Thursday TigerBlog - Midterm Week
October 09, 2025 | Tiger Blog
This is midterm week at Princeton.
Do you know what TigerBlog remembers about taking midterms way back when? Absolutely nothing.
He's pretty sure he took them. How else to explain diploma they ended up giving to him?
He does remember that the class schedule book — online, what was that? — listed the dates of the final exams for each class, and he did like to schedule classes that had earlier rather than later finals. Midterms? No memory, at least nothing specific.
He does remember the blue books that he'd have to cram with answers to tests. He also remembers being a much bigger fan of essay questions rather than multiple choice or true/false or anything like that. He considered essay questions to be tests of what you knew, as opposed to the others, which were tests of what you didn't know.
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The Princeton men's soccer team has moved into the No. 9 spot in the coaches' poll (and No. 1 in the more-important RPI).
The Tigers will finish exams and head to Cornell for Saturday's game, which starts at 4. This one is a big one, with Princeton at 8-1-0 and Cornell at 7-1-1. Both are 2-0-0 in the Ivy race, something no other team can claim.
Cornell has played nine games and has scored three or more goals in seven of them. Princeton has played nine games and allowed three goals — that's three goals total.
Only North Carolina State allows fewer goals per game than the 0.33 Princeton does in Division I. Only Duke, Delaware, Lindenwood and Portland average more goals per game than the Big Red (2.67).
If you're wondering, there are 220 Division I men's soccer teams.
These kinds of matchups fascinate TigerBlog, the kind that match a team with a lockdown defense against a team that scores in bunches. He should start to track which team does better in these situations.
That's just a subplot though. Obviously with the start its had, Princeton is looking beyond October in the big picture. There's no looking ahead for anyone in the immediate moment, of course.
Saturday at 4. Make sure you watch it on ESPN+.
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There are six schools who are ranked in the top 20 in both the Division I men's soccer and Division I field hockey polls. Can you name them?
TigerBlog will spot you Princeton, No. 8 in field hockey and the aforementioned No. 9 in men's soccer. Why else would he have mentioned it, right?
He'll give you a few paragraphs to think of the answer.
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The field hockey team, by the way, is at Dartmouth Saturday and then at Northwestern Monday. TigerBlog will be the team photographer for both.
He can pretty much guarantee you he won't be taking any pictures as good as this one, snapped by Camryn Ley (a recent graduate of the College of New Jersey, where she played field hockey) at this past weekend's men's lacrosse scrimmages (that's freshman Thatcher Bernstein who went airborne):
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The Princeton women's volleyball team also heads to Dartmouth and then Boston. While the field hockey team will be stopping at Logan Airport for the flight to Chicago, the women's volleyball team will stay in town to face Harvard.
The Ivy women's volleyball season is in its infancy, with three matches down and 11 to go before the league tournament, which will determine the NCAA tournament bid. Cornell, at 3-0, is the lone unbeaten, with Princeton, Brown, Yale and Harvard all at 2-1.
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The women's soccer team is home against Cornell Saturday, with kickoff at 1. The Tigers are in the fight for the Ivy tournament spots, currently tied for fifth with the Big Red.
There are four games remaining in the league, with 12 points still out there to be had. Dartmouth is in first with seven, with a three-way tie between Harvard, Brown and Columbia with six. Princeton and the Big Red have three each, so the math on this one is obvious.
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And the trivia answer is:
In addition to Princeton, you have Virginia (No. 2 field hockey/No. 8 men's soccer), Maryland (12/15), Rutgers (14/18), Duke (9/7) and Michigan (11/13).
The Wolverines, by the way, feature Patrick O'Toole, the younger brother of former Princeton Roper Trophy winner and current member of the NYCFC of Major League Soccer Kevin O'Toole.