it's been on the last decade-plus by relying only on a handful of players.

Berube talks about the new faces on the podcast. She also talks about her team's challenging non-league schedule and the league opener Jan. 2 against Harvard at home, including some very heartfelt comments about Kathy Delaney-Smith, who is retiring as the Crimson head coach after 40 years. 

More than anything else, the takeaway from this podcast is just how thrilled Berube is about getting to a gamenight again. It's been a long wait, and now it's time to play for real. She talks about a return to "normalcy" on campus, and you can tell how thrilled she is for her players to have the opportunity again.

It's the season opener for the women's basketball team. Again, that's tonight at Villanova.

Ivy Champs

Is there anybody at all out there who likes the first day after the clocks "fall back?"

If there is, TigerBlog has never met that person. If there is one thing that everyone seems to be able to agree on, it's that the first time it gets dark out before 5 pm stinks, right?

It was the middle of the night Saturday into Sunday when the clocks got turned back an hour. If the Princeton men's soccer team had turned the clocks back a full month, would things have looked remotely familiar?

There was a time this year when the men's soccer team was 0-2, not to mention 2-3, 3-4 and 4-5.

It seemed like Princeton spent the first month of the season in a win-one, lose-one situation. By late Saturday evening, that seemed like a long time ago. In fact, Saturday evening marked exactly one month since the Tigers had lost a game. They'd gone from 4-5-0 on Oct. 6 to champions on Nov. 6.

If you were looking for high drama with high stakes, then the men's soccer game at Penn Saturday night was perfect for you. Princeton went into the weekend unbeaten in the league with 15 points, while Yale was in second with 11, followed by Cornell at nine. With two games to play, Princeton had some margin of error to work with, but not much. 

For starters, Yale's game against Brown started earlier than Princeton's at Penn. Had Yale lost to Brown, Princeton would have been assured of no worse than a tie for the league title (Yale would have been eliminated but Cornell still could have tied) and even better would have meant the league's automatic NCAA bid (regardless if Cornell had ultimately tied Princeton in the standings).

Instead, Yale won that game 3-2, and suddenly the pressure was on the Tigers. The situation heading into the game at Penn was this: Win, and you're the outright Ivy champ and NCAA bound; lose or tie, and that would have set up this weekend's game at home against Yale as something of a championship game (Princeton would have needed only a win or tie, but still, that's a pretty high-pressure game).

As for the game at Penn, the Tigers had a miraculous turn of events in the first half, when a Penn chance at a mostly open net slammed off the post. Princeton had the better of play in the second half, but the score remained 0-0 as time went on ... and on ... and on. Both goalkeepers made big saves. Both defenses swarmed when the ball made it into the box. 

It was a riveting game to watch. In many ways, it reminded TB of a World Cup group stage game, where one team needed a win to move on to the knockout round and the other team simply wanted to prevent that from happening.

There were 25 minutes left, no score. Twenty minutes left, no score. Fifteen. Ten. Would this go to OT scoreless? Would it end that way? 

No, it wouldn't. A Princeton shot hit the crossbar, but fortuitously bounced to Walker Gillespie, whose header gently curled over the outstretched arms of the goalkeeper and found its ways into the corner of the net. It was 1-0 Princeton with five minutes left, and that's how it ended, touching off a massive celebration of the championship.

For Princeton, it is the second championship in three seasons. For Jim Barlow, it is is his sixth Ivy title as Princeton head coach.

Often the best teams are the ones that have the best culture, and in the case of Barlow and his staff (especially Associate Head Coach Steve Totten), building culture is a strength. Barlow is a model for what a head coach in the Ivy League should be, with players who develop as individuals both as athletes and people and teams that learn all of the lessons that "Education Through Athletics" represents.

That doesn't mean they win championships every year. It does mean that they run a high-quality program every year.

This year, that has resulted in another Ivy title. Princeton is now 11-5-0 overall and 6-0-0 in the Ivy League heading into that final regular season game against Yale, with the NCAA tournament to follow.

The 1-0 win over Penn ensured that the Yale game won't be the pressure-cooker it otherwise might have been. It was a riveting, highly dramatic game, won by a team that now has earned the right to be called champions.

The Rearview Mirror

The sooner the Princeton football team put Hanover into its rearview mirror, the better.

TigerBlog is speaking figuratively, by the way. The Tigers need to put Friday night's 31-7 loss to Dartmouth behind them as quickly as possibly, hopefully already by now.

