Bad Guy Column: Princeton on target to shoot down Quakers

Before I start in with the arrogance, allow me to preface with a short allegory. My grand uncle used to take part in rapid-fire pistol competitions, where he befriended an Arizona state trooper to whom he routinely lost. He liked to tell a story about the time this trooper pulled a truck over for a traffic violation, unaware of the fact that the driver of the vehicle was a vicious axe murderer. For some time, the killer had been rampaging about the state, hacking up victims not with skill but with bloodlust. He'd had some success in the killing racket, so he imagined he would not have much trouble with this policeman. When the axe-wielding goon burst from his car, the state trooper was only 10 feet away, pistol holstered and clipped shut. When the coroners came to the scene, the man lay next to his axe, five feet away from his truck. Five bullets. All in his heart. Now, I suppose this tale needs explaining, so here's the connection. You, Penn, are the bloodthirsty, wild-eyed lunatic that has been terrorizing the Ivy League for the last two years. We, Princeton, are the heat-packing, Doc Holiday, steely-eyed gunslingers. We have eight guns -- five for your heart, plus three strictly for mutilation purposes. Eight guns? you ask. Yes, eight guns. I realize that Chris Young moved up, Spencer Gloger moved out and Bill Carmody moved on. I realize that Chris Krug, Ray Robins and Eugene Baah left the team. I realize that we lost both the tip and the base of the iceberg, but somehow we came away from it with depth. For the first time in years, we're running eight deep, and every one of them has led us in scoring for at least a game this year. I suppose some explanation of my pronoun usage is in order here. When I write, 'we,' I'm obviously aware that I do not play basketball for Princeton. I am also aware that most of my Quakers readers are not members of the Penn team, either. You should take heart in that fact, because it dramatically reduces your chances of being the ugliest man on the face of the earth. This isn't very sportswriterly of me, but come on, where do you recruit these torturously gruesome players? Seriously, it pains me. End of digression. It's nice being able to write these taunting columns once a year; howling haughty invective is just my game. It'd be a shame if some other Ivy team were to challenge our contentious but comfortable diumvirate, because then I'd have to write to someone else. It seemed as though such a disruption might be taking place this Friday, when we lost to Dartmouth in the final seconds, and you lost to Harvard -- badly. But before I had to stop hating you in favor of some upstart team from the North, we both won on Saturday night. So now it's back to you. Let me tell you just how you will lose tonight. You will lose glamorously, lose lavishly, lose catastrophically, lose absurdly, lose comically. This will be no dramatic, drawn-out slugfest. In short, we will wreck you. Then we will be 6-1 in the Ivies, on cruise control for an Ivy championship and a trip to the NCAA Tournament. There you will be, morosely pinned to your couch, watching Kyle Wente make miraculous three-pointers on CBS in March. You, the collective you -- coaches, players, fans, et al. -- will bow your collectively ugly head out of jealousy, while I, the collective I -- me, myself and I -- will revel in the happiness that is my tournament ticket. On to the score prediction. We beat Xavier by six, Xavier beat Temple by seven, and Temple beat you by 14. According to my calculations (all in my head, folks, try to contain your amazement), that makes us 27 points better than you. So, final score: Princeton 27, Penn 0.

Believe it or not, Alex Iliff is a Sports Editor at The Daily Princetonian.

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