You're Busy On Dec. 8

TigerBlog used to watch a lot of Atlanta Braves games back when they were on WTBS, the Superstation.

This was also when the Braves started to get really good, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Lest you think he was a bandwagon jumper, he started watching because where he lived at the time didn't allow him to get Mets' games on his cable system and MotherBlog was living in Atlanta. 

In fact, in 1990, the year before the Braves started their long, highly successful run, he and MB went to a game at old Fulton County Stadium and saw the Dodgers shellac the Braves in front of about 6,000 fans. 

Skip Carey was the play-by-play man for the Braves on TBS. When a game would be out of reach in the seventh inning or so, he'd say something along the lines of "you can turn off the game if you promise to support our sponsors."

In honor of the late Skip Carey, who passed away at only 68 in 2008, and because it is a Friday in the summer and you probably have more exciting things to do, TigerBlog will tell you that you can skip the rest of today's entry if you look this sentence: "You're busy on Dec. 8" and this video:

Time to bring @Coach_Berube home.

See you in Storrs, @UConnWBB‼️

Full schedule coming 🔜 pic.twitter.com/maoewfOawZ

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) July 13, 2022

To the folks jumping off here, have a great weekend.

For those of you toughing it out for another 450 words or so, how pumped are you from that video? 

The Princeton women's basketball team released yesterday that the Tigers will be playing at UConn on Dec. 8. Princeton is coached by Carla Berube, whom you probably know is one of the all-time greats from the greatest program in women's basketball history, though she would never actually admit that she should be held in that company.

Berube put up 1,381 career points as a collegiate player. Her teams went 132-8 in her four years, including a perfect 35-0 record and NCAA championship in 1995, her sophomore year. 

If you're wondering what her all-time record is as a college player and head coach, well, here's a little math:

player: 132-8
head coach at Tufts: 384-96
head coach at Princeton: 51-6

If you add those together, you get 567-110. There cannot be too many people who have ever put up better numbers.

Princeton went 25-5 a year ago, winning the Ivy League and Ivy tournament without dropping a game. The Tigers then defeated a Kentucky team led by the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft, Ryhne Howard, by a 69-62 score in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. 

The season ended with a 56-55 loss to Indiana on the Hoosiers' home court in the second round. Had Princeton won that game, it would have played UConn in the Sweet 16.

Instead, that game will now be played in Storrs on Dec. 8. It has to be pretty exciting for Berube, who will be going up against her college coach, the legendary Geno Auriemma. Actually, it has to be pretty exciting for any Princeton women's basketball fan. 

The Huskies went 30-6 last season and did what the team has often done under Auriemma, which is to say that it played on the final night of the season.

This time, UConn fell to South Carolina in the NCAA championship game. Auriemma has led UConn to 11 NCAA titles, the most in history. 

The Huskies will be led by perhaps the best player in the country, Paige Bueckers, as well as the usual deep cast of greats who have followed Berube to play for UConn.

Princeton had two seniors in 2021-22, Abby Meyers and Neenah Young. Interestingly, Meyers, the Ivy Player of the Year, will be playing as a grad transfer at Maryland, and UConn plays Maryland three days after it plays Princeton. The Huskies also are at Notre Dame four days before taking on Princeton.

And there you have it for today. 

If you made it to the end, enjoy your summer weekend too.

More Gold For Currier

One of these days, TigerBlog will be able to look back at the Princeton-Michigan State men's basketball second round NCAA tournament game of 1998 and not think "grrrr."

It's only been 24-plus years. You can't rush these things.

TB has been asked several times what the toughest loss he's been around for a Princeton team in all his time here, and he usually answers with that game. 

It's not so much that Princeton "should" have won that game. It's more that Princeton "could" have won that game, and considering that Michigan State had four players on that team who started two years later on a team that won the NCAA title, that's saying something.

The 1997-98 Princeton men's basketball team went 26-1 in the regular season and then easily defeated UNLV in the first round of the tournament (in Hartford). Michigan State jumped out to a big lead in the second round game, but the Tigers came back to tie it late before Mateen Cleaves, who would have a long NBA career, drained a long three to put the Spartans back on top. After that, Michigan State made some foul shots and won 63-56.

Cleaves was the only Spartan in double figures. He finished with 27. Steve Goodrich, who would also play in the NBA, had 18 to lead the Tigers.

Had Princeton won, it would have advanced to the Sweet 16 and would have played North Carolina in Greensboro. North Carolina was the only other team to defeat Princeton that season, and TB would have loved to see the rematch on that stage. 

North Carolina reached the Final Four that year, losing to Utah. Kentucky beat Stanford in the other semifinal and then Utah to win the championship.

It was a great year for the Tigers, one of the best by any Princeton team ever. It's just that it ended with a bit of a "what-if?" feel to it.

