Sending Condolences

TigerBlog received a comment two weeks ago asking him to answer a few questions about his emotional reactions to Princeton events in the past. 

In case you didn't read it, here's what it said:

What Princeton events have made you happiest? The single best column you've ever written described your emotions when you entered into the statistics software the first ground ball your daughter picked up in a Princeton uniform. The ability of your prose to weave a sporting moment with a parent's joy and pride was on full display. Which other events have made you happiest? It might be a repeat of your answer to "greatest wins," but I suspect not. And if that resonates with you, how about List 2. What events have made you angriest or saddest? If that works for you, then proceed to List 3. What events have been most thought-provoking? Not just an emotional experience, but a cerebral one.

He was going to start today with the first part, the moments that have made him the happiest.

When he thinks back to those moments, they're not necessarily because they were the biggest wins. That was a part of it, obviously, because those moments are the ones that led to the actual reason for happiness.

It's the people. It's always about the people.

And so as TB made his list of the events that made him happiest, he always came back to one defining constant - he was happy not because Princeton won or because it made him happy; he was happy FOR someone.

Pretty much every moment he came up with fits that description. Not all, but the overwhelming majority.

One of the moments near the top would have been Princeton's win over Penn in the men's basketball season finale in 2001. That one is way, way up there on TigerBlog's list of all-time happiest moments.

If you recall, the 2000-01 men's basketball season, it was from chaos to championship in a matter of months. Princeton lost head coach Bill Carmody to Northwestern and top assistant Joe Scott to Air Force, not to mention pretty much its entire projected lineup, including likely All-Americans Chris Young and Spencer Gloger.

It was into September already when all of this happened. The program was turned over to the second assistant coach, John Thompson III, and he had what looked like an impossible job ahead of him.

Instead, the first-year head coach calmly righted the ship, pushing every correct button along the way. It all led up to the night of March 6, 2001, when Princeton hosted Penn holding a one-game lead. A Tiger win would mean an outright championship and NCAA bid. A Penn win would mean a co-championship and a playoff for the NCAA bid.

It was 31-26 Tigers at the break and then all Princeton after that. The final was 68-52 Princeton, after the Tigers shot 11 for 20 in the second half, including 5 for 9 from three.

TB's biggest memory of that night came after the game, when JT3 made the final cut off the net and then wore it draped around his neck. TB, who was the men's basketball contact at the time, had been there for every game that year, and he had seen the growth of the coach and the players up close. 

He was thrilled for all of them, and not just because of the win. He was happy FOR them as people for what they accomplished, especially Thompson, and especially because he knew what was driving him.

It was the fact that his own career at Princeton (he graduated in 1988) did not include an NCAA trip, and he wanted to get there so much for his players. How could you not be happy for him when it actually happened?

John Thompson III is a rarity in that his father (John Thompson II) and his college coach (Pete Carril) are both in the Hall-of-Fame. He is very much a product of both, which made the 1989 Princeton-Georgetown game in the NCAA tournament toughest on him.

TigerBlog saw the news yesterday that John Thompson II had passed away at the age of 78. He was a giant man, in both physical presence and in stature, and TB would say he's among the five most important people in the history of college basketball. He led Georgetown to three Final Fours (JT3 led the Hoyas to one as well when he became head coach) and the 1984 NCAA championship, and he was also a tireless champion off the court, when it came to advocating for the players, especially in his famous opposition to Prop 48, the rule that prohibited players from competing as freshmen if they didn't meet minimum scores on standardized tests.

JT3 always referred to his father as "Pops," and the two were as close as any father/son TB has ever seen. TB texted condolences to JT3 yesterday, and he offers them again here, to the entire Thompson family.

He was going to spend today talking about happiness, but it's not the right day for it. Today is more about sadness, as college basketball has lost one of its greats.

It hits closer to home for Princeton basketball. 

One of its all-time favorite sons has lost his father.

Princeton's First Bushnell Winner

Jason Garrett, the current offensive coordinator of the New York Giants, was the second Princeton football player ever to win the Bushnell Cup as the Ivy League Player of the Year.

That was in 1988. 

The Bushnell Cup was first awarded in 1970. Of course, Ivy League football began in 1956, and there were All-Ivy League teams from the start. For that matter, there were All-American teams back in 1889, or 101 years from when Jason won the Ivy Player of the Year Award and 100 from when his brother Judd did so as well.

So why no Ivy Player of the Year from Year 1? It doesn't make much sense. 

How about other sports? The first year of Ivy League men's basketball was also 1956-57, and there was no Player of the Year until the 1974-75 season. 

Why?

Even weirder, there was no Player of the Year until then, but there was a Rookie of the Year five years before that. TB will have to find out why.

In men's lacrosse, there was no Ivy Player of the Year until 1974. In baseball there was a Pitcher of the Year in 1977 but no award for player or rookie until 1993. 

Again, why?

