Tigers’ lacrosse confident despite winless start
By: Bob Nuse
The last time the Princeton University men’s lacrosse team opened the season with four straight losses, Bill Tierney was still an assistant coach at Johns Hopkins.
The Tigers won just one game that year, 1986, and two years later Tierney came on board as the new PU head coach. By 1990, Tierney had the Tigers in the NCAA tournament, starting a run of success that hasn’t stopped.
And despite falling to 0-4 with a 10-8 loss to Syracuse on Saturday, Tierney doesn’t expect that run of success to stop this year.
"I’m extremely confident because this is a great lacrosse team," said Tierney, whose team will open Ivy League play on Saturday when the Tigers play at Yale. "We’re not going to predict anything right now. We’ve played four of the top teams in the country. Certainly No. 1 and No. 2, and this team (Syracuse) is going to be close to No. 3. If they aren’t at the end of the year, I’ll be surprised they lost to No. 1 and No 2.
"If we turn it around and win the league and get it going, nobody will remember we were 0-4. One thing I know is that we are not a bad lacrosse team."
And at this point, Tierney would be acknowledged as a pretty good judge of what a good lacrosse team is. Each week the Tigers have shown signs of improvement. On Saturday, they battled back from a sluggish offensive first half to take a 5-3 lead early in the second half. But the Orangemen responded with seven of the next eight goals to earn their second win of the season.
"When we got that two-goal lead, I thought it was really starting to click," Tierney said. "But to their credit they are very business-like, they did what they need to do, their coaches made adjustments. We thought that the matchups they beat us in were the ones we were most confident in. That was their attack beating our defense. Give them credit, they figured it out."
Now it’s up to the Tigers to figure it out over the final eight games of the season. The six in the Ivy League will be the most important, with an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament riding in the balance. But at this point, Princeton is just looking to get that first one.
On Saturday, the Tigers turned to senior Matt Larkin, who made his first career start in goal. He finished the game with 13 saves, including eight in the first half that kept the Tigers in the game.
"I’ve been waiting four years for this opportunity," Larkin said. "I guess I took a four-year sabbatical from the starting position. This is the first time in a Princeton uniform that I was able to cross the line and shake hands with the other goalie. It was exciting to hear my name announced before the game.
"In the end, though, we didn’t win the game, and that’s what’s important."
Larkin’s play in goal, along with the whole play of the defense, kept the Tigers in a game they trailed, 3-2, at halftime. In the first three minutes of the second half, Peter Trombino scored three times and all of a sudden Princeton had a 5-3 lead. But then Syracuse started to click on offense the way Syracuse always has, and the Tigers came up a couple goals short of their first win.
"It’s hard to watch," Tierney said. "You just have to take a step back and know that you played much better. It’s tough to take a loss, but we played much better I feel than last week. We played hard and played with poise. We got the things that we talked about, other than shooting. We got the faceoffs, we got the goalie play. If we get two out of three each week, we’ll be fine."
Scott Sowanick and Zach Goldberg scored the first two Princeton goals, while Whitney Hayes and Mike Gaudio added late goals to account for the final score.
Princeton can take solace in the fact that on Saturday, it started three freshmen, as well as a pair of sophomores. There will be some fine-tuning before the Ivy season begins, but the Tigers appear to be heading in the right direction.
"We start the Ivy season now and that’s the most important thing for us," Larkin said. "We feel like we’re getting better each week of the season. We’ve played some of the best teams in the country and hopefully that has us ready."
And if Larkin is called on again to start on Saturday, he knows he’ll be ready.
"I came here to play," Larkin said. "The whole experience has gone by so fast. I felt relaxed in there. So much of being a goalie is mental. I really believe that 95 percent of the position is mental. I just really wanted it this year. I worked harder than I ever have before and I took it seriously.
"I have so much more confidence this year. The team support has been great and I’ll always try to do the best job I can."
Against Syracuse, that job kept the Tigers in a game they were nearly able to win.