Tonsil Talk

TigerBlog is in his 60s. 

He also had his tonsils out Monday morning — among other things to fix some issues in the back of his throat. Everything went well, though it's made for pretty much the worst sore throat imaginable. 

On the other hand, it might even be worse to hear the response every time he mentioned his procedure: "Why didn't you get that done when you were a kid? ... I didn't know they did that for people your age? ... I had that when I was five and all I remember is getting a lot of ice cream."

TB has no idea why he waited so long for this. All he knows is that he wished he'd done it way back when. 

TigerBlog had to be at the hospital at 5:30 am — as did a whole bunch of other people in advance of their various surgeries. As he sat there, TB couldn't help but wonder what everyone was having done, and if he was the only tonsil guy there. He did strike up a conversation with three other people who were waiting and said "what are you in for," to which everyone laughed and no one answered. 

Before he was wheeled into the operating room, TigerBlog had this exchange with his surgeon:

Surgeon: How are you?
TigerBlog: How are you more importantly?
Surgeon: I'm good.
TigerBlog: You still remember how to do this one? I think there are some videos on YouTube if you forget.

Always good to double check on the relative stranger who is about to go into the back of your throat with very sharp instruments. 

TB's pep talk seemed to work, since everything apparently went smoothly. And now, other than his complete inability to speak or to swallow anything, TB is on the road to recovery. 

He also got some nice text messages from his daughter after the fact, checking in to see how he was doing. And he also got this message after the procedure was over from his son: "When is your surgery?"

Two days before his operation, TigerBlog went to Villanova to watch the men's lacrosse team's scrimmage against the Wildcats. What's more ridiculous than that was the fact that Saturday was also opening day of actual games in Division I lacrosse. 

Princeton doesn't have a real game until Feb. 15, when the women are home against Virginia and the men are at Penn State. 

The Princeton men's team has four players who are the sons of former Princeton athletes who competed while TB was already covering the Tigers. One of them is Kevin Morrow, a freshman defenseman, who father David was the 1993 Division I Player of the Year and a 2018 NCAA Silver Anniversary Award winner. You can make a case that David Morrow is the greatest defenseman in lacrosse history.

Another is Cooper Mueller, whose father Kit was a two-time Ivy League men's basketball Player of the Year (1990, 1991). There is Porter Malkiel, whose father Jon was part of two NCAA championship teams on the men's lacrosse team (1992, 1994). And there is Billy Barnds, whose father Tom was the 1990 men's lacrosse captain.

As TB stood on the sideline at the scrimmage, he realized that Jon Malkiel was a high school junior when TB first started watching Princeton lacrosse. 

For years and years, TB thought that he'd feel old when the children of athletes who covered at Princeton started to compete as Tigers themselves. Those days have come and gone, and TB still hasn't felt old. 

Maybe it's because he still had his tonsils? He doesn't anymore. 

This season will be TB's 36th with the men's lacrosse team. He's been with the team for six NCAA titles and 11 Final Fours, most recently in 2022. The last three seasons have all ended in the NCAA tournament. The current season begins in the top 10.

Along the way, TB has had the chance to meet hundreds of Princeton men's lacrosse players, and they are among the best people he's met in his life. The experiences he's had with Princeton Lacrosse have taken him literally all over the world. 

When the time comes some day from him to think back on his career and asks the question "what it worth it," the answer will be a resounding "yes."

Ah, but he's not there yet. The thrill of another season is building. It's what Bill Tierney always used to say — each season is its own entity, its own challenge, its own reason to be excited. 

That's how you stay young. 

"My Brother Has Some Wings On Me"

TigerBlog was talking to someone the other day about the nature of sports when he heard this perfect description:

"Sports is life condensed into a few hours."

TB was really taken aback by that. He really likes that. 

Specifically, it's a reference to the emotional swings that can found in athletic competition and how they can run the gamut across all points of the compass. It's about more than just winning and losing. 

It's about how much of oneself an athlete has to invest to reach the fullest potential and then to put yourself on display to be judged publicly, with nowhere to hide. How many setbacks can there be, how many moments of joy — and they can lead one into another in rapid succession. 

Where else are you going to find that? 

If you followed anything to do with the Senior Bowl this past Saturday, you definitely got to see it all. And it certainly hit close to home for Princeton.

