MLK Day Hoops

Here is what TigerBlog wrote a year ago on Martin Luther King Jr. Day:

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which makes the Civil Rights leader the only person ever born in the United States to have a federal holiday named for him or her.

TigerBlog spent a great deal of time in college studying the Civil Rights movement and Dr. King's role in it (he'd also be fortunate enough to meet John Doar, the Princeton basketball alum who was also a huge factor in the movement). 

In addition, TB has also been to the national park that bears Dr. King's name in Atlanta, back before it was a national park. The Civil Rights museum there is a must.

The occasion of his birthday first became a Monday federal holiday in 1983. Within three years, the NBA began to play games on the holiday, a tradition that will continue today with 11 games. Memphis (where Dr. King was killed in 1968) and Atlanta (his home) are at home each year.

The basketball tradition on the holiday was actually born a few months after the assassination itself. A year ago, TB wrote this on the holiday:

The National Basketball Association first started playing matinee games on Martin Luther King Day in 1986.

The first game to feature NBA players in honor of Dr. King came much earlier, back in 1968, the year in which he was assassinated. In fact, on the day after the assassination, which happened on April 4 of that year, Oscar Robertson began to organize a special exhibition game that would be played outdoors in New York City on Aug. 15.

According to an AP story, that game included players like Wilt Chamberlain, Lenny Wilkens, Dave Bing, Dave DeBusschere, Willis Reed and Walt Bellamy. That game raised $90,000 in support of Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

If you haven't heard of all of those players, then stop what you're doing and look them up. They are among the all-time greats the game has ever seen.

The Ivy League joined the MLK Day basketball tradition two years ago, and it continues today, with all 16 Ivy teams in action.

Princeton plays Dartmouth in both men's and women's basketball today, with the women in Hanover at 6 and the men in Jadwin Gym for a 2 pm tip-off. 

A year ago, Princeton defeated Arizona and Missouri in the NCAA tournament to reach the Sweet 16. That was in March. 

In January, Princeton went overtime to beat the Big Green 93-90 in overtime in Jadwin. In February, Dartmouth defeated Princeton 83-76 in Hanover.

What's the takeaway? One, no league game is ever easy, because the teams all know each other so well. Two, the opportunity to play in late March is the product of a long road that has ups and downs and is defined by the way a team continues to improve throughout all of it.

Dartmouth dropped its Ivy opener to Penn last Saturday in Philadelphia, which means that the Big Green drove to Philadelphia, back to Hanover and now come back to Princeton. This also means that Dartmouth's two long road trips will be out of the way after the game today.

The Big Green have never reached the Ivy League tournament field, and they would very much like this to be the first year they do so. The team clearly showed last year that it's not afraid to go toe-to-toe with the Tigers. 

For all of the attention that Princeton has gotten so far with its ability to score points, the Tigers are actually the No. 1 scoring defense team in the Ivy League at 63.6 per game. That figure, by the way, ranks 23rd out of the 351 teams in Division I. 

Dartmouth comes to Jadwin third in the league in scoring defense (Yale is second), at 68.7 per game. Will this one be low-scoring? Princeton is also averaging a shade under 80 per game, while Dartmouth is averaging just over 60 per game on offense.

Princeton also leads the league in three-pointers made per game, free throw percentage, turnover margin and assist to turnover ratio. 

One of the best parts of the Ivy League's new scheduling is the number of afternoon games. There used to be almost none, and now they're a regular occurrence. 

This afternoon's game is also part of what has become a tradition of the intersection of basketball and the recognition of the man for whom the day is named. 

See you at Jadwin at 2.

What's Going On?

What's going on? 

*

The No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the ECAC men's hockey standings meet up for a home-and-home this weekend. The No. 1 team is Quinnipiac, the defending NCAA champion and current No. 5 team in the Pairwise rankings. 

The No. 2 team is Princeton, who is ranked eighth among ECAC teams in the Pairwise rankings. Eighth?

Princeton has 14 points on the season, trailing only the 22 that the 7-0-1 Bobcats have. The ECAC standings are pretty interesting right now, with the eight-point difference between the top and No. 2 and then seven points between No. 2 and No. 12. 

The weekend series starts tonight in Hamden at 7, followed by the second game tomorrow night at 7 at Hobey Baker Rink. 

*

The Lute Olson Award is given to the outstanding player in college basketball at season's end. The mid-season watchlist was announced earlier this week, and it had 30 names on it.

How many do you think you could name? It's what TigerBlog said the other day, that the women's game has the more recognizable names. 

As for the men's list, one of the players on it is Zach Eady, from Purdue. Another was Ryan Kalkbrenner, from Creighton. UNC's RJ Davis and Duke's Ryan Filipowski are on it as well.

The rest of the names are pretty unfamiliar — with one glaring exception. Princeton's Xaivian Lee is also on it. 

