The pundits have spoken, and the Ivy League announced last Thursday that the women's basketball team is expected to end the season in third place.
When an Ivy League team loses five seniors, including two three-time all-Ivy selections and four of its top seven scorers, and is still picked to finish third in the Ancient Eight, either the other Ivies have decided to field squads of individuals with mascot aspirations or that team must be pretty confident that its underclassmen can pick up the slack.
One by one, the members of the football team emerged from the Tigers' locker room and trudged out of Princeton Stadium late Saturday afternoon.Most didn't say a word.
This year, the women's basketball program is completely unified in both its composition and its focus for the first time in over three years.With the preseason poll ranking Princeton third in the Ivy League, behind first-place Dartmouth and second-place Harvard, the players have but one aspiration ? a league title."From the first person to the trainers to the managers, I feel like we all have one goal, which is to win Ivies," sophomore center Ariel Rogers said.
"I don't really know what these guys are going to do."If there has ever been a Princeton men's basketball team about which this could be said ? by its head coach, no less ? it is Joe Scott's 2005-06 squad."These guys," Scott '87 continued, "are going to show what they are going to do."After all, what good is speculation when, just last year, Scott watched his Tigers post their first losing Ivy League record in school history following a preseason laden with talk of a league title?What kind of forecast can be made about a team that features one lone senior and just four other players who spent more than 80 minutes on the court last season?One might quip, "Not a very good one," but then again, Princeton was picked to finish third in the standings in the Ivy League preseason media poll.So, while sharing his outlook for this season ? which starts tonight at Jadwin Gym against Drexel ? Scott dodged the hype and revealed that his only concern is internal improvement."I think the big mistake that I made last year was talking about all that B.S.," Scott said of last year's talk about an Ivy crown.
The football team's dreams of an Ivy League title and a bonfire went up in smoke Saturday afternoon, leaving the Tigers shaking their heads and wondering what might have been."We had our chances to get the 'W,' and we didn't pull it out," senior cornerback Jay McCareins said as he slowly trudged away from the locker room, eyes bleary.
The last time sophomore center Harrison Schaen put on a jersey emblazoned with the Princeton Tiger, he was a precocious freshman playing off the bench in the men's basketball team's 66-49 loss to Texas in the first round of the 2004 NCAA tournament.
With a spot in the NCAA Championships on the line, the women's cross country team easily outran its competition at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships on Saturday.
For the diehard Princeton sports fans, Saturday was a rough day. As the clock wound down at Princeton Stadium, the action was just getting underway at a packed Lourie-Love Field.
This year, the women's basketball program is completely unified in both its composition and its focus for the first time in over three years.With the preseason poll ranking Princeton third in the Ivy League, behind first-place Dartmouth and second-place Harvard, the players have but one aspiration ? a league title."From the first person to the trainers to the managers, I feel like we all have one goal, which is to win Ivies," sophomore center Ariel Rogers said.
Want to make Joe Scott '87 smile?Don't ask him about backdoor cuts and defensive shifts. Don't ask him about Quakers and Elis.Ask him about his kids.He'll talk about his four-year-old son Ben, beaming as he recalls how Ben managed to stand up on his waterskis this summer at the Jersey Shore.He'll talk about his two-year-old son Jack, even grinning as he explains that he does diaper duty in the mornings.Yes, Scott smiles plenty ? just rarely on the basketball court."This persona everyone sees and thinks I have, it's really just the opposite," he says.
For all the attention given to the world-famous "Princeton Offense," the Tigers' unique defensive system will play just as big of a role in determining the fate of the men's basketball team this season.Once again, Princeton will employ a matchup-zone defense this year.
At the start of the men's basketball season two years ago, juniors Freddy Flaxman, Jonah Perlin and John Boscia ? then freshmen ? were surprised to find only about 20 students in attendance at a game in Jadwin Gym.
There is something comforting about the sight of a few players flanking their coach as he arrives at the postgame press conference after a loss.
The football team's dreams of an Ivy League title and a bonfire went up in smoke Saturday afternoon, leaving the Tigers shaking their heads and wondering what might have been."We had our chances to get the 'W,' and we didn't pull it out," senior cornerback Jay McCareins said as he slowly trudged away from the locker room, eyes bleary.
After splitting its games the past two weekends, the men's hockey team looks to push its record over .500 this Friday and Saturday on the road as when it faces Union and Rensselaer in upstate New York.The seventh-ranked Tigers (2-2 overall, 1-1 Eastern College Athletic Conference Hockey League) are looking to rebound from last Saturday's 2-1 loss to Harvard.
Both the men's and women's cross country teams have high expectations going into this weekend's NCAA Regional Championships.
Princeton-Yale football game? Forget it. Homecoming? Overrated.Such events, no matter how steeped in tradition they may be, aren't even on the radar for the men's water polo team.
For the first time in more than a decade, the football team will get to see whether or not it can start a fire.Princeton (6-2 overall, 4-1 Ivy League) will look to both earn its first bonfire since 1994 by completing a Harvard-Yale sweep and remain atop the Ivy League when it faces Yale (3-5, 3-2) this Saturday at Princeton Stadium."This is a very unique rivalry ... that takes on special significance regardless of what the records are," head coach Roger Hughes said.
While a lead headline of "Princeton Pyromania" might be either a cause for alarm or an allusion to the gutted ruins of Ivy Club in "The Rule of Four," this weekend it could have more positive connotations as the rallying cry of the football team and faithful Tiger fans.A victory over Yale this weekend would green-light one of the more venerable Princeton traditions ? a bonfire on Cannon Green, signifying the Tigers' Big Three football supremacy.