TigerBlog isn't really annoyed by that Michigan State loss. It's just that he'd have loved to see what Princeton would have done in the next round. Plus, it would have been really cool.

When it comes to being flat out annoyed by something he's seen at Princeton, there's a certain five-year-old matter that will always bother him. That would be the fact that Zach Currier was not a USILA first-team All-American in 2017.

In reality, he should have won the Tewaaraton Award that year as the nation's best player. Instead, he was a second-team All-American. 

These were Currier's numbers in 2017: 24 goals, 34 assists, 58 points (tops among all Division I midfielders that year), 130 ground balls (that's 94 more than the four first-team All-Americans that year combined) and 56.2 percent face-off winning percentage on 202 face-off attempts. He also led the team in caused turnovers. 

Sorry, but it might be that no midfielder in college ever puts up those numbers again. For all of the great players that the program has had and for all of the gaudy numbers they have put up, TB maintains that Currier's senior year was the best single-season he's seen by a Princeton men's lacrosse player. He was dominant in every way.

And it bothers him still.

Currier, a Canadian, has gone on from Princeton to establish clearly that he is one of the best players in the world right now. He has as good an all-around skill set as any player anywhere, and the results have been championships on the professional outdoor (Major League Lacrosse), professional indoor (National Lacrosse League) and international (indoor World Championships), with a runner-up finish at the most recent outdoor World Championships.

To all of that he can now add a World Games Sixes championship. The new international Sixes game is played on a smaller field with no face-offs after goals, fewer players (the name sort of gives it away), no long poles and more offense. 

It's almost as if a game was designed to best highlight was Currier can do.

It's not shock that Canada rumbled through the tournament this past week unbeaten, defeating the U.S. 23-9 in the final. Currier had a game-high five goals, including the first two, and he took only six shots to do so.

TB has written this a lot, but Currier is as competitive as any athlete he's ever seen. He's relentless. He's the kind of guy you love when he's your guy and can't stand when you have to play against him.

Fortunately for Princeton, he'll always be a Tiger.

General Managing

Nolan Jones made a big splash in his Major League debut with the Cleveland Guardians.

Called up last week, he had two hits in his first game and then his first home run in his second game. He went seven for his first 13 with eight RBIs, making him the fastest Guardian to reach eight career RBIs in nearly 100 years.

It's always good to see a young player have that kind of success right off the bat. Jones' brother is Peyton Jones, who is a hockey goalie. He played for four years at Penn State, including multiple times against Princeton, and his coach at Penn State was obviously former Tiger coach Guy Gadowsky. These days, Peyton Jones, in the Colorado Avalanche system, is right on the verge of being called up to the NHL.

Ah, but he's not quite there yet.

After Nolan had his big debut, Peyton tweeted out this:

The word is out. About 15 years ago we made a bet. Whoever makes it to the MLB or NHL first gets to have their signature tattooed on the others butt. Safe to say I lost the bet. Any recommendations on tattoo places in Philly? @Nolan_Jones10 https://t.co/8u2oCGQ9LF

— Peyton Jones (@Peyton_Jones31) July 10, 2022

 Now that's pretty good stuff.

TigerBlog is rooting extra hard for these two brothers. Why? It's because they both went to high school with TigerBlog Jr. TB has never met either one, but hey, some connections lead to a lifetime of rooting, correct?

Nolan was the second-round pick of the Guardians a few years back, signing instead of playing at the University of Virginia, and he probably would have made the Majors sooner had it not been for injuries and Covid. Now that he's there, the goal is to stick.

One of the people who will be deciding Jones' future is Cleveland general manager Mike Chernoff. If that name is familiar, it's because he is a former Princeton shortstop, someone who played on Ivy League championship and NCAA tournament teams in 2000, 2001 and, as a senior, in 2003. 

Chernoff is not alone among Princeton alums who are currently in decision-making roles for Major League Baseball teams. In fact, he's one of three Princetonians who are Major League GMs right now, while a fourth is a team president and CEO.

Chris Young is the GM of the Texas Rangers. He grew up in Highland Park, near Dallas, and he was a basketball/baseball star while at Princeton. Do most Princeton fans still remember his story, or has it been 22 years since he competed here and that has caused memories to fade or a new generation of fans to not really know?

Young was a dominant center and pitcher as a Tiger. Unfortunately for Princeton fans, he turned 21 a few days before the Major League draft after his sophomore year, and when he signed his first pro contract, he was therefore ineligible in the Ivy League in both sports.

It certainly left Princeton fans to wonder what might have been has he played two more seasons of basketball. He was already being spoken about as an NBA draft choice, and he certainly looked the part when he went against a few players who ultimately did play in the league.