The game-winning touchdown was scored by TCU wide receiver Jack Bech on the final play of the game. Bech wore No. 7 in the game. The play started with seven seconds to play. The pass came from quarterback Seth Henigan, from the University of Memphis.

That would be the Memphis TIGERS.

Bech wore No. 18 for the Horned Frogs this year, when he put up one of the best seasons in program history for a wide receiver. His 1,034 receiving yards were the fourth-most in a single season at TCU, and he had nine touchdown receptions on his 62 receptions. 

He had 200 yards on nine receptions in a 35-34 loss to the University of South Florida, making him one of only five players from a Power Four Conference school to reach 200 receiving yards in a game this past season. He was a second-team All-Big 12 selection and an honorable mention All-American, among many other awards.

Bech is projected as a third or fourth round pick in this coming NFL Draft. He certainly helped his cause with his performance at the Senior Bowl, where he caught six passes for 68 yards in addition to the game-winning catch.

There was so much more to it than just the numbers and the winning play.

Jack Bech is the younger brother of Tiger Bech, the Princeton football alum who was killed in the terrorist attack in New Orleans in the early hours of New Year's Day. The Bech family has been remarkable in how it has so publicly grieved and done so much to keep Tigers' memory alive. 

They have focused on who Tiger was, what a bright light he was able to shine on the world in his 27 years. They've done so in a way that is so genuine and so inspirational that you can't help but manage a bit of a smile when you think of them, after everything that they've been through.

"It's simple, my brother has some wings on me," Bech said after the game to NFL.com's Tom Pelissero. "He gave them to me and let all of that all take place.

Maybe you saw the long embrace between Jack and his parents after the game. It was so emotional, so powerful. 

"My brother had some wings on me."

One month after tragically losing his brother, @TCUFootball's Jack Bech scored the game-winning TD and won @seniorbowl MVP 💜 @tompelissero pic.twitter.com/8Rlw1vlK3O

— NFL Network (@nflnetwork) February 1, 2025

TigerBlog had a chance to spend some time with Michelle Bech, Tiger's mother, and Ryan Quigley, his teammate and best friend, shortly after the tragedy. The more he's come to know about the Bech family and those close to them, the more impressive they all become. 

To see what happened at the Senior Bowl was just extraordinary. It was another moment where there were memories of Tiger everywhere.

And that's just how the Bech family wants it. And needs it. 

"Sports is life condensed into a few hours."

That was rarely truer than it was Saturday at the Senior Bowl. 

To The Groundhog

Okay, once again, TigerBlog has to point out the obvious.

If the groundhog's forecasting prowess can determine whether or not there will be an early spring or six more weeks of winter, then those two outcomes are supposed to be radically different. Of course, six more weeks from Feb. 2 is March 16, which is five days before the end of winter. 

In other words, six more weeks of winter and an early spring are the same thing. Then again, what do you expect from getting highly scientific weather analysis from a rodent?

Yesterday was Groundhog Day, when said rodent gets to make the annual prediction about how much more winter there will be. It wasn't that big of a deal until 1993, when the movie of the same name was released. 

Somehow, it didn't earn a single Academy Award nomination. And yet? There aren't too many movies that are thought of more fondly than "Groundhog Day," which was funny and touching and clever. 

It also made "Groundhog Day" a term used to refer to things that happen over and over, as opposed to weather prediction. That's not easy to do.

Anyway, March 16, in addition to being six weeks from Groundhog Day, will also be the championship game of the Ivy League men's basketball tournament. The women's final will be the day before.

The tournament will be held at Brown, by the way. 

If the tournament were to start today, only Princeton would be in both the men's and women's tournaments. Of course, there is a very, very long way to go until then. 

Princeton's women improved to 6-1 in the league with a pair of wins this weekend, taking down 74-38 and Brown 60-47. Back when Pete Carril was the Princeton men's coach, TigerBlog used to think that holding a pair of opponents under 100 points for a weekend was an extraordinary accomplishment.

It's even more impressive these days, with the shorter shot clock, the more athletic teams, the greater balance in the league, more reliable three-point shooters. Carla Berube's Princeton teams still emphasize defense above all else, and the results speak for themselves.

The score of the Princeton-Brown game may make it seem like it was a comfortable win, but it was anything but. In fact, it was a 43-43 game at the end of the third quarter, and Brown had the home court and the confidence that grows as you come closer and closer to an upset.

