If you are one of the people who emailed TigerBlog yesterday to let him know whether or not your senior thesis had a colon in it, well, he appreciates that you had fun with it like he did.
He got 11 emails yesterday from Princeton alums with their thesis titles. Of those 11, there were seven who had colons in them.
That's way more than 43 percent.
If you didn't read yesterday, then 1) you're wondering what in the world he's talking about and 2) why didn't you?
You can click HERE to see what he was talking about.
By the way, TB said yesterday he likes semicolons better than colons, so he decided to work one into today's headline.
TB enjoyed that whole thing so much that he included it on a list of trivia questions that Mollie Marcoux Samaan asked him to put together for today's monthly staff meeting.
Another one involved Mike Ford, the Princeton alum who spent this season with the New York Yankees. Ford, the only player ever to be the Ivy League Player of the Year and Pitcher of the Year, had a very productive rookie season.
In fact, Ford had 143 at-bats for the Yankees this year. How many home runs did he hit?
If you guessed 12, you'd be correct. That's a lot of home runs in a short amount of at-bats.
Ford actually hit .259 and scored 30 runs. In the world of baseball analytics, the 12 home runs and 30 runs scored matter way more than the 28 strikeouts. His .909 OPS would be considered pretty much excellent.
The Yankees begin the playoffs tomorrow night against the Twins in the American League Division Series. Ford probably won't know if he's on the 25-man roster for the series until the deadline tomorrow morning, but TigerBlog is hoping he will be.
He'd certainly include him. He's a lefty with power in Yankee Stadium. That bat would come in handy at some point in the series, TB would think.
Plus, the Yankees have been dealing with injuries all season. It was those injuries that gave Ford his chance in the first place, and he made the most of it.
He certainly appears to have a future, either in the Bronx or somewhere else.
So that's one of the things that TB wanted to share with you today.
What else does he have for you on your Thursday?
While the Yankees head into the playoffs, it'll be a typically busy early October weekend for Princeton Athletics.
As far as Ivy League events go, there are three teams who are playing at home this weekend in league matchups.
The football team is home against Columbia Saturday at 1 in a matchup of one of the top offenses in the country (Princeton's) and one of the top defenses in the country (Columbia). TB will have more on that one tomorrow.
In the meantime, he refers you to THIS STORY he wrote about senior offensive linemen Brent Holder and Alex Deters and what it's like to be on the O line when your quarterback (Kevin Davidson) and receiver (Andrew Griffin) are setting Ivy League records.
As for the rest of the fall teams, the women's volleyball team, who defeated Penn last weekend in its Ivy opener, hosts Columbia tomorrow night and then Cornell Saturday.
The field hockey team is home tomorrow at 5 against Yale before heading to Duke to take on the second-ranked Blue Devils Sunday. This was after a 1-0 win over yet another nationally ranked team, Delaware, Tuesday night.
If you're going to be in the Hanover, N.H., area, there's a soccer doubleheader Saturday afternoon between Princeton and Dartmouth. The women's game is at 1, followed at 4 by the men.
The Princeton women dropped their league opener to Yale last weekend, but there's a long way to go in a league where very, very few teams go unbeaten.
As for the men, this is the Ivy opener. They come in with a four-game winning streak, which includes a 6-3 win over St. Joe's Tuesday night. That's a lot of goals. In fact, that's the most Princeton has scored in a game since a 7-3 win over Seton Hall in 2011.
There will also be home men's water polo, against Harvard Saturday at noon and then Sunday against Brown (10 am) and MIT (3).
The women's golf team, women's tennis team, women's cross country team and men's cross country team are also playing away this weekend.
The complete schedule is HERE.
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Wednesday TigerBlog: Thoughts On A Story TB's Friend Todd Sent Him.
Wednesday TigerBlog: Thoughts On A Story TB's Friend Todd Sent Him.
That's a good title, no?
It was yesterday morning when TigerBlog got a text from his friend Todd. The story was from a website called "towardsdatascience.com," and it was about how nearly half of Princeton's senior thesis all-time have a colon in the title.
The story even used a term for this that may or not be made up: titular colonicity. You can insert whatever punchline you wish to insert.
Seriously, here's what it said:
Princeton’s thesis database lists nearly seventy thousand titles, dating from when first establishing the senior thesis in 1926 to the class of seniors who graduated in June. We can use this huge dataset to discover how titular colonicity (yes, there’s actually a term for it) got its start.
The basic premise of the story is that someone or a handful of someones took the time to analyze the Princeton senior thesis database to to see what percentage of the time the author used a colon in the title. This is also broken down by majors.
HERE is the story. It fascinated TB, for some reason.
At first TB thought it was a gag, some sort of parody of a science website. Here were the two main headlines yesterday afternoon:
"Conversational Sentiment Analysis ... Methods for determining sentiment towards named entities" and "Top 5 Mistakes With Statistics In A/B Testing ... A/B tests (a.k.a. online controlled experiments) are widely used to estimate the effect of proposed changes to websites and mobile apps"
Seems on the level.
According to the story, 43 percent of Princeton's all-time senior theses - and there have been 67,359 of them - have had a colon in the title. That's a lot.
TigerBlog has never liked using colons. He much prefers semi-colons, but there's probably not a lot of those in titles.
TB has always loved the senior thesis database, which you can find HERE.
Whose thesis do you want to know about? Bill Bradley?
"On That Record I Stand" – Harry S. Truman's Fight For The Senatorship In 1940. Wait. That's a long dash, not a colon.
Bradley and Truman were both from Missouri. Between them, they'd serve five terms in the U.S. Senate, which is something Bradley couldn't have know when he was figuring out what to write about in 1965.
It would be 13 years between when Bradley would graduate from Princeton to when he was elected to the first of his three terms in the Senate. In between, he'd win two NBA championships with the Knicks, who haven't won one since.
Who else?
How about Rachael DeCecco, who was Rachael Becker when she won the 2003 Tewaaraton Award and led Princeton to its second straight NCAA women's lacrosse championship (and third overall). She's also two weeks away from getting into the US Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
Her thesis?
Depression and the Elderly: A Function of Loss. She's one of those colon people.
When TB went to check on Rachael Becker, he also saw Max Becker, who scored the game-winning goal in overtime against Clarkson in the 2018 ECAC men's hockey championship game, sending the Tigers to the NCAA tournament.
His was this: "Bitcoin: Financial Instrument or Speculative Asset? An Analysis of Bitcoin in the Foreign exchange Market."
You're seeing the trend.
She's one of three Princeton alums who are going to be inducted in Baltimore on Oct. 18. The other two are Ryan Boyle and Matt Striebel. Colons? Hmmm.
Here's Boyle's: "An Investigation of Meditation: The Influence of Meditation on Stress, Risk-Taking, Creating Thinking, Framing Effects, and Locus of Control."
Here's Striebel's: "Green Lights and Other Forms of Earthly Transcendence: "Anguished Yearning" and the American Dream."
That's a lot of colons for the Hall of Fame.
Surely some random Princeton athlete must not have had a colon.
Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan: "The Social Construction of Sport and Gender: A History of Women in Golf, 1890-1955."
Colon.
Men's soccer head coach Jim Barlow: "Deepening the Chasms: A History of Race Relations in the One Square Mile Paradise of Hightstown, New Jersey."
Colon.
Wait. He finally found one.
Caroline Lind, like Bradley an Olympic gold medalist. Actually Lind won two gold medals, in rowing.
Her title?
"Flow In Rowing."
No colons.
That was fun.
That's a good title, no?
It was yesterday morning when TigerBlog got a text from his friend Todd. The story was from a website called "towardsdatascience.com," and it was about how nearly half of Princeton's senior thesis all-time have a colon in the title.
The story even used a term for this that may or not be made up: titular colonicity. You can insert whatever punchline you wish to insert.
Seriously, here's what it said:
Princeton’s thesis database lists nearly seventy thousand titles, dating from when first establishing the senior thesis in 1926 to the class of seniors who graduated in June. We can use this huge dataset to discover how titular colonicity (yes, there’s actually a term for it) got its start.
The basic premise of the story is that someone or a handful of someones took the time to analyze the Princeton senior thesis database to to see what percentage of the time the author used a colon in the title. This is also broken down by majors.
HERE is the story. It fascinated TB, for some reason.
At first TB thought it was a gag, some sort of parody of a science website. Here were the two main headlines yesterday afternoon:
"Conversational Sentiment Analysis ... Methods for determining sentiment towards named entities" and "Top 5 Mistakes With Statistics In A/B Testing ... A/B tests (a.k.a. online controlled experiments) are widely used to estimate the effect of proposed changes to websites and mobile apps"
Seems on the level.