Anyway, Jason Garrett was the second Princeton football player to win the Bushnell Cup. Who was the first?

You know it wasn't Cosmo Iacavazzi or Stas Maliszewski or Ron Landeck, because the award didn't exist in the 1960s.

Here's the stat line for the first Princeton winner: 1,041 yards on 214 carries with 16 rushing touchdowns.  

The year was 1974. The player was Walt Snickenberger.

In addition to being Princeton's first Bushnell winner, Snickenberger is an a rather exclusive club that you probably don't want to be in, though it does speak to your individual greatness, In Ivy football history, only six players have won the Bushnell Cup on teams that did not have a better-than .500 league record.

Only four players did so before the league went to an Offensive and Defensive Bushnell winner in 2011. The only other Princeton player besides Snickenberger to be in that club is quarterback Chad Kanoff, who won the award in 2017.

Snickenberger's name is all over the Princeton football record book, among the all-time leaders in areas like rushing yards, rushing touchdowns and all-purpose yards. Among other things, his 3,173 career rushing yards are the sixth-best total in program history.

Walt Snickenberger came to Princeton from Ithaca High School. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's the same high school that sent, among others, Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan to Princeton. 

In addition to winning the 1974 Bushnell Cup, Snickenberger was a two-time first-team All-Ivy League selection and a 1974 first-team All-American. That does make him the only Ivy League player ever to be a first-team All-American from a team without a winning league record.

Again, that suggests a player who was extraordinary.

Walt Snickenberger passed away earlier this month at the age of 68.

From his obituary:
In his sixty-eight years, he wore many hats, from scholar and standout athlete, to loving husband, proud father, dog lover, and most recently, adoring grandfather.

TigerBlog also learned from the obituary that Snickenberger was married to his wife Wendy for 37 years and that they had three children, all of whom became college athletes: Alex, who played golf at Boston College; Mark, who played football at Hamilton; and Sally, who played field hockey at Vermont.

TB doesn't think he ever met Walt Snickenberger. He has seen his name in the record book for football for all these years, and he knows what a great player he was. 

There was something he didn't know about Snickenberger until he learned it from the obituary. In addition to being a three-time letterwinner in football, Snickenberger also lettered three times in hockey. 

This got TB to wondering if that had ever been doing before. He knows of athletes who played football and lacrosse, or football and baseball, or football and track and field.

But football and hockey? This had to be unique, right?

Then he realized how obvious the answer was. Hobey Baker and all.

Baker, of course, was only 26 when he died shortly after World War I. Snickenberger was 68. They both were gone way too young.

TigerBlog sends his condolences to the Snickenberger family, as well as all of his friends and teammates from Princeton.

Bronze To Silver

Today TigerBlog goes back to 1896 and the first modern Olympic Games in Athens.

If you looked at the list of all-time Princeton Olympians on goprincetontigers.com at any point prior to yesterday, you have seen that Albert Tyler was listed as having won a bronze medal in the pole vault in 1896. 

Instead, it was called to TB's attention that Albert actually won silver. TB was able to confirm this in a few places, including the Alumni Weekly.

Tyler's silver medal came on a vault of 10 feet, six inches. That vault, by the way, obviously wouldn't have come close to scoring points at the most recent outdoor Heps meet, for men or women. 

One thing the change in the archives does it give Princeton more silver medals than any other kind at the Olympics. Since those first Olympic games, Princetonians have won 19 gold, 24 silver and 23 bronze medals, after it was listed as 23 silver and 24 bronze before yesterday.

Albert Tyler was a member of the Princeton Class of 1897, and he also played football and baseball while in school. A native of Franklin, Ohio, Tyler went on to become a teacher at Lawrenceville School and Haverford School. He died at the age of 73, in 1945.

In his research to find out whether Tyler was a silver medalist or bronze medalist, TB came across a first-person account Tyler had written about the first day of the Olympics, and primarily about fellow Princeton Robert Garrett, who won the gold medal in the discus and shot put and the silver in the high jump and long jump.

Such a four-medal sweep of those events today would be impossible, though it does suggest that Garrett might have made for a pretty good decathlete, though there was no decathlon in the Olympics until 1912 in Stockholm. 

Extra credit goes to those who know who won the gold medal there.

