The Daily Princetonian | Keeping with the trend

During the NBA lockout last fall, some of the top professional basketball players in the world took the court at the Palestra in “The Battle for I-95.” The much-hyped exhibition game finished with a score of 131-122, prompting the usual jokes about how NBA stars don’t play defense. The professionals, however, were simply being gracious guests, following the example set by their hosts — in their previous game, the Quakers showed that they did not believe defense should be played at the Palestra.

If you were there — which you probably weren’t, since few students made it to the big game during spring break — Princeton needed to beat its archrival to earn a share of the Ivy League title and force a playoff for the conference’s NCAA Tournament bid. The Quakers took a halftime lead but allowed 51 points in the second half, as the Tigers made 14 of their final 17 shots and scored at will to notch their 26th Ivy League championship — one more than Penn.

You know what happened next, but we’ll tell you anyway: Doug Davis beats Harvard with a do-or-die buzzer-beater and is tackled by a sea of orange-clad fans. Princeton travels to the Big Dance and plays 39 minutes and 58 seconds of straight-up basketball against a Kentucky team that eventually reaches the Final Four.

Sure, all of that was last year, and we realize Penn fans are probably thrilled about a 2-0 start (something Princeton has done four times in the last five years, but we digress). But let’s chew on a little more recent history. None of the current Tigers have ever lost at the Palestra, and Princeton has won five straight overall against the Quakers. Consequently, Penn’s senior class has never beaten its rival in your self-monikered “Cathedral of College Basketball.” (Cathedral? And Penn students think Princetonians are the haughty ones with their noses up in the air.)

And while we’re talking about Penn’s senior class, we should mention that the current junior class has been worse, winning exactly zero games. Mostly because there aren’t any of them. Were they all excommunicated from the Cathedral?

With all the enthusiasm on campus, this year will be different, right? To try to boost student attendance, the Penn Athletics department rolled out a big social marketing campaign to get people so excited! Anyone who wrote #beatprinceton hashtag had the chance to get free tickets to the game on Monday.

Well, we tallied up the results, and here’s what we found: There were 41 total tweets with the hashtag since the campaign began. Twenty-five were from Penn Athletics, two were teenage girls talking about Princeton High School, three were Daily Pennsylvanian sports people, one was marketing spam and one came from Sports Illustrated writer and Penn alumnus Andy Glockner. Only nine normal fans actually tweeted about getting the tickets. The project was then postponed due to “rain.” Sure.

Also, #puckfrinceton? Really? Been watching a little too much Summer Heights High, haven’t you? Well, we can actually puck you, as in on the ice, considering Princeton has a real D-I hockey team. (And its own “cathedral” of college hockey, named after legendary puckman Hobey Baker.)

Not to mention, according to a recent column by the DP’s Ernest Owens, it looks like there isn’t much “pucking” going on for either Penn or its basketball team. And there won’t be much on Monday night.

ERIC LEVENSON and KEVIN WHITAKER are the sports editors of The Daily Princetonian. They can be reached at sports@dailyprincetonian.com

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