Instead, the fourth quarter was all Princeton. The Tigers shut out Brown for the first 7:07 and allowed only four points for the entire 10 minutes. Princeton, meanwhile, ripped off the first 13 points of the quarter, including getting back-to-back threes from Fadima Tall, who finished with a career high of 18 points.

As the women are at the midway point, Columbia is 7-0, followed by the 6-1 Tigers, 5-2 Harvard and 4-3 Brown. Every other league team has at least five losses.

Winning a road game against a good team when it's tied after three quarters is impressive. So too is what the Princeton men's team did Saturday, at home against Brown.

Princeton came into the game having lost two straight league games, including one Friday night against Yale, who swept the weekend at Princeton and Penn to stay unbeaten through six games. Brown came into the game having won at Penn Friday night. 

That's a different kind of challenge. How did Princeton handle it? 

The Tigers sprinted away from Brown with a 20-5 run midway through the first half and then held off any move from the Bears, winning 69-49. It was an impressive start to finish performance from a team that had to turn the page quickly after the game Friday night.

As a side note, Princeton's dynamic junior duo of Caden Pierce and Xaivian Lee are closing in on 1,000 points each. As the Tigers prepare to head to the Palestra Friday night, Lee is sitting on 992, while Pierce is at 989. 

For the men, the standings now have Yale at 6-0, Cornell at 5-1, Princeton at 4-2 and Dartmouth at 3-3. Brown, Harvard and Penn are all 2-4, while Columbia is 0-6.

There's a long way to go between now and Ivy Madness. And Groundhog Madness, with its early spring and six more weeks of winter all rolled into one. 

Back To Back

TigerBlog, as you know, loves a good statistical anomaly. 

Here's a good one. It involves Princeton lacrosse seniors McKenzie Blake and Coulter Mackesy.

A year ago, Blake scored 67 goals — and she enters this season 67 goals away from Kyla Sears' school record of 209. A year ago, Mackesy scored 40 goals — and he enters this season 40 goals away from Jesse Hubbard's school record of 163.

Now that's pretty wild, no? 

The opening day for Princeton Lacrosse is two weeks from tomorrow, when the women host Virginia and the men are at Penn State. Two weeks? What the? 

In the meantime, this weekend features a genuine old-fashioned Ivy League basketball back-to-back. For Princeton, that means the men are home today at 5 against Yale and tomorrow at 5 against Brown, while the women are in New Haven tonight at 6 and Providence tomorrow at 5.

The 1958-59 season was the first time that Ivy League men's basketball featured six weekends of Friday/Saturday games against travel partners. The year before, the travel partner format was pretty well established, though it wasn't strictly played on back-to-back nights. 

It stayed that way through until the 2021-22 season, when the league spread the schedule out over 10 weeks instead of six. Now, there's a mix of single-game weekends, back-to-backs and a Saturday/Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 

For the overwhelming majority of the time that Ivy basketball has been played, the travel-partner weekends have been in play. TB likes the new way, with this mix, especially when there is a Saturday afternoon game.

Still, for people like him, the back-to-backs are special. TB has so many great memories of those weekend back-to-backs, as you do too probably. He really liked when Princeton was on the road and the team would play Friday night and then head to a different gym for a quick turnaround to Saturday. 

The new schedules require a different kind of preparation. The back-to-backs are more physically challenging, obviously, with an additional 40 minutes — and some travel — mixed into the weekend. 

Beyond that, there was also the need to prepare for two different teams in one weekend. Those two teams could have very different styles of play and very different personnel, and coaches had to figure out what the best way to ready was. Teams got into practice routines of preparing for Saturday's opponent on, say, Wednesday and Friday's on Thursday, or something like that. 

This weekend's games are huge as both the men and women chase down a league title and a spot in the Ivy League tournaments, which will be held at Brown this year.

The women are 4-1, tied with Harvard behind 5-0 Columbia. The latter two meet tonight in Cambridge. 

Princeton already owns a win over Harvard but also a loss to Columbia. None of those three obviously has a loss to any of the other five, which means that there is a different kind of pressure in the head-to-head games and the games against the rest of the league. 

Brown enters the weekend in fourth place at 3-2 in the league, having split with Dartmouth and lost by 30 to Harvard while also defeating Yale and Cornell. Yale comes into the weekend 1-4 in the league, with a win over Dartmouth. 

For the men, Yale is the lone Ivy unbeaten at 4-0, ahead of 3-1 Princeton and Cornell, who won at Jadwin last week. Dartmouth and Penn are 2-2 each, followed by Brown and Harvard at 1-3 and Columbia at 0-4.

As a subplot for the weekend, Xaivian Lee comes into the game tonight with 974 career points, while Caden Pierce comes in with 971. It would be great for both of them to get to 1,000 this weekend. 

Lee has 98 career three-pointers, leaving him two away from the 100 mark. Pierce has 82 career three-pointers and 633 career rebounds (seventh all-time at Princeton), and no Princeton men's player has ever put up both of those numbers before. 

Blake Peters made six three-pointers last week against Cornell and now has 170, No. 7 on the program career list as well.

There's more to the weekend than just basketball. There are two home women's hockey games, two men's games on the road, HYP swimming and diving in New Haven, showdowns in squash and other events. 

You can see the whole schedule HERE.

Guest TigerBlog - A Grand Event

Jon Kurian's title is "Associate Director of Athletics for Finance and Administration," though he can be summed up equally well as "Department of Athletics Director of Fun." That's just who he is. No matter what, no matter where, Kurian always seems to be having a good time. 

He likes to say that nobody has ever scored more points in the history of Jadwin Gym than he has, and with multiple decades of lighting it up in lunchtime basketball under his belt, he might just be correct in that statement. He also is a mildly decent squash player, or at least one capable of getting a workout in, if nothing else. 

Given his propensity for fun, Kurian was hardly a surprising choice to say to TigerBlog that he was heading into New York City for the women's squash national championship Tuesday, with the match to be played in Grand Central Station, along with colleagues Tiffani Semancik and Michael Medley. TB asked him if he'd like to report on the experience.

Jon Kurian has appeared on the pages of TigerBlog many times before, always being written about — including his being honored with the departmental Lorin Maurer Award in 2023. That award is one of the highest the department awards, and that gives you an idea of the esteem in which Kurian is held.

Ah, but for today, Kurian appears here in a different light. Today, he offers up a Guest TigerBlog on his experience at what he called "A Grand Event."

I spent several years of my early career commuting into New York City from Stamford, Conn.

That meant taking the Metro-North train line every weekday into and out of NYC. And where does that train line start… the one and only Grand Central Terminal in the heart of Manhattan. 

The building is something that only Manhattan could produce. Walking into the great hall, you can’t help but feel the energy and grandeur of NYC. 

The 40,000 square foot space, with its vaulted 130-foot ceiling painted with an elaborate celestial mural, simply takes your breath away—if you are able to stop and look up without being run over by one of the more than 750,000 people that walk through this building every day. The staircases are marble with gold-painted railings. The four-sided clock tower (installed in 1913) in the center of the hall brings visions of a simpler time, with men wearing top hats and long coats. 

The huge granite and limestone pillars on either side of the hall and massive windows add to the feeling of how monstrous and glorious this building is. It’s more than a train station; it is a work of art. 

Legend has it that it was built in such a way that if anyone tried to invade NYC via the train tracks, they would be on the low ground and the defenders would be on the high ground, making it nearly impossible to launch a successful invasion. You can feel that elevation change as you walk out of the main hall towards Park Avenue, the main entrance and exit of the building. 

I made that walk Tuesday, not to go into the hustle and bustle of NYC (although I must admit, I did walk outside to get the feel of NYC, thanks to my coworker who made this journey with me), but to go to, of all things, a squash match. Not just any squash match—the College Squash Association Singles National Championship, which, by now, I am sure you have heard, Princeton's Zeina Zein won in convincing fashion. 

Squash is a great sport to watch. Watching it played in a glass court is really cool, but watching it played in a glass court in Grand Central Station was truly surreal. In my opinion, a venue as majestic and grand as Grand Central Terminal was the perfect spot for such a huge event. 

As I watched, I could not help but notice the enormous crystal chandelier that hung over the court, or the crowd of people walking behind the court on their way to or from the train, or the many people who stopped to watch on their way in or out of the world’s largest train station. 

The energy of New York City was palpable. I can only imagine what Zeina was feeling. 

Whatever she was feeling, it certainly suited her well as she rolled over the competition. 

Her performance was as majestic as the venue itself. Well done, Zeina; well done, CSA for having this event in the perfect spot; well done, Grand Central Terminal.

National Champ

Who were those people beyond the front wall of the big glass squash court at Grand Central Station yesterday? 

Commuters, TigerBlog would guess. Your average person strolling through the massive train station had to be a bit shocked to see the structure in the first place, let alone what was happening there.

The occasion was the CSA individual national championship final matches, where on the women's side it was Princeton sophomore Zeina Zein against Stanford freshman Riya Navani. Just as she had in each of her first four matches in this tournament, Zein won in three games, winning the title by scores of 16-14, 11-4, 11-8.

All of this was accomplished with squash fans in the temporary bleachers and, presumably, confused on-lookers beyond the front of the court. At least that's how it looked on the videostream.

How did it look? Super cool — and that was before the Princeton woman won it all. 

Zein became the sixth Princeton woman to win the national title and first since Julia Beaver did so in 1999, 2000 and 2001. Here is the complete list: Julia Beaver (1999, 2000, 2001), Katherine Johnson (1997), Demer Holleran (1986, 1987, 1989), Nancy Gengler (1976) and Wendy Zaharko (1972, 1974, 1975).

Zaharko, by the way, never lost a collegiate match. She didn't compete in the college championships as a sophomore in 1973 because it conflicted with the U.S. national championships. 

As for the match yesterday, Zein fell behind 10-6 in the first game and was on the verge of dropping her first game of the tournament before she rallied. In all, she'd fight off five total game balls, while Navani held off three against her as well. 

Once she had that game in hand, she did was she has been doing — steamrolling her way to a win. 

The second game saw her lose only four points. In the five matches, she played 15 total games, and she lost four or fewer points in nine of those 15 games. The 14 points she lost in Game 1 yesterday were more than she lost in two of her first four matches total. 

That's steamrolling.

Zein trailed 5-3 and 6-4 in the third game before turning it around with four straight points to take control. She threw her arms skyward after winning match ball. 

The formal name of the women's championship main draw is the Ramsay Cup, named for Princeton head coach Gail Ramsay. As TigerBlog listened to the broadcast, he heard that Ramsay is the longest tenured currently active head women's squash coach. 

That means she's been coaching Princeton for more than 30 years. TB knows this exactly, since he and Ramsay (and Gary Walters, for that matter) all started officially working at Princeton on the same day. 

Ramsay and one time was TB's next-door neighbor, and a great next-door neighbor at that. She is, in addition to being one of the all-time greatest women's squash coaches, a gourmet cook, something TB got to experience first hand. Plus, she never minded if TB borrowed her grill when she wasn't home (or did TB never mention that to her?).

If you don't know her, she is unflappable, friendly and very loyal. She also has a really good sense of humor, the dry kind, same as TB. She is one of the truly great people who ever has worked in Jadwin, and her years alongside the great (and so tragically late) Bob Callahan in the building were so special. 

Her list of accomplishments in the sport also includes being a four-time individual champ herself while at Penn State. Now she can add another individual champ to her resume.

Only a sophomore, Zein can certainly challenge Zaharko, Holleran and Beaver to win three titles (she can also conceivably join the last two as goalies on the lacrosse team, if she's so inclined, or the first and third as a doctor). Whether or not she does so (the three titles, not the lacrosse goalie part or the doctor part), having even one national title on your record is pretty special. 

It means that she's done something really historic.

In her case, she also did it in a place that is really historic. 

Congrats to Zeina Zein on her Ramsay Cup championship. And to the trophy's namesake and the Princeton head coach. 

It was a huge day for Princeton squash.

Championship Tuesday At Grand Central

Okay, it's pretty clear that it was a first down for Josh Allen.

It's also clear that the way the officials handled the play was a bit murky. Before you get all conspiratorial on TigerBlog, though, there is a reason why the Buffalo Bills lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game — and it wasn't the officiating.

It was the play calling, specifically the short-yardage play calling, either on third or fourth and short or near the goal line. You have to be more creative than simply assuming your quarterback — even if he's 6-5, 250 — will get it for you every time. 

First of all, it's no sure thing. Second of all, that's a lot of extra pounding on your franchise player. 

As for the refs, it's really bad for the NFL that the perception only grows week-to-week that the officials are under orders to make sure Kansas City wins. Also, is it asking too much to figure out a more exact way to measure where the football should be positioned and where the first down line is? 