Anyway, here's what Tyler wrote about the first Olympic discus competition, which also apparently corresponded with the first time Garrett ever touched a discus:

The efforts of the English novices were ludicrous. Garrett had practised a little during the forenoon; but he had not even seen a discus before to-day. Consequently, you may imagine our joy when the American competitor's first hurl was 27 metres 53 centimetres. The Greeks almost tied themselves in knots in preparing for a throw, and then suddenly stretched out, and the discus sailed through the air. The best Greek threw 28 metres 51 centimetres. Garrett' s second and third tries were unfortunate, the discus first flying crooked, and the third time dropping from his hand as he pitched. But Garrett's first effort was sufficient to secure him a place in the finals. His two opponents were native Greeks, and one of them was the champion for many years of discus-throwing. The other Greek was a famous weight lifter. Both were men of magnificent physique. The Greek champion, in the finals threw first and scored 23 metres 88 centimetres. Our champion, Garrett, followed with 28 metres 72 centimetres. The third man was so provoked at Garrett's success that he was only able to throw 27 metres 48 centimetres. The champion of Greece then threw the discus 28 metres 95 centimetres, and the other Greek hurled it 28 metres. Then came the final effort, and we all held our breath as Garrett carefully prepared for the throw. By this time he had caught the knack of hurling the discus, and had complete confidence in himself. He put all his energy into the last cast, and as the discus flew through the air the vast concourse of people were silent as if the structure were empty. When the discus struck there was a tremendous burst of applause from all sides, and we joined in it with right good will. The applause of the Greek champions, however, was decidedly feeble. The throw was measured, and the announcement was made that Garrett had thrown 29 metres 15 centimetres, and had beaten the Greeks at their own game.

That's great, right? 

By the way, the winner of the 1912 Olympic decathlon was Jim Thorpe, though he was stripped of his medal because it was determined that he had taken money to play baseball, which made him a professional instead of an amateur. There was a time when the Olympics were strictly for amateurs.

Today Thorpe and Hugo Wieslander of Sweden, who became the winner when Thorpe was disqualified in 1913, are both officially considered gold medalists, as the IOC reversed the decision in 1982. 

Wieslander, to his great credit, refused to accept the gold medal, knowing that he'd finished 668 points behind Thorpe, who died in 1953 never having had his medals (he also won the pentathlon) returned.

And there you have it. TigerBlog got through the entire day without mentioning that today would have been the first athletic event of the 2020-21 academic year.

Or sort of.

Anyway, it's the last weekend of August. Have a great one.

Welcome, Class Of 2024

TigerBlog's lucky number, for now at least, is 2313.

That was his number for jury duty this week. He had to log on each day after 4 pm to see if juror number 2313 was being called in.

For Monday, jurors 8-197 had to go in. When he logged on Monday evening, it said that no jurors had to go in Tuesday. When he logged in Tuesday, it said that no jurors had to come in for the rest of week. 

And, on top of that, it meant that your jury duty service was fulfilled for three more years at least. 

TigerBlog, being TigerBlog, immediately thought of how many times Princeton played a football game that ended 23-13. It's just how he's wired.

The answer, if you're wondering is one. There's been one 23-13 game in Princeton history.

That came in one of the biggest seasons in Princeton history, the undefeated 1964 season. That season went unmatched for 54 years, until the 2018 team went 10-0.

The 23-13 game came in Week 2 of the season, in the Ivy opener against Columbia. The 1964 Princeton team was so good defensively that those 13 points were the second-most the team would allow all season, with the 14 that Yale would score in a 35-14 Tiger win the most.

Only three times all year did Princeton allow double figures (Cornell scored 12 in the final game of the year, a 17-12 win). In fact, Princeton had more shutouts (four) than it had double figures scored against it.

As TB has said, this will be the first fall without Princeton football since 1871. As much as that stings, there will be Princeton football, and all of Princeton Athletics, again.

The Class of 2024 is not having the start to its college experience that it would have wanted. This applies to every member of the Class of 2024 pretty much everywhere by the way.

The incoming group traditionally gathers in McCosh 50 for student-athlete orientation shortly before classes begin. With the change in the academic calendar, TB isn't sure where the orientation would have landed in a normal year - but as everyone knows, this is not a normal year. 

As a result, the orientation was held yesterday, via Zoom. Between incoming athletes, as well as coaches and administrators, there were more than 220 people on the call.

The goal was to informative and welcoming, while introducing the newcomers to the traditions and values of Princeton Athletics. In that way, it was no different than any other of these orientations.

It's easy to take for granted that everyone knows what you know, but that's usually not the case. As it relates to the call yesterday, or any year where there are all of the new athletes in one place together, TB always assumes they know how great the history of Princeton Athletics is. The reality, though, is they probably do not, and so it's good to remind them.

The orientation also fascinates TB each year because of the great variety of sports represented. Each incoming athlete has a unique story of how he or she came to be sitting in McCosh 50, or watching on Zoom, and the story of how one became a swimmer and another became a fencer and a third became a football player is always amazing.

And then there's also the point that the entire athletic class will not gather together in one place at the same time too many times in their Princeton careers. There's the orientation. There are a very small amount of social events. And there is the senior athlete awards banquet, the Gary Walters PVC Awards Banquet to be exact.

As always, TB wondered what their experiences would be. Who would be All-American and All-Ivy? Who would be hurt more times than not? Who would set records? Who would be four-year starters? Who would wait until senior year to get a chance for playing time and make the most of it?

Again, they'll all have their own paths from here to the finish line.

