Princeton University Athletics
Tuesday TigerBlog - The Caramel And Black
April 25, 2023 | Tiger Blog
TigerBlog cannot recommend enough the Kane shoes that he got from the equipment staff earlier this year.
If you've never seen them, they look like Crocs, but they are a much different shoe. They are called Revive recovery shoes. This is from the Kane website:
A transformative, sustainably designed injection molded sneaker for active recovery.
They're also sustainable. As it says on the website:
Made in Brazil from sugarcane-based EVA foam.
Whatever they're made of and whatever recovery properties they have, they are incredibly comfortable. They're probably the most comfortable shoes TB has ever had, for that matter.
There's only one problem that TB has noticed, and it's also on the website. TigerBlog's Kane's are orange and white, perfect Princeton colors. The only thing is that the Kane website calls them "white and caramel."
What the heck? Caramel?
It's Orange and Black, not Caramel and Black. It's William of Nassau of the House of Orange, not William of Nassau of the House of Caramel. C'mon now.
Be that as it may, they are great shoes.
As for the Caramel and Black, there are spring teams who are in their Ivy League tournament, hoping to host their Ivy tournament and hoping to be in their Ivy tournament.
The Ivy League has expanded the number of sports in which a tournament will decide the league's automatic NCAA tournament bid. Keep in mind that the Ivy League champion will still be determined by the regular season, which is why the winner of this Saturday's men's lacrosse game at Cornell between the Big Caramel and Big Red will be the Ivy League champion, regardless of the tournament the following weekend.
Princeton will be either the No. 1 or No. 3 seed in the men's lacrosse tournament. Unlike basically every other year, the men's lacrosse race is straightforward. Princeton, Cornell and Penn are in, and they'll be joined by the winner of Harvard-Yale. Easy.
The softball team will be either the No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the first Ivy softball tournament, and there's an added bonus for being first. While the men's lacrosse tournament will be at Columbia no matter what, the top seed will host all of the other tournaments (unless a very, very unlikely scenario occurs where one team would get a choice between being top seed or host, though that cannot happen in softball this year).
Princeton is currently a game up on Harvard with three to play, with the Tigers at Dartmouth and Harvard at Columbia. Should any combination of Princeton wins and Harvard losses add up to two, then Princeton would be assured of at least a tie for the championship but definitely the top seed and the host role. Why? Because only two teams can still catch Princeton, and that's Columbia and Harvard, and Princeton has the tiebreaker on both.
Should that number add up to three, then Princeton would be the outright champion. If the tournament isn't at Princeton, then it would have to be at Harvard. There are no other options now.
The softball team will play two today at Villanova.
As for the baseball team, that's a bit more complicated. For starters, there are two weekends left, which means six more games for each team, plus a makeup game today between Harvard and Brown. No team has officially clinched a spot, but that almost certainly changes this weekend.
TB is pretty sure, though, that he can narrow it down to either Penn, Columbia, Princeton or Harvard as the site of the tournament. Those four all have either four or five league losses.
Princeton has three this weekend at Yale and then three at home against Brown to wrap up the regular season. Bradley's Wallbangers (see the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers for context) would wrap up its place in the tournament with a sweep of the Bulldogs or with two wins over Yale and one Brown loss between its game today and its three this weekend against Dartmouth, who is currently 0-14. Otherwise, Princeton would have to wait until next weekend and get at least one from Brown.
At least TB thinks that's the case. In the meantime, Princeton hosts NJIT tomorrow.
And finally, speaking of things that are a bit more complicated, TB presents the Ivy women's lacrosse race, where heading into the final weekend, one team has clinched the championship and home field, one team is eliminated and six more, including Princeton, could fall pretty much anywhere.