If nothing else, Lee has to be the most improved player in Division I basketball. He went from 4.8 points per game last year to 18.1 this year, as well as 13.4 minutes per game to 29.3 per game, 0.9 assists per game to 3.6 per game, 37.6 percent shooting to 48.9 and 23.2 three-point shooting to 39.5.

None of that even takes into consideration the intangible side of Lee and the impact he has every time he touches the ball. And now he's vaulted himself into a conversation among the very best players in college basketball, and deservedly so. 

*

The final Olympic field hockey qualifying tournaments begin tomorrow, and two Princetonians are chasing spots that will go to six of the 16 teams that are still playing.

Beth Yeager, who will be a junior next year, is on the United States team, which lost 2-1 to world powerhouse Argentina in the Pan Am Games final. Had the U.S. won that game, it would have qualified. Instead, the Americans are now in India getting ready to play Game 1 against the host team tomorrow, with group games against New Zealand and Italy to follow.

The Canadians have Princeton alum Elise Wong. They are in the other location, Valencia, Spain, in a group with Great Britain, Malaysia and Spain. 

Each team plays the other teams in the group, and then there are crossover games. The top three teams in each tournament will advance to Paris, joining the six countries that have already qualified (Argentina, France, the Netherlands, China, South Africa and Australia).

*

TigerBlog got this message from former Princeton men's basketball player/assistant coach and current Mercer County Community College head coach Howard Levy earlier this week:

Play Smart, Save Lives Webinar

A new coach-led initiative was recently launched to help address gun violence and safe gun ownership - Play Smart, Save Lives. Just before the new year, Coaches Ron Cottrell at HCU and Jamie Dixon at TCU hosted the first Play Smart game to raise awareness around gun violence and safe storage. Coming off that success, Play Smart will host its first webinar on Sunday, Jan. 14 at 4:00 p.m. ET for coaches and players. Experts on trauma-informed practices will walk through a few of the ways gun violence touches communities in different ways, how to talk to players and peers about it, and how to help prevent tragedies before they occur. Contact Howard Levy (howardl@hyphats.com) or Ryan Marks (coach.ryanmarks@gmail.com) for any questions.

 Whether you sign up or not, what Howard and the rest of the coaches involved are doing is on the highest level of caring. It speaks volumes about who Howard is and how much he cares about the game and especially about the people who play it. 

There are a lot of people out there who talk a good game. Howard is one of the few who is willing to try to actually do something to make things better. 

* 

Lastly, is Bill Belichik the greatest football coach ever? Is Phil Jackson the greatest NBA coach ever? It depends. Belichik never won a Super Bowl without Tom Brady, but Brady won one without Belichik, whose record without Brady as his QB is way below .500. It's like Jackson in some ways, since Jackson had the luxury of winning NBA titles with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in Chicago and Shaq and Kobe in Los Angeles.

It's up to you to decide for yourself. For TB, it's like what he's always said about Pete Carril and John Wooden. Just because Wooden was a lot of NCAA titles (10), it doesn't make him a better coach than Carril.

The Week In Women's Hoops

TigerBlog starts today with congratulations to yet another wedding between two former Princeton athletes.

This time, it's former women's basketball player Blake Dietrick, the 2015 Ivy League Player of the Year, and Greg Seifert, a 2016 first-team All-Ivy League men's soccer player. Where was the wedding held? The Princeton Chapel, of course.

How many Princeton athlete-marries-Princeton athlete weddings have there been all-time? A lot. 

Dietrick is the one of only two players in Princeton women's basketball history to have at least 1,000 points and 300 assists in her career. The other? That would be Ellen Tomasiewicz, not to be confused with her sister CB Tomasiewicz, who scored more points than any other Princeton women's basketball player (1,622) without ever making a three-pointer. 

Dietrick is also in the running for the U.S. Olympic 3-on-3 team. 

On the subject of women's basketball, TigerBlog got in a discussion the other day with someone about college basketball players and name recognition. It is TB's belief that the three most well-known current college players are all women.

As an aside, as the person with whom TB talked about this is a Princeton alum, his first answer was "Xavian Lee." When TB suggested excluding Princeton players, he came up with the same three that TB did.

Which three? UConn's Paige Bueckers is third, LSU's Angel Reese is second and Iowa's Caitlin Clark is first. 

He also likened it to a few decades ago, when the women's tennis players were way more famous than the men. That this happened in women's college basketball would have been unheard of back then, as would the idea that the women's basketball tournament could be the biggest part of a separate media rights deal for NCAA championship events.

What's the reason for this? There are several. First, the women's game has vastly improved, in both its quality of play and its visibility. Second, the men's game has long been about the coaches more than the players. Lastly, the men's players turn over so quickly that who knows who is playing where? 

Seriously. Name five Power Conference men's basketball players. If you're a casual fan, you probably can't.

Of course, the same Princeton fan did name four Power Five players: Purdue's Zach Eady, along with Ryan Langborg, Jordan Dingle and Chris Ludlum.

Interesting, right? 

Closer to home — even though it was on the road — the Princeton women opened their Ivy League season with a 41-point win at Cornell (79-38). It was classic Carla Berube, as the Tigers allowed only six first-quarter points and never let up on the defensive end.

