Men's soccer looks to build on momentum from Harvard win

Gianfranco Trippichio felt responsible. In the week before the men's soccer team played Harvard, the freshman midfielder's mind drifted during the day as he dwelled anxiously on the Tigers' terrible inability to score.

The Tigers (7-5-1 overall, 1-3-0 Ivy League) had no wins in the Ivy League. They had scored one goal in their last three games. Trippichio sat in classes and spun daydreams, imagining himself assisting on a goal that would stop the slide.

And then he did.

With nine minutes left in the first half against the Crimson last Saturday, Trