Princeton University Athletics
Wednesday TigerBlog - More ECAC Champs
February 18, 2026 | Tiger Blog
In TigerBlog's piece yesterday about the women's hockey team's ECAC regular-season championship, he forgot to mention one item.
While Princeton and Yale tied for the ECAC title, neither won the Ivy League championship. That went to Cornell, who finished with 21 points, to 20 for Yale and 18 for Princeton.
The ECAC regular season has 22 games for each team, with one home and one away against the other 11 league teams. Of those 22 games, though, the Ivy vs. Ivy games count in the Ivy standings, so those 10 games are a subset of the ECAC ones.
As such, you can have co-champs in the ECAC who do not win the Ivy League. It's a pretty interesting anomaly, and you know how TigerBlog loves a good anomaly.
The ECAC Hockey League, by the way, isn't the same entity as the ECAC. Confusing, right?
The ECAC itself dates back to 1938, when Asa S. Bushnell (Princeton Class of 1921, by the way) became the first commissioner. Today the ECAC is an extension of Northeast Division I, II and III schools, pretty much all of whom are in other primary leagues (such as the Ivy League, for instance).
The ECAC, according to its mission statement, "exists to enhance the experience of student-athletes participating in intercollegiate athletics, and provide great value for universities and colleges, by sponsoring championships, leagues, bowl games, tournaments and other competitions throughout the Northeast."
One of the championships that the ECAC sponsors is Division I tennis, both for men and women. Those two tournaments — which featured all eight Ivy League teams and nobody else — were held the last two weekends at the Si Qin Family Indoor Tennis Center at Princeton.
The women's event saw Princeton go 2-1 two weeks ago. This past weekend, it was the men's turn.
The final matched Princeton and Columbia Sunday. Guess what? It was one of the best Princeton events TigerBlog has seen in a long time.
Princeton and Columbia both won their first two matches by 4-0 counts, setting up a championship match between the two top seeds. Columbia was ranked 12th nationally; Princeton was on the cusp of the national rankings.
Throw in that Princeton had already come close to beating two other ranked teams (Arizona State, North Carolina State) and lost 4-3. And throw in that Princeton had lost 14 straight to Columbia.
The match started at 3:30. It was nearly 7:30 when it ended. Final score: Princeton 4, Columbia 3.
It was crazy. It was wildly intense. Every point seemed to make a big difference. It was everything you could have asked from a sporting event.
If you don't know how college tennis matches work, there are three doubles matches to start off, and whichever team wins two gets a team point. Then there are six singles matches, worth one point each as well. It takes four points to get a team to win.
There are other differences from what you see during Wimbledon or the U.S. Open. For one thing, if a game gets to 40-40, then the next point wins. And then for another, it's hardly quiet during play. Spectators. Players. Teammates. The sound bounces everywhere, always. It turns the whole event into something of a party atmosphere.
The biggest subplot of Sunday's match came at first singles, where Columbia's Michael Zheng and Princeton's Paul Inchauspe met. It was a rematch of the NCAA singles tournament semifinal last fall, when Zheng defeated Inchauspe in three sets on his way to his second-straight individual national championship. In addition, Zheng also happened to win a match in the Australian Open main draw a month ago.
The match between them Sunday was a great one. It was incredible shot-making, by both players. Inchauspe won the first set. Zheng won the second. If you were waiting for Inchauspe to fold, well, you're still waiting — he won the third set and the match.
Princeton had won the doubles point. Aleksandar Mitric gave Princeton a win at No. 6. Columbia won at No. 2, No. 4 and No. 5. All were back-and-forth matches that only made the drama build and flip almost game-by-game.
And so it was 3-3 as the third set at No. 3 started. The crowd was big and very into it. The building was loud. Very loud.
The match had Princeton's Landon Ardila against Columbia's Sachin Palta, the No. 37 player in the most recent ITA singles rankings. It didn't matter. Ardila played with a visible combination of poise and confidence, and he rolled through the set 6-1, touching off a celebration worthy of the moment.
Have the Tigers seen the last of the Lions? Hardly. The teams meet again in New York City on April 12, with an Ivy League championship possibly at stake that day.
Can it live up to what the teams did Sunday? If it does, then that's going to be an incredible scene.
