The Memory Of A Goldfish

If you haven't watched it yet, "Ted Lasso" is a great show. 

It's actually one of the best shows TigerBlog has ever seen. He'd call it "sweet" more than anything else. If you've watched it, you know what TB means. 

The show centers on an American college football coach who is hired away to coach an English Premier League team, despite having no soccer background and no credibility in England. He's met as you would think someone in that situation would be met, but his sincerity, humility and charm win over even his harshest critics.

When TB saw the trailer, his first thought was "this show has no chance of being good." He's never been more wrong about a show. There's also a Ted Lasso Twitter feed that 1) is really good, 2) has 673,400 followers and 3) is run by someone very clever.

It's fun, and it has great characters. One of them is the team owner, played by Hannah Waddingham, who, if you did not know this, is one of the most accomplished actresses in musical theater on the West End, which is London's equivalent of Broadway. The moments where she has sung on the show have been among the best.

Of course, she also played a nun who met an unfortunate end in "Game Of Thrones," during which she did no singing.

TB mentions Ted Lasso now for two reasons.

First, after men's soccer coach Jim Barlow reached 200 career wins (which came in Princeton's win over Yale to cap a perfect 7-0-0 Ivy season), a few alums and friends sent congratulatory videos. This one came from Tom McCabe, a teammate of Barlow's at Princeton and fellow member of the Class of 1991, not to mention something of a soccer historian (fast forward to the 59-second mark).

2⃣0⃣0⃣ Wins... Countless Lives Impacted.

A few of Jim Barlow's biggest fans sent in 🧡🖤 to commemorate his 200th win as head coach late this season. pic.twitter.com/iPQdj6I7Ko

— Princeton Men’s Soccer (@TigerMensSoccer) December 1, 2021

TB has no idea how he made it onto the Ted Lasso set, but hey, it's great stuff.

The other Ted Lasso reference today comes from a feature story that TigerBlog's colleague Warren Croxton wrote about women's basketball player Abby Meyers for goprincetontigers.com the other day.

You can read the story HERE.

As you saw if you read it, Meyers mentioned the show: "I'm watching Ted Lasso and in the second episode he refers to players having the memory of a goldfish because it only last 10 seconds," said Meyers. "In shooting slumps, you must have a short-term memory especially when the coach gives you the green light and trusts you enough."

Pete Carril always said the same thing. To paraphrase one of his best quotes: "Give me the guy who is 0 for 10 from the field who shoots the 11th shot with confidence."

Meyers, as TB mentioned earlier, willed Princeton to its win over Florida-Gulf Coast with two great moves in the final 70 seconds. Warren's story mentions that Meyers is in the 96th percentile in Division I in two-point makes and is in the 73rd percentile in two-point percentage. She can also shoot mid-range shots as well as anyone who has come through Princeton basketball of late, and these days, that's something of a lost art.

You can see Meyers and her mid-range game, as well as the rest of her teammates, at home for each of their next five games, spread out over three weeks, beginning tomorrow with a noon game against Seton Hall and ending Jan. 2 with Harvard in the Ivy opener. 

In between, there are also Jadwin dates against Buffalo (Tuesday at 7), Texas (Dec. 22 at noon) and Central Florida (Dec. 29 at 5). That's a great stretch of games. 

The only other home events this weekend are the men's and women's track meets Sunday at Jadwin. The two hockey teams are on the road, with the men at Providence and the women at Syracuse, both for games tonight and tomorrow.

The men's basketball team is at Lafayette tomorrow at 2. The Leopards are 2-7 on the season, but their two wins should catch your attention: Rutgers and Columbia. 

 The men are also home Monday at 6 against UMBC.

Meeting Josie

TigerBlog is a fan of great sports photography.

There have been epic photos through the years of Princeton Athletics. There is, of course, perhaps the most iconic, the one of current men's basketball head coach Mitch Henderson as he leaps in exaltation at the final buzzer of Princeton's win over UCLA in the opening round of the 1996 NCAA tournament.

TB tracked that picture down from the AP photographer who took it in Indianapolis that night. Maybe he'll try to reach out to him now and see where that picture ranks all time on the ones he's taken.

The shot of Henderson was so perfectly timed that if you watch the video clip after Toby Bailey's airball that ended it, you'll see just how small the window was to take it. That's something that's always impressed TB about the shot. 

As for the photographer, grrrr, he can't remember his name right now. He'll find it.

Maybe the best Princeton picture he's seen is the one of Gevvie Stone, wrapped in the American flag, after she won the silver medal in singles rowing in the 2016 Olympic Games. The look of pure joy on her face is awesome.