According to the story, 43 percent of Princeton's all-time senior theses - and there have been 67,359 of them - have had a colon in the title. That's a lot.
TigerBlog has never liked using colons. He much prefers semi-colons, but there's probably not a lot of those in titles.
TB has always loved the senior thesis database, which you can find HERE.
Whose thesis do you want to know about? Bill Bradley?
"On That Record I Stand" – Harry S. Truman's Fight For The Senatorship In 1940. Wait. That's a long dash, not a colon.
Bradley and Truman were both from Missouri. Between them, they'd serve five terms in the U.S. Senate, which is something Bradley couldn't have know when he was figuring out what to write about in 1965.
It would be 13 years between when Bradley would graduate from Princeton to when he was elected to the first of his three terms in the Senate. In between, he'd win two NBA championships with the Knicks, who haven't won one since.
Who else?
How about Rachael DeCecco, who was Rachael Becker when she won the 2003 Tewaaraton Award and led Princeton to its second straight NCAA women's lacrosse championship (and third overall). She's also two weeks away from getting into the US Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
Her thesis?
Depression and the Elderly: A Function of Loss. She's one of those colon people.
When TB went to check on Rachael Becker, he also saw Max Becker, who scored the game-winning goal in overtime against Clarkson in the 2018 ECAC men's hockey championship game, sending the Tigers to the NCAA tournament.
His was this: "Bitcoin: Financial Instrument or Speculative Asset? An Analysis of Bitcoin in the Foreign exchange Market."
You're seeing the trend.
She's one of three Princeton alums who are going to be inducted in Baltimore on Oct. 18. The other two are Ryan Boyle and Matt Striebel. Colons? Hmmm.
Here's Boyle's: "An Investigation of Meditation: The Influence of Meditation on Stress, Risk-Taking, Creating Thinking, Framing Effects, and Locus of Control."
Here's Striebel's: "Green Lights and Other Forms of Earthly Transcendence: "Anguished Yearning" and the American Dream."
That's a lot of colons for the Hall of Fame.
Surely some random Princeton athlete must not have had a colon.
Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan: "The Social Construction of Sport and Gender: A History of Women in Golf, 1890-1955."
Colon.
Men's soccer head coach Jim Barlow: "Deepening the Chasms: A History of Race Relations in the One Square Mile Paradise of Hightstown, New Jersey."
Colon.
Wait. He finally found one.
Caroline Lind, like Bradley an Olympic gold medalist. Actually Lind won two gold medals, in rowing.
Her title?
"Flow In Rowing."
No colons.
That was fun.
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Players Of The Week
So say part of your job is to decide which players to nominate for player of the week each week.
And say that you have two players whose weeks were 1) record-setting and 2) completely intertwined in essentially every way. And the rules said you couldn't nominate both.
Then what would you do?
Well, that's where TigerBlog was yesterday.
You had Kevin Davidson, who threw an Ivy League-record seven touchdown passes against Bucknell Saturday. And you had Andrew Griffin, who tied the Ivy League record by catching four of them.
There was more, too. Davidson was 29 for 37 for 381 yards and no interceptions. Griffin caught nine passes for 200 yards. Both were big-time, dominant performances.
On top of that, neither would have set any of those records without the other. Griffin had to get open and catch the ball, but doing so without having Davidson deliver the ball would have been worthless. To TB, they were both equally impressive.
So now what?
In the end, TigerBlog nominated Davidson for Ivy Player of the Week and then successfully advocated with his Office of Athletic Communications colleagues to have Griffin be the goprincetontigers.com Athlete of the Week.
James Stagg, a freshman defensive lineman with a very bright future, was the Ivy Rookie of the Week after a sack and an interception that he returned to the two.
Griffin was so good against Bucknell that it almost became an oversight that Andrei Iosivas, who didn't catch a pass at all last year as a freshman, caught two more touchdown passes, giving him back-to-back two touchdown games to start his sophomore year.
Or that Princeton's wide receivers have caught 10 touchdown passes in two weeks, which leaves them - Griffin, Iosivas, Dylan Classi and Jacob Birmelin - more than halfway to the 18 that current NFL players Stephen Carlson and Jesper Horsted caught a year ago. Griffin, by the way, has already matched the five that Carlson had a year ago - and Carlson is third all-time at Princeton in career touchdown receptions.
The Tigers open their Ivy League season Saturday at home against Columbia (kickoff at 1). TB will have more on that later in the week.
While the subject is Players of the Week, Princeton also had the Ivy League field hockey Player of the Week, junior Clara Roth, who won for the second time this year.
Roth had two goals in a 4-3 overtime loss to No. 4 Maryland and then came back with two goals and two assists in a 4-0 win over Dartmouth in the Ivy opener in Hanover Saturday.
Princeton has scored 20 goals this season in eight games (seven against ranked teams), and Roth has either scored (five) or assisted (seven) on 12 of them.
When TB looked up where Roth was from, he learned that she's from a town in Germany called Schweitzingen, which sits about six miles southwest of Heidelberg and dates back to the eighth century. He considered logging on to Wikipedia to add Roth to the town's list of notable people.
And why not? She deserves to be listed.
She was the 2018 Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year after leading the team in goals (13) and points (34) while the season ended in the Final Four. She was first-team All-Mid Atlantic Region and third-team All-America, after earning honorable mention All-Ivy and second-team all-region as a freshman.
She's currently tied for 11th in career assists at Princeton, and she's on the cusp of being listed in all-time leaders in goals and points.
Roth and the Tigers play another ranked opponent tonight, as they travel to No. 12 Delaware. Like Princeton, Delaware has won an NCAA field hockey national championship this decade.
It's also the start of a very busy week for Princeton, who hosts Yale Friday at 5 in the second Ivy game. Speaking of second, that game will be followed by a trip Sunday to second-ranked Duke.
After that, it's a run of five Ivy opponents and unranked Boston University for the rest of the regular season.
And hey, TB just realized it's October 1st. That means, among other things, that the fall season is going to reach its peak, right around the time that the foliage does as well.
And say that you have two players whose weeks were 1) record-setting and 2) completely intertwined in essentially every way. And the rules said you couldn't nominate both.
Then what would you do?
Well, that's where TigerBlog was yesterday.
You had Kevin Davidson, who threw an Ivy League-record seven touchdown passes against Bucknell Saturday. And you had Andrew Griffin, who tied the Ivy League record by catching four of them.
There was more, too. Davidson was 29 for 37 for 381 yards and no interceptions. Griffin caught nine passes for 200 yards. Both were big-time, dominant performances.
On top of that, neither would have set any of those records without the other. Griffin had to get open and catch the ball, but doing so without having Davidson deliver the ball would have been worthless. To TB, they were both equally impressive.
So now what?
In the end, TigerBlog nominated Davidson for Ivy Player of the Week and then successfully advocated with his Office of Athletic Communications colleagues to have Griffin be the goprincetontigers.com Athlete of the Week.
James Stagg, a freshman defensive lineman with a very bright future, was the Ivy Rookie of the Week after a sack and an interception that he returned to the two.
Griffin was so good against Bucknell that it almost became an oversight that Andrei Iosivas, who didn't catch a pass at all last year as a freshman, caught two more touchdown passes, giving him back-to-back two touchdown games to start his sophomore year.
Or that Princeton's wide receivers have caught 10 touchdown passes in two weeks, which leaves them - Griffin, Iosivas, Dylan Classi and Jacob Birmelin - more than halfway to the 18 that current NFL players Stephen Carlson and Jesper Horsted caught a year ago. Griffin, by the way, has already matched the five that Carlson had a year ago - and Carlson is third all-time at Princeton in career touchdown receptions.
The Tigers open their Ivy League season Saturday at home against Columbia (kickoff at 1). TB will have more on that later in the week.
While the subject is Players of the Week, Princeton also had the Ivy League field hockey Player of the Week, junior Clara Roth, who won for the second time this year.
Roth had two goals in a 4-3 overtime loss to No. 4 Maryland and then came back with two goals and two assists in a 4-0 win over Dartmouth in the Ivy opener in Hanover Saturday.
Princeton has scored 20 goals this season in eight games (seven against ranked teams), and Roth has either scored (five) or assisted (seven) on 12 of them.
When TB looked up where Roth was from, he learned that she's from a town in Germany called Schweitzingen, which sits about six miles southwest of Heidelberg and dates back to the eighth century. He considered logging on to Wikipedia to add Roth to the town's list of notable people.
And why not? She deserves to be listed.
She was the 2018 Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year after leading the team in goals (13) and points (34) while the season ended in the Final Four. She was first-team All-Mid Atlantic Region and third-team All-America, after earning honorable mention All-Ivy and second-team all-region as a freshman.