Offensively, Kaitlyn Chen and Madison St. Rose combined for 35 points on 16 for 26 shooting. A total of 12 different players scored in the game.

Ellie Mitchell had 10 more rebounds, moving her past Bella Alarie into second all-time at Princeton with 973 for her career. She needs 126 more to tie Margaret Meier's record of 1,099, which has stood since 1978. 

On the men's side, only Bill Bradley (1,008) and Whitey Fulcomer (995) have more than Mitchell.

All eight Ivy women's teams played this past Saturday, and Columbia (over Penn), Harvard (over Yale) and Brown (over Dartmouth) were the other winners. The preseason poll had Princeton, Columbia and Harvard as the top three, which was the top three a year ago. 

Brown was picked in sixth place, but the Bears are now 10-4 with their 68-39 win over the Big Green.

For reasons that TB has not bothered to look into, the women's schedules and men's schedules are not inverses, as they have always been. For instance, Princeton men opened up at home against Harvard.

While the men all play one game this coming week (Monday games on Martin Luther King Day), the women will play twice each, with one Saturday and another Monday. 

Princeton will be on the road twice, first at Harvard Saturday and then at Dartmouth Monday.

Harvard will head to Brown Monday after the Princeton game and after Brown's game at Yale Saturday. Columbia hosts Cornell and Yale. Penn make the same trip Princeton does. The league standings come Monday night will start to take at least a little bit of shape. 

After that, Princeton will have 11 league games left, seven of which will be in Jadwin. 

The first of those, by the way, will be Jan. 20 against Columbia.

Drilling Down

TigerBlog isn't feeling it right now.

Want to know why? It's because he's coming off his first-ever root canal, a thrilling event that happened yesterday afternoon.

His dentist referred him to an endodontist and sent him on his way with these words: "It's not as bad as everyone thinks." Oh yeah? 

The endodontist was a very nice man who came in and introduced himself as "Larry." Okay Larry. No need for formalities. 

He then showed TB his x-rays, as if they made sense to TB, and gave TB a very detailed description of what had led him to this point. Then he did a few checks on TB's teeth, including one where he put this very cold solution against the nerve, saying "raise your hand if you feel the cold."

The first two times, there was nothing. The third time? Yes, that definitely made an impression. It led to this actual conversation:

TB: "Sorry about not raising the hand."
Larry the Endodontist: "That's okay. I took the fact that you tried to levitate out of your chair as a substitute for hand-raising."

Fair enough. Then it was open wide and the insertion of a block in his mouth that, while successfully allowing Larry access to the back of TB's mouth, also made TB feel like his jaw was going to permanently come off its track.

The actual procedure took a bit over an hour and started with the numbing. As Larry began to do his thing, there was a classic rock playlist in the background, and Larry was humming along as he worked. 

As he began to drill, the song that played was "I Can See Clearly Now," by Johnny Nash. It was sort of ironic, since the rain was lashing against the window.

Oh, and the drilling? TB could see and smell the smoke that was coming from his mouth. That was, um, disheartening. And, to be honest, it was a bit, what's the word, surreal? There TB was, stuck in a chair, mouth immobilized, with an endodontist who was half-whistling, half-singing "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way." TB would have laughed, but he had the whole Hannibal Lector face-mask deal going.

For the entire time, Larry was whistling and working. At one point, the Dire Straits song "Walk Of Life" came on, and Larry didn't whistle. "He must know this song," TB thought. "Something must be wrong. He's gone after the wrong tooth." Fortunately, Larry picked it back up for the second verse. Whew.

As TB heard the humming in one ear, he also heard the voice of his good friend Zack DiGregorio in the other ear, whispering to him: "Forget the pain. Forget how much your jaw hurts. This is great blog content."

He was right too. It's amazing what floats through your mind while your root canal is ongoing.

First TB wondered how many of these Larry had done and what the first one was like. He'd ask him about it after the procedure. 

What else came to his mind? Oh yeah ... filling beer cups from the bottom up. 

Remember when TB talked about how he saw that at the Tottenham Hotspurs Stadium last week? Well, he got an email from Charlie Bell, a soccer player from the Class of 1976 and a huge Princeton Athletics fan. 

It turns out that Charlie's wife is a big Spurs fan (his team is Crystal Palace) and he had done some investigating into how the beer comes from the bottom of a cup at the stadium. You can read about it HERE.

TB began to wonder how long he'd been in the chair. He'd also wished he'd asked for a mirror to watch it. 

Then he thought about how he'd been talking to women's head basketball coach Carla Berube earlier in the week, and she mentioned his story on Abby Meyers from England. If you haven't read it yet, it's HERE.

Carla asked TB if the London Lions women's coach really did look like her, to which TB said she did. He also mentioned her quote: "That's good for her then," which made Carla smile.

He thought about how many touchdown receptions Andrei Iosivas had this year, which as you know is four, and wondered how many he'd had at Princeton last year. Turns out it was seven, with five the year before that. 