Hey, maybe some sort of, um, technology? Is it possible to put some sort of GPS tracker into the ball? Wouldn't that eliminate the need for the officials to figure out where to spot the ball? The officials actually get this correct way more often than not, but it's so seemingly inexact, especially on plays like the ones from the Bills-Chiefs game. How can any human see through that pile of bodies, especially from 25 yards away?

It seems like an easy fix, no? 

Meanwhile, over at the NFC game, the Eagles beat the Commanders easily. Along the way, Washington's Frankie Luvu did manage to qualify for the NCAA Zone Diving championships for his repeated launches over the line of scrimmage and into Philly quarterback Jalen Hurts near the goal line. 

TB had no idea that the officials could simply award a score if they wanted to. Who knew that? I

And now there are two weeks until the Super Bowl. That's plenty of time for the "refs are in on it" talk to skyrocket.

In championship news for today, Princeton's Zeina Zein will play Riya Navani of Stanford for the CSA Individual Squash title. Navani is a freshman from Northern California.

Oh, and it's pronounced "ZAY-nuh ZANE," if you're wondering.

The women's championship is named the Ramsay Cup, after Princeton coach Gail Ramsay, herself a four-time individual national champion.

And where is this match to be held? 

At Grand Central Station in New York City, that's where. That has to be quite a show, no?

The match starts at 1:30.

is a sophomore from Egypt who was a first-team All-American a year ago. She's won four matches in the tournament to get the final, and she has yet to lose a single game.

Beyond that, she's only give up more than four points in four of the 12 games she's played. Her semifinal win was over Cornell's Yee Xin Ying by scores of 11-4, 11-6, 11-8.

Navani's semifinal match went much longer, the full five games in fact, before she took care of Columbia's Chan Sin Yuk. Navani won the first two games by scores of 11-9 each before dropping Games 3 and 4 11-2 and 11-4. She then regrouped a took the deciding game 11-9 to reach the final.

Navani started out with a three-game win in the opening round before going five games in the next round. Her quarterfinal match was actually a default, so she never even had to step on the court. 

Now it'll be Navani against Zein for the championship. At Grand Central, of all places.

This is from the goprincetontigers.com story: 

Zein will be the first Princeton woman in 24 years to play in the national final, since Julia Beaver '01 won the last of her three national titles. A win would be the 12th individual national title in program history, and Zein would be the sixth Princeton woman to win the title, with Wendy Zaharko, Demer Holleran and Beaver winning three each, and Nancy Gengler and Katherine Johnson one each.

That's some elite company that Zein is looking to join.

Hill At The Top

The week starts with a trivia question:

Who is the career leader in field goal percentage for Princeton women's basketball? Your hint: She has the same last name as the men's team's single-season record holder for field goal percentage. 

This is also something of a trick question. There might actually be a new leader for the women's program by season's end. 

When TigerBlog went to look it up, his guess for the women's career leader was actually the person in third place — Becky Brown, Class of 2006. The answer is actually Taylor Williams, who graduated in 2016 with a .586 career percentage. 

The men's single-season leader is, by the way, Alan Williams, whose .703 percentage in the 1986-87 season was seriously challenged by Richmond Ariroguzoh, who had a .693 season in 2018-19. Had Ariroguzoh made two more baskets among his 176 attempts that season, he would have been at .704.

Ah, but TB digresses. 

Williams (Taylor, that is) went 206 for 366 for her career, which was a .5683 percentage. Current Tiger Parker Hill improved to 145 for 255 for her career Saturday in a 62-54 win at Cornell, which is .5686.

For the season, Hill has a .692 field goal percentage (62 for 91). Brown does hold the current single-season record of .633, though Hill is certainly making a serious run at that mark as well. 

Hill is leading the Ivy League in field goal percentage, and in fact the next best is .586. Who has that? Princeton's Tabitha Amanze.

All of this makes her Hill at the top, as opposed to the top of the Hill. 

If TB had to guess, he'd say that Hill has no idea that she has edged in front of Williams for the top spot. Actually, he'd be pretty interested to know the answer. He'll have to put his colleague Warren Croxton on that to get some answers. 

Actually, that's a pretty interesting question. Do athletes know when they're approaching records? Not something like 1,000 points or the school record for points or goals but something like field goal percentage, which is less obvious?