To the list of those two photos and all of the other great ones, you can add this:

Okay, okay, it's not quite a game action shot. It's still pretty good.

Say hello to Misty, the dog of Josie Ziluca, who is both the new women's rugby coach and the existing women's rugby coach. It is Ziluca who will be leading the program from its longstanding status as a club team into a varsity program, beginning officially in the fall of 2022.

Ziluca's announcement was made official earlier this week. You can read about her HERE.

Summing it up, Ziluca grew up in Northern Virginia. She first excelled in equestrian, and she'd go on to play lacrosse and tennis at Longwood University. It was there that she was first exposed to the sport of rugby.

From there, she went on to carve out a highly successful playing and coaching career. She's been at Princeton since 2019, which means she's had one on-field season and then the Covid year to navigate. Next up is the transition to the varsity level.

The picture of Misty the dog is cute, but it is also telling. It shows you that there already exists in Princeton women's rugby a team culture and chemistry, something that was solidified during the Covid year. The jump to varsity status is big, but it helps to have a foundation in place.

As for Ziluca, her passion for rugby in general and Princeton rugby specifically is obvious. She loves the idea of the next challenge, and she is certainly going to give it her all.

Her original Princeton connection is her grandfather, Kurth Sprague of the Class of 1956. Kurth was a poet and novelist who spent the majority of his career as an English professor at the University of Texas.

As for Ziluca, she was an art history major who originally figured she would go into work in a museum. Instead, she was sidetracked by rugby and coaching, but she still has the artistic side as well. It seems to be a good combination.

If you're not familiar with college rugby, there are two seasons - the 15s in the fall (which is the main championship season) and the 7s in the spring. There are currently three other Ivy schools with varsity women's rugby (Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard), and Princeton will join them in the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association.

There are eight teams currently in the league. Dartmouth was the champion this fall at 7-0, followed by Harvard at 6-1. Army-West Point is also a traditionally strong team, and the Cadets tied Brown for third place (you can't get more tied, as they both lost to Dartmouth and Harvard and beat the other four teams while tying each other). The other four, by the way, are Quinnipiac, Sacred Heart, LIU and Mount St. Mary's.

The first challenge for Ziluca is the spring 7s season, the last on the club level. Then it's on to the varsity, for the team and its coach. 

The culture is already there. The alumni base is strong. And to that you can add Josie Ziluca. Talk to her for five minutes, and you can't help but be impressed.

Remembering A Former Opponent

The night of Feb. 6, 1990, was a big night in Mercer County college basketball.

TigerBlog, still a sportswriter, was covering Trenton State at Glassboro State, which today is actually The College of New Jersey at Rowan. It was a huge New Jersey Athletic Conference game that year.

About 25 miles away, in Philadelphia, it was Princeton at Penn. It was, of course, a huge Ivy League game.

Princeton had won the Ivy League title in 1989 and gone on to lose 50-49 to No. 1 Georgetown in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. As a Princeton fan, you've probably heard of that game.

The 1989-90 season began with Princeton as something of a national curiosity after the Georgetown game. They were a big story every night. Everywhere Princeton went, everyone wanted to see the team that had almost beaten Georgetown.

It was exciting to be around them. And TB was around them for pretty much every game, minus the trip to San Francisco in December. He did go with the Tigers to Michigan State, for the first events ever held in the then-new Breslin Center.

That night in February, though, he was not with Princeton. He was instead with Trenton State, the other team he regularly covered. He's pretty sure Harvey Yavener went with Princeton to the Palestra.

Of course, he was much more interested in the Princeton-Penn game than the TSC-GSC (TCNJ-Rowan) game. Plus, as he remembers it, the game he was at was the second of a doubleheader, so he covered the women's game beginning at 6 and then the men at 8. Meanwhile, Princeton-Penn was at 7 or 7:30.

Whatever the actual game times were, TB is positive that the Princeton-Penn game came down to the wire while there was still plenty of time in the game he was actually covering. And so he tried to do something that in 1990 was not nearly as easy as it is today: He tried to follow the Princeton-Penn game.

Now if this happened in 2021, TB would have endless ways to do so. He would sit courtside at the game he was at and watch the other game online. At the very least, he'd follow the livestats.

In 1990, he had to find the one place in the athletic building at Glassboro State that had a radio and offered good enough reception to be able to pick it up. And so he was able to get set up in a random office there to listen to the end of the game. 

It was quite an ending. Princeton led 50-49 (that score again) with one second to go when Paul Chambers went to the line for a one-and-one. He missed it, but the ball sort of hung on the rim just long enough to throw the Princeton players who were closest to it off balance.