The Olympic qualifying tournaments are next week for field hockey, and Princeton junior-to-be Beth Yeager (USA) and alum Elise Wong (Canada) will be competing for spots in Paris. That popped into his head too.

Then he thought about a bunch of other non-Princeton Athletic stuff, and he won't bore you with that. Back on the Princeton Athletics theme, there's already a spreadsheet that exists for the upcoming winter/spring crossover season and which events will be covered by which member of the Office of Athletic Communications. 

Think about that. It's barely past the first week of January, and the OAC is already planning for the end of winter and the start of baseball, softball, lacrosse, golf and others. Crazy.

He remembered that he'd spelled Xaivian Lee's name wrong here earlier in the week and felt badly about that. He left out the first "i," and the presence of the second one meant he couldn't make a "there's no "i" in Xaivian' excuse.'"

Also, TB checked the number of bio clicks for the first nine days of 2024 for current Princeton athletes. Lee is already past 4,000; no other Princeton athlete had more than 545 (Sarah Fillier).

Finally, finally — TB was finished. Larry took the block out of his mouth, and TB was able to sit up. 

"How many times have you done this and what was the first time like?" TB asked.

"Hmmm," Larry said. "Well, figure seven a day times 240 working days a year times 20 years. What does that come to?"

Turns out it comes to 33,600.

And the first time? 

"I didn't have the muscle memory I have now."

Then he was off to his next one. As he walked down the hall, TB could hear him whistling "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young. And he could hear Zack, who was saying "told you."

Four For Iosivas

TigerBlog was rooting for Washington last night in the College Football Playoff championship game. 

It was a family thing. Both BrotherBlog and the Official Brother-In-Law Of TigerBlog (OBILOTB, for short) are professors at U-Dub, as they like to call it out there. 

They're also big Washington fans who have watched games in the president's box at Husky Stadium, a perk of OBILOTB's work as a Faculty Athletic Rep.

For the game last night, there were watch parties at several locations, including in the basketball arena. The two did not attend either, though. TigerBlog gets it. If you want to actually watch a game, then a watch party is not a good place to do it.

 Plus, you know, it probably didn't turn out to be the best party ever with the way things turned out.

While the subject for the day is football, the NFL regular-season is now over and the playoffs are about to begin. Can the Eagles turn it around? Are the Lions finally going to reward Princeton Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack for all of his years of being a loyal fan? Will Joe Flacco magically take the Browns the distance?

Here is a question for you: If you had to choose, would you take a team to win the Super Bowl this year who has never won one before (Bills, Browns, Lions, Texans), one that has but hasn't won one this century (Cowboys, Dolphins, 49ers) or one that has won this century (Eagles, Packers, Buccaneers, Ravens, Dolphins, Chiefs, Rams)? That's a tough one.

Oh, and as TB types those words, he is reminded of what the Cowboys' Duane Thomas once said: "If it's the biggest game ever, why do they play it again next year?"

One team that isn't in the postseason is the Cincinnati Bengals, who might have been a preseason Super Bowl contender until Joe Burrow was hurt in the preseason. Even when he came back, he wasn't quite the same quarterback he was when he took the team to the Super Bowl two years ago and the AFC title game last year, and then he was shut down after 10 games due to injury.

Even without Burrow, the Bengals went 9-8, which in the loaded AFC North put the team in last place. That same record, on the other hand, won a division for Tampa Bay and got Green Bay a wild card.

With a healthy Burrow, the Bengals will vault back into Super Bowl contention next season. They may have to do so without wide receiver Tee Higgins, who is likely to leave in free agency, and a player who is ready to step up for additional playing time would be Princeton's own Andrei Iosivas.

A sixth-round pick last spring, Iosivas just finished his rookie season with 15 catches for 116 yards and four touchdowns. That's four TDs, including two that came Sunday in a win over the Browns.

All of this brings TB to Dutch Hendrian. After Iosivas' second touchdown Sunday, TB saw this post on X:

Andrei Iosivas is the first @PrincetonFTBL player with 2 TD in a game since... Dutch Hendrian in 1924. pic.twitter.com/ScwDrvlJvx

— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) January 7, 2024

TB likes to think he knows a thing or two about Princeton Athletic history, and he'd never heard of Dutch Hendrian. As he spent much of yesterday morning researching him, TB found no evidence that Hendrian ever played at Princeton. 

He did learn that Hendrian played at Pitt before transferring to Princeton and that Hendrian never won a letter, which in those days was given to players who played against either Harvard or Yale (TB didn't know that either) or in at least half of the games. 

What Hendrian did letter in was ... boxing. Apparently he was pretty good at it. 

Hendrian did go on to play for three years in the earliest days of the National Football League, including spending five games in 1923 (while still a Princeton undergrad) as the player-coach for the Akron Pros. That must have kept him busy. 