TB would say that Hill is much more concerned with the present than with history. In fact, she had a career-high 20 points against the Big Red, bettering her previous high of 18, which she set in the win over Cornell at Jadwin earlier this month. 

It's quite likely the Big Red have had quite enough of Hill, who also had a career-high 12 rebounds in the game Saturday.  

The game started off as if it would be a blowout, as Princeton built a quick double-figure lead. Given that Princeton had taken down the Big Red 72-39, this one seemed to be heading down the same path. 

Instead, Cornell battled until the end. It was as close as four when Hill banked in a short turnaround with just over a minute to play, and Princeton had itself a win for the bus ride home. 

It was an important one for the Tigers, who had lost their first league game five days earlier, at Columbia. It was also a good sign for Cornell, who is 0-5 in the league but certainly a threat to win some games in the next few weeks.

There appears to be a clear delineation in Ivy women's basketball right now, with the top three of Columbia (5-0) and Princeton and Harvard (4-1 each) in what seems to be the top group. After that, Brown is next at 3-2, with Dartmouth at 2-3 and Penn and Yale at 1-4 each. 

Princeton will be on the road again this weekend, at Yale and Brown, as the league has itself a traditional back-to-back on the schedule. Included in that is the first meeting of the season between Columbia and Harvard, who will meet Friday night in Cambridge. 

By the time the weekend is over, the women's teams will be at the halfway point of their league schedules. It'll also be February, meaning that Ivy Madness will be a month away. 

Okay, and one more trivia question, while the subject is field goal percentage. Who is Princeton's career leader for the men?

That would be Howard Levy, with .647. Aririguzoh is second, followed by Williams (Alan, obviously).

Pancakes With Yariv

There were a lot of years — 13 of them, actually — when Yariv Amir would have been dialed in at Baker Rink on weekends like this coming one.

When Yariv first came to Princeton, it was for the perfect match. Princeton needed an ice hockey communications contact, and Yariv was looking to be the hockey contact at a Division I school in Mercer County.

He'd stay for more than a decade, moving from communications to marketing and being one of the most important reasons why Princeton Athletics was able to get into the videostreaming business. When he was at Princeton, it was clear that he was destined for bigger things.

Yariv was a rower at Colgate and classmate of a women's soccer player named Kellie, who is now the Senior Associate AD for Advancement and the Senior Woman Administrator at Princeton. He'd leave Princeton in 2016 to return to his alma mater, rising to become the Colgate Director of Athletics. 

Princeton men's lacrosse coach Matt Madalon is a big proponent of working in as many different areas as you can as you make your way up. In his case, he was a grad assistant, a Division III assistant, a Division I coordinator and finally the head coach. That is the path that Yariv has followed, and in doing so they both ended up getting the kind of experience that pays off in a huge way when you're the boss.  

Yariv was back in Princeton yesterday, having come from the women's basketball game at Bucknell and then heading into New York City for meetings. He asked TigerBlog if he'd like to meet up for breakfast — which ended up being pancakes for both of them.

It's pretty fascinating that Yariv hasn't even been gone for a full decade and yet there aren't many people who work at Princeton whom he knows. On the bright side, he got to see a few of them yesterday, when he and TB went to Jadwin Gym post-pancakes.

The first person he saw was Brian Fitzwater, the department IT person. He and Yariv used to have lunch together on a regular basis, along with Greg Paczkowski, who is now Associate AD for Facilities. 

After that, there was a stop on D-level to visit with Jon Kurian and Jess Muroff from the business office. And up to John Mack's office, to say hello to Princeton's Ford Family Director of Athletics and Deputy AD/COO Anthony Archbald. 

All in all, it made for a pretty nice homecoming. And somehow, Yariv and his wife Beth, also a Colgate rowing alum, have two daughters in high school? They were little when TB last saw them.

Time marches on.

As TB said before, there were a lot of weekends when Yariv would have spent his time at Baker Rink. This weekend would have been one of them, since there are three games there.

The women play twice, starting tonight at 6 against Brown and then concluding tomorrow at 3 against Yale. The men are then on the Baker ice tomorrow at 7 and Sunday at 4, to take on Bentley. 

The Princeton women enter the weekend tied with RPI for seventh in the ECAC standings, 1.5 points behind Yale and 1.5 points ahead of Brown. That alone suggests that this is a big weekend for the Tigers. 

