Princeton University

Well that turned into a busy Thursday for TigerBlog. 

It was the good kind of busy, of course — the kind of busy you get when your team is heading into the postseason. 

The Princeton men’s lacrosse team will host Towson in the opening round of the NCAA tournament tomorrow at 2:30. The Tigers are the No. 3 seed, and the Tigers are unseeded.

Those are the kinds of sentences you can write when both teams have the same nickname. 

Princeton and Towson meet for the fourth time, with all of those meetings as NCAA tournament games. The first one was a famous one, back in 1991, when Towson defeated Princeton 14-13 in three overtimes at Palmer Stadium (TigerBlog was there).

After the game, Princeton goalie Scott Bacigalupo vowed that his team would never lose an overtime game again — and it didn’t, not on his watch. In fact, two of those OT wins would come in NCAA championship games in which Batch was in goal, in 1992 against Syracuse and 1994 against Virginia. 

The Princeton women, by the way, play UMass this afternoon at 5 at Johns Hopkins in their first NCAA game. It’s the third meeting between the two, and the first two were also NCAA games. That’s fairly interesting, at least to TigerBlog. 

Towson, meanwhile, is coached by one of TB’s favorite people he’s met in the lacrosse world, Shawn Nadelen, a former Princeton assistant under Bill Tierney from 2002-04. During that time, who was Nadelen’s roommate? 

TB gives you a few paragraphs to guess. 

The usual pregame writing gets a bit more extensive when it’s an NCAA tournament game. Then you can throw in a few other things that came up out of the blue. 

First, there was the selection of Princeton’s Coulter Mackesy as a Tewaaraton Award finalist, one of five, along with Army’s Jackson Eicher, Notre Dame’s Chris Kavanagh, Harvard’s Sam King and Cornell’s CJ Kirst. All five finalists are attackmen.

Then, just as TB was getting that under control, an email with the USA Lacrosse All-American team was sent. Princeton had seven honorees: Mackesy on first team, defenseman Colin Mulshine on second team, offensive middie Chad Palumbo and defensive middie Cooper Mueller on third team and goalie Ryan Croddick, defensive middie Jackson Green and offensive middie Tucker Wade as honorable mention. 

Wade’s father Ryan, by the way, was a first-team All-American at North Carolina. And Mueller’s dad? You know all about Kit Mueller. 

Cooper Mueller is the kind of player who is a hugely deserving All-American but who is often overlooked because of the position he plays. Mueller, though, put up extraordinary numbers this season, and yet his biggest impact isn’t really measurable. The same is true of Green who is a walk-on from the football team and now a lacrosse All-American.

As for the Princeton women, they had five USA Lacrosse All-Americans: McKenzie Blake (second team), Haven Dora (third team) and Dylan Allen, Amelia Hughes and Jami MacDonald (all honorable mention). 

Beyond all of that, TigerBlog also wrote a feature story about McKnight Pederson, a longstick midfielder/defenseman on the Princeton men’s team. McKnight is a senior whose career has unfortunately been defined by injuries. 

At the same time, it’s also been defined by his spirit, which is just incredible. He is, as TB calls him in the story, the “heart and soul” of the team. To fully appreciate it you have to watch him day after day. TB hopes he was able to capture that spirit. 

The story will be up today. It would have been up yesterday were it not for everything else going on.

In the world of lacrosse, this is the best time of year. It’s also the most unforgiving. 

Each weekend that comes by brings with it one goal for every team that has been fortunate enough to make it this far. And what is that? 

Everybody wants to have practice Monday. Not everybody will. 

And if you’re TigerBlog? You definitely want to have a busy week next week. 

If you feel differently, you’re in the wrong line of work. 

Trivia answer: Nadelen lived with John Mack, Princeton’s current Ford Family Director of Athletics.