In all, Hendrian played for the Pros, the Canton Bulldogs, the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants. He finished his career with six touchdowns, four rushing and two receiving, while also serving as a placekicker, bringing his career total to 50 points.

Hendrian also went on to a career in acting, appearing mostly in small parts in football movies like "Knute Rockne All-American" and gangster movies like "The Public Enemy."

Iosivas will enter his second NFL season two TDs away from tying Hendrian. He'll also need to appear in 162 movies when he's finished his playing career.

The Ivy Opener, Starring Xaivian Lee

It was about 10 minutes after Princeton had opened the Ivy League portion of its men's basketball season with an 89-58 win over Harvard, and Xaivian Lee was standing beyond the edge of the Jadwin court, surrounded by little kids, all of whom wanted his autograph.

About 10 yards away stood another fan, a woman named Kirin, who along with her husband Kumar had just attended their first-ever Princeton Athletic event. They didn't exactly want an autograph from Lee. They just wanted to be a part of the moment.

As it would turn out, they got a photo with Lee — and Lee got two new adoring fans.

Well, actually way more than two. Kirin and Kumar had to have a lot of company after the day Lee had.

The 6-3 sophomore's performance was extraordinary. It was as dominant a game that a Princeton basketball player has had in a very long time, and it came on a day when nearly 5,000 fans were watching in Jadwin, a half-dozen of whom were NBA scouts. 

Lee came very close to the first triple-double in Princeton men's basketball history, finishing the day with 33 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. He completely took over the game as the Tigers turned a five-point game with 15 minutes left and turned it into a 31-point Tiger win, not to mention a showcase of his extraordinary abilities. 

To fully appreciate how much he exploded, you have to break the game into three segments. It started with the first 11:12 of the day, which saw Harvard build a 21-14 lead. Lee, to that point, had no points, going 0 for 3 from three-point range. 

The third segment came with 2:43 left, when Lee checked out of the game for the final time, with the Tigers up 86-56. 

It's the middle segment that was craziness. Lee scored those 33 points in that middle segment, which lasted 24:05. That's more than a point per minute.

Lee missed two more threes before making one and them made five of his last six. He got to the basket any time he wanted. He found open teammate after open teammate. He was completely unstoppable. 

For the day he was 13 for 22 from the field, including 8 for 11 on two-pointers. He only had one turnover. 

It clearly was the Ivy Opener, starring Xaivian Lee. What it wasn't was a one-man show.

The biggest shot of the day may have come not from Lee but instead from Jack Scott. Princeton led 41-32 at the break and 46-36 shortly after it, but Harvard cut it to just five at 46-41 with 15 minutes to play. Would it become a game? 

Nope. Scott drained a very long three, snapping a four-minute scoreless stretch for the Tigers and starting his team on a  run of, well, who knows whether it was a series of runs or just one long run. Either way, starting with Scott's three, Princeton outscored Harvard 43-19 the rest of the way.

Caden Pierce had 19 points and 10 rebounds, giving him six double-doubles. Scott had four points, but he made a huge impact on the game beyond just his big three-pointer. Zach Martini continues to be very consistent, as he finished with 14 points, including 4 for 5 from three-point range.

The story, though, was Lee.

It was his second game this year with at least 30 points (he had 30 against Northeastern), and he's now reached at least 20 six times. If you take away the games against Bryn Athyn and Delaware Valley in which he played 19 total minutes, and he's averaging 20.5 points per game. Even with those two, he's at 18.1.

The crowd, of course, loved him. And pretty much everything that happened. 

The big turnout was due to the team's strong start (the Tigers are now 13-1) and the fact that this is the year after a Sweet 16 trip. 

Kirin and Kumar had their first Jadwin experience end on an even higher note than just the way the game went, if that was possible, as they walked past Lee in a hallway in Caldwell and got a picture with him. They were all smiles, and a bit awed. 

Next up is a home matinee on Martin Luther King Day against Dartmouth. With the way this team plays, every home game needs to be circled on the calendar.

Certainly Kirin and Kumar will be back. 

Opening Tips

Here's a quiz for you to start your Friday:

Well, it's not quite a quiz. More like a game of logic and luck.

In the calendar year of 2023, which current Princeton athletes had their bios clicked on the most? TigerBlog is looking for a top 10 here.

This is from Jan. 1-Dec. 31 2023.

The only hints TB will give you are that six different teams are represented and that there are six men and four women. He'll come back with the answer shortly. 

Also, the athlete in first has more than the next three athletes combined. 

In the meantime, the first Ivy League basketball games of the year take place tomorrow, when there will be four women's games and two men's games. The two most interesting parts of the first weekend's schedule is that 1) the men's games and women's games are not the same matchups and 2) there are two men's games tomorrow and two more Tuesday.

As far as Princeton is concerned, the women begin the chase to another Ivy title and return trip to the NCAA tournament — where they have won a game each of the last two years — with a trip to Cornell. Tip-off in Ithaca is at 2. The men host Harvard tomorrow at 2 as they also look to get back to the NCAA tournament. As you know, Princeton was a Sweet 16 team a year ago.