There's a lot left to play for this season, even with the hopes of a second perfect record in three seasons now gone. There is still an Ivy League championship on the line, and Princeton can assume that it needs to win its final two games to get a piece of that.

The loss to Dartmouth left Princeton and the Big Green even at 4-1 in the league standings. TB was right when he said this Friday: It seems like Dartmouth always saves its best for Princeton.

Isn't that the case? No offense to Columbia, which is a very, very good team in its own right, but TB had seven different people text him during the Princeton-Dartmouth game asking where the team that lost 19-0 to the Lions was?

Right from the start Friday, it just didn't seem like this was going to be Princeton's night, and that was before Collin Eaddy's leg injury that saw him leave the field on a cart. It was a tough moment for the Tiger senior, who has been such a warrior for the program during his time here. 

It was also a tender moment, as you could see the Princeton – and Dartmouth – players come over to Eaddy to wish him the best. Ultimately, it was really brutal to see Eaddy leave the field like that. He's much more than a really good running back with a nose for the end zone. He's one of those athletes whom others are just drawn to, one of those players you see as an undergraduate and have absolutely no doubt he's headed towards extraordinary things in life. TB's heart sank for him as Eaddy left the field.

Eaddy tweeted yesterday that his surgery was a success. He's a total class act, and as TB said in an email to him, he's been an incredible representative of Princeton Athletics Since Day 1.

The score was 7-0 at the time Eaddy got hurt. It soon was 17-0, and even when Princeton began to try to right the ship, it became a one-step-forward, two-steps-backward situation. In many ways, it was like the Yankee Stadium game two years earlier, when Dartmouth controlled the feel of the game from beginning to end.

Unlike two years ago, though, there is a major difference after Dartmouth's Week 8 win. Princeton is still tied for first place in the league, and as former men's basketball coach John Thompson III always said, the goal is to be in first place at the end of each weekend.

This is not a standard Ivy League football race. This one is much more wide open than usual, and so results can vary from week to week. Princeton can beat Columbia 24-7. Columbia can beat Dartmouth 19-0. Dartmouth can beat Princeton 31-7. You don't find that in most years. 

So what's next? 

Yale made it a three-way tie at 4-1 atop the league with a 63-38 shootout win over Brown Saturday. Princeton and Yale meet on Powers Field Saturday, followed by a trip to Penn to end the season for the Tigers the following Saturday, while Yale obviously ends its season with Harvard, who defeated Columbia to get to 3-2 in the league. As for Dartmouth, the Big Green end the season with games against Cornell and Brown.

It'll be good for Princeton to be back home for the first time in three weeks, and it'll be good for Princeton to be able to play on a Saturday again after back-to-back trips for Friday games at Cornell and then Dartmouth. There's also the matter of getting an extra day of rest between the game at Dartmouth and kickoff against the Bulldogs.

If you recall, Princeton two years ago followed up the loss to Dartmouth with another loss against Yale before finishing strong at Penn. The lesson from that 2019 Yale game is that turning the page after games like Friday night isn't always easy. 

In this case, it's mandatory.

Another Friday In Front Of The TV

TigerBlog has no idea if Princeton football has ever played back-to-back games on Fridays before.

Princeton played last Friday night at Cornell, winning 34-16. The Tigers now play at Dartmouth tonight, again on ESPNU, though this time kickoff is at 6.

Is there an advantage to doing it a second time? 

On the plus side, this is the second week of having an altered practice schedule, so it should be familiar by now. On the down side, there's Dartmouth.

The Big Green are one of the best defensive teams in the FCS (then again, so are the Tigers and pretty much everybody else in the Ivy League, with six teams ranked in the top 25 in scoring defense). They also have, among other weapons, a quarterback, Derek Kyler, who leads the Ivy League by completing nearly 70 percent of his passes and has thrown 10 touchdown passes and only one interception.

You can also throw in the long trip to Hanover and a game-time temperature of 38. To that you can add that it seems like Dartmouth always saves its best for Princeton.

The two teams have played some memorable football games through the years, and the last two are up there with pretty much any of them (okay, maybe the game where an inebriated fan came out of the stands and joined the Dartmouth defensive line might be a bit more memorable).

Don't know that story? It was in 1935, when undefeated Princeton and undefeated Dartmouth met at Palmer Stadium in the second-to-last week of the season. Princeton won 26-6, but the game is best know for two things. 