And now to that he added in the uncertainty of when they'll all get to compete for the first time as Tigers. They're walking into college under the COVID cloud, and it's put everything on hold for now. 

But make no mistake. That cloud will lift, and there will be bright days ahead for them. 

They will get their chances, and TB can't wait until they do.

For now, though, the best he can do is say Welcome to Princeton. It's great having you as part of the tradition. 

The Whale House

Craig Haley used to write for the Trenton Times, and much of what he covered by the end of his time there involved Princeton football and basketball.

TigerBlog can't remember when he left the beat, but Craig has been one of the leaders in covering college football on the FCS level for a long time. Recently, he sent an email out saying that, even without the usual FCS season to be played in 2020, there would be a one-time Top 25, as if it was back in March or so and whoever was going to be playing would actually be playing.

That poll was released yesterday.

Not surprisingly, North Dakota State was the No. 1 team in the preseason. For that matter, it's also not surprising that the Bison received all 147 first-place votes.

No Ivy League team was ranked in the Top 25. There were three league teams in the "others receiving votes" category, with Dartmouth, Yale and Princeton tightly bunched.

For full disclosure, they went in that order, at what would have been 31st, 32nd and 34th. The competitive side of TB doesn't like to admit that Princeton was the third in the group, even if it's a hypothetical ranking for a season that won't happen.

As TigerBlog has mentioned before, this will be the first fall in which Princeton has not played an official varsity football game since 1871. The Tigers played in 1869 and 1870, all against Rutgers, and then played Rutgers again in 1872. 

In 1871, there were only unofficial games against the Seminary, and those aren't counted in the records.

Between 1872 and 1877, Princeton added games against Penn, Columbia, Harvard and Yale, and Tiger football was off and running.

Now it's taking a pause, along with much of the country, due to the COVID-19 situation. 

There will still be football this fall, presumably, and there will still be Princetonians to root for, at least on the professional level.

As of now, Princeton has five players on NFL rosters. In a normal year, they'd all be well into the preseason, hoping to make a big impression there to secure their roster spots. Instead, there is no preseason, only the coming season openers in a little more than two weeks.

There's also a Princeton connection in the NFL coaching ranks, one that is far easier to root for this year than in year's past. 

That, of course, is Jason Garrett, the 1987 Bushnell Cup winner as the Ivy League Player of the Year as Princeton's quarterback. He set records back then that still stand at Princeton, including lowest career interception percentage.

If you followed his career at all, you know that he spent a great deal of time as a player (winning two Super Bowls) and ultimately head coach with the Dallas Cowboys.

Ah, but that's all in the past. Now he's back where he should be, in New Jersey, as the offensive coordinator for the Giants, the team he rooted for as a kid. 

If you're looking for the definitive story about Jason Garrett, then click HERE and read Ryan Dunleavy's piece from the New York Post earlier this week. There's a lot in there in general, and there's a lot in there from Princeton head coach Bob Surace, a teammate with Garrett at Princeton.

In fact, Surace was the center when Garrett won the Bushnell Cup. That's like catching a great pitcher. 

The story in the Post includes this:

“There’s an old-school mentality to Jason,” Surace said. “He and his dad both have a way of making you feel like they believe in you. He makes average football players feel great.”

What Surace said there is so true. It's a trait of the best coaches, and it's something TB has always said about Bill Tierney, the Hall of Fame lacrosse coach who won six of his seven NCAA titles with Princeton.

When you're around Jason, you can't help but get swept up by his energy and passion. It's just something that oozes out of him, and it inspires the people around him.

One of the best parts of being in the job he's had for the last 30-plus years is that TB has heard some of the greatest public speakers out there. The way some people can capture a room is so impressive, and there is a very short list of people TB has heard through Princeton Athletics who stand out more than any other.

Pete Carril is one, but in a bit of a different way, as he is more of a professor than an orator. His words have always carried great weight, even if he wasn't a booming physical presence in the room. 

Dick Vitale, though not a Princetonian, spoke at halftime of a Princeton-Wake Forest men's basketball game at the Meadowlands in the 1996-97 season, and TB had never felt anyone dominate an audience like that. 

Jason Garrett is just as good, as good at it as anyone TB has ever heard. He has the presence. He has the enthusiasm. He has the message. 

And, like the very best of them, everything is coming straight from the heart.

Anyway, read the story about Jason and his family. It's really good.

And root for him this fall. 

It's never been easier.

Going Back - Oct. 25, 2004

This is the second installment of the new "Going Back" series, in which TigerBlog is "going back" to games that predate the blog itself to write what he might have written had it existed.

There will be one per week, though not always on the same day of the week. 

A week ago, on Wednesday, he wrote about the 1996 Princeton-UCLA NCAA tournament men's basketball game. You can read that one HERE.

One issue that TB has is whether or not he should be saying that the date is the one the game was actually played or the date the blog would have been posted. He's going with the day it would have been posted. 