His baseball career, though, was extraordinary. He won a World Series with the Kansas City Royals, winning Game 1 with three incredibly clutch innings in a game the Royals won in the 14th. He was a Comeback Player of the Year and an All-Star, and he pitched for 13 years in the Majors.

Still, it would have been great to see how he would have done with his last two years in basketball at Princeton.

Princeton alum Mike Hazen is the General Manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Mark Shapiro is the one who is the president and CEO, in his case for the Toronto Blue Jays.

This is all a pretty good achievement for the baseball program. It speaks volumes about the impact that Scott Bradley has had on his players as Princeton's coach all these years.

As TB wrote last week and Monday, there is a host of former men's basketball players who have gone into coaching and basketball management. It makes TB wonder how many of them would have said when they were Princeton undergrads or before they came to Princeton that they'd want to make their sport their career.

Bradley is a baseball guy through and through. His love for the sport is obvious and infectious.  

He has clearly had an impact with more than just his wins and championships.

No. 22 Strikes Again

Of all the great quotes that appear in TigerBlog's book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton (purchaseable HERE), one of the best is this one:

"It's cool that Mike Bossy wore my number."

If you were a hockey fan in the 1970s and 1980s, then you know who Mike Bossy was. If you weren't, Bossy was a key member of the great New York Islanders teams back then, the ones that won four straight Stanley Cups from 1980-83, before Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers took over and started winning them.

Bossy played 10 NHL seasons and scored at least 50 goals in nine of them. He is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, and he was also named one of the 100 greatest players of all time in 2017. 

Sadly, he passed away in April this year at the young age of 65. 

Olivia Hompe came along a little past Bossy's time, but she grew up in a family of Islanders fans, including her parents John and Amanda, both of whom are Princeton alums. Hompe wore the No. 22 as a high school hockey and lacrosse player.

For Hompe's part, she was a great hockey player in high school, and she took awhile to decide which sport to play in college. She ultimately chose lacrosse, and she'd wear No. 22 for her final three years as a Tiger.

Because Amanda was born in England, Olivia has been eligible to play for the English national team. This week, at the World Championships in Baltimore, she did what she does best, and what Princeton fans saw her do a lot, when her team needed her the most.

It was Hompe's goal on a free position shot in the third overtime that gave England an 8-7 win over Australia for the bronze medal. Hompe's final goal finished a day that saw her score four goals and have one assist, giving her a point on five of the team's eight goals.

THAT MOMENT, THIS TEAM 🥰 pic.twitter.com/y1xpHvWzW3

— England Lacrosse (@englacrosse) July 9, 2022

For the tournament, England went 2-2 in the round robin part and then fell 11-9 to Canada in the semifinals. Home finished with 21 goals and eight assists in six games.

As TB said, this is nothing new for Hompe, who is second all-time at Princeton in career goals and points and third in career assists. Her senior year of 2017 saw her put up 75 goals and 110 points, which are two records that withstood the Kyla Sears onslaught that scooped up the career marks that Hompe had previously held.

Hompe is also one of Princeton's great student-athletes of the last decade. Her time at Princeton included three first-team All-Ivy selections, an Ivy Attacker of the Year Award winner, an Ivy tournament MVP trophy and three Academic All-Ivy selections. She was also a first-team All-American and Tewaaraton Award finalist, as well as a Princeton Scholar in the Nation's Service Initiative winner. That's a pretty full resume. 

Another of her quotes in the book was about how she chose Princeton because she wanted a well-rounded experience, and not just a lacrosse experience. She certainly fulfilled that.

Hompe broke the career points record that had been held for 18 years by Crista Samaras, who is now a motivational speaker and great lacrosse commentator and podcaster. Before Samaras, the record was 220 points by Lisa Rebane, who graduated in 1996. Then Samaras pushed it to 270, which was a remarkable number beyond what anyone else had done.

When Hompe chased that record down with 285, it seemed like it might stand for awhile, but Sears has now set the standard at 307. That takes nothing away from how great a player Hompe was, and how clutch a player she was at Princeton.

She appears to still be both. And because she is, England can celebrate with a bronze medal.

The story on goprincetontigers.com and on the women's lacrosse social media showed her with her arms raised after scoring the game-winner. It may have said "England" instead of "Princeton" on her jersey, but the number was familiar.

No. 22 had struck again.

Carril-less Tigers

TigerBlog needs to start with a few corrections from Friday's entry.

First, Rafael Nadal had to withdraw from his Wimbledon semifinal match due to injury, something he had already done before TB published Friday's entry. When TB saw the news Friday morning, he was bummed because he wanted to see how Nadal would have done and because he wasn't sure if he had obligation to update what he'd written.

TB was asked if he thought Nadal was the best tennis player he's ever seen. That's a pretty interesting question, actually, since he considers Nadal one of the very greatest athletes of all time. Where does he rank as a tennis player? 