It also gave a player from Penn the chance for a tip-in. That player was Hassan Duncombe. His tip gave the Quakers a 51-50 win.

TB was annoyed by this, but he went back to covering the other game. As it turned out, it was just a hiccup for the Princeton dynasty then, as the Tigers won the 1990 Ivy title – and added the 1991 and 1992 titles as well. 

That night was the last time for more than 20 years that TB would miss a Princeton-Penn men's basketball game. 

As for Hassan Duncombe, he finished his career with 1,009 points. He's one of three Quakers ever to go for 40 points in a single game, and he was a first-team All-Ivy pick in 1990.

Hassan Duncombe passed away last week at the age of just 52. He left behind a wife and four children.

TB was shocked and saddened when he saw the news on Twitter. He never met Hassan Duncombe, but he remembered him as a very, very tough opponent and the one who played the pivotal role on that night nearly 32 years ago. A story about him in the Daily Pennsylvanian last week included this: Dunbcombe had one of the more iconic moments in Penn basketball history.

TB sends along his condolences to Hassan Duncombe's family and friends, and to the Penn basketball community.

Jacob Birmelin Trivia Question

TigerBlog has a trivia question regarding Princeton wide receiver Jacob Birmelin. 

Before he gets there, though, here are some other college football thoughts from this past weekend: 

Did you see the play in the Pitt-Wake Forest game where the Pitt quarterback went into a fake slide but stayed up and went on to score a touchdown?

Fret not, you can see it here:

AFTER BURNERS ACTIVATE 🚀🚀🚀

Kenny Pickett 58-yards to the HOUSE.#ACCFCG | @Pitt_FB

📺 @accnetwork
📱 https://t.co/dXvEmbEk0H pic.twitter.com/JQiOVOWMgc

— ACC Football (@ACCFootball) December 5, 2021

Thoughts? Here's TigerBlog's: That should be a dead ball at the point where he starts to slide and then a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. 

You cannot have quarterbacks faking slides, because then what is the defense supposed to do? If the Wake defenders had hit him when he started the fake, it would have been a penalty and likely ejection against them.

Safety rules exist for a reason, and that's to keep players healthy. They're not to be exploited like that.

Speaking of the weekend in college football, TigerBlog was rooting for Notre Dame to get into the playoff. Why? Because Brian Kelly has always made it impossible to root for the Irish, and so TB wanted to see ND win it all once he and his fake southern accent bailed for LSU.

Instead, it'll be Alabama-Cincinnati and Georgia-Michigan. TB roots for Georgia in the Power 5 football world, but he thinks Alabama wins it all. He always thinks that.

While it didn't end up mattering as far as the playoff is concerned, the end of the Oklahoma State-Baylor game in the Big 12 game might have been the best ending in college football history. Seriously, that's how incredible it was. You want to say the pass by Doug Flutie in 1984 against Miami? Okay. This had to be the best defensive play ever to end a game.

Jairon McVea, a former Baylor walk-on, found himself in a one-on-one situation with Oklahoma State running back Dezmon Jackson. Baylor led 21-16 and time was running out. It was also a fourth-and-goal play, the 16th play of a drive that had covered 89 yards. 

 Ok State ran a perfectly executed play with a fake up the middle and then a run to the left by Jackson. At some point, McVea said to himself "oh no" as he realized that it was either an open field tackle or a Baylor loss. 

You can see the game-saving tackle at the 3:20 mark.

If you go to the 1:20 mark, you can see Drew Estrada make a touchdown reception that gave Baylor a 14-3 lead. Estrada is, of course, a Dartmouth alum who is spending a grad student year at Baylor.

Watching Estrada play at Dartmouth had to be something along the lines of watching Jacob Birmelin play at Princeton for an opposing fan. In short, it means that every time the ball was thrown in their general direction, your reaction as a fan of the other team was what McVea had to be thinking on that decisive play: "Oh no."

Estrada and Birmelin had somewhat similar numbers in the Ivy League. Estrada had more receiving touchdowns (10-6) and yards per catch (12.9-12.2), but Birmelin had more catches (131-110) and yards (1,595-1,418). Neither ever dropped anything routine and usually made the less-than-routine seem easy.

Both were outstanding punt returners. Estrada had more chances to run the ball from scrimmage, but Birmelin's average per run was better. 

All of this brings TigerBlog to the aforementioned trivia question. Birmelin finished his career as one of four Princeton players ever to have two seasons of at least 60 receptions. Who were the other three?

His senior year saw him lead the Ivy League with 64 catches while earning first-team All-Ivy League honors. He's not a Bushnell Cup finalist, but he would have been had TigerBlog been in charge of choosing them. He's the kind of player you appreciate the more you see him play. Birmelin's 133 catches rank eighth all-time at Princeton, despite only being a two-year starter.