For this week's "Going Back," he's not sure what date that would have been. Would he have written this the Monday after it was played, or the Tuesday after, going with the football game Monday. Princeton lost that football game to Harvard that year, so he thinks this would have been the blog for Monday, Oct. 25, 2004:

TigerBlog stood at the scorer's table at Lourie-Love Field and wondered if this was all his fault.

Of course he didn't actually think that. Still, was there something karmic going on there? 

Here was the Princeton women's soccer team, ranked ninth in the country, averaging nearly three goals per game, the 26th-best total in Division I. And here was the pregame story TB had written, the one that pointed out that Princeton hadn't scored a goal at home against Harvard since 1992, more than a decade earlier.

That was five straight shutouts at the hands of the Crimson on Lourie-Love Field.

Certainly that streak would end on this night, right?

So what that Harvard came into the game ranked 26th in Division I in scoring defense? This was a Princeton team that was rolling, having outscored its opponents 31-4 to date and having put up 11 goals in the last three games.

Princeton's goal would come early, and then the floodgates would open. That's what TB thought at least.

Former Princeton men's basketball coach Bill Carmody used to call it "The Whammy," which is sort of the concept of a jinx taken to another level. Was TB guilty of The Whammy?

Shot after shot flew at the Harvard goal. None of them went in.

Princeton was dominating - but could not score. But Harvard did, getting one late in the first half, and it was 1-0 Crimson at the break.

There was something else in the pregame story. A Princeton win would start to open up the Ivy League race. A Harvard win would tie the two teams for first place.

TB was starting to feel uneasy. Something just felt off about the whole night. That's how sports work sometimes. There are just some of those nights.

Was this going to be one of them?

The second half started - and it was more of the same. With each shot that didn't go in, Princeton added to its overwhelming edge in the stats, but not on the scoreboard. And TB got more and more antsy.

Was there really a reason why Princeton couldn't score against Harvard?

Then there were 15 minutes to go. And then 10. And then five. And then two. Still 1-0 Harvard.

Princeton had a 20-6 edge in shots to that point. And nothing to show for it. This was going to sting.

Ah, but then a sign of life. Kristina Fontanez fed the ball into the area to Diana Matheson, who was trapped by three Harvard defenders. The ball then squirted to Emily Behncke, who took one dribble to her left.

Wait. She was free. Would this be it, finally? Yes, it would. Behncke's shot was well-placed, settling into the net and touching off a wild celebration. 

Tie game, 1-1. With 41 seconds to play.

It was like the clouds lifted and the sun began to shine on Lourie-Love, even though it was nighttime. 

Oh, but it was far from over.

The game went to overtime, and then into a second overtime. Harvard had an incredible chance to end it when Brittany Meeks, who had scored her team's goal earlier, suddenly found herself one-on-one with Tiger goalkeeper Emily Vogelzang, who didn't hesitate. In Vogelzang's words after the game "If I sat back, it was going to be a goal," and so she didn't, instead charging out to Meeks and smothering the shot.

It was three minutes later when Diana Matheson took the ball and played it to the right side to Behncke, who crossed it past the Crimson goal to a wide-open Esmeralda Negron on the backside. Negron knocked it in, giving her a fourth career overtime goal, moving her within four goals away from the school career goal - and way more importantly making it a 2-1 final.

Just like that, Princeton went from a team that was 41 seconds away from being in a first-place tie with Harvard and wondering if that early-season momentum was gone to a team rolling to an Ivy League championship and wondering what might be ahead for what could be a special postseason run.

If it does come to that, Princeton will look back to Behncke's goal in the last 41 seconds of regulation and then Vogelzang's save and Negron's game-winner as the turning point of it all. 

On a season that has already had its share of special moments, none has been more so than what happened Saturday night on Lourie-Love Field. 

Endless Summer

TigerBlog may have jury duty this week.

He won't know until after 4 each day if he'll have to go in the next day. The website gets updated with the numbers of the potential jurors who need to report the next morning after 4.

TB checked it yesterday, and there was a pretty good distance between the numbers called and where his is. It'll be interesting to see what happens as the week goes along.

Does it stay in the order that it's going in? Does it start randomly at some other number? How many numbers are issued each week?

TigerBlog has had jury duty twice, though he's never actually been on a jury. His first time around was back when he is the newspaper business. He came close to being seated on the jury then, in a civil case, but the lawyer for one of the parties dismissed TB without even asking him a question. 

Does TB not look impartial? 

His other experience saw him head into the courthouse at 8:30 am to watch the video they show the potential jurors. Then it was sit around until they call numbers, only no numbers were called - or going to be called - that day, so they sent everyone home around noon.

They also said that those 3-plus hour satisfied the jury duty requirement and that nobody would be called again for three years. When TB got the summons this time around, he was a bit confused at first, since he thought he didn't have to go back for three years and it wasn't three years yet.

Only it was. In fact, it was June 19, 2017. How does he know this? Does he have a diary, or a calendar? 