She's currently tied for 11th in career assists at Princeton, and she's on the cusp of being listed in all-time leaders in goals and points.
Roth and the Tigers play another ranked opponent tonight, as they travel to No. 12 Delaware. Like Princeton, Delaware has won an NCAA field hockey national championship this decade.
It's also the start of a very busy week for Princeton, who hosts Yale Friday at 5 in the second Ivy game. Speaking of second, that game will be followed by a trip Sunday to second-ranked Duke.
After that, it's a run of five Ivy opponents and unranked Boston University for the rest of the regular season.
And hey, TB just realized it's October 1st. That means, among other things, that the fall season is going to reach its peak, right around the time that the foliage does as well.
Monday, September 30, 2019
Davidson To Griffin
Princeton had the ball, third-and-10, late first quarter at the Bucknell 44 Saturday afternoon.
The Bison, 0-3 on the year coming in, were ahead 7-0 and playing with confidence. Princeton quarterback Kevin Davidson took the snap, rolled right and looked like he had room to run. Instead, he threw for Jacob Birmelin in the end zone, incomplete.
Even had the pass been complete, it wouldn't have counted, because Davidson was clearly beyond the line of scrimmage when he let it go. Penalty. Loss of down.
From his spot in the radio booth, TigerBlog thought to himself - "This is good. It's a chance to see how Davidson will respond when things hadn't been going easily."
Want to know how he responded?
His next pass went to Andrei Iosivas for 29 yards and a touchdown after the defense got him the ball back. For the rest of the first half, he went 13 for 15 for 166 yards, with three more touchdowns mixed in.
He even had a 10-yard run on a third-and-seven to keep a touchdown drive alive in the second quarter.
By the time his day was over, Davidson had put away the pesky Bison with a 29 for 37, 381-yard performance. Oh, and he finished with seven passing touchdowns.
Those seven touchdowns weren't just a new Princeton record. They were an Ivy League record.
They also got Davidson a game ball on ESPN on its college football wrap up show.
So, yeah, he seemed to respond well. And in doing so, he showed you a lot about himself.
Davidson turned a close game on the road into a 56-23 Princeton win. Davidson didn't play in the final 11 minutes of the game, and all 62 Princeton players who traveled got in the game.
And, to all the people who reached out to TigerBlog yesterday to find out how participation works, the in-game stat program records starters and anyone who gets a statistic in the game. Any player who doesn't get a stat in the game needs to added to the participation list, but for an away game, where TB is on the radio and doing social media in-game, he waits until it's over to confirm with the coaches as to who played and who didn't. When he got the list from the coaches yesterday, he added those players to the stats for the game.
So just to repeat, the correct answer is that all 62 Princeton players in uniform got in the game. Who knew the subject of participation could be so interesting to so many people?
Meanwhile, Davidson wasn't the only Princeton player who had a record-setting day.
Senior wide receiver Andrew Griffin caught four of Davidson's touchdown passes, tying the Princeton and Ivy records for TD receptions in a game. If you go back as far as TB with Princeton football, you remember Michael Lerch's four TD game at Brown in 1991, a game in which he also had 370 receiving yards.
Griffin didn't quite get to 370, but he did catch nine passes for 200 yards to go with the four touchdowns. His TD receptions were from 57, 27, 59 and 14 yards, and he became the sixth player in program history to reach 200 receiving yards in a game.
In his three career starts, Davidson's numbers are otherworldly: 91 for 118 for 1,362 yards and 13 touchdowns with no interceptions.
Through two games, he leads the FCS in passing efficiency rating and completion percentage. Passing efficiency rating is a complex formula, but Davidson has a rating of 236.8. The next-best total is 194.9, of Trey Lance of North Dakota State. That's a 41.9 point lead over the second-place quarterback.
If you go 41.9 points down from 194.9, you have 153.0. That would put you in 21st place.
In other words, the distance from first to second is also the distance from second to 21st. That's a big gap.
It's even larger in completion percentage. Davidson has completed 81 percent of his throws; the distance from first to second is the same as the distance from second to 26th.
Does that make sense? You get the point.
As for Griffin, he's gone from three receptions for 31 yards and no touchdowns in his career (and playing on special teams), to 11 catches for 251 yards and five touchdowns in two games. He is averaging 22.8 yards per catch.
Against Bucknell, he was unstoppable. He'd get open, Davidson would find him and he wouldn't quit until he reached the end zone.
It's been a great two weeks for them. It's even greater when you consider that they walked into the two positions where Princeton had its greatest question marks after graduation last year.
Now it gets a bit more serious.
Princeton, winner of 12 straight, opens its Ivy League season Saturday at home at 1 against Columbia. The Lions are looking to be a major factor in the Ivy race this year, just like Princeton.
TigerBlog has a lot of respect for all different kinds of Princeton athletes, but among those who earn his biggest respect are seniors who have not had a great deal of playing time in their first three years but remain loyal parts of the program and end up making the most of their one year to be a starter.
Davidson (one career start prior to this year) and Griffin (no career starts before this year) personify that group.
The Bison, 0-3 on the year coming in, were ahead 7-0 and playing with confidence. Princeton quarterback Kevin Davidson took the snap, rolled right and looked like he had room to run. Instead, he threw for Jacob Birmelin in the end zone, incomplete.
Even had the pass been complete, it wouldn't have counted, because Davidson was clearly beyond the line of scrimmage when he let it go. Penalty. Loss of down.
From his spot in the radio booth, TigerBlog thought to himself - "This is good. It's a chance to see how Davidson will respond when things hadn't been going easily."
Want to know how he responded?
His next pass went to Andrei Iosivas for 29 yards and a touchdown after the defense got him the ball back. For the rest of the first half, he went 13 for 15 for 166 yards, with three more touchdowns mixed in.
He even had a 10-yard run on a third-and-seven to keep a touchdown drive alive in the second quarter.
By the time his day was over, Davidson had put away the pesky Bison with a 29 for 37, 381-yard performance. Oh, and he finished with seven passing touchdowns.
Those seven touchdowns weren't just a new Princeton record. They were an Ivy League record.
They also got Davidson a game ball on ESPN on its college football wrap up show.
So, yeah, he seemed to respond well. And in doing so, he showed you a lot about himself.
Davidson turned a close game on the road into a 56-23 Princeton win. Davidson didn't play in the final 11 minutes of the game, and all 62 Princeton players who traveled got in the game.
And, to all the people who reached out to TigerBlog yesterday to find out how participation works, the in-game stat program records starters and anyone who gets a statistic in the game. Any player who doesn't get a stat in the game needs to added to the participation list, but for an away game, where TB is on the radio and doing social media in-game, he waits until it's over to confirm with the coaches as to who played and who didn't. When he got the list from the coaches yesterday, he added those players to the stats for the game.
So just to repeat, the correct answer is that all 62 Princeton players in uniform got in the game. Who knew the subject of participation could be so interesting to so many people?
Meanwhile, Davidson wasn't the only Princeton player who had a record-setting day.
Senior wide receiver Andrew Griffin caught four of Davidson's touchdown passes, tying the Princeton and Ivy records for TD receptions in a game. If you go back as far as TB with Princeton football, you remember Michael Lerch's four TD game at Brown in 1991, a game in which he also had 370 receiving yards.
Griffin didn't quite get to 370, but he did catch nine passes for 200 yards to go with the four touchdowns. His TD receptions were from 57, 27, 59 and 14 yards, and he became the sixth player in program history to reach 200 receiving yards in a game.
In his three career starts, Davidson's numbers are otherworldly: 91 for 118 for 1,362 yards and 13 touchdowns with no interceptions.
Through two games, he leads the FCS in passing efficiency rating and completion percentage. Passing efficiency rating is a complex formula, but Davidson has a rating of 236.8. The next-best total is 194.9, of Trey Lance of North Dakota State. That's a 41.9 point lead over the second-place quarterback.
If you go 41.9 points down from 194.9, you have 153.0. That would put you in 21st place.
In other words, the distance from first to second is also the distance from second to 21st. That's a big gap.
It's even larger in completion percentage. Davidson has completed 81 percent of his throws; the distance from first to second is the same as the distance from second to 26th.
Does that make sense? You get the point.
As for Griffin, he's gone from three receptions for 31 yards and no touchdowns in his career (and playing on special teams), to 11 catches for 251 yards and five touchdowns in two games. He is averaging 22.8 yards per catch.
Against Bucknell, he was unstoppable. He'd get open, Davidson would find him and he wouldn't quit until he reached the end zone.