First, it was played in a driving snowstorm. Second, as TB mentioned, a Dartmouth fan came out of the stands and for one play managed to be a member of the Big Green D-line. It's sometimes known as the 12th-man game.

Like 1935, the last two times Princeton and Dartmouth have met both have been unbeaten. This time around, Princeton is 7-0, 4-0 Ivy League, while Dartmouth is 6-1, 3-1 in the league, with a loss to Columbia.

If you add that all up, the last three Princeton-Dartmouth games have seen the teams come in with a combined record of 41-1. 

The 2018 game was as good an Ivy League football game as TigerBlog has ever seen. Princeton won that one 14-9 on a day when both defenses allowed long touchdown drives on the first possession for both offenses and then played extraordinarily the rest of the way. 

The 2019 game was played in Yankee Stadium as part of the 150th anniversary celebration. This time, it was Dartmouth who won, 27-10, in a game that was an incredible experience for everyone who was there.

This time around, Dartmouth is either going to be tied for the league lead or two games back after this game is over. Those are high stakes.

A look at the Ivy League stats shows some interesting stuff. Dartmouth (14.3) and Princeton (15.3) allow the fewest first downs of any teams in the league. At the same time, they rank second (Princeton) and third (Dartmouth) in third-down percentage conversion. 

Perhaps that's where the game gets decided, by which team can best turn third down into first down and therefore sustain drives in what doesn't figure to be the kind of game the teams last played in Hanover. That was a 55-45 Dartmouth win in 2017.

The teams are also ranked 1-2 in the league in passing efficiency. Princeton is second in the league in sacks with 25, more than twice as many as Dartmouth (12). Getting to the quarterback will be huge as well.

Who knows what the difference will end up being. That's the beauty of it all. And that's what the goal always is, to get to November and play games that decide championships.

Princeton is chasing a fourth title in eight years. Dartmouth is looking for a second straight. Certainly the coaches are no strangers to winning championships, as they (Princeton's Bob Surace and Dartmouth's Buddy Teevens) are the only ones to win Ivy League football titles as players and coaches. 

After this game, Princeton is home with Yale, who is also 3-1 in the league before finishing the season at Penn. For tonight, though, the only color that matters is Green.

It's another Friday night in front of the television. 

Guest TigerBlog - The Floor Again Belongs To Tad La Fountain

As TigerBlog has said for years, the floor is always open if you have something you want to say. 

Once again, Tad La Fountain of the Class of 1972 has taken TB up on his offer. Tad is a great storyteller, and his pieces are always funny, well-written and informative. This one might be his best: 

Just over 50 years ago, Appalachian Power dammed the Roanoke River at Smith Mountain in Southside Virginia (a region defined as north of the North Carolina border, east of the Appalachian Mountains, south of the James River and west of the fall line) for a hydroelectric project. 

In so doing, they created Smith Mountain Lake – a 32-square-mile body of water with 550 miles of meandering lakeshore (think Maine coastline) with the Blue Ridge and the Peaks of Otter serving as visual punctuation marks. It is scenic, wonderful and…for the most part…virtually unknown north of the Beltway. 

We moved here from Pennington and Princeton seven years ago, when my wife left Stuart Country Day in Princeton and took a teaching job at Chatham Hall – a girls’ boarding school about 35 minutes from the southeast end of the Lake near the Dam. Until she retired this past spring, we split time between her campus home and a house we bought off the 12th green of The Water’s Edge – a 1.1 square-mile peninsula on the Lake with a country club and other amenities. 

It’s not a bad place to hang out. Unless you are – like the writer – a washed-up old tiller wiggler from Barnegat Bay. For the most part, there’s no wind. So you capitulate to the forces at work and end up playing golf like a really good sailor (unfortunately, there’s every reason to believe that I now sail like a really good golfer; these things happen). Occasionally, I string some good shots together, but my 16 handicap masks a terrible reality: standing over the shot, I never know who’s going to show up – Mr. 6 or Mr. 26. Invariably, the post-shot reaction tends to be the same: “Wow, I can’t believe I did that!” 

Of course, inflection and intonation (and often an imprecation) are brought to bear to allow the reaction to match the outcome. One round last spring had a decent tee shot on the opening par 5 – a dogleg right requiring a second shot to a plateau that opens up the approach to the green – that was followed by something that resembled a shankasaurus into the woods. Searching for the ball took a while, and as is often the case, resulted in finding another ball before discovering my own errant shot. 