No. He wrote about it of course. You can read it HERE if you're inclined to go back a little more than three years.  

Now it's August 2020, so he's eligible again. Will he have to go? He'll keep checking every day at 4.

What if he gets picked for a huge case and gets sequestered? Will they allow him to ride his bike and blog? 

Hopefully it doesn't come to that. 

TigerBlog was speaking with men's lacrosse coach Matt Madalon last week, and they both remarked that the summer of 2020 feels like it's lasting longer than other summers. That's where the college athletics calendar piece plays in to things.

TB has always thought - and written about here - the notion that the seasons all have their own unique feel to them, as work is wildly different from one month to the next. In fact, TB could tell you the date with relative ease based solely on the feel of how work is going.

It's been that way ever since he started in the newspaper world, which come next month will have been 37 years ago. Each year around this time he'd say he was going to do it for one more 12-month cycle and then get a "real job," only he never did. 

Come June, the academic year would end. Come late August, it would gear up again. That's 37 straight years of that.

This year, there will be no fall sports, and there will therefore be a much different feel than he can now remember.

Seriously. The last few weeks, when he's thought about what the date is, he's been off by weeks. It's felt like July, not August. Early July at that. 

Only it isn't. It's late August. 

And that would usually - always, for the last 37 years, actually - have meant that this would be game week.

The first athletic events of the 2020-21 academic year (by the way, that is so ridiculously hard to say) would have been this coming Friday. And it would have gone from there.

All of the fall teams would have been back on campus, practicing, getting ready for their season openers. And now, because of the virus, that won't be the case this time around.

When the spring season was first shut down, TB got caught up in the whole "what would have been going on now if it had been a normal season" vibe. He gave up on that after a short while. It's not important what might have been, only what is, and what is in this case requires a lot to handle. 

He won't be doing it this fall either, with a few exceptions. One of them, for instance, will be Oct. 10, when Princeton would have been at Army in football.

And another one is this week. It's eerie, how it just feels so much earlier than it really is. 

The athletics clock is stopped, back in July. For now, it's an endless summer.

Hopefully, though, it's the only summer that will ever be this way. 

Guest TigerBlog - David Rosenfeld With His Own "Going Back"

TigerBlog made an offer earlier this week as part of his newly named "Going Back" series about Princeton events that predate the creation of this blog.

The offer was for anyone to submit a story about their own recollections and memories of Princeton games. He hopes readers take him up this.

The first response he received came from his longtime friend and former colleague (that's way better than the other way around, right?) David Rosenfeld, who at one point was the Princeton men's basketball contact. David hasn't worked in Princeton for more than 10 years, but he has remained a huge fan of the Tigers.

Here is his "Going Back":

  

It was the Monday before Thanksgiving, in 2004. The No. 1 song on the Billboard chart was “My Boo” by Usher and Alicia Keys, which I just had Alexa play for me so I might remember it (I didn’t). Speaking of technology that can spy on you, the iPhone was still three years away.

And the Princeton basketball team was in…you guessed it…Wyoming.

Wyoming?

We played a game there, and it was a good one. More on that later. But it was quite a ride to even make it to Laramie, home of the University of Wyoming.

We left the Philadelphia airport on Saturday afternoon, arriving in Denver at night. The plan was to bus it from there to Laramie, a trip of a bit more than two hours. We never made it.

Upon reaching Cheyenne on Interstate 25, you then head west on Interstate 80 to Laramie. We headed west, but were stopped by the State Police. An 18-wheeler had spun out in the snow, and the road was closed. Would be for a while. This wasn’t New Jersey; there was no way around it in 6,000-foot mountains, and the weather was bad.

It was late, approaching midnight probably. We turned around and found ourselves driving through downtown Cheyenne looking for a hotel. I believe sleeping on the bus might have been discussed. Somehow, we found a Holiday Inn. After some pleading with the front desk, our group of 20 or so squeezed into six or seven rooms.

The short trip to Laramie a few hours later on a sunny Sunday morning was uneventful. It’s beautiful country—God’s country, some would say. Sadly, God did not help us with the officiating the following evening.

Wyoming shot 45 free throws, we shot 15. Three of our starters fouled out. Still, it was a great game. Neither team led by more than seven points, and we forced overtime with a late free throw. Scott Greenman, now an assistant coach at American under former Princeton player and coach Mike Brennan, hit a three-pointer to force a second overtime. Unfortunately, the Cowboys won the game at the free-throw line in the last five minutes.

I learned a lot about our new coach that trip, though I knew Joe Scott a little bit from his time as an assistant coach at Princeton in the 1990s. This was only his third game as head coach after coming back from Air Force in the spring. Air Force and Wyoming are in the same conference, the Mountain West, which was likely why we ended up getting a home-and-home with the Cowboys.

