Tigers pound Penn, slip by Duke in triple overtime
By: Bob Nuse
Maybe it was a little too early to start counting out the Princeton University men’s lacrosse team.
After a 15-13 loss to Yale two weekends ago, the defending national champions were 2-4 and looking at needing to win their final six games to have a realistic chance at defending their championship.
The Tigers responded in a big way to the challenge ahead of them, first by pounding Pennsylvania, 18-4, to even their Ivy League record at 1-1, then by beating Duke, 7-6, in triple overtime on Friday night to even their overall record at 4-4.
"They say you never get a second chance to make a good impression," Princeton coach Bill Tierney said. "Well, we’re on about our third chance. We’re playing hard and we’re starting to play better. We know what we have to do and we just have take each game as it comes and play the best we can."
The Tigers will play three of their final four games on the road, beginning Saturday at Harvard. If they close out the season with four straight wins they’ll win the Ivy title. Currently, both Cornell and Brown are unbeaten in Ivy League play, but Princeton has games remaining against both and those two still have to play each other.
"As I said to the kids, if we had lost this game it would all be about winning the next four games in the Ivy League," said Tierney, whose team has now won 12 of its 14 overtime games since he became head coach. "Now that we’ve got this win it helps us, but we still need to win these last four games."
Princeton beat Duke on Friday night with its trademark great defense as well as a timely goal in overtime from B.J. Prager. Princeton led, 6-4, early in the fourth quarter before Duke rallied with two goals in the final eight minutes to tie the game. After two scoreless overtimes in which Duke held the ball for nearly seven of the eight total minutes of play, Princeton scored the winning goal in the third overtime when Prager converted a feed from Ryan Boyle into a goal.
"It was the luckiest goal of my career," Prager said of his 101st goal as a Tiger. "It was a great feed from Ryan. I don’t even know what happened. It hit my stick. It hit my shoulder. It went in."
And it made winners of the Tigers for the second straight game. A great deal of the credit for the win has to go to the defense, which had to withstand Duke holding the ball for the final 2:30 of regulation, as well as most of the first two overtime periods.
"We just tried not to feel any pressure and keep them from shooting outside of 10 yards because if we did that, we were confident Julian (Gould) would make the save," said junior defender Joe Rosenbaum, who drew the assignment of shutting down Duke’s Alex Lieske. "It was pretty nerve-wracking in the overtimes, but we stayed patient in our matchups."
Even though the game against Duke had no bearing on the Tigers’ Ivy League hopes, the players knew it meant a lot.
"We definitely needed to prove something by winning this game," Rosenbaum said of the win over the eighth-ranked Blue Devils. "We’re still trying to win an Ivy League championship, but it also helps to get a win against a great team like Duke. We had played some pretty close games against highly ranked teams, but we didn’t manage to win any of them.
"Ever since the start of the season our first goal has been to win the Ivy League. We still have a chance to do that if we continue to play well these last four games. Duke is a team that has already beaten Maryland, so it’s nice to get a win like this."
At 4-4, Princeton is in an usual position of battling for a spot in the NCAA tournament field. But the Tigers also know they have their fate in their own hands over the next four weekends.
"We’ve come up short in some close games against the best teams in the country," Tierney said. "So to get this win tonight was important for us. Even though winning the Ivy League gets you into the tournament, you still need to play well. This was a huge step in the right direction for us to beat a team like Duke."
Prior to the goal by Prager, all six Princeton goals were scored by players in the midfield. Josh White and Brad Dumont scored twice for the Tigers, while Owen Daly and Mark Pellegrino one apiece.