And the trivia answer?

Derek Graham, Kevin Guthrie and Jesper Horsted. Did you get it right?

When you're in that company, you've stamped yourself as an all-time great.

Working Overtime At Jadwin

For the rarest of weekends, the Mercer County college team that TigerBlog was rooting the hardest for was not a Princeton team.

No, this past weekend he was hoping to see the College of New Jersey women's soccer team win when it played Christopher Newport in the Division III championship game. Unfortunately, the Lions came up on the short end of a 2-0 decision in a matchup of undefeated teams.

What was TB's interest in this game? It was TCNJ coach Joe Russo's final game.

Russo is the only coach TCNJ women's soccer has ever had. He began the program back in 1990, when TigerBlog was still covering the school (then known as Trenton State College). During those early years, he covered a few women's soccer games (maybe even the first one ever), as Russo began to get things going.

And get it going he did. It took him two years to get to the NCAA tournament and four years to win it. He'd add to more to finish with three while also winning more than 500 games and missing out on the NCAA tournament only once after he first got the team there.

On a side note, Russo's brother was the DHL deliveryman who would be in Jadwin Gym pretty much every day and would always come and hang out in the Office of Athletic Communications. He was also a very nice guy.

And of course congratulations to Joe Russo on an incredible career. 

As for Princeton's teams, TB watched the men's basketball game against Drexel (on television, not in person), and that one turned out to be a really good one, as the Tigers erased a double-figure first half deficit to win in overtime 81-79.

Here was Tosan Evbuomwan with the game-winner:

The Game-Winner.@Tosan_Evb put a bow on his career night with this tough finish in overtime last night against Drexel! #MakeShots 🐯🏀 pic.twitter.com/HVU8IiUf3r

— Princeton Men’s Basketball (@PrincetonMBB) December 5, 2021

TigerBlog is a big fan of trying to figure out who current generation Princeton athletes remind him of from earlier days. In the case of Evbuomwan, there's only one player who comes to mind. Who is it?

Guesses? He'll let you think about that for a little while.

First, this was Evbuomwan's stat line from the game: 27 points on 11 for 20 shooting, 0 for 2 from three, seven rebounds, six assists, 34 minutes, one turnover.

Those are big, big numbers. That's not too far away from triple-double territory, something Princeton  men's basketball has never had (Leslie Robinson of the women's team had one). The triple-double disclaimer is that assists weren't an official stat back when Bill Bradley played, and TB senses he would have had a few.

How many people realize that Evbuomwan leads the Ivy League in assists, and by a relatively wide margin? With 38 in eight games, he's at 4.8 per game. The next-best total in the league is 3.9.

Meanwhile, back at Tosan, he can rebound, create for himself, pass, defend and is a physical force at all times. Is there some Mason Rocca there, for those who go back to the 1990s? The healthy Mason Rocca, of course.

Evbuomwan is eighth in the Ivy League in rebounds. Ethan Wright is fourth. Considering Wright is 6-4, that's pretty impressive stuff. Wright averaged 6.5 points and 3.0 rebounds for the first two games. Since then? He's averaging 16.9 points and 9.9 rebounds. He's just short of 50 percent from the floor for the season.

Neither Evbuomwan nor Wright is Princeton's leading scorer, even though they're both in the top 10 in the Ivy League. Jaelin Llewellyn is the Tigers' leader at this point, with 15.4 per game, sixth in the league. To reach 1,000 career points, Llewellyn needs to average 13.1 points per game over the remaining 18 games. 

Of course, the goal is to play more than 18 games. It's to play into the Ivy League tournament and then into the NCAA tournament.

So far, Princeton is looking like a team that is going to make a serious push to be playing in the biggest games come March in what appears to be a very strong Ivy League in 2021-22. 

In December, the Tigers are a lot of fun to watch. The next chance to do so is tomorrow, when Princeton hosts Bucknell at 7.

Abby Meyers Takes Control

CLICK HERE TO ORDER "I CAN DO ANYTHING ... STORIES FROM THE FIRST 50 YEARS OF WOMEN'S ATHLETICS AT PRINCETON" 

Whenever TigerBlog thinks of a Princeton player who took over the last two minutes of a game and basically willed the Tigers to a win, he goes back to the 2004 NCAA men's lacrosse quarterfinals.

Back then, it was Princeton against Maryland, in a game played in the football stadium at the University of Virginia on a very hot day. Princeton was down 8-6 with less than two minutes to go when Ryan Boyle put his team on his shoulders, scoring two goals while matched up one-on-one against the nation's best defenseman that year and then assisting on the game-winner in overtime to send the Tigers to the Final Four.