It's been a great two weeks for them. It's even greater when you consider that they walked into the two positions where Princeton had its greatest question marks after graduation last year.
Now it gets a bit more serious.
Princeton, winner of 12 straight, opens its Ivy League season Saturday at home at 1 against Columbia. The Lions are looking to be a major factor in the Ivy race this year, just like Princeton.
TigerBlog has a lot of respect for all different kinds of Princeton athletes, but among those who earn his biggest respect are seniors who have not had a great deal of playing time in their first three years but remain loyal parts of the program and end up making the most of their one year to be a starter.
Davidson (one career start prior to this year) and Griffin (no career starts before this year) personify that group.
Friday, September 27, 2019
Road Trip
Keith Elias carried the ball 736 times for the Princeton football team.
No Princeton player has ever run it more.
For every one of those that he saw - which is a lot of them - TigerBlog thought Elias was going to break it the distance. TB has never been a fan of the term "taking it to the house;" he wonders if anyone ever said it back in the early ’90s, when Elias was playing.
For that matter, what would have been the reaction had somebody randomly blurted that out as Elias was in fact running for one of his 49 career touchdowns? They would have gotten a weird look.
They also would have gotten a weird look had they said words like "blog," "smartphone" and "tweet" and if they used "text" as a verb. The world has changed quickly.
In the meantime, TB will get to the point. Of those 736 carries, he's wondering how many times Elias was tackled for a loss.
He's not 100 percent sure there's a way to check, but he'll try to look it up at some point.
He started wondering about that when he was looking up the last time current running back Collin Eaddy was tackled for a loss. In fact, Eaddy, a junior, has gone 107 straight carries without being stopped for negative yardage.
Is that a record? How does that compare?
No idea. It seems pretty impressive though, no?
Another impressive streak is the one by Tavish Rice, the senior placekicker. Rice started the 2019 season by having a touchback on all eight of his kickoff attempts against Butler. This came after he had touchbacks on his last two against Penn last year, in a game in which he went 6 for 7.
As an aside, every time TB types "touchback," it comes out "touchdown," because he's so used to typing that word instead, so he has to go back and change it.
For his junior year, Rice kicked off 76 times, with 50 touchbacks. TB watched him in practice last week, and the ball was just rocketing off his foot.
Eaddy and Rice will put their streaks on the line tomorrow for the second game of the year and first road trip, as the Tigers head to Bucknell. The teams meet for the first time since 2011, which is the only meeting the teams have had between back-to-back games in 1995 and 1996 and the meeting tomorrow.
Kickoff in Lewisburg is 3:30.
You would think that two schools that are not that far apart and who have been playing football for a long time would have played more than 16 times, but 16 games are the extent of the history between Princeton and Bucknell. The teams first met in 1903, and seven of the 16 meetings were held by the United States got involved in World War I.
The Tigers are 1-0 on the year, having defeated Butler 49-7 in Week 1, last week on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. Bucknell is 0-3, but the Bison have had a very challenging schedule to date - the losses are to FBS member Temple, defending NEC co-champ Sacred Heart and No. 8 Villanova.
Eaddy and Rice aren't the only ones who have streaks going. In fact, Princeton itself has a good one.
The team as a whole has won 11 straight games, which is the longest the program has had since a 17-game run in 1964 and 1965. The school record, if you're wondering, is 24 straight, from 1949-52, encompassing back-to-back perfect seasons in Dick Kazmaier's junior and senior years.
Princeton looked really good against Butler, especially considering it was the first game of the year. The key is to continue to progress and work out any issues before Week 3, which would be Week 1 of the Ivy League season, as Columbia will be on Powers Field next Saturday at 1.
The Ivy League looks pretty good from the Week 1 results. Princeton is the defending champ. Yale is the preseason favorite. Dartmouth was second last year and in the preseason poll.
At this point, though, it wouldn't be shocking to see any team beat any other team. There are two Ivy League games this weekend: Brown at Harvard tonight and Cornell at Yale tomorrow.
As for Princeton, it's what Week 2 usually is: Work out the kinks with a second-straight non-league opponent before the league season begins.
This time, it's against someone the Tigers haven't seen in awhile.
It should be fun.
No Princeton player has ever run it more.
For every one of those that he saw - which is a lot of them - TigerBlog thought Elias was going to break it the distance. TB has never been a fan of the term "taking it to the house;" he wonders if anyone ever said it back in the early ’90s, when Elias was playing.
For that matter, what would have been the reaction had somebody randomly blurted that out as Elias was in fact running for one of his 49 career touchdowns? They would have gotten a weird look.
They also would have gotten a weird look had they said words like "blog," "smartphone" and "tweet" and if they used "text" as a verb. The world has changed quickly.
In the meantime, TB will get to the point. Of those 736 carries, he's wondering how many times Elias was tackled for a loss.
He's not 100 percent sure there's a way to check, but he'll try to look it up at some point.
He started wondering about that when he was looking up the last time current running back Collin Eaddy was tackled for a loss. In fact, Eaddy, a junior, has gone 107 straight carries without being stopped for negative yardage.
Is that a record? How does that compare?
No idea. It seems pretty impressive though, no?
Another impressive streak is the one by Tavish Rice, the senior placekicker. Rice started the 2019 season by having a touchback on all eight of his kickoff attempts against Butler. This came after he had touchbacks on his last two against Penn last year, in a game in which he went 6 for 7.
As an aside, every time TB types "touchback," it comes out "touchdown," because he's so used to typing that word instead, so he has to go back and change it.
For his junior year, Rice kicked off 76 times, with 50 touchbacks. TB watched him in practice last week, and the ball was just rocketing off his foot.
Eaddy and Rice will put their streaks on the line tomorrow for the second game of the year and first road trip, as the Tigers head to Bucknell. The teams meet for the first time since 2011, which is the only meeting the teams have had between back-to-back games in 1995 and 1996 and the meeting tomorrow.
Kickoff in Lewisburg is 3:30.
You would think that two schools that are not that far apart and who have been playing football for a long time would have played more than 16 times, but 16 games are the extent of the history between Princeton and Bucknell. The teams first met in 1903, and seven of the 16 meetings were held by the United States got involved in World War I.
The Tigers are 1-0 on the year, having defeated Butler 49-7 in Week 1, last week on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. Bucknell is 0-3, but the Bison have had a very challenging schedule to date - the losses are to FBS member Temple, defending NEC co-champ Sacred Heart and No. 8 Villanova.
Eaddy and Rice aren't the only ones who have streaks going. In fact, Princeton itself has a good one.
The team as a whole has won 11 straight games, which is the longest the program has had since a 17-game run in 1964 and 1965. The school record, if you're wondering, is 24 straight, from 1949-52, encompassing back-to-back perfect seasons in Dick Kazmaier's junior and senior years.
Princeton looked really good against Butler, especially considering it was the first game of the year. The key is to continue to progress and work out any issues before Week 3, which would be Week 1 of the Ivy League season, as Columbia will be on Powers Field next Saturday at 1.
The Ivy League looks pretty good from the Week 1 results. Princeton is the defending champ. Yale is the preseason favorite. Dartmouth was second last year and in the preseason poll.
At this point, though, it wouldn't be shocking to see any team beat any other team. There are two Ivy League games this weekend: Brown at Harvard tonight and Cornell at Yale tomorrow.
As for Princeton, it's what Week 2 usually is: Work out the kinks with a second-straight non-league opponent before the league season begins.
This time, it's against someone the Tigers haven't seen in awhile.
It should be fun.
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Ivy Openers
What is the record for most Ivy League championships won by one class?
The answer is 51, by the Princeton Classes of 2001 and 2002.
Does that make those two classes the best in Ivy League history? Presumably if you asked a member of those classes what they thought, they'd give you a quick "duh, obviously."
Is that the best metric? Well, the Classes of 2012 and 2013 won 49 each. They should at least be in the conversation.
Again, though, is total Ivy titles won the best definition? It might be, the more TigerBlog thinks about it. The downside is that you have to figure out an objective way to measure the contributions of the athletes only from those particular classes and see how directly they impacted those championships, something that might not be measurable.
TigerBlog has always said that the measure of an extraordinary year is one where you reach double figures in Ivy titles. Princeton has done that five years in a row.
If you go back before that, there was one year under 10 and then five more in a row in double figures, which means 10 of the last 11 academic years have seen Princeton win at least 10 Ivy titles.
That's fairly amazing when you consider that Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn and Yale have never done it and that Harvard has done it 10 times in its history. All told Princeton has done so 26 times.
If you've been a loyal reader, you know exactly what movie clip all of this conjures up for TigerBlog. It's THIS one.