 I was stunned – the found ball had the logo of the Concord Country Club. I’ve never played Concord, but I’m familiar with it; it’s just north of Route 1 on the Wilmington Pike (Rt. 202) south of West Chester in Concordville and just a hop, skip and a long iron from Westtown School, my alma mater. But my familiarity with CCC was enhanced 50 years ago this spring when a Cannon Clubmate had his reception there when he was married shortly after graduation. Jack Hittson ’71 was a first-term All-America pitcher who went to Wharton instead of professional ball (the other two first-team pitchers [Burt Hooten and Steve Busby] both pitched no-hitters in their careers; Jack became a CEO). 

There were other Cannon members who were stalwarts on that team, including the late Bob Schiffner ’71 (who I believe still holds the highest draft position for a Princeton player, played in the Yankees organization, retired as the CFO of Campbell Soup, and had a son who starred for the Penn basketball team) and team captain Ray Huard ’71 (who was drafted two times). Jack Hittson’s catcher on that team wasn’t All-America or even first-team All-Ivy. In fact, Laird Hayes ’71 made his mark in football – as an official. Mike Pereira, the former VP of Officiating for the NFL and long-time TV rules commentator, cited Hayes for making the best call in the history of professional football – the Manningham Super Bowl reception for the New York Giants. A bang-bang call with enormous implications, and it was made dead on. 

The reason Laird Hayes (or Bill Binder ’72, who caught all the team’s other games that Hayes didn’t catch) didn’t make first-team All-Ivy catcher was that Harvard had a catcher who was first-team All-America and who had been drafted by the pros six times. Pete Varney played professionally, spent some time in the majors, and after coaching at the high school level for a few years, ended up as the baseball coach at Brandeis for 34 years, which is interesting and not a little bit laudable. 

But what Pete Varney will be forever known for is the reception he made as Harvard’s tight end on a throw from Frank Champi for a two-point conversion as time expired allowing Harvard to make up a 16-point deficit in the last 42 seconds of the 1968 Harvard-Yale game. This led to the Crimson’s famous headline “Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29.”

The Princeton Cheetahs

TigerBlog was in the supermarket the other day when he overheard this conversation between a man and a woman who were pushing a cart together:

Woman: You want your pretzels?
Man: No, I'm going to get the Cheetos.
Woman: But those are your favorite pretzels.
Man: Sometimes you just feel the Cheetos.

TB isn't sure exactly what it means, though it seems there's wisdom in there somewhere. As it turns out, Cheetos were made by the same person who created Fritos. Annually, there are more than $4 billion worth of Cheetos sold worldwide, though none to TigerBlog, who has never really "felt the Cheetos." 

He does like their ads, though, featuring Chester Cheetah. You know Chester. He's cool.

You'd think there'd be more sports teams nicknamed "Cheetahs." In fact, TigerBlog can't think of one. There are all kinds of cats who are represented in the world of college mascots, including, of course, the Princeton Tigers. There are a lot of other Tigers out there (Auburn, Clemson, Missouri and Towson leap to mind).

There are also Lions, Wildcats, Cougars, Bobcats, Leopards and Jaguars. There must be some cheetahs out there, right? The cheetah is the fastest animal on Earth, and it's the only one of the Big Cats – the Tiger is the largest of them, by the way – who can't roar. That makes for a great nickname. 

The Cheetahs would have orange and black for their school colors. Princeton became the Tigers in the 1870s when they wore black shirts with orange stripes on their sleeves for a football game, and a newspaper account suggested they were "fighting like tigers." Perhaps if they'd said "running like cheetahs" then it would be the Princeton Cheetahs all these years. 

Taking that to another level, think of all the things that are alliterative here: Tiger Talks, Tigers Together, even Tiger Transit. They'd all have to have names starting with "C," like "Cheetah Conversations" and "Cheetah Community." Even the ones that weren't alliterative would be different: "Reading With The Cheetahs."

One current Tiger team that would have been equally as comfortable being known as "Cheetahs" would be the men's soccer team. 

These Tigers – stick with that – are fast and a bit stealthy. They don't roar. They just impose their will.

The men's soccer team has been on quite a roll of late. In fact, the Tigers haven't lost in just about a month, dating back to Oct. 6 and a 2-0 loss to Temple. That game left Princeton at 4-5 overall, though a win over Dartmouth a few days before that meant the team was 1-0 in the league.