At one point late in the game, Will Venable was at the free-throw line when radio announcer Dan Loney mentioned that Venable was a perfect 6-for-6 from the line in the team’s most recent game, against Syracuse. Venable missed and Scott turned to Dan, sitting at the scorer’s table right next to the bench, and screamed something about a jinx. It was then that I realized that Joe was superstitious about free throws—he never watched anyone shoot one—ever—always turning his head or doing something to avoid it.

 For all his sideline histrionics and his intelligence (he graduated from Notre Dame Law School), Joe is a normal guy, a dude who grew up in Toms River on the Jersey Shore with a dad who sold pizza on the Seaside Heights boardwalk.

When I tell people about the “glory” of working in college athletics, I often refer back to this trip—specifically, where I rested my head every night. Saturday in Cheyenne. Sunday in Laramie. Monday in Denver. Tuesday back home. Wednesday and Thursday in Baltimore, celebrating Thanksgiving with family. Friday back home, since we had a game at Lafayette Saturday afternoon.

That 2004-05 season, despite a strong start, was a disappointment. Our gritty play in tough situations, like Laramie, became easy to forget as the conference losses piled up. Still, our Wyoming adventure was unforgettable, even all these years later.

 

Going Back

So TigerBlog was happy enough with how the first installment of his series on what he would have written for events that happened prior to the start of the blog.

If you missed it, he wrote yesterday about the 1996 Princeton-UCLA NCAA tournament men's basketball game. As he said, he had three choices in mind for the first one, and he thinks he went with the right opener.

You can read it HERE if you missed it. 

TB especially liked the part where he wrote of Sydney Johnson and Mitch Henderson that they were like having two more coaches on the floor. The idea of sneaking in something to each of these entries that ties it together to the present is pretty appealing, though it does need to be subtle like that.

He also said he had no name for the series yet. Then he received this comment:

Steven J. Feldman '68 said...

How about "Going Back" for a title for your series? That would not only be an appropriate name for your series but also work in one of Princeton's most iconic sports fight songs "Going Back to Nassau Hall."

 

That's a great idea. TB is going to borrow it.

Each time he writes one of these entries - and he's committing to one per week to start at least - he'll have the title of "Going Back" and then the date the blog would have run had it existed. 

Plus, the whole "Going back to Nassau Hall" part is great, even if he's been whistling the song pretty much non-stop since he first read the comment.

 

As TB started to make a list of possible events to write about, it grew from way past the original three. Many of these games were from before he was born, so he'll have to figure out how to handle the normal TB way of writing about his own experiences in covering a game, but he'll figure that part out.

 

It's funny, too, because back in 1996, for instance, he never would have dreamed of writing a story after the game about his perspective of the last 2.2 seconds. It was unheard of then.

 

Of course, also back in 1996 there wasn't even a goprincetontigers.com yet, so TB didn't have to write any kind of story after the game that night in Indianapolis. His time was spent solely on postgame media responsibilities - and he still didn't get back to the hotel (which was connected to the RCA Dome) until around 1 am. 

It was a completely different world then. That's why the series is compelling to him. It's not just the stories. 

 

For the one yesterday, the fun part was going back - as it were - in his mind to that night in the RCA Dome and remembering what the postgame was like and then imagining what he would have done if there had been a webpage and a blog. 

Speaking of going back, he also got this comment this week:

 

D '82 said...

TB, a couple years ago, you were gracious enough to respond to my suggestion that you list several categories of Princeton athletic events: greatest wins, biggest comebacks, worst losses, et cetera.

Might I offer an idea which sounds similar, but may yield a different answer from you:

What Princeton events have made you happiest? The single best column you've ever written described your emotions when you entered into the statistics software the first ground ball your daughter picked up in a Princeton uniform. The ability of your prose to weave a sporting moment with a parent's joy and pride was on full display. Which other events have made you happiest? It might be a repeat of your answer to "greatest wins," but I suspect not.

And if that resonates with you, how about List 2. What events have made you angriest or saddest? If that works for you, then proceed to List 3. What events have been most thought-provoking? Not just an emotional experience, but a cerebral one.

Those are three great lists. TB is definitely going to dive into those. 

Obviously, or perhaps it would be better to say "sadly," he has the time to do those kind of things now. He'll have his first list up next week at some point.

He'll also have to come up with some guidelines and definitions about the difference between events that make him happy and simply greatest wins.

Before he does all that, and before he starts to think about what to include, he can say one thing definitively: the next Princeton event, whenever it is, will definitely be near the top of the "happiest" list. 

TigerBlog, March 15, 1996

As promised earlier this week, TigerBlog is embarking on a once-weekly venture to write a piece on a game that happened before this blog was born in 2008. 

At least he's going to try it anyway. Today is the first. He doesn't have a name for the series or anything. Maybe he'll come up with one. Maybe not.

Either way, he actually thought of three possible games that he could use as the first for his new series. Even now, as he's writing this intro, he's still not sure which of three he'll go with, but hey, he better make up his mind soon.