In other words, none of this is Princeton's right, and none of this should ever be taken for granted. Princeton's coaches and athletes, backed by the "Team Around The Team," work really hard to make that success a reality.
So far this year, all eight Ivy League schools are exactly even in every Ivy League race. That changes really soon.
In fact, the first Ivy League events of the 2019-20 academic year come up this weekend.
There are three Princeton teams who will be playing their Ivy League openers. All three were voted as the preseason favorite in the Ivy League, so maybe they should just be awarded the championship and leave it at that?
Just kidding.
The first Ivy opener will see the women's volleyball team host Penn tomorrow night at 7 at Dillon Gym.
There are four Ivy women's volleyball teams who are either 7-2 or 8-2 and then four others who are below .500. Penn, at 7-2, is in the first group. Princeton, at 4-5, is in the second.
What does that mean? Nothing. It's about how the schedule prepares you for the league season, not about the wins and losses.
There are two other Ivy openers Saturday, one in field hockey at Dartmouth (at noon) and the other in women's soccer at Princeton.
The field hockey team has played just a brutal schedule, which is how the Tigers like it.
Princeton is 3-4 on the season, with all seven games against ranked teams, including three of the top five teams. Princeton has also played seven one-goal games.
This is a team that has been tested and is used to having to play at a level where it can compete with the best.
The women's soccer team is home against Yale Saturday at 4. Princeton is 3-3-2, with its most recent outing a 1-0 win over William & Mary. Yale is 6-2, and the teams have not played any common opponents.
There are other events this weekend as well. The whole schedule is HERE.
The current Princeton senior class, by the way, has won 34 Ivy titles in three years - 11 and 11 as freshmen and sophomores and then 12 last year. That leaves them 17 off tying the record, and the record for one year is 15, back in 2010-11.
That's always a good goal to shoot for - as long as you keep in mind what Patton was saying on his walk.
Right now, everyone in every Ivy sport is 0-0.
TigerBlog has a chart each year of Ivy titles and where every team has placed. He needs to reset it for 2019-20 before this weekend.
It's the start of the race for Ivy championships in 33 different sports. It's always a fascinating run.
The answer is 51, by the Princeton Classes of 2001 and 2002.
Does that make those two classes the best in Ivy League history? Presumably if you asked a member of those classes what they thought, they'd give you a quick "duh, obviously."
Is that the best metric? Well, the Classes of 2012 and 2013 won 49 each. They should at least be in the conversation.
Again, though, is total Ivy titles won the best definition? It might be, the more TigerBlog thinks about it. The downside is that you have to figure out an objective way to measure the contributions of the athletes only from those particular classes and see how directly they impacted those championships, something that might not be measurable.
TigerBlog has always said that the measure of an extraordinary year is one where you reach double figures in Ivy titles. Princeton has done that five years in a row.
If you go back before that, there was one year under 10 and then five more in a row in double figures, which means 10 of the last 11 academic years have seen Princeton win at least 10 Ivy titles.
That's fairly amazing when you consider that Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn and Yale have never done it and that Harvard has done it 10 times in its history. All told Princeton has done so 26 times.
If you've been a loyal reader, you know exactly what movie clip all of this conjures up for TigerBlog. It's THIS one.
In other words, none of this is Princeton's right, and none of this should ever be taken for granted. Princeton's coaches and athletes, backed by the "Team Around The Team," work really hard to make that success a reality.
So far this year, all eight Ivy League schools are exactly even in every Ivy League race. That changes really soon.
In fact, the first Ivy League events of the 2019-20 academic year come up this weekend.
There are three Princeton teams who will be playing their Ivy League openers. All three were voted as the preseason favorite in the Ivy League, so maybe they should just be awarded the championship and leave it at that?
Just kidding.
The first Ivy opener will see the women's volleyball team host Penn tomorrow night at 7 at Dillon Gym.
There are four Ivy women's volleyball teams who are either 7-2 or 8-2 and then four others who are below .500. Penn, at 7-2, is in the first group. Princeton, at 4-5, is in the second.
What does that mean? Nothing. It's about how the schedule prepares you for the league season, not about the wins and losses.
There are two other Ivy openers Saturday, one in field hockey at Dartmouth (at noon) and the other in women's soccer at Princeton.
The field hockey team has played just a brutal schedule, which is how the Tigers like it.
Princeton is 3-4 on the season, with all seven games against ranked teams, including three of the top five teams. Princeton has also played seven one-goal games.
This is a team that has been tested and is used to having to play at a level where it can compete with the best.
The women's soccer team is home against Yale Saturday at 4. Princeton is 3-3-2, with its most recent outing a 1-0 win over William & Mary. Yale is 6-2, and the teams have not played any common opponents.
There are other events this weekend as well. The whole schedule is HERE.
The current Princeton senior class, by the way, has won 34 Ivy titles in three years - 11 and 11 as freshmen and sophomores and then 12 last year. That leaves them 17 off tying the record, and the record for one year is 15, back in 2010-11.
That's always a good goal to shoot for - as long as you keep in mind what Patton was saying on his walk.
Right now, everyone in every Ivy sport is 0-0.
TigerBlog has a chart each year of Ivy titles and where every team has placed. He needs to reset it for 2019-20 before this weekend.
It's the start of the race for Ivy championships in 33 different sports. It's always a fascinating run.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Remembering The Rain
So Monday was Bruce Springsteen's 70th birthday.
Seventy? And still rocking like he does?
In honor of the occasion, the people at E Street Radio had a voting for the top 100 Springsteen songs. The only rule was that they had to be off of a studio album, as opposed to a live cover, which left off, among others, "Jersey Girl," "Pretty Flamingo" and "Jole Blon," all of which TB would have had in his top 20.
The countdown was played Monday, and TB caught much of it. He heard the last eight songs while he was out on his bike, and he thinks the voting was pretty accurate.
The top three were, in his own mind, not debatable, and that's how it would play out: No. 1 was "Thunder Road," No. 2 was "Born To Run" and No. 3 was "Jungleland." TB thought it might go "Born To Run" and then "Thunder Road," but those were the correct three.
If you want to see the complete list, you can click HERE.
He doesn't have too many complaints. He would have had "4th of July Asbury Park" higher than 31st and "Out In The Street" higher than 37th. He would have had "Mary's Place" way higher than 74th.
The whole thing got TB thinking about how someone like Springsteen can still have that level of energy at this stage of his life. The same applies to other musicians who have moved into their 60s and 70s.
Heck, Mick Jagger is 76 years old. Keith Richards? He's 75. And they're still touring, right?
Contrast that with athletes. The physical toll just takes too much out of them. That, and the fact that there's a finite number of spots available. You can't just keep adding players to rosters, the way you could with musical acts.
As you may be aware, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played a concert in Jadwin Gym once, back on Nov. 1, 1978. He would play seven of the top eight songs on the 70th birthday list in that concert, which was 41 years ago.
Presumably, there was no live tweeting of the concert.
A world without Twitter. Who even remembers such a thing?
As TB has said before, the best thing about Twitter is the way it can be used for in-game highlights of Princeton sporting events, of course.
And postgame celebrations too.
The short video that TB made of wide receiver Andrei Iosivas after the 49-7 win over Butler Saturday night had more than 3,000 views. The one of the team in the locker room celebrating had more than 8,000.
Those are pretty good numbers.
Up next for the Tigers is a trip Saturday to Bucknell, with a 3:30 kickoff. This will be TB's second football game ever at Bucknell, after a game in 1996 that is pretty hard to forget.
If, instead of the top Springsteen songs, you're making a list of the 100 Princeton football games played in the worst conditions, you might want to include that 1996 game.
That game had to be the wettest football game TB has ever attended. It rained all afternoon and night on Friday and then never let up on Saturday.
TB brought his nice pants and shoes to wear to the game but instead went with jeans and sneakers. He's pretty sure he was never able to wear those sneakers again.
The field at Christy Mathewson Stadium was all mud, which made any attempt at offense difficult. In fact, the teams would combine for 205 yards of offense, or less than half of what Princeton put up against Butler in the first half alone Saturday night. There would be 14 fumbles, 19 punts and no touchdown drive longer than 15 yards.
The final score would be Bucknell 10, Princeton 6.
As TB remembers it, the winning points came after a great Princeton goal line stand and then subsequent fumble and touchdown for the Bison. He remembers mostly a defensive struggle, with a lot of mud-covered uniforms.
This year's game doesn't figure to be a repeat of that. For starters, Christy Mathewson Stadium is now FieldTurf. For another, the forcast for Lewisburg for Saturday is for sunny weather and a high in the 80s.