Elsewhere on the women's side, you have Yale at Harvard, Brown at Dartmouth and Penn at Columbia. 

What is there to expect? Who knows. As the teams head into the league season, Princeton has the best non-conference record at 10-3, followed by Brown and Columbia at 9-4. Every team is .500 or better except Dartmouth (5-6) and Yale (3-10).

Those results don't really tell you much. It's all a matter of scheduling. And then there are any number of transitive games you can play among common opponents. That doesn't matter either.

Brown beat Providence by five. Columbia beat Providence by 25. It doesn't matter. Princeton beat Seton Hall in two OTs. Columbia beat Seton Hall by 11. That also doesn't matter.

As for the men, the other game tomorrow is Dartmouth at Penn, and then the Tuesday matchups are Columbia at Cornell and Yale at Brown. 

The non-league standings have Princeton at 12-1 after its win over Delaware to end 2023. The next-best record belongs to Cornell at 10-3, followed by 9-4 Harvard. The only teams below .500 are Dartmouth (4-9) and Brown (4-11).

Caden Pierce was the Ivy League men's Player of the Week this past week after his 21-point, 10-rebound performance against the Blue Hens. Pierce shot 9 for 11 in the game.

The Rookie of the Week was Harvard's Thomas Batties II, who won for the first time. His classmate, Malik Mack, won it the first four weeks of the season, though he has missed the Crimson's last two games. 

Again, the first goal is to get into the top four in the league to reach the Ivy tournament, which this year will be at Columbia. The winners of those tournaments get the league's automatic NCAA bids.

And that brings TB back to the question of most viewed player bios. TB regrets that he didn't make his own list before looking at the numbers, because he's not certain how well he would have done. He definitely would have had four of the players (No. 2, No. 3, No. 7 and No. 9).

The list, as TB said earlier, had six different sports and six men and four women. He has no idea why No. 1 has so many more than everyone else.

Here is the list:

No. 10 - Skye Belker, women's basketball (2,452 views)
No. 9 - Ozzie Nicholas, football (2,473 views)
No. 8 - Arthur Smith, men's hockey (2,578 views)
No. 7 - Caden Pierce, men's basketball (2,725 views)
No. 6 - Pietra Tordin, women's soccer (2,799 views)
No. 5 - Chloe Ayres, wrestling (2,876 views)
No. 4 - Jalen Travis, football (3,277 views)
No. 3 - Blake Stenstrom, football (3,868 views)
No. 2 - Kaitlyn Chen, women's basketball (4,063 views)
No. 1 - Xaivian Lee, men's basketball (13,059 views)

The Friendship Classic

Welp, TigerBlog is back in the United States.

It's possible that his plane passed the women's hockey team's flight going in the opposite direction. It's one of those old math problems, where one plane was going in one direction and another was going the other and where did they pass? 

TB thinks you need the speed of the wind in addition to the planes, but hey,

The women's hockey flight was headed to Belfast for this weekend's Friendship Classic, where the Tigers will take on Providence in games tomorrow and Saturday. Face-off will be at noon tomorrow local time, which means 7 am in Princeton, and 2 pm Saturday, which makes it a 9 am start in Princeton.

Princeton is ranked 12th while Providence is unranked. Both teams are playing for the first time since Dec. 9.

And what a way to come out of a long break. 

This is from the Friendship Classic's website:

“We are so excited to travel to Belfast and showcase our game to international fans,” Princeton women’s coach Cara Morey said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that most college hockey players never get to experience. At Princeton, we believe in Education Through Athletics, and we are excited to learn the unique history and customs from the people of Belfast. We are also excited to play top-level college hockey as we take on Providence. This is going to be a highlight for many of our players as they create memories that last a lifetime. We’re grateful for the ECAC and Princeton University for helping facilitate this amazing experience.”

A key focus of the Friendship Series is education, including education of youth through sports to create a spirit of mutual understanding and the spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play; an exploration of the opportunities that education can provide, both in Northern Ireland and the USA through scholarships and placements; and education linked to future job opportunities and economic success.

In parallel, the Friendship Series initiative aims to focus on social inclusion – ensuring that young people and communities from rural and urban deprived areas are engaged with education and provided with opportunities to identify relevant areas of study and future potential career paths.

The games will be played at the SSE Arena, which seats 11,000 for hockey and is located in the Titanic Quarter of the city. There is a museum close to the arena called "Titanic Belfast;" if you didn't know, the doomed luxury liner was built in Belfast before sailing from Southampton. 

Princeton is in seventh place in the ECAC standings. The Tigers come back from Northern Ireland and then hit the road again, traveling to Dartmouth and Harvard Dec. 12 and 13 as they get back into the league schedule. Dartmouth and Harvard are currently 10-11 in the standings. 

Oddly, it will take longer to drive to Dartmouth than it will to fly to Belfast. That's up there with the record for most miles traveled by a Princeton team in a 10-day stretch though. 

