Junior attack’s overtime goal earns Sailer 300th career victory
By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
There hasn’t been a bad bus ride yet for Lizzy Drumm and the Princeton University women’s lacrosse team.
The junior attack’s goal with 2:04 left in sudden-victory overtime gave the No. 19 Tigers a 15-14 win at No. 9 Georgetown on Sunday.
”It was a huge win,” said Drumm, who scored five goals on the day. “Especially going into the second half of the season and giving us momentum, giving us confidence that we have the ability and we have the players to be able to knock off a ranked team. It was an important win for us.”
With the win, the Tigers are 4-4. All four of their wins have come on the road. All four of their losses have come at home in the first year that the Tigers are playing all of their home games at Princeton Stadium rather than Class of 1952 Stadium.
”Some of us think it’s unlucky,” Drumm said. The win over Georgetown followed a win at Columbia, and the Tigers go back on the road to play at Temple on Wednesday.
”We don’t mind being on the road,” Drumm said. “It’s important to keep up our momentum. In the next couple weeks, we’ll be playing some tough Ivy League teams. It’ll give us some confidence.”
The young Tigers have been challenged plenty in 2010 already, and the second half of the schedule holds no breaks. After Temple, they host three straight beginning with Ivy foes Cornell and Yale and finishing with always tough Maryland. Then it’s on the road at much-improved Harvard and back home to take on the current Ivy leaders, Penn and then Dartmouth, in a four-day stretch.
”One of the most important things for us is, in practice, we continue to push ourselves,” Drumm said. “We have to make it competitive in practices so hopefully the games come easily. One of the most important parts is the transition in our games. If we do make a big stop, we have to be able to transition down the field so the attack can capitalize. That’ll be important in the upcoming games.”
Drumm is one of the more experienced players on the field for the Tigers along with fellow junior, goalie Erin Tochihara, and seniors attack Kristin Morrison, goalie Kaitlyn Perrelle and defense Sarah Vance. The older players have seen their less experienced teammates make big gains even as the team struggled to put together consecutive wins.
”We seemed very composed the whole game,” said PU head coach Chris Sailer after picking up her 300th career win. “We were always able to respond when we needed to. We dominated the draw controls all game, until overtime. Then Toch’ came up with some big stops. We’ve grown so much over the season. We wanted to rise in this game and we did.”
Drumm has seen the less experienced Tigers making better decisions with each game.
”They’ve stepped it up, and in a matter of a half the season, become better players,” Drumm said. “The majority of starters and people coming off bench are underclassmen.”
It’s why earning their first win over a ranked opponent this year — they earlier lost to Duke and Virginia, was so important. The Tigers had gotten their season off to a slower start than usual while figuring out how to replace nine graduated seniors.
”It was a little frustrating,” Drumm said. “It was a learning experience. We all knew we had the talent there and had the potential. We just had to put it together. We’ve won games against lower tier teams. This is important to build our team’s confidence. If we put it together, we see we can take down top teams.”
And the Tigers know that if they don’t, a lower tier team can sneak in a victory against them, as an improved Rutgers squad did in the second games of the season. Princeton, though, has learned from its mistakes. The Tigers went back and forth with Georgetown before edging them in overtime.
”From the start, we knew we wanted to come out strong,” Drumm said. “It was a back and forth game. When they scored, we did a good job of responding and keeping our momentum up. That was important. In previous games, we’ve let teams go on runs, particularly in the second half.
”We also were a lot smarter with the decisions we made, especially with midfield transition. Our passes, we made smarter choices. The defense came up with big stops. The offense was able to capitalize on turnovers. Our shooting percentage was a lot higher than it’s been.”
No one could shoot better than Drumm, who was 5-for-5 on the day. She also picked up two ground balls and one draw control against the Hoyas, but it was the fact that she had help that helped change the Tigers fortunes. Princeton had learned to play without Drumm, who missed the Columbia game with a hamstring injury.
”That really made a difference,” Sailer said. “We weren’t sitting around looking for Lizzy to do everything. Having said that, she was phenomenal.”
When it came to overtime, it was only fitting that Drumm would score the game-winner, though it wasn’t anything she was expecting.
”I didn’t think I had to take the last shot,” Drumm said. “I knew somebody was going to step up — whether it was me or one of the six attackers. It was off a fast break in the moment. I was confident that anyone who got the ball in that situation was going to finish.”
The win was the second in overtime this season for the Tigers. They defeated Johns Hopkins, 10-9, in the season opener on a goal by Morrison. They got an even better team effort to top Georgetown.
”We’ve tried in the last couple games to get more consistent with our rotation of kids and get more rest and get more kids in and they responded well,” Sailer said. “We have a lot of kids that are capable of putting the ball in. The freshmen are really coming along, and we had some sophomores score today. To have nine different kids score, that’s a lot in a game like this.”
The Tigers need to continue to grow to get big results this season. Princeton faces a loaded schedule in the second half of the season, but after an upset win over a top-10 team, it feels ready to contend for an Ivy title.
”Further down the season, the more games we have under our belt, the more we learn,” Drumm said. “Hopefully the learning process will end in success.”
Sunday’s win at Georgetown was a big step, but there’s still a long road to success. That’s OK with the Tigers — they like life on the road.