Well, he does still have the most wins at the majors even after Novak Djokovic won Wimbledon yesterday, so that's a good indicator. TB isn't sure, though Nadal has proven himself to be more than just a great clay court player.

So that's one correction from Friday.

Then there is the tweet TB put out Friday with the link to the blog where he wrote "wishing a happy 92nd birthday to the great Pete Carril." As he posted it, he realized it was Friday and that Carril's birthday was still two days away, but he figured that it was a general birthday wish and that he the entry itself referenced the correct day.

Who would notice, he thought? Carril's son Pete, that's who. He commented that by basically saying he'd forgotten to call his dad that day, which actually was pretty funny. 

So that's another correction.

The last one has to do with the list of coaches who played for or coached with Pete Carril. Somehow he left out people like Armond Hill, Craig Robinson and even his great friend Howard Levy. How did he do that? He did go back and add them. 

Is he forgetting anyone else? That's what TB hates about listing people like that. He always forgets someone.

Also, without getting into details, TigerBlog will always remember the kindness that Armond Hill showed him after an unfortunate incident when Hill was an assistant coach in the 1990s. TB remains grateful to Hill for that moment, and for being an extraordinarily good person in general. He's very glad he had the chance to get to know him.

Speaking of Carril and coaching, and speaking of Armond Hill, TB's list does not include Pete Molloy, who was part of what maybe TB's favorite Carril story as the Tiger head coach. Or at least his favorite that he can repeat here.

Back on Feb. 25, 1975, late in the regular season, Princeton had a game at Virginia. TB has no idea why the game was played when it was, following a weekend trip to Columbia and Cornell and then a home weekend with Brown and Yale to follow. 

Regardless, there Princeton was, on a Tuesday night in Charlottesville. Because his assistants were out recruiting and scouting, Carril was the only coach on the bench that night. Then, with 15 minutes to go, Carril was ejected after a non-call on a play where Hill was taken down and then a call a few seconds later when Hill was whistled for something that Carril considered to be "a travesty of justice," as he called it.

This left Princeton with two problems. First, Hill now had four fouls. Second, the Tigers, you know, had no coach.

Princeton was ahead 35-29 at the time. Carril chose Molloy to be a player-coach. The first thing Molloy did was ignore Carril's instructions and switch into a zone defense to protect Hill. From there, Princeton went on to win 55-50.

The Daily Princetonian story the next day had the headline "Carril-less Tigers Surprise Virginia." The 1975 Tigers lost the Ivy League by a game to Penn, with whom they'd split, only to be done in by a 62-61 loss to Brown on Feb. 1.

It might be just as well that Princeton didn't win the league that year. Those Tigers wouldn't lose again after the Brown game, winning out in the league, beating Virginia in the non-league game and then sweeping Holy Cross, South Carolina, Oregon and Providence to win the NIT, which was a much more prestigious event back then. 

That win counts as one of Carril's 514 at Princeton. Molloy gets no credit for a win, but he does have the honor of knowing that there can't be many other similar examples of a college player-coach.

As Carril tells the story, the team was in the locker room afterwards celebrating when Carril asked, rhetorically, how his guys had won that game. As he has always told it:

"So I'm asking them how did we win this game. How in the hell did we win this game? And then someone yells out: 'we finally got ourselves a coach.'"

That's a great story. 

Happy birthday, Coach. 

Oh wait, that was yesterday.

Happy 92nd

If Rafael Nadal is able to win his next two matches at Wimbledon, he will accomplish two things.

First, he will be three-quarters of the way to winning the Grand Slam, as he's already won the Australian and French Opens. Second, he will vault himself into the conservation as one of the absolute greatest athletes TigerBlog has ever seen. 

If he can bounce back on two days from the physical toll that his quarterfinal win over American Taylor Fritz, which took five sets and more than four hours, and do so against the massive challenges that he faces if he gets to the finish line Sunday.

Just watching Nadal play in that match was impressive enough. At the age of 36. he powered through everything Hicks brought, which was a lot. He did that while battling an abdominal injury that forced him to get treatment during the second set.

His performance was almost superhuman. What does he have left for today's match against Australian Nick Kyrgios — nine years younger and winner in straight sets in his quarterfinal — and then for the winner of the other semifinal between Novak Djokovic and Cameron Norrie of Great Britain, which makes him the crowd favorite? 

TB is fascinated by how well Nadal and Djokovic do when they get behind by a set or two and how they have such a mental edge against players much younger as the matches make it into the fifth set. There was no point of the first-to-10 fifth-set tiebreaker between Nadal and Fritz where TB thought Fritz would win, just because of how hard it is to win the most important points. 

