Princeton University Athletics
Monday TigerBlog - Pennant Race
April 17, 2023 | Tiger Blog
Jalen Travis is a big man.
How big? The Princeton offensive tackle is listed at 6-7, 310, and he may be even larger than that.
When TigerBlog read that Travis was heading to law school after graduation, he thought about how intimidating it will be when he is the opposing counsel in a courtroom.
"I object."
"Overruled. I mean, sustained. Sustained. What did I say? I meant sustained."
Travis was honored last week as one of 62 recipients of a Truman Scholarship, which provides up to $30,000 towards graduate study. From the award's website:
"Truman Scholars demonstrate outstanding leadership potential, a commitment to a career in government or the nonprofit sector, and academic excellence."
Travis has one more year as a Tiger. When his senior season kicks off, it will be part of an upcoming book by none other than legendary sportswriter John Feinstein, who is spending 2023 following Ivy League football.
TigerBlog saw Feinstein at Dartmouth Saturday, before the start of the men's lacrosse game there. Feinstein was in Hanover as part of his preliminary work on the project, and he was there for a Big Green spring practice.
TB actually walked over to the football stadium to say hello to Bruce Wood, the man behind the Big Green Alert website and a longtime friend. Bruce was talking to Feinstein, whom TB first met back in the 1990s, when Feinstein wrote about Princeton men's basketball.
It was good to see both of them. And certainly the book is now a subject of interest for TB.
To get to the football stadium, TB had to walk past the outfield of Dartmouth's baseball field. The weather there couldn't have been better for baseball (or lacrosse or anything else), and the Big Green and Yale were just getting started on a doubleheader.
As it turned out, Yale would sweep those two games, turning a 5-3 game after eight into a 16-3 win in Game 1 and then taking Game 2 in 10 innings 7-2. Between those two games, Yale scored 16 runs in its final at-bats.
There would only be a single run in yesterday's Game 3 of the series, which Yale took 1-0. The only run came on a bases-loaded walk in the seventh, and four Yale pitchers combined for the shutout.
The hard-luck Big Green fell to 0-12 in the Ivy League. The sweep vaulted Yale over .500 in the league, from 4-5 to start the weekend to 7-5 now.
Princeton? The Tigers could have used a little help from Dartmouth. When that didn't happen, Princeton was left to make due on its own.
To that end, Princeton got two huge wins this weekend over Columbia, the defending Ivy champion. It started Friday with a 10-9 win. Columbia took Game 2 by a 5-4 count to start yesterday, and that meant that the third game would be huge.
This season marks the first Ivy League tournament for baseball (and softball, more on that later in the week, but a preview is that there is a huge series in Princeton this weekend. The top four teams in the standings will play at the home field of the No. 1 seed, and the baseball race suggests five teams are playing for those four spots.
Princeton was 6-5 in the league, a half-game back of Yale for fourth place, heading into its second game of the doubleheader against Columbia yesterday. This was one of those games that wasn't quite a must-win, though it was as "sure would be a good thing to get it" win.
As it turned out Princeton did get it, topping the Lions 7-5. Tom Chmielewski retired the first 11 hitters he faced on his way to a six-inning outing and a victory. Justin Kim pitched three innings in relief to get the save, getting into and out of big trouble in the ninth before closing it out.
Scott Bandura homered in Game 1 and Game 3, and he now has a 15-game hitting streak. Bandura and Kyle Vinci went back-to-back in the second inning of the third game, giving Vinci 13 home runs on the year, tying Mike Ciminiello's 27-year-old school single-season record.
The Ivy standings have Penn in first place at 9-3, followed by Columbia and Harvard at 8-4 and then Princeton and Yale at 7-5. Cornell 5-7, and Brown is 4-8.
For the rest of the Ivy season, Princeton has three this weekend in Ithaca, followed by three at Yale and three at home against Brown. There are also three straight Wednesday matchups against New Jersey rivals, beginning this week at Rider, with dates against NJIT (home) and Rutgers (away) to follow.