As TB watched the women's basketball game Wednesday night at No. 22 Florida-Gulf Coast on ESPN+, he couldn't help but think back to that performance by Boyle (now a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame and as good a lacrosse broadcaster as there has ever been). 

Why? It was because of what Abby Meyers did in the final 70 seconds.

Princeton was down 53-52 with a little more than a minute to play when Meyers took the ball just above the three-point line, squared up and then beat her opponent to the baseline, eventually finishing with a reverse layup and the and-one, putting Princeton up 55-53.

Princeton 55, FGCU 53 | 1:03 4th

AND-1!!! 😤😤

Abby with the biggest bucket of the game so far. Tigers up two with 1:03 to go! Timeout Eagles!

🖥 - https://t.co/hIOqo0XR9o
📊 - https://t.co/sKBMgVkhWR#GetStops 🐯🏀 pic.twitter.com/ELtfKkwwN7

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) December 2, 2021

That move was explosive. 

FGCU came back and tied it on its next possession, so it was a 55-55 game with a 10-second difference between the shot clock and game clock. If Princeton couldn't convert, FGCU would have the last chance to win it in regulation.

So what happened?

Meyers did it again. This time, she dribbled way above the three-point line, made a move to the basket, reversed herself and then spun back to her left, shooting a soft floater from about eight feet that arched softly into the basket, putting Princeton up 57-55 with 17.3 seconds to go. The final was Princeton 58, Florida-Gulf Coast 55.

The game was a great early-season game to watch. It was two outstanding teams with contrasting approaches, Princeton with gaudy defensive numbers and FGCU scoring 84 per game coming in.

Princeton swarmed defensively, as it always does. Every shot was contested. Florida-Gulf Coast was held nearly four three-pointers below its season average. Rebounds were pretty much even.

It was clear throughout that this one was going to go to the wire. When it did, there was Meyers, with a great clutch performance.

In fact, it was the best kind of clutch performance. Meyers scored just two first-half points, shooting 1 for 5 in the opening 20 minutes. In the second half, she scored 16 points on 6 of 11 shooting, finishing with 18 points, right out of her average. Throw in that she did this on the road against a ranked team and that she scored the decisive points on tough shots when she was most needed, and you have a really impressive performance.

Next up for the women's basketball team is a trip to Fordham Sunday at 1. The Rams have also played a really brutal schedule and have some really good showings, including a win over Michigan State, a team receiving votes in the polls.

As for the rest of this weekend in Princeton sports, the only teams who are at home are the men's basketball team (tomorrow at 4 against Drexel) and the men's and women's swimming and diving teams (the Big Al Invitational runs all weekend). 

Among the other events are the men's hockey team trip to RPI and Union and the men's and women's fencing team at the Sacred Heart Duals (TB will of course always defer to mentioning Sacred Heart University, his son's alma mater, when given the opportunity).

As always, the entire schedule for the weekend can be found HERE.

And once again, to order the book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton, click on the link above.

I Can Do Anything

CLICK HERE TO ORDER "I CAN DO ANYTHING ... STORIES FROM THE FIRST 50 YEARS OF WOMEN'S ATHLETICS AT PRINCETON"

It was January of 2020 when TigerBlog flew to South Florida to meet with the great Merrily Dean Baker to talk about the history of women's athletics at Princeton. 

While he was there, he wrote this: 

This is a business trip for him. And the business is the beginning of the project on the history of women's athletics at Princeton as the 50th anniversary of coeducation approaches. The purpose of coming to Florida was to meet with the woman who started women's athletics at Princeton, a woman named Merrily Dean Baker.

At one point when he was down there, TB sat down on a bench next to a stream. It was one of the most serene and peaceful spots he's ever been. The temperature was around 80. There was a little breeze. There sun felt warm. He took out his laptop and started to write, getting down about 1,000 words to start to tell the story about how Merrily had gotten women's athletics at Princeton off the ground in 1970. 

At the time, he had no idea what was to come. He didn't realize he'd write another another 5,000 words  just about Merrily, let alone 130,000 more about the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton. 

He thought about that peaceful stream a week ago, on another peaceful morning, one that also featured sunshine, no clouds and little wind. This time, he was in the Pennsylvania farm town of Lancaster, so it wasn't quite 80 degrees. It was peaceful though.

That's what TB was thinking as he walked into the bindery there. This project started out on a peaceful day, and now it was coming to fruition on another one.

Once inside the bindery, he finally, finally was able to see the finished product. Oh sure, he'd seen PDFs and proof copies, version after version. This, though, was the first time he got to actually see it.