Djokovic did the same thing in his quarterfinal, coming from down two sets to none to win, also against a much younger opponent. Just as with Nadal, the longer the match went, the better the chances for the veteran. If Nadal loses today, it'll be in straight sets, is TB's prediction.

Speaking of Spaniards and tennis, Sunday marks the 92nd birthday of Pete Carril, a longtime tennis player in his own right. And one of his best quotes ever, maybe his best (and that's saying a lot), is this:

"What good is being Spanish if you can't chase after windmills."

Does TB really need to point out that Carril was the men's basketball coach at Princeton for 29 years? It's astonishing to TB that there's almost nobody left at Princeton who worked here when Carril retired in 1996 (though Mitch Henderson, the current head coach, was a player on Carril's last team).

It's even more astonishing to TB that he is older now than Carril was the first time he wrote about him. That's just insane.

Carril won 514 games as the Princeton head coach, with 13 Ivy titles, 11 NCAA appearances, the 1975 NIT title and some of the greatest moments the NCAA tournament has seen, with the 50-49 loss to No. 1 Georgetown in 1989 and the 43-41 win over UCLA in 1996, shortly after Princeton defeated Penn in the Ivy playoff on the night Carril announced his retirement.

It was two years after he retired that Carril was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, joining Bill Bradley as Princeton's representatives in Springfield.

Carril grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., the son of a Spanish immigrant who worked in the steel mills for 40 years. He played college basketball at Lafayette, where his coach in his senior year of 1952 was Butch van Breda Kolff, the man he replaced in 1967 as the Tiger head coach.

Among those who have been part of his orbit are Gary Walters, who played for Carril when he coached at Reading High and then was an assistant under Carril before becoming the last athletic director at Princeton Carril worked for, and future coaches Bill Carmody, John Thompson III, Joe Scott, Sydney Johnson, Mike Brennan, Brian Earl, Chris Mooney, Armond Hill, Craig Robinson, Howard Levy and now Henderson.

Carril became more than just a basketball coach, though. Almost all conversations with Carril have  resulted in a better understanding of the deeper meanings of people, sports and their intersection. If TB had to describe him, he'd say he's more of a sociologist than anything else.

And now he's 92. 

To those who played for him, worked with him or watched his teams play, Pete Carril remains as legendary a figure as Princeton Athletics has ever had, in any capacity. To those who didn't, you'll have to take TB's word for it. 

Happy birthday to the legend.

Guest TigerBlog - Henry Von Kohorn ’66

As you know, TigerBlog has a standing offer to anyone who wants to write a guest entry. 

Some have taken him up on it through the years and contributed more than once. Today he offers a guest debut, this time from Henry Von Kohorn of the Class of 1966.

Henry is one of TB's favorite Princeton fans. He's a loyal Tiger through and through, but his contributions to Princeton run to more than just the athletic. 

He is a former head of the Alumni Council. In addition, it was Henry who back in 2003 founded the Princeton Prize on Race Relations. This is from the award website:

The Princeton Prize in Race Relations (PPRR) was founded in the fall of 2003. Founder Henry Von Kohorn '66 recognized the need to support and encourage young high school students committed to fostering positive race relations within their communities. Henry's vision was founded on the notion that early encouragement, reward and support for these students would motivate them to continue this critical work in college and beyond. Further, that these students would create a virtuous cycle that would continue to foster positive race relations well beyond the scope of their initial projects.

After TB wrote about "Yankee Doodle Dandy" earlier this week, he received this from Henry on his own love of the movie. TB thanks Henry for this, and for everything he's done for Princeton, and he hopes you enjoy: 

I’m patriotic, and I love the 4th of July – the parades, the picnics, and the fireworks. But, to me, the holiday isn’t complete without a viewing of Yankee Doodle Dandy, the film biography of George M. Cohan, composer of such American standards as You’re a Grand Old Flag, Over There, Give My Regards to Broadway, I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy (formally, The Yankee Doodle Boy), and Over There – the unofficial anthem of World War I. The movie tracks Cohan’s life and career from his days as a child member of his family’s vaudeville act, The Four Cohans, to the very pinnacle of Broadway success. Yankee Doodle Dandy opened on Memorial Day, 1942. Its hokey, patriotic, flag-waving enthusiasm was the perfect vehicle for a country then mobilizing for war.

 

As is often the case with older films, to those with a modern sensibility the movie contains a couple of cringe-inducing moments, neither vital to the plot. The first, a short clip that depicts The Four Cohans singing and dancing in blackface; the second, an interlude with former slaves paying obeisance to the Great Emancipator by singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Yet despite these awkward segments, I can’t help it; I love the movie.

 

Where to begin? Perhaps in the mid-to-late 1950s. I’m at home watching TV. The program is “Million Dollar Movie” on WOR, channel 9 in New York. Million Dollar Movie’s formula was to show the same film twice a day, every day, for a week. It presented Yankee Doodle Dandy annually during 4^th of July week. I watched it time and again, year-after-year.