The idea of playing games in another country is not new in college sports. Princeton has played regular season men's basketball in Nova Scotia and London. The men's hockey team has played games in British Columbia and in Belfast as well.

This is the third Friendship Classic for American women's hockey teams and the first since 2020. It's an offshoot of the Friendship Four, a tournament for American men's teams in the same arena. The first one was held in 2015, and Princeton played in the 2019 version, along with Northeastern, Colgate and New Hampshire. 

TB was with the men's basketball team in Nova Scotia in 1999. The Tigers played Ohio University in the last game of a full day of games — starting with Canadian high school games and then Canadian en's and women's college games —at a really nice arena in Halifax. Ordinarily it would have been just another November game, but playing it in Canada made it something that TB is pretty sure all of that year's players remember well.

The same will be true for the women's hockey team. Getting a chance to play in Belfast at this event makes it way more than just another weekend of games. 

Couple that with the start of play for the four Princeton alums in the new Professional Women's Hockey League, and this is a big start to 2024 for the Tigers.

Cherries-Spurs

TigerBlog ordered a sausage roll, a ham-and-cheese pie and chips at the concession stand at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Sunday afternoon, before the game between the Spurs and Bournemouth.

As he waited, he looked over at the gentleman next to him, who had ordered three beers. The concession worker took a plastic cup, placed it over a circle, pushed a button — and then the beer started to rise from the bottom of the cup. 

What the heck? How in the world did the beer stay in the cup afterwards? Wasn't there a hole in the bottom of it? How else would the beer come into the cup? 

Had it been any other stadium, TB would have looked into it. At Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, nah. It's just part of the mystique of the place.

TigerBlog has never been to a more beautiful stadium than the one in North London. His experience at the game Saturday also reinforced for him that there is nothing in sports that compares to a European soccer game.

Yes, he said that. Princeton head men's soccer coach Jim Barlow would have to smile at that. He and TB have gone back and forth for decades on the merits of soccer and lacrosse, and yet even TB has to admit that going to a big, big-time soccer game is crazy. He learned it when he went to the El Salvador-Costa Rica World Cup qualifier in 2008 when he was in Costa Rica with the men's lacrosse team, but it has really been reinforced for him in the last 15 months. 

The game Sunday was his first English Premier League game. His other experience in European professional soccer came on the men's lacrosse trip in the fall of 2022, when the team went to see a La Liga game between Villareal and Barcelona. 

He didn't really need to go to either game to have a pretty good sense of what the experience is like. It's crazy. You can tell that from television.

When you're in the stadium, though, it all goes to an entirely different level. It's a party from start to finish, with singing, cheering, dancing and rabid love for whoever your team is.

In this case, TB's team is Bournemouth, which is where Mrs. Blog was born and raised. When she was young, the Cherries, as the team is known, were a fourth-division club. Now they have reached the Premier League and managed to stay there for the last few years, and they came into the game Sunday with six wins and a tie in their last seven games, moving themselves into a tie for 10th with Chelsea.

Before TB left for England, Barlow told him that he would be able to help him get EPL tickets if there was a game he wanted to attend. And so it was that Barlow came through, starting TB down a path that led to two seats for the Cherries-Spurs game 17 rows off the field, behind the Bournemouth bench.

The day started with the 12:03 train into London from the small town of Ware, where TB and Mrs. Blog have been staying while dog-sitting a Whippet named Dougal. They (Dougal stayed home) took the 30-minute trip on the Hertford East line, which stops at stations with very English-sounding names like, among others, Broxbourne, Cheshunt, St. Margaret's, Rye House, Enfield Lock, Waltham Cross and Brimsdown.

When they got to the train platform, it was already pretty crowded, and everyone there was 1) headed to the game, 2) telling them not to cheer out loud for Bournemouth and 3), um, imbibing. On Spurs game days, the train adds a stop at Northumberland Park, in between Ponder's End and Tottenham Hale. The trains also add extra cars, or, as they say on the PA at the station, "formed of extra coaches."

It actually reminded TB of the way extra trains were added to Princeton for football games in the earliest days of Palmer Stadium.

TB and Mrs. Blog got off at Northumberland Park and made the 10-minute walk towards the stadium, which rises like a spaceship above the row homes and shops in the neighborhood. The old stadium, White Hart Lane, was torn down and the new stadium built on the same spot, opening in 2019. It is immaculate, beautiful, welcoming, accessible and just an incredible venue all around. It was built in a way so that when it rains — and it poured during the game Sunday — not a single fan in the stadium will get wet.

TB was wearing, shockingly, a Princeton sweatshirt and Princeton hat, and he was approached by a tall man with a thick English accent who said "Princeton?" When TB turned around, he saw a man who said his name was Robert Reed. 

When TB asked him if he was familiar with Princeton, Reed said he most certainly was. Why was that? Because he played basketball at, you won't believe it, Rider. Really. Rider. 

Did he say Rider? TB wasn't quite sure he heard him correctly. Yes. Rider. 