There it was, TB's book: "I Can Do Anything ... Stories From The First 50 Years Of Women's Athletics At Princeton." 

It certainly made him smile. After all, of everything he's done in all of his years at Princeton, he is most proud of this book.

This is what Helena Novakova, one of the first two women ever to compete at Princeton, emailed TB  after she received a copy last week: 

"This book is such a phenomenal collection of stories of Princeton's women's athletes. I could not put it down after I first opened it, and I read until the wee hours. I am humbled by the achievements of the other women and terribly proud of being counted among them."

Helena's story, by the way, is one of the most fascinating in the book.

What started on a bench in South Florida grew to be 500 pages, with more than 131,000 words and 400 pictures. It is not an encyclopedia of Princeton women's athletics but instead of a collection of stories that tell the history. 

As TigerBlog has mentioned here before, the very, very beginning of the book is an apology to all of the amazing women whose stories are not told in the book. There were more than 4,200 women who competed for Princeton in those first 50 years, and there are just under 100 who are featured. There are hundreds and hundreds of others who are included in pictures. 

The book is divided into nine sections: 

1. Pioneers
2. Administrators/Coaches
3. The New Era (the early 1980s)
4. Three-Sport Athletes
5. Olympians
6. National Champions
7. Professional Athletes
8. Service
9. Sport-by-Sport Review

In all, there are 55 chapters. There's also an introduction, which explains the significance of the book's title, and a prologue, which talks about the pandemic and how the 50th year ended with the women's lightweight national championship.

The book was edited by M. Kathryn Taylor, herself an early Princeton woman student, from the Class of 1974. The design was done by Mike Trunzo, whose layout really has enhanced the book. It was published by Tom Krisak of Prism Color Corporation.

This is the second book TigerBlog has written. The first one was a novel (shameless plug, you can find out more about that HERE), and TB can tell you that the non-fiction book was so much more difficult to write, largely because he couldn't simply make up the facts. 

He can also tell you that when he started this project, most of the women in the book were just names that he knew of, with general accomplishments that he had seen or read about. The best part of the book was the opportunity to get to know these women and share their stories, and so many of them have remarkable stories indeed. 

His favorite section is the first one, on the pioneers who did so much to get the women's athletic program started. They were part of a Princeton that is wholly unfamiliar to most of the generations that followed, and what was asked of them was not always fair. What shines through brightly, though, is their love of having been able to compete and compete together and the friendships that they made that still go strong to this day.

He finished the actual writing portion back in April. Since then, it's been layout, choosing photos, rewrites, edits, edits and more edits, followed by proofing and more proofing. Then it was printing and lastly binding.

And now they're here.

TigerBlog has a book that was published in 1900 that has a review of every Princeton sporting event of the 1800s. He's used it a thousand times for historical research and for his own curiosity and interest. He's often wondered if the person who wrote it more than 120 years ago ever dreamed that in the 21st century some Princeton athletic historian would still cherish the book.

As he wrote his, he wondered if the same would be true, that in 2141 or so that his book might still be on someone's desk. He won't be around, but hey, he likes to think it's possible.

In 2021, though, he really hopes you check it out and enjoy it. 

Like he said, this is the best thing he's done since he's been here.

Flying To Where It's Warm

TigerBlog begins with a huge "thank you" to everyone who showed their support of Princeton Athletics on TAGD.

Once again your efforts speak volumes about what Princeton Athletics has meant to you and continues to mean to you. The current athletes will feel a direct benefit from your generosity.

Looking ahead, there are two Princeton teams who got on airplanes to fly to warmer, much warmer, climates yesterday. Neither is going for vacation. 

The first was the men's water polo team, who rolled out in the middle of the afternoon yesterday to head to Southern California and the NCAA tournament, where Princeton will play UCLA tomorrow at 6 Eastern time.

In advance of that game, TigerBlog wrote a feature yesterday about Roko Pozaric, a freshman on the team. Pozaric is another great Tiger athletic story, a freshman who came to Princeton from his native Croatia and has made a huge impact on his team.

In fact, he was the Northeast Water Polo Conference Rookie of the Year and a first-team all-league selection. Helped along greatly by Pozaric's 66 goals and 41 assists, Princeton has won a program-record 26 games, most recently a 17-8 win over Fordham in the NCAA opening round game. 

UCLA is the host for the entire tournament. The winner of the game between the Tigers and Bruins will advance to the semifinals, to take on Cal.

If you want to read the story TB wrote about Pozaric, it is HERE.