 

There was something about the movie that I found simply mesmerizing – the songs, the unabashed patriotism, the energy, and the Oscar-winning, against-type performance by noted tough-guy, James Cagney. Who knew that Cagney could dance so brilliantly? I now find it fascinating that the director, a Hungarian Jew named Michael Curtiz, directed the quintessentially American Yankee Doodle Dandy, which he immediately followed up with Casablanca, another beloved wartime classic.

 

After years of watching it on TV, when I first saw Yankee Doodle Dandy on the big screen, I was utterly shocked to discover that the red, white, and bluest of all movies was in black and white. Yet I can’t help it; I love the movie.

 

The film is full of memorable scenes that have me either smiling or tearing up, sometimes simultaneously.

 

Between acts of the play in which she’s currently starring, George M. Cohan attempts to attract a skeptical Fay Templeton (Irene Manning) to star in his next production. Leaving to go on stage, she mentions that her refuge from the theater is only 45 minutes away, at her home in New Rochelle. Cohan writes Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway between acts of the play and presents it to her afterwards. Cue the smiles.

 

Cohan later visits his girlfriend, Mary (Joan Leslie). He brings her an enormous bouquet of flowers and an equally large box of candy.  Then he proposes marriage – all before revealing that he has given the song written for her, Mary’s a Grand Old Name, to Fay Templeton, who has agreed to star in his next show. Mary says, “I knew you did when you brought the candy and flowers.” Cue the smiles, cue the tears.

 

After their vaudeville performance, The Four Cohans, are taking a curtain call. George’s father (Walter Huston) asks his son to say a few words. In what becomes his signature speech, Cohan says, “My mother thanks you; my father thanks you; my sister thanks you; and I thank you.” Cue the smiles. Many years later, George’s father, delirious on his deathbed, asks how that evening’s show had been received, Cohan tells him that it had gone very well and that he had closed by saying, “My mother thanks you; my father thanks you; my sister thanks you; and I thank you.” Cue the tears.

 

The most iconic scene in the movie occurs towards the end. Cohan is sitting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to whom he has recounted his life story in flashback. Roosevelt then presents Cohan with the Congressional Gold Medal for writing Over There and It’s a Grand Old Flag, examples of his many patriotic contributions to the American spirit. As Cohan takes his leave, his footfalls echo in the marble stairway while I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy plays in the background. Without warning, Cohan begins to tap dance his way down the stairs before slowing to a walk at the bottom. Cue the smiles.

 

As Cohan exits the White House, there is a military parade on Pennsylvania Avenue. A band is playing and soldiers are singing Over There. He silently joins the line of march and is asked by a soldier, “What’s the matter old-timer, don’t you know the words?” Cohan grins and starts to sing along. Cue the smiles, cue the tears.

 

I’m far from alone in my devotion to this movie. Some years ago, the Times ran a series entitled “Watching Movies With/” in which filmmakers talked about their favorite pictures. In November 2001 just after the 9/11 attacks, John Travolta, another notable actor/dancer, raved about Yankee Doodle Dandy. “How often does a movie really evoke that level of emotion, you know? --- and continually, throughout the piece, unabashedly so. I just love it --- Jimmy Cagney made you feel patriotic in that movie --- I get chills just thinking about it.”

 

Princeton is fortunate to have the Garrden theater that shows classic films, mostly in the summer. In 2018, I convinced the management to screen Yankee Doodle Dandy on the 4^th of July. The theater was close to full, and the audience was enthusiastic. What a treat to see it again on the big screen, if only in black and white. I can’t help it; I love the movie.

 

Director of Athletics Allison Rich

NEW HAMPSHIRE RELEASE ANNOUNCING THE HIRING OF ALLISON RICH AS DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS

There have been six Directors of Athletics at Princeton since the position was first held by Ken Fairman, back in 1941.

That's it. Just six.

Those six people grew the athletic program from where it was in the 1940s, when it was an all male school and where the Ivy League was still a decade away, to where it is now, which is to say a model for what college athletics should be. As TigerBlog wrote yesterday, Princeton had an incredible 2021-22 athletic year, winning 16 league championships and finishing 18th — by far the best by a non-Power Five school — in the Learfield Directors' Cup.

The culture of an athletic program is set by the athletic director. The expectations, the values, the policies — those all start with the person at the top. To that end, all six deserve the credit for what Princeton Athletics is today. From Fairman on, their efforts are all still being felt today in one or another.

At the same time, the ability to have a functioning athletic department requires a great deal of people, and it requires them to be pulling in the same direction. There has been an army of people who have worked to achieve the path the ADs have put forward, and all of those people deserve their credit as well.