It's too bad that there was no in-game tweeting back in 1996. People love to see football highlights in terrible weather.
Anyway, Princeton will be playing its second game when it travels to Bucknell. After that comes the Ivy League opener against Columbia, on Powers Field on Oct. 5.
This team looks like it'll be a lot of fun to watch.
Seventy? And still rocking like he does?
In honor of the occasion, the people at E Street Radio had a voting for the top 100 Springsteen songs. The only rule was that they had to be off of a studio album, as opposed to a live cover, which left off, among others, "Jersey Girl," "Pretty Flamingo" and "Jole Blon," all of which TB would have had in his top 20.
The countdown was played Monday, and TB caught much of it. He heard the last eight songs while he was out on his bike, and he thinks the voting was pretty accurate.
The top three were, in his own mind, not debatable, and that's how it would play out: No. 1 was "Thunder Road," No. 2 was "Born To Run" and No. 3 was "Jungleland." TB thought it might go "Born To Run" and then "Thunder Road," but those were the correct three.
If you want to see the complete list, you can click HERE.
He doesn't have too many complaints. He would have had "4th of July Asbury Park" higher than 31st and "Out In The Street" higher than 37th. He would have had "Mary's Place" way higher than 74th.
The whole thing got TB thinking about how someone like Springsteen can still have that level of energy at this stage of his life. The same applies to other musicians who have moved into their 60s and 70s.
Heck, Mick Jagger is 76 years old. Keith Richards? He's 75. And they're still touring, right?
Contrast that with athletes. The physical toll just takes too much out of them. That, and the fact that there's a finite number of spots available. You can't just keep adding players to rosters, the way you could with musical acts.
As you may be aware, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played a concert in Jadwin Gym once, back on Nov. 1, 1978. He would play seven of the top eight songs on the 70th birthday list in that concert, which was 41 years ago.
Presumably, there was no live tweeting of the concert.
A world without Twitter. Who even remembers such a thing?
As TB has said before, the best thing about Twitter is the way it can be used for in-game highlights of Princeton sporting events, of course.
And postgame celebrations too.
The short video that TB made of wide receiver Andrei Iosivas after the 49-7 win over Butler Saturday night had more than 3,000 views. The one of the team in the locker room celebrating had more than 8,000.
Those are pretty good numbers.
Up next for the Tigers is a trip Saturday to Bucknell, with a 3:30 kickoff. This will be TB's second football game ever at Bucknell, after a game in 1996 that is pretty hard to forget.
If, instead of the top Springsteen songs, you're making a list of the 100 Princeton football games played in the worst conditions, you might want to include that 1996 game.
That game had to be the wettest football game TB has ever attended. It rained all afternoon and night on Friday and then never let up on Saturday.
TB brought his nice pants and shoes to wear to the game but instead went with jeans and sneakers. He's pretty sure he was never able to wear those sneakers again.
The field at Christy Mathewson Stadium was all mud, which made any attempt at offense difficult. In fact, the teams would combine for 205 yards of offense, or less than half of what Princeton put up against Butler in the first half alone Saturday night. There would be 14 fumbles, 19 punts and no touchdown drive longer than 15 yards.
The final score would be Bucknell 10, Princeton 6.
As TB remembers it, the winning points came after a great Princeton goal line stand and then subsequent fumble and touchdown for the Bison. He remembers mostly a defensive struggle, with a lot of mud-covered uniforms.
This year's game doesn't figure to be a repeat of that. For starters, Christy Mathewson Stadium is now FieldTurf. For another, the forcast for Lewisburg for Saturday is for sunny weather and a high in the 80s.
It's too bad that there was no in-game tweeting back in 1996. People love to see football highlights in terrible weather.
Anyway, Princeton will be playing its second game when it travels to Bucknell. After that comes the Ivy League opener against Columbia, on Powers Field on Oct. 5.
This team looks like it'll be a lot of fun to watch.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Two Homecomings
The first college football game ever played was between Princeton and Rutgers, in New Brunswick, on Nov. 6, 1869.
TigerBlog was talking to a few people at the Princeton-Butler game Saturday night about that game, how it was essentially 25 on 25 full contact soccer. When TB thinks about it, he wonders what in the world it must have looked like.
Imagine it. Two teams of 25 each going after each other. It had to be total chaos, no?
The second football game was a week later at Princeton.
That game was Homecoming Day for Princeton that year. The alums came back in big numbers to see the new sensation. There was a parade before the game, and a Homecoming King and Queen were crowned to ride in the lead float with then-President James McCosh, who mentioned that one day there'd be a health center and a classroom that pretty much every Princeton student would have at least one class in during their four years named for him along what then was the parade route.
Actually, the last paragraph was a complete fabrication.
When was the first homecoming game? It depends whom you ask.
There is pretty much universal acknowledgement that Princeton-Rutgers was the first game, which makes this the 150th anniversary season for the sport. Everyone can agree on that.
As for the first Homecoming game? Here's a list of schools who claim to own it: Baylor, Illinois, Missouri, Southwestern University and Northern Illinois. All of these go back to the early 1900s.
This past weekend's two Princeton homecomings got TB thinking about the origins of what people consider when they think of Homecoming Games. Football. Alums. Tailgates. Parades. That sort of thing.
The two this weekend were of another variety, when old friends came back to visit.
The men's water polo team hosted Wagner and Navy this past weekend, winning both. The Tigers are ranked 14th nationally.
Navy, of course, is led by former longtime Princeton head coach Luis Nicolao. The team put together a pregame video recognizing the old coach.
Luis is one of the great characters who ever worked at Princeton. That's obvious from the video, which mentions 1) how he used to be Santa Claus every year at the holiday party and 2) how he once fell in the pool during a match.
The other homecoming was Sunday on Myslik Field, where Princeton defeated William & Mary in women's soccer 1-0. The W&M coach is now Julie Shackford, who, like Luis, was coached at Princeton for 20 years.
Shackford and Nicolao are by far the coaches with the most wins at Princeton in their sports. Between them, they had a Princeton combined record of 1,071-431-29. That's a lot of winning.
Both coaches took their Princeton teams regularly to the postseason, including to the NCAA Final Four. Both also coached Olympic medalists - Ashleigh Johnson won gold in water polo, and Diana Matheson won two bronzes in soccer.
And they were back this weekend.
TB never got a chance to see Luis. He did see Julie, whose daughter Kayleigh started for the Tribe in the game and whose son Keegan was in attendance.
So were a lot of her Princeton alums. When the game ended, it was non-stop hugs and photos, and TB presumes the same happened in DeNunzio Pool as well.
It can't be easy for a longtime coach to come back to Princeton and coach against the program that they helped build and had so much success with for so long. TB understands why certain coaches are so resistant to it.
On the other hand, it did make for a pretty special weekend for Princeton water polo and women's soccer.
And probably for a few additional pregame jitters for the returnees.
TigerBlog was talking to a few people at the Princeton-Butler game Saturday night about that game, how it was essentially 25 on 25 full contact soccer. When TB thinks about it, he wonders what in the world it must have looked like.
Imagine it. Two teams of 25 each going after each other. It had to be total chaos, no?
The second football game was a week later at Princeton.
That game was Homecoming Day for Princeton that year. The alums came back in big numbers to see the new sensation. There was a parade before the game, and a Homecoming King and Queen were crowned to ride in the lead float with then-President James McCosh, who mentioned that one day there'd be a health center and a classroom that pretty much every Princeton student would have at least one class in during their four years named for him along what then was the parade route.
Actually, the last paragraph was a complete fabrication.
When was the first homecoming game? It depends whom you ask.
There is pretty much universal acknowledgement that Princeton-Rutgers was the first game, which makes this the 150th anniversary season for the sport. Everyone can agree on that.
As for the first Homecoming game? Here's a list of schools who claim to own it: Baylor, Illinois, Missouri, Southwestern University and Northern Illinois. All of these go back to the early 1900s.
This past weekend's two Princeton homecomings got TB thinking about the origins of what people consider when they think of Homecoming Games. Football. Alums. Tailgates. Parades. That sort of thing.
The two this weekend were of another variety, when old friends came back to visit.
The men's water polo team hosted Wagner and Navy this past weekend, winning both. The Tigers are ranked 14th nationally.
Navy, of course, is led by former longtime Princeton head coach Luis Nicolao. The team put together a pregame video recognizing the old coach.
Check out the pregame video we made for Luis and played for him prior to tonight's contest. Thank you for your time at Princeton Luis! pic.twitter.com/d2Pv0evgp0— Princeton Water Polo (@Pwaterpolo) September 22, 2019
Luis is one of the great characters who ever worked at Princeton. That's obvious from the video, which mentions 1) how he used to be Santa Claus every year at the holiday party and 2) how he once fell in the pool during a match.