If you don't want to read it, you should know that Pozaric had never been to Princeton, or the United States for that matter, before the day he arrived as a student a few months ago. Actually, you should read it for the leaf story alone, or to hear what his teammate and fellow first-team All-NWPC selection Keller Maloney had to say about him.

Here's a sample of that: “I’ve been here four years, counting the gap year last year,” Maloney says. “Being his teammate inspires me every day, makes me grateful for everything we have, especially after a year as depressing as the Covid year. That’s just how he is. He inspires the team in unlimited ways and not just as a water polo player."

That's pretty good stuff. 

The men's water polo team is the final Princeton fall team to be playing, which means their tournament will mark the end of what's left of crossover season. 

The winter teams are in full swing now, with some teams that are already well into at least the early portions of their league schedules. One team that still has more than a month to go until the Ivy League begins is the women's basketball team (actually a month and a day).

Still, the Tigers have a fascinating game tonight against Florida-Gulf Coast. Tip-off in Fort Myers is at 7.

Princeton comes into the game at 5-1. FGCU comes in at 7-0 and ranked 22nd in the country. This is a great chance for both teams. 

Speaking of the town the game is being played in, it's never easy to know if it's "Myers" or "Meyers." In the case of Florida-Gulf Coast, it's the former. In the case of Princeton's leading scorer, it's the latter, as in Abby Meyers, who is averaging 17.7 points per game.

For Princeton under head coach Carla Berube, the key numbers will always be the ones on the other end, though, and so it helps frame this matchup to know that Princeton allows 47.2 points per game, sixth in Division I, while FGCU ranks 12th in scoring offense, at 84 points per game.

The game figures to be decided somewhere in that stat alone, no? 

Diving a bit further, the Eagles love to shoot the three-pointer, averaging 24 attempts per game. That's first in Division I. Their 11.6 made three's per game rank third.

Princeton? The Tigers defend the three very well, allowing its opponents just under 20 percent shooting from beyond the arc. That's ninth best in Division I. Again, the game figures to be decided somewhere in there. 

You can watch this game on ESPN+. 

Today's high temperature in Ft. Myers and Los Angeles will be the same: 80 degrees. These are not vacations for the two Princeton teams though. 

They'll be all business. Maybe they'll be all business in beautiful weather, but all business nonetheless.

Roar Forward

TAGD website

So TigerBlog was going back into the archives to see what he's written in the past about TAGD – that's Tiger Athletics Give Day, which is a 24-hour giving day that just happens to be today.

This year's version is Year 8 of TAGD, which has been an overwhelmingly successful endeavor that has achieved and exceeded any of its goals. It has raised a considerable amount of money, which goes directly to student-athlete experience. It's connected and reconnected former teammates. It's been just plain fun.

TB figured he'd go back to the beginning, to see what he thought of it back in 2014. The first TAGD grew out the 150th anniversary of the first Princeton varsity athletic event, which was a baseball game against Williams on Nov. 22, 1864. 

Princeton won that game 27-16, something that obviously isn't a normal baseball game score. Of course, the first football game was won by Rutgers over Princeton 6-4, which also happened to be the final score of the 2004 Iowa-Penn State game (Iowa won). Scoring four points in a football game almost never happens, since it requires to safeties and nothing else. There was one NFL game ever where a team scored exactly four points, and it was done by the 1923 Chicago Cardinals (they were in Chicago Cardinals before St. Louis and Arizona) in a 10-4 loss to the Racine Legion (an NFL team from 1922-24).

Ah, but TB digresses. Today, after all, is TAGD, and he'd like to keep his focus there.

As he said, he went back to 2014 to see what he first had to say about the event. He found a link to this video from the women's hockey team:

By the way, TB also saw that he wrote this on the day after TAGD that year: "TB's biggest fashion struggle, he supposes, is whether or not to tuck a particular shirt in or not. For instance, right now he's wearing a long-sleeve black Nike Princeton Athletics shirt and khaki pants. Should the shirt be tucked in? Let the record reflect that it is. Two things about this: 1) he laughed when he saw that because yesterday he wore the same exact shirt (not one that looks like it but the exact same one from 2014) and 2) he still isn't sure if he should tuck it in or not.

Anyway, that's more digression. And a bit embarrassing.

The women's hockey video is what TB meant about fun. They certainly were. Hey, that works just as well in 2021 as it did in 2014.

Well, other than the slogan. The one from 2014 was "It's a great day to be a Tiger." This year, it's "Roar Forward."

You can see different takes on "Roar Forward" on the social media accounts of all of Princeton's teams. TB helped direct the efforts from field hockey players Aimee Jungfer and Beth Yeager, who both were naturals at comedy. Again, it's all part of what makes the day fun. The two field hockey players certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves.