Now? Princeton is 10-5 overall and 5-0 in the league after its 2-1 win over a Cornell team that has been ranked in the Top 20 for much of the season. The Tigers picked up goals from Walker Gillespie and Daniel Diaz Bonilla, but the easy choice for Ivy League Player of the Week was goalkeeper Jack Roberts, who made 11 saves, including these two:

Jack Roberts has 5 saves so far in the first half! Check out two right here.

Watch the game here:https://t.co/rX7Df6qzal pic.twitter.com/3qXOSQ934D

— Princeton Men’s Soccer (@TigerMensSoccer) October 30, 2021

The Ivy League standings now have Princeton at 5-0-0, followed by Yale at 3-0-2. Cornell is now 3-2-0; the other five teams have all been mathematically eliminated from winning the championship.

Princeton is at Penn Saturday night (at 7) and then at home the following Saturday against Yale. The Tigers need one win in those two games to ensure the outright title and NCAA bid, or maybe not even that much. A Princeton tie in either game eliminates Cornell, and a tie Saturday along with a Yale tie or loss would mean Princeton wins. 

In fact, Yale's game Saturday against Brown starts at 4 and so will be over by the time Princeton plays. A tie in that game clinches at least a tie for the championship for Princeton; a Brown win clinches at least a tie for Princeton and the NCAA tournament bid (in that case, Cornell could still tie Princeton but the Tigers would have the NCAA bid by virtue of the win last weekend).

On the other hand, Princetion hasn't won anything yet. A Yale win at home over the Bears Saturday and another win next week at Princeton and a Penn win over Princeton would give Yale the outright championship. 

In other words, Princeton has put itself in position to win but still has a long way to go.

The month of October was a great one for Princeton. It's put the Tigers in position for a bigger November, though with some major hurdles to go.

In the meantime, TB will be trying to figure out if there are any colleges nicknamed "Cheetahs."

Hanging At Heps

The rain that was supposed to turn the West Windsor cross country course into a muddy quagmire never really materialized Saturday morning.

Instead, there were clear skies and temperatures in the 60s. In other words it was perfect running weather. 

Well, TigerBlog can't really speak to that. He's never been a runner. It was perfect watching-other-people-run weather. 

The occasion was the 2021 Ivy League Heptagonal cross country championship meet, held on Princeton's West Windsor course. As TigerBlog has said many times before, there aren't many events on the annual Ivy League calendar that are more fun than Heps cross country.

It's a giant party with one of the most grueling athletic challenges mixed in. TB hasn't missed too many of them through the years, whether it has been at West Windsor fields or at Van Cortlandt Park in New York City.

The most common conversation from Saturday went something like this:

Person 1: "It was supposed to be really muddy."
Person 2: "Do you remember the year it snowed?"

That year was 2011, when West Windsor was blanketed by some late October snow that made for brutal conditions – and for extraordinary photography. Anyone who was there that day remembers it well, and remembers the football game against Cornell that followed.

Fortunately, the meet Saturday did not have to worry about any of that. 

TB arrived just before the women's race began at 11. There were the eight team tents – each with plenty of food – lined up adjacent to Washington Road, and they were gathering points for alums and friends.

One of the first people TB saw was Donn Cabral, the 2010 Heps cross country champion, as well as 2012 NCAA steeplechase champion and two-time Olympic steeplechase final. There aren't too many more accomplished Princeton athletes in the last, well, ever. 

TB, Cabral, and Thayer Patterson (you probably know Thayer, since he seems to know everyone) had lunch two days before Heps. Cabral, in addition to his running career, recently graduated from UConn law school and is now starting out his legal career. 

He is overwhelming humble about his running accomplishments, and he is the kind of person you can just sense will improve whatever he touches as he continues through his life. It was good to see him at lunch, and it was good to see him at Heps. 

Cabral, as a senior, ran on that snowy day in 2011, when he finished third after slipping once during on the icy course. His time that year was nearly a minute off his 2010 time of 24:03.8, which at the time was the second-fastest 8K race in Heps history.

Princeton's Ed Trippas, who continued in Cabral's footsteps as a steeplechase Olympian himself this past summer, ran a 23:26.3 time Saturday, which would have been the all-time Heps record, had it not been for Harvard's Matthew Pereira, who ran a 23:18.0 to win and set the record, leaving Trippas in second.

That Princeton was going to be the men's team winner was made clear the first time the pack came back into view after the start. TB couldn't count that fast, but there was a lot of orange and black near the front. 