Also, the invitation is out there for anyone who wants to try his or her hand at doing this. All you have to do is let TB know and then write 700 or so words about any game you'd like.

And he's figured out which game to go with, so here it is:

TigerBlog ... March 15, 1996

TigerBlog was kneeling near where the baseline and sideline came together, opposite the Princeton men's basketball bench, at the RCA Dome last night, with somewhere between two and four seconds to play in the opening round game of the NCAA tournament between the Tigers and UCLA.

A few moments earlier, Steve Goodrich had threaded a perfect backdoor pass to Gabe Lewullis, who converted the layup to put Princeton up 43-41. At that point, Andrea Joyce, the CBS sideline reporter, told TB that she needed to grab Pete Carril as soon as the game ended - if Princeton won. 

As such, she and TB settled down on the far side of the court, so that they could immediately get to the coach should Princeton indeed hang on. It was either going to be one of the greatest moments in Princeton Athletics history, or one of the biggest heartaches. There would be no middle ground.

It had been quite a few days for Carril and Princeton basketball, that's for sure. It was less than a week ago that Princeton defeated Penn 63-56 at Lehigh in the Ivy playoff for the automatic NCAA bid, ending an eight-game losing streak to the archrival Quakers in the process.

And when it ended, that was hardly the biggest story. Nope, that came when Carril casually scribbled "I'm retiring. I'm very happy" on the old blackboard in the Princeton lockerroom after the game. TB was the first person to see what Carril had written, and he immediately thought "well, the large gathering in the media room has no idea what's about to happen."

And now it was only five days later, and here was Carril, in Indianapolis, trying to prolong a career that had seen him win 513 games and 13 Ivy titles in 29 years at Princeton.

It didn't start out looking all that promising for the Tigers. They were down 7-0 at the first media timeout, when it seemed like it was going to be a long night in Indy.

But then Princeton tightened. And UCLA, the defending NCAA champion, couldn't adjust. 

Princeton hardly played a perfect game, far from it. The Tigers shot 37 percent for the night and just 4 for 15 from three-point range, but what they did do is keep UCLA from ever getting into anything resembling a rhythm. 

Even when the Bruins built a 41-34 lead with five minutes to go, nothing seemed out of hand. And then UCLA's Kris Johnson missed a gimme, and Sydney Johnson answered with a very long three-pointer, and suddenly it was a four-point game. 

Then Goodrich tied in on a reverse layup off a pass from Chris Doyal, and now it was 41-39. And then Doyal came up with a steal, and the ball ended up in Mitch Henderson's hands. And then Henderson bounced a pass perfectly to Johnson - the two of them are like having additional coaches on the court - and Johnson made it a 41-41 game.

For the next three minutes or so there was a lot of sloppiness - and some good fortune for Princeton, as Cameron Dollar missed a pair of foul shots after an intentional foul call, and then Goodrich rebounded another Bruin miss (the Bruins shot 8 for 21 in the second half), giving the Tigers the ball and a chance to take the lead.

And take the lead Princeton did, as Lewullis made one fake cut and then doubled back, creating just enough space for Goodrich to slip the ball in. And the freshman Lewullis didn't miss, putting the Tigers up 43-41.

With how much time left? Good question.

UCLA advanced the ball across midcourt, though it's not really clear when a timeout was called and where the ball was at the time. And so the officials went to the monitor.

It ended up being about a seven-minute delay until the game resumed. Originally, there were 1.3 seconds on the clock, with UCLA to trigger sideline out of bounds on the Princeton end. It was clear that Lewullis' shot went in with 3.9 seconds to go. It was also clear that the timeout came before 1.3.

During the long discussion, TB stayed glued to his spot, along with Joyce. She never took sides, saying that she was hoping Princeton held on or anything, but it's clear that was what was in her heart.

If that's what was in her heart, then there was TB's heart, which was racing. And there was this nagging voice in his head that kept saying "if UCLA pulls this out, that's really, really going to suck."

Again, there would be no middle ground. Elation or total devastation. There would be no other option.

Then the clock was set to 2.2 seconds. Another timeout, this time by Carril.

And finally, finally, it was time to play. TB could barely watch. The huge crowd would tell him what happened anyway. Other than a few UCLA fans - including Indiana Pacers guard Reggie Miller, a Bruin alum - the entire crowd of nearly 30,000 was pulling loudly for the Tigers.

No, he figured. He'll watch.

And so he did. And the ball went into Toby Bailey, the hero of the 1995 NCAA title. And then he spun and got himself free and put a shot up from the baseline.

And it hung in the air forever. TB has never seen a shot take longer to figure out if it was going in or not.

And then ... it didn't.

Final score, Princeton 43, UCLA 41.

This game will be talked about forever in NCAA tournament circles. It instantly takes its place as one of the signature games in the history of the tournament and in Princeton history. 

More importantly, it advances Princeton to the second round, against Mississippi State.

Most importantly, Pete Carril gets to coach another game.