What else is there this weekend? As will be the case every weekend between now and the end of the academic year, the answer is — a lot. 

There are spring teams (women's water polo, who is at home in DeNunzio Pool against La Salle at 7 tonight, LIU tomorrow at 11:30 and then Wagner Sunday at 4) and tennis (women at the ITA championships, men at Ohio State). There are winterish teams (men's volleyball on the road) and winter sports (including wrestling home in Jadwin tonight at 7 against Rider and then at Columbia Sunday, the CSA individual national squash championships in New York City).

Also, as TB has written this week, there is men's basketball in Jadwin tomorrow at 2 against Cornell, while the women are in Ithaca to take on the Big Red at 1. Next weekend will be a traditional back-to-back in Ivy basketball, with Princeton at home against Yale and Brown on the men's side and the women at New Haven and Providence.  

The complete weekend schedule is HERE, by the way. 

 

Alternate Research

TigerBlog was talking to Princeton Athletics superfan Duncan Yin the other day about the propensity of the men's basketball team to come from way back to win games in the most dramatic fashion.

At one point of their conversation, Yin — Class of 1982, by the way — brought up something that would require a bit of research. TB thought it was a great idea, until the next day, when he couldn't remember what it was. 

When TB asked Yin if he remembered, this was the response he got: 

"Don’t hit this ball back over the net at me.  I’m not prepared." TB is pretty sure that means that he couldn't remember what they'd talked about either.

Oh well. It was something good. It'll come to TB at some point. 

Yin, by the way, is a fan of pretty much every sport across the board and is very well-versed on all of them. In fact, he's the kind of fan TigerBlog would be if he hadn't spent the last four decades writing about Princeton Athletics.

As he wrote that, TB realized that if he hadn't spent all that time at Princeton then he probably wouldn't be a Princeton fan at all, since he went to Penn. Imagine the alternate universe where TB never started writing for the newspaper, went to law school instead and spent all these years as a tax attorney or something who was rooting for the Quakers on the weekends. Egads. 

Now he's starting to think of all the Princeton-Penn games he's been to in any sport where he would have had the opposite rooting interest. And now he's getting a headache.

Back here in the real world, as opposed to the alternate universe, TigerBlog instead did some alternate research. 

When he mentioned yesterday that both Xaivian Lee and Caden Pierce were closing in on 1,000 career points, it got him wondering how many Princeton juniors had reached that milestone. And, additionally, had any two juniors done so in the same year? 

If you don't recall, Lee now has 955 career points, which is four more than fellow junior Caden Pierce. Princeton hosts Cornell this Saturday at 2, though asking them to get 45 and 49 in one game might be a lot. 

So how many Princeton men's basketball players have reached 1,000 points by the end of their junior years? The answer is six. 

This is a bit misleading, of course, in that there would probably have been others had freshmen been eligible before the mid 1970s. 

Who is on the list? There are two players who did so before freshmen eligibility. Can you guess their names? Yes, of course you can.

They're also the two players who have scored the most by the end of their junior seasons. That would be, shockingly, Bill Bradley, who had 1,618 points between his sophomore and junior seasons alone, and then Brian Taylor, who only played two varsity seasons and had 1,239 points. 

The next four? Any guesses? 

Okay, TB will tell you. Devin Cannady is in third place for points by the end of a junior season with 1,224. Next up are Ian Hummer (1,170), Kit Mueller (1,161) and Doug Davis (1,110).

Should Lee and Pierce maintain their averages for the first three Ivy League games, they'd reach the end of the regular season with 1,226 (Lee) and 1,130 (Pierce). Those are big numbers for teammates. 

Hummer and Davis were teammates too, though Hummer was a year ahead of Davis, so they didn't both get to 1,000 as juniors in the same class. 

By the way, there is something on the 1,000-point list that leaps out at TB. It involves Myles Stephens, who might be the most underrated Princeton player this century. Stephens was known mostly as a defensive player, right? He was the 2017 Ivy Defensive Player of the Year as a sophomore. 

You know how many points he scored? How about 1,346, which is 10th best all-time at Princeton. If you're wondering, he finished his junior year with 980 points.

Throw in what a clutch player he was (see the 2017 Ivy League tournament semifinal against Penn as exhibit A), and that's an amazingly underrated player, one of the best the program has ever seen.