There have been way more than six people who have worked on the Princeton Athletics senior staff through the decades. These men and women have complemented the ADs as they have gone about their tasks in areas such as business and finance, compliance, fundraising, external relations, events, programming, facilities and everything else that has needed to be done.

To work at Princeton on that level, you need a few things. First, you need to check your ego at the door. As TB said, these people deserve credit, but they also rarely get publicly recognized. 

Second, you have to buy into what is going on at Princeton and in the Ivy League, especially with the concept of broad-based athletic participation, which translates for the Tigers into 38 varsity teams and 1,000 athletes a year. If you don't, you won't last.

When you have a program as successful as Princeton's, others notice. They also look to bring your people into their own programs.

Look at Ivy League women's basketball, for instance, where three of the other seven schools in the league now have a former Princeton assistant coach as their head coach. 

This extends to the administrative side as well. Princeton Athletics has a long history of having its senior staff members go on to become ADs elsewhere. 

To that list you can now add Allison Rich, who was announced yesterday as the new Director of Athletics at the University of New Hampshire.

They don’t come any better than Allison Rich. She’ll be sorely missed here at Princeton, but I know she will do a fantastic job leading @UNHWildcats. #AlwaysATiger https://t.co/jNCyZ2e9Zv

— John Mack (@jlmack00) July 5, 2022

Allison is a 1991 Princeton graduate who has spent the last nine years on the department's senior staff, as the head of the compliance efforts and as the Senior Woman Administrator. Her role in the department and the University was much more than just that, though, and she was especially involved in the extensive efforts in Jadwin and across the campus related to student-athlete welfare. 

She has also been a leader on many issues on the national level.

TB can't begin to count the number of games Allison was at during her nine years, and, much like TB, Allison is very much a hybrid between administrator and fan, which took her to a ton of games because she simply wanted to watch.

Allison fits to a "T" what TB said above. There aren't too many others whom TB has worked with who more closely bought into the department vision and values, and she definitely was content to be in the background doing the important work she did, with direct results on the two most important areas there are in an athletic department: student-athlete experience and student-athlete wellness.

Now she heads to New Hampshire, a member of the America East Conference for most of its 18 sports, though also a member of Hockey East.

TB knows that Allison never looked at her time at Princeton as a prerequisite for moving on to her next job, and he's pretty sure she's cherished the last nine years and always will.

She made a real impact on the department, and more importantly, on the student-athletes themselves. TB wishes Allison all of the best as she moves from being a Tiger to a Wildcat.

Finishing 18th

2021-22 Learfield Directors' Cup final standings

TigerBlog hopes you had a fun and safe Fourth of July weekend.

Did you see any fireworks? Beach? Barbecue? 

Did you watch "Yankee Doodle Dandy?" If you missed the latter, here it is again:

That clip is TB's favorite part of the Fourth of July. Here's one thing that TB just can't get into: the hot dog eating contest. Just the thought of it makes him queasy.  

Now that the Fourth is over, today is more about the 18th. Not the date of the 18th. The 18th, as in an 18th-place finish.

The official final standings for the 2021-22 Learfield Directors' Cup were announced at the end of last week, and Princeton finished in 18th place (not to brag or anything, but TB said Princeton would finish 18th after the baseball points were awarded when he wrote about the Cup two weeks ago). 

By the way, this is Princeton's best finish ever, beating the 21st-place finish of the 2001-02 academic year. 

In case you're wondering what the Directors' Cup is, it's a competition to determine the best overall collegiate athletic programs in all of the divisions. Schools are assigned points based on NCAA championship qualification and success, and the team with the most points wins.

The Division I winner this year was Texas, which was nearly 100 points ahead of Stanford, who has won the Cup all but three times. If you look at the 17 schools ahead of Princeton, the breakdown by conference is this:

* five SEC
* five ACC
* three Pac 12
* two Big 12
* two Big Ten

Those affiliations are, as an aside, where the schools are today. In the current climate, who knows where they will be tomorrow.

The schools who finished directly behind Princeton are Georgia, Ole Miss, Duke, Alabama and Oklahoma State. You have to go down to BYU in 29th place to find another non-Power Five school other than Princeton.

And remember, Princeton only scored points in 16 sports, as opposed to the maximum 19, because points are scored in men's and women's basketball, baseball, volleyball and then your next 15 best finishes.

It's even more extraordinary to do this one year after having only a handful of competitions due to the pandemic. What it really speaks to is the remarkable job that Princeton's coaches and athletes did of maintaining their team chemistries and cultures during the year away. It speaks to the self-motivation of the athletes, who were literally spread around the country and the world and yet still managed to train and practice as much as possible.

Once everyone reconvened back on campus, there were two full classes of athletes who had never played as Tigers and another class for spring sports that had barely any experience. With all of these newcomers and all of this uncertainty, it would have been easy to excuse the teams for not being at their best for the 2021-22 season.