The other homecoming was Sunday on Myslik Field, where Princeton defeated William & Mary in women's soccer 1-0. The W&M coach is now Julie Shackford, who, like Luis, was coached at Princeton for 20 years.
Shackford and Nicolao are by far the coaches with the most wins at Princeton in their sports. Between them, they had a Princeton combined record of 1,071-431-29. That's a lot of winning.
Both coaches took their Princeton teams regularly to the postseason, including to the NCAA Final Four. Both also coached Olympic medalists - Ashleigh Johnson won gold in water polo, and Diana Matheson won two bronzes in soccer.
And they were back this weekend.
TB never got a chance to see Luis. He did see Julie, whose daughter Kayleigh started for the Tribe in the game and whose son Keegan was in attendance.
So were a lot of her Princeton alums. When the game ended, it was non-stop hugs and photos, and TB presumes the same happened in DeNunzio Pool as well.
It can't be easy for a longtime coach to come back to Princeton and coach against the program that they helped build and had so much success with for so long. TB understands why certain coaches are so resistant to it.
On the other hand, it did make for a pretty special weekend for Princeton water polo and women's soccer.
And probably for a few additional pregame jitters for the returnees.
Monday, September 23, 2019
Shoe Filling
TigerBlog's thoughts as kickoff neared for the Princeton-Butler game Saturday were actually on someone who wasn't even in the stadium.
And that was news.
No, he's not talking about two-time Bushnell Cup-winning quarterback John Lovett, or graduated wide receivers Jesper Horsted and Stephen Carlson. They weren't in the stadium either, or if they were, TB didn't see them.
Those three are in the NFL now, and they left some gigantic shoes to fill. TigerBlog could relate to the players who had to fill them, since he was doing something similar.
For the first time in 17 years, Craig Sachson was not the Princeton communications football contact for a game. TB was, for Game 1 of his second go-round in the position.
Craig left the University in April, ending a long run in college athletics in which he did so much for so many teams and really thousands of athletes. He loved all of his teams and all of his coaches, and he did as much as he can to treat them equally.
Still, there was something a little more special for him about Princeton Football. Perhaps it's the quantity of work involved. Perhaps it's the number of players. Or, in his case, perhaps it was from not missing a single game for 17 seasons, a total of 170 straight Princeton football games that he worked.
For almost all of that time, TB was the Princeton Stadium PA announcer, a role he has relinquished to Spenser Smith, who did one women's lacrosse game last year and who works for the Trenton Thunder minor league baseball team. Spenser was tremendous behind the mic for the his first Princeton football game, leading TB to joke that everyone would like the new PA guy more than the old one and the old communications guy more than the new one.
As Saturday late afternoon rolled around, here it was, for the first time since the 2001 season, a Princeton football game without Craig Sachson - a season-opener that Princeton won 49-7 over Butler.
It was a bit different not to have him there.
And it's why TB could relate at least a little to the players who were stepping in for the NFL guys, at least on some level.
It's not easy when there have been such established presences in a role that is now your responsibility. Everyone is so used to the old guys, how they operated, what they did, what they meant to the program. And now they're just not there anymore, moved on to a different challenge - in the case of the players professional football, and in the case of Craig, biomedical informatics.
For Week 1, things seemed to go well for all the newbies.
TigerBlog thought he wrote a good story, which was aided by the fact that the real newbies had such a dynamic game.
It started with Kevin Davidson, the 6-4 225-pound quarterback who started one game a year ago, when Lovett was hurt against Brown. Davidson has spent three years learning from Lovett and Chad Kanoff, and he was clearly ready for the start of his senior year.
By halftime Davidson had thrown for 318 yards, completing 16 of 18, with a pair of touchdowns, and led the Tigers on six straight TD drives. He'd throw only three more passes in the second half, completing two, making the final line 18 for 21 for 341.
It's not just that he was completing passes. It's that he was throwing perfect passes. And it's not just that he was throwing perfect passes, he was throwing all kinds of perfect passes, to basically every area of the field.
And beyond all of that, he was doing so to a new generation of receivers, and they looked as good as he did.
As big a question mark as was left by Lovett's graduation, at least there was the knowledge that Davidson had throw for 300 yards in a start last year. It was the loss of Horsted and Carlson at wide receiver, at least to TigerBlog, that was a bigger unknown.
Horsted and Carlson rank 1-3 on Princeton's career touchdown receptions list, with 44 between them. a year ago they combined for 123 catches, 1,730 yards and 18 touchdowns.
In their place were four players - Andrew Griffin, Jacob Birmelin, Andrei Iosivas and Dylan Classi. That group last year combined for 17 catches, 185 yards and one touchdown.
And that didn't matter at all Saturday night.
All four of them made big plays. All four of them played with great confidence.
By halftime, they had zoomed past last year's combined receiving yardage total. For the night they caught nine passes for 257 yards, with three of them touchdowns - two from the 6-4 Iosivas, who was the Ivy League indoor heptathlon champ a year ago. That's pronounced "YO-see-vosh," by the way.
The contributions were well-spread between the four. One of the Iosivas TD receptions came on a pass from Classi, who also made a great catch on a 44-yard pass to set up another touchdown. Griffin had his first career TD reception, and Birmelin led the group with 87 yards.
Princeton was completely dominant in the first half, in all phases. Tavish Rice was 7 for 7 on extra points and had eight touchbacks in eight kickoff attempts.
With this one over, Princeton plays its first road game this coming Saturday, at Bucknell. Then it's the Ivy opener against Columbia at home. The league this year looks pretty strong, at least through one week's results.
TB has been trying to find the right balance of talking about last year's unbeaten season and the players who graduated with the idea that this is a new year and a new team with a new identity.
In Week 1, the ones who weren't here anymore were a big part of the story.
A bigger part was how impressive their replacements were.
And that was news.
No, he's not talking about two-time Bushnell Cup-winning quarterback John Lovett, or graduated wide receivers Jesper Horsted and Stephen Carlson. They weren't in the stadium either, or if they were, TB didn't see them.
Those three are in the NFL now, and they left some gigantic shoes to fill. TigerBlog could relate to the players who had to fill them, since he was doing something similar.
For the first time in 17 years, Craig Sachson was not the Princeton communications football contact for a game. TB was, for Game 1 of his second go-round in the position.
Craig left the University in April, ending a long run in college athletics in which he did so much for so many teams and really thousands of athletes. He loved all of his teams and all of his coaches, and he did as much as he can to treat them equally.
Still, there was something a little more special for him about Princeton Football. Perhaps it's the quantity of work involved. Perhaps it's the number of players. Or, in his case, perhaps it was from not missing a single game for 17 seasons, a total of 170 straight Princeton football games that he worked.
For almost all of that time, TB was the Princeton Stadium PA announcer, a role he has relinquished to Spenser Smith, who did one women's lacrosse game last year and who works for the Trenton Thunder minor league baseball team. Spenser was tremendous behind the mic for the his first Princeton football game, leading TB to joke that everyone would like the new PA guy more than the old one and the old communications guy more than the new one.
As Saturday late afternoon rolled around, here it was, for the first time since the 2001 season, a Princeton football game without Craig Sachson - a season-opener that Princeton won 49-7 over Butler.
It was a bit different not to have him there.
And it's why TB could relate at least a little to the players who were stepping in for the NFL guys, at least on some level.
It's not easy when there have been such established presences in a role that is now your responsibility. Everyone is so used to the old guys, how they operated, what they did, what they meant to the program. And now they're just not there anymore, moved on to a different challenge - in the case of the players professional football, and in the case of Craig, biomedical informatics.
For Week 1, things seemed to go well for all the newbies.
TigerBlog thought he wrote a good story, which was aided by the fact that the real newbies had such a dynamic game.
It started with Kevin Davidson, the 6-4 225-pound quarterback who started one game a year ago, when Lovett was hurt against Brown. Davidson has spent three years learning from Lovett and Chad Kanoff, and he was clearly ready for the start of his senior year.
By halftime Davidson had thrown for 318 yards, completing 16 of 18, with a pair of touchdowns, and led the Tigers on six straight TD drives. He'd throw only three more passes in the second half, completing two, making the final line 18 for 21 for 341.
It's not just that he was completing passes. It's that he was throwing perfect passes. And it's not just that he was throwing perfect passes, he was throwing all kinds of perfect passes, to basically every area of the field.
And beyond all of that, he was doing so to a new generation of receivers, and they looked as good as he did.