As TB watched them do their various videos, he wondered if they had a good appreciation for what was actually going on, what the real message is behind TAGD. 

For TigerBlog, it's about investing. TAGD is about creating the best possible undergraduate experience, which in turn attracts the best possible students and athletes to attend Princeton. 

They in turn benefit from their athletic experience, and in doing so, they also are being prepared to do great things once they leave Princeton. It's easy to get caught up in thinking about "the best and the brightest," but it's clear that Princeton Athletics has produced real difference makers in so many important post-Princeton fields: medicine, law, politics, engineering, business, service. 

That's who you're investing in on TAGD with your support for the teams and the athletes. It's a fun day, yes, but it's also a day to remember that when Princeton talks about "Education Through Athletics," it really does believe in what those messages and experiences mean.

So thank you again in advance for your generosity. As someone who has been here for more than 30 years now, TB can tell you that many of the very best people he's ever met have been Princeton Athletes.

Finally, he leaves you with this ... enjoy TAGD everyone:

Catching Up

Did you miss TigerBlog during the long Thanksgiving weekend?

Hopefully you had a great holiday. How many days in a row can you eat turkey? And what percentage of people love green bean casserole? 

These four days annually mark the only four consecutive days that TB doesn't write here. He has some stuff to catch up on:

1) TigerBlog has been a lifelong Giants fan (the football variety), but that is over now for good. His affection for the team took a huge hit when the team let go of Marc Ross, the former Princeton wide receiver who played a major role in building two Super Bowl champions. 

When the Giants took on Jason Garrett, a former Princeton quarterback and Bushnell Cup winner, TB figured he would give them another chance. That's gone now too, after Garrett was let go, as if anything that was going wrong there was his fault. 

So now the Giants no longer exist to TB. He's now firmly on the Jets bandwagon. He figures if he does this, he can never be accused of jumping on a winner. It's either the Jets or the Eagles, his son's favorite team. The Eagles of course lost yesterday to the Giants. Note: Philadelphia would have won had any of Princeton's top three wide receivers been the target of those two late passes that were dropped.

2) Chris Sailer's retirement announcement last week and James Johnson's epic reaction to being named first-team All-Ivy League in football prevented TB from mentioning Princeton's 81-80 win over Oregon State in men's basketball.

That's a pretty good win for the Tigers. Oregon State, as you might remember, was one game away from the Final Four last season. Even if the Beavers are struggling so far this year, that's still a really good effort to go on the road like that and beat a Power Five team, the second such team Princeton has knocked off so far this year (South Carolina was the other; Princeton took Minnesota to two OTs).

The Tigers did lose to Monmouth in the middle of the week, but Monmouth turned around and defeated previously unbeaten Cincinnati on the road. Princeton rebounded to knock off Fairleigh Dickinson 89-78 at Jadwin.

Princeton scored 89 points, of which 81 came from four players. Three of the four Tigers in double figures were Jaelin Llewellyn (15), Ryan Langborg (18) and Tosan Evbuomwan (career-high 19). 

The other was Ethan Wright, who continued his hot streak with a 29-point, 10-rebound effort against the Knights in a game in which he shot 7 for 12 from three-point range. He was already the reigning Ivy League Player of the Week after going for 24 points (then a career high) and 10 rebounds at Oregon State. 

For his part, Wright had six career double figure scoring games two games into this, his senior season. He now has five straight, averaging 18 during that stretch.

3) Women's basketball player A: 17.5 points per game, .474 from the field, .356 from three-point range. Women's basketball player B: 17.7 points per game, .500 from the field, .407 from three-point range.

Who are they? Player A was Bella Alarie's senior year at Princeton. Player B is Abby Meyers through six games this year. For now it's just something to keep an eye on as the season goes forward, but Meyers is a lot of fun to watch.

4) Congratulations to the men's water polo team, who extended Princeton's outstanding fall with a 17-8 win over Fordham in the opening round of the NCAA tournament Saturday. The Tigers' reward is a trip to No. 1 UCLA for the next round, which will be Thursday night at 6 Eastern time.

Princeton is 26-7 overall this year and has played very competitively with some of the top teams in California. TigerBlog's next feature story will be a men's water polo one, coming to goprincetontigers.com in advance of the game.

5) Tomorrow is TAGD, which stands for Tiger Athletics Give Day (as you probably already know). It's an annual event that has resulted in so much generous support from Princeton's athletic friends and alums, and it's done so much to give the current generation the best possible experience.

There will be a lot of TAGD information on the webpage and social media. TigerBlog thanks you in advance for your support, as always.