But nope. Princeton came storming back, and the Directors' Cup results prove that. 

Think about it. You're a coach of a team that has been sidelined for more than a year. You have some players who were on campus in the spring of 2021. You have others who withdrew for a year. Then you have a whole contingent who are brand-new to what you're doing on a day-to-day basis, how practices are run, what expectations there are. In addition, they hardly know anyone and you hardly know them.

You can debate all you want about whether or not the 2021-22 athletic year at Princeton was its greatest ever.  It's not debatable that the challenges that were faced by coaches and athletes this year were so unique that there was no precedent to draw from. Everyone had to figure it out as they went along. Despite that, it was a year of incredible success.

Also, this is all about points from NCAA competition. It's not about how many conference championships you won (Princeton won 16 of those, with 13 Ivy titles and three from non-Ivy sports). 

In other words, you have to get to the postseason and then compete with all of the best, most fully funded athletic programs there are. To finish 18th? It's simply extraordinary.

Happy First Of July

It's the First of July, soon to be followed by the Fourth of July weekend.

In honor of such, TigerBlog offers you one of his absolute favorite songs by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (a song with "Fourth of July" in the title):

Is that enough for the Friday before the big summer holiday weekend? Not quite. There's also these little snippets:

* TigerBlog walked into Jadwin Gym Wednesday afternoon and heard the sound of a bouncing basketball. When he looked, he saw the person doing the bouncing is a former Princeton two-sport athlete and Roper Trophy winner who is in two Halls of Fame.

Who is it? Hint - basketball wasn't one of the sports he played. 

The answer is Matt Striebel, who played soccer and lacrosse at Princeton (and if TB is remembering correctly, Striebel scored a goal in the NCAA tournament for both sports). He was a member of the 1998 and 2001 NCAA championship men's lacrosse teams at Princeton, and he then went on to a long career as a professional and international player that resulted in multiple championships.

In fact, Striebel is widely considered to be one of the best midfielders of all time. He's in the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame and recently was part of the 11-member inaugural Premier Lacrosse League Hall of Fame for professional lacrosse.

Striebel is in his 40s now, but he's still very much the same big kid he was when he played at Princeton. He has the same velocity to his life, in which he speaks quickly and loudly, with a lot of laughing mixed in, and TB means that in the best way possible.

He's one of those people you meet in life where every time you see him, you're reminded of why you liked him in the first place.

* Speaking of basketball, Princeton alum Devin Cannady will be playing for the Orlando Magic in the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, beginning this coming Thursday against the Rockets. You can see Orlando's first four games on either ESPN or NBA TV, with the fifth game to be determined.

HERE is more information.

If you recall, Cannady first made it to the NBA in 2020-21 season and had a 17-point night before suffering a major leg injury. He made it all the way back from that to win MVP honors of the G-League postseason in 2021 and then averaged 10 points a game for Orlando while shooting 40 percent from three in five games to end last season.

* Women's lacrosse head coach Jenn Cook has added another member to her staff with the hiring of Molly Dougherty, a goalie who won an NCAA championship at the only school other than Princeton, Northwestern, Virginia, Maryland, Boston College or North Carolina to win one this century.

What was the school? James Madison, in 2018.

* When TB saw yesterday that USC and UCLA were planning on joining the Big Ten, the first thing he did was text the news to his colleague Andrew Borders, a UCLA grad, whose response was "wow." To that TB said "nothing screams Big Ten like UCLA vs. Rutgers."

The seismic shifts in the college athletics landscape probably dates to when Penn State first joined the Big Ten, back in 1993. TB was at the newspaper back then, and the conversation there was "how does an Eastern team join a Midwestern conference?" That was a long time ago.

The Ivy League has been fortunate through all of this craziness in that its eight members are set. Nobody is getting in. Nobody wants to leave. When it all plays out, though, it could have an impact on how NCAA championships work, what non-league opponents are available and who knows what else. These are wild times in college sports.

* TB saw this tweet from another of his colleagues, Elliott Carr:

A special week of both learning and connecting with friends at #CoSIDA22. Grateful for the opportunity! pic.twitter.com/3eMziq58Dr

— Elliott Carr (@ecarr89) June 30, 2022

As with the games themselves, the ability for those who work in college athletics to again gather in person has returned. Princeton was well-represented at both CoSIDA and NACDA, which held their conventions in Las Vegas this week.

Congratulations to Jen Babik, the former softball/field hockey great, who was inducted officially into the CoSIDA Academic All-American Hall of Fame. 

And congratulations to yet another colleague, Chas Dorman, who picked up his CoSIDA "Rising Star" award. 

* Have a great Fourth of July weekend. Stay safe.