As big a question mark as was left by Lovett's graduation, at least there was the knowledge that Davidson had throw for 300 yards in a start last year. It was the loss of Horsted and Carlson at wide receiver, at least to TigerBlog, that was a bigger unknown.
Horsted and Carlson rank 1-3 on Princeton's career touchdown receptions list, with 44 between them. a year ago they combined for 123 catches, 1,730 yards and 18 touchdowns.
In their place were four players - Andrew Griffin, Jacob Birmelin, Andrei Iosivas and Dylan Classi. That group last year combined for 17 catches, 185 yards and one touchdown.
And that didn't matter at all Saturday night.
All four of them made big plays. All four of them played with great confidence.
By halftime, they had zoomed past last year's combined receiving yardage total. For the night they caught nine passes for 257 yards, with three of them touchdowns - two from the 6-4 Iosivas, who was the Ivy League indoor heptathlon champ a year ago. That's pronounced "YO-see-vosh," by the way.
The contributions were well-spread between the four. One of the Iosivas TD receptions came on a pass from Classi, who also made a great catch on a 44-yard pass to set up another touchdown. Griffin had his first career TD reception, and Birmelin led the group with 87 yards.
Princeton was completely dominant in the first half, in all phases. Tavish Rice was 7 for 7 on extra points and had eight touchbacks in eight kickoff attempts.
With this one over, Princeton plays its first road game this coming Saturday, at Bucknell. Then it's the Ivy opener against Columbia at home. The league this year looks pretty strong, at least through one week's results.
TB has been trying to find the right balance of talking about last year's unbeaten season and the players who graduated with the idea that this is a new year and a new team with a new identity.
In Week 1, the ones who weren't here anymore were a big part of the story.
A bigger part was how impressive their replacements were.
Friday, September 20, 2019
Opening Kickoff
TigerBlog isn't usually a big celebrity gossip fan or anything like that.
He's never watched any of those "Real Housewives" shows or the Kardashians, and he never will.
He did notice a headline in the New York Post Wednesday, though, that caught his attention. It was about the new quarterback for the Giants, Daniel Jones, and his girlfriend. The headline was this: "Meet Ella Bonafede, girlfriend of Giants' starting quarterback Daniel Jones."
TB immediately put it all together. Bonafede. As in Sam Bonafede, former Princeton men's lacrosse face-off man. As in, Sam Bonafede, whose sister played lacrosse ... at Duke ... where Jones went to school.
Then he double-checked, and Bonafede's sister is in fact named Ella. He didn't really need to check, of course, since the picture of Ella Bonafede with Jones makes it fairly obvious that she's Sam's sister.
And there you have it.
Sam Bonafede, by the way, is a 2018 grad who is currently at the University of Chicago Law School. TB once wrote this about him:
"Bono," as they call him, could be the perfect Princeton ambassador, always upbeat, always supportive. He's the kind of kid you look at and know that he's going to make a real difference in the decades to come.
And that was before his sister was apparently dating the new starting quarterback for the New York Giants.
There will be a new starting quarterback for the Princeton football team this year. And two new starting wide receivers. And two new starting inside linebackers. And some other new starters dotted throughout the lineup.
The kickoff for the 2019 Tigers comes up tomorrow, when Princeton hosts Butler on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. Kickoff is at 5, after the Community Day activities at 3:30, including the youth sports clinic on Weaver Track.
For Princeton, it's the season after the season. A year ago, the Tigers went 10-0, going unbeaten for the first time in 54 years.
As TB went through last year's stats, it came back to him just how dominant those Tigers were. The average score of a Princeton game last year was Tigers 47, Other Guys 13.
That's pretty dominant.
Princeton lost its last game of the 2017 season, which means that the current winning streak sits at 10 games. The last time Princeton won 10 straight was between 1994-95. Before that, you have to go back to 1964-65. Before that it's 1949-52. Before that it was 1934-35.
In other words, it's a pretty special accomplishment.
Princeton has won three of the last six Ivy League championships, and you don't do that by having one or two great classes that come through. No, what Princeton has done is build a winning culture, and that has led to sustained success.
If you want to read a pretty good story about the Tigers' success and the link between head coach Bob Surace and Dallas Cowboys' head coach Jason Garrett (if you're a Princeton fan, you probably already know a lot about this), click HERE.
As for the 2019 Tigers, they're picked to finish third in the league, behind Dartmouth and Yale, two teams that Princeton will play on consecutive November Saturdays. The first of those game is against the Big Green on Nov. 9 at Yankee Stadium as part of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of college football, followed by Yale at home Nov. 16.
The game tomorrow is the opener for Princeton and Game 4 for Butler, who is 1-2 on the season. Princeton and Butler have met once before, last year in Indianapolis, where Princeton won 50-7 after leading 44-7 at halftime.
The 2019 Tigers have more sophomores (19) listed on the two-deep than they do from any other class. There are 24 freshmen and sophomores and 29 juniors and seniors. It's a great mix of returning players who had huge roles in past years, returning players who will have bigger roles and new players who are getting their first real shot at meaningful playing time.
After the Butler game is a trip to Bucknell, followed at home by the Ivy League opener against Columbia. That's in two weeks, and it'll be here in no time.
In fact, the entire season, as always, will seem to fly by. It figures to be a fun one.
That's how Princeton football has been lately. Fun, and successful.
He's never watched any of those "Real Housewives" shows or the Kardashians, and he never will.
He did notice a headline in the New York Post Wednesday, though, that caught his attention. It was about the new quarterback for the Giants, Daniel Jones, and his girlfriend. The headline was this: "Meet Ella Bonafede, girlfriend of Giants' starting quarterback Daniel Jones."
TB immediately put it all together. Bonafede. As in Sam Bonafede, former Princeton men's lacrosse face-off man. As in, Sam Bonafede, whose sister played lacrosse ... at Duke ... where Jones went to school.
Then he double-checked, and Bonafede's sister is in fact named Ella. He didn't really need to check, of course, since the picture of Ella Bonafede with Jones makes it fairly obvious that she's Sam's sister.
And there you have it.
Sam Bonafede, by the way, is a 2018 grad who is currently at the University of Chicago Law School. TB once wrote this about him:
"Bono," as they call him, could be the perfect Princeton ambassador, always upbeat, always supportive. He's the kind of kid you look at and know that he's going to make a real difference in the decades to come.
And that was before his sister was apparently dating the new starting quarterback for the New York Giants.
There will be a new starting quarterback for the Princeton football team this year. And two new starting wide receivers. And two new starting inside linebackers. And some other new starters dotted throughout the lineup.
The kickoff for the 2019 Tigers comes up tomorrow, when Princeton hosts Butler on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. Kickoff is at 5, after the Community Day activities at 3:30, including the youth sports clinic on Weaver Track.
For Princeton, it's the season after the season. A year ago, the Tigers went 10-0, going unbeaten for the first time in 54 years.
As TB went through last year's stats, it came back to him just how dominant those Tigers were. The average score of a Princeton game last year was Tigers 47, Other Guys 13.
That's pretty dominant.
Princeton lost its last game of the 2017 season, which means that the current winning streak sits at 10 games. The last time Princeton won 10 straight was between 1994-95. Before that, you have to go back to 1964-65. Before that it's 1949-52. Before that it was 1934-35.
In other words, it's a pretty special accomplishment.
Princeton has won three of the last six Ivy League championships, and you don't do that by having one or two great classes that come through. No, what Princeton has done is build a winning culture, and that has led to sustained success.
If you want to read a pretty good story about the Tigers' success and the link between head coach Bob Surace and Dallas Cowboys' head coach Jason Garrett (if you're a Princeton fan, you probably already know a lot about this), click HERE.
As for the 2019 Tigers, they're picked to finish third in the league, behind Dartmouth and Yale, two teams that Princeton will play on consecutive November Saturdays. The first of those game is against the Big Green on Nov. 9 at Yankee Stadium as part of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of college football, followed by Yale at home Nov. 16.
The game tomorrow is the opener for Princeton and Game 4 for Butler, who is 1-2 on the season. Princeton and Butler have met once before, last year in Indianapolis, where Princeton won 50-7 after leading 44-7 at halftime.
The 2019 Tigers have more sophomores (19) listed on the two-deep than they do from any other class. There are 24 freshmen and sophomores and 29 juniors and seniors. It's a great mix of returning players who had huge roles in past years, returning players who will have bigger roles and new players who are getting their first real shot at meaningful playing time.
After the Butler game is a trip to Bucknell, followed at home by the Ivy League opener against Columbia. That's in two weeks, and it'll be here in no time.
In fact, the entire season, as always, will seem to fly by. It figures to be a fun one.
That's how Princeton football has been lately. Fun, and successful.
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