As it played out, Princeton had nine of the top 15 finishers. For point scoring purposes, Princeton's top five were all among the first nine to cross the finish line: Trippas in second, Kevin Berry in third, Anthony Monte in sixth, Matthew Farrell in eighth and Jacob Kintzele in ninth. 

Added up, and Princeton finished with 28 points, well ahead of Harvard's 43 and then Penn's 90. 

On the women's side, Princeton finished strong but couldn't quite catch up to Harvard, instead finishing second to the Crimson (37-68). The Tigers were led by Fiona Max, who finished in second, followed by Angie Allen in 10th, Abby Loveys in 14th, Caroline Timm in 17th and Lexie Allen in 25th.

And so the party was back, and it was pretty much like it always is, which is to say a time to see old friends, a time to make some new ones, a time to see all eight Ivy League schools line up at once, a time to see some great races and a time to remember what broad-based intercollegiate athletic competition is all about. 

It was one Princeton win and one Princeton runner-up, which wasn't a bad day at all. Then again, regardless of the finishes, it's never a bad day at Heps.

Balancing Act

 As TigerBlog watched Princeton take on Cornell Friday night, he found himself wondering what the answer to this question is:

Who is the best player on the team?

Is it Jeremiah Tyler, the linebacker who scored a touchdown in the game? Maybe. Is it Collin Eaddy, the running back who is moving up the Princeton career rushing lists? Is it one of the wide receivers? Is it someone else on D? James Johnson? Sam Wright? Trevor Forbes? Punter Will Powers?

It says a lot about this team that it is now 7-0 after the 34-16 win in rainy Ithaca Friday that the answer to TB's question is not clear cut. This is a team in every sense of the word, and it is not a team who needs to rely on one player to be dominant game after game after game.

It's a winning formula.

Princeton raced out to a 21-0 lead by the early second quarter Friday night. Though the home team was able to move the ball consistently (and actually outgain the Tigers for the night), Cornell never seriously threatened after that.

As it became clear that Princeton was going to win, the historian in TigerBlog began to wonder the last time Princeton started out three straight seasons at 7-0. When he looked it up, he found out that it was 1901, 1902 and 1903. That's a long time ago.

There's no doubt who the best player on those teams was. His name was John DeWitt, a guard/kicker (there aren't many of those left) who is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. He was also a silver medalist at the 1904 Summer Olympics in the hammer throw.

The current Tigers have reached 7-0 with their depth and balance. Maybe the best part of this team is that it hasn't had to have its offense or its defense be dominant to win on any give weekend. Sometimes it's been the offense. Sometimes it's been the defense. When one has dominated, it's been so dominant that it has carried the team through that game.

Go back to the game Friday night. You get extra credit if you correctly predicted before the game that the first three Tiger TDs would come from Niko Vangarelli, Tyler and Carson Bobo. 

But that's the point. It didn't need to be Eaddy. It didn't need to be Jacob Birmelin. It didn't need to be Cole Smith.

One of the good things about playing Friday night is that you can watch the other Ivy games Saturday afternoon. That's what TigerBlog did, with three windows open on his computer to flip back and forth around the other Ivy football games on ESPN+.

The two games that figured to most directly impact that Ivy League race were the Dartmouth-Harvard and Columbia-Yale games. With Princeton now at 4-0 in the league, that left those four playing what weren't mathematically elimination games but were big games nonetheless, as all four of them came into the weekend at 2-1. 

Both games were close.

The first to end was Dartmouth's 20-17 win over Harvard. The Big Green took the lead on a late field goal and then withstood a 53-yard field goal attempt on the final play that went a little wide. The most unsung play you will ever see is the job that Dartmouth holder Dylan Cadwallader did to pull in a snap that was going wide and get it down perfectly.

Meanwhile, Yale was able to hold off Columbia 37-30. As a result, you now have these standings: Princeton 4-0, Dartmouth 3-1, Yale 3-1, Harvard 2-2, Columbia 2-2.

Another way of putting that is that it's Princeton 4-0, followed by its next two opponents at 3-1 each. That stretch begins with another Friday night game on the road on ESPNU, this time at Dartmouth.

The last two Princeton-Dartmouth games matched unbeaten teams. This time Dartmouth isn't unbeaten, but it's no less of a huge match-up for the Ivy standings. 

Getting to 7-0 is an accomplishment by itself. Doing it three years in a row is even more impressive.

The whole point of Ivy League football is to play big games in November, which arrives today. Princeton has once again put itself in position to do just that.