In fact, Reed had an 11-point, eight-rebound game against the Tigers in his senior year of 2003. He played for Don Harnum, an old TB friend who is now the Director of Athletics at Rider (and whose brother Mike played for Pete Carril at Princeton).

Is Reed, who now runs a sports hospitality company after a long pro career in Europe, a Spurs fan? He goes to every game, home and away, wherever the team plays. This includes all over Europe in addition to the EPL games. 

After talking to Reed for a few minutes, the walk to the stadium continued. As he was starting up the steps, he heard, again, "Princeton?" When he turned around, there were about eight people standing there. They were Americans who had come to the game. Where did they live? In Princeton. Literally in the town of Princeton. 

Wear your Princeton stuff and people will find you.

The crowd featured about 3,000 Bournemouth fans and 60,000 or so Spurs fans. They sang "When the Spurs go marching in," to the tune of "When The Saints Go Marching In," as the game began and they never stopped the party. 

In the end, it was a 3-1 Spurs win as the home side (as they say) continues to chase a spot in the UEFA Champions League. Bournemouth is comfortably out of the relegation zone, for now at least. 

TB will root for the Spurs moving forward in addition to the Cherries. 

And why not? They put on an incredible show at their incredible venue. 

And as for Jim Barlow? Thanks for arranging the tickets. 

And you've known TB since you were in high school. You could have said something about how much fun pro soccer is.

Looking Grand

Happy New Year everyone.

TigerBlog will ask you the same question he asked himself yesterday. What day of the week is it? He had no idea. It's Tuesday today, right? 

Hopefully you all had a safe and happy New Year's Eve and 2024 is your best year ever. Are you the New Year's resolution type? 

TB has made the same New Year's resolution year after year — to go from third person to first person here. As of yet, he hasn't do so, and it appears that it'll have to wait at least another year.

Also, as with January 1 of any year, TigerBlog likes to point out that the lacrosse, baseball and softball openers are officially now next month.

The last weekend of 2023 featured some pretty exciting performances in Princeton Athletics. 

You can start in Baker Rink, where the final home event of the year saw the men's hockey team defeat Harvard 5-2. The Tigers actually scored the final five goals of the game after trailing 2-0 late in the first period.

The win moved Princeton into second place in the ECAC standings and first place in the Ivy League standings. Next up is a weekend trip to New Hampshire, who is ranked 13th in the Pairwise ratings, and then a home-and-home the following weekend with defending NCAA champion Quinnipiac, No. 3 in the Pairwise.

If you're wondering, the top five is Maine, Boston University, Quinnipiac, Boston College and Wisconsin.

The wrestling team had a strong showing at the Midlands tournament at Northwestern, where the Tigers finished 10th as a team. Luke Stout was the runner-up at 197 pounds, while Nate Dugan (184) and Aidan Connor (also 197) finished sixth.

The men's basketball team finished the 2023 part of its schedule with an 84-82 win over Delaware. Caden Pierce had 21 points and 10 rebounds, leading to this rather fascinating stat: Princeton is 15-1 in games in which Pierce reaches double figures in rebounds.

The Tigers are now 12-1 on the season as they get ready for the Ivy League opener at home Saturday at 2 against Harvard. Princeton also went 25-6 for the calendar year 2023, a year that, as you now, included a run to the NCAA Sweet 16 last March.

And then there was the women's basketball team. Princeton had an easy win on the home court of a very good Vermont team, winning that one 67-47, and then won at Le Moyne 66-55 on New Year's Eve afternoon.

The women also open their Ivy season Saturday, though they are at Cornell for a 2 pm tip as well. 

The big story of the two wins was that Kaitlyn Chen went over the 1,000-point mark for her career. She reached the milestone in the third quarter against the Catamounts, and, with the Le Moyne game added in, she now has 1,014 for her career. Those points have come in 73 career games, giving her an average of 13.9 per game.

Chen is the 28th Princeton women's player to reach 1,000 career points. There have also been 37 men's players who have gotten there, bringing the total number of Princeton basketball players to 65. 

Who was the first? That was Bud Haabestad, who got there on Jan. 15, 1955, in a win over Harvard. Who was the first woman? That was Jackie Jackson, who did so against Seton Hall on Feb. 3, 1978.

After not getting to play as a freshman during the Covid year, Chen averaged 10.5 points per game in her first year and then improved that to 16.2 last year and now 16.3 this year. If she keeps up that pace, she'll end the regular season with 1,242 points, which would put her in 13th place among the women.

One note about Chen that is very interesting to TB is that of her 389 career made field goals, only 40 are three-pointers. That's not 40 percent. That's 40 total. To get to 1,000 points in 2.5 seasons without being a three-point shooter primarily is wildly impressive.

Chen's 1,000th point came like so many of the ones that preceded it did. She took a pass above the three-point line, took two dribbles to her left, freed herself up from 15 and dropped it in without even touching the rim. 

Congratulations to Kaitlyn Chen for the achievement. 

And here's to 2024. Let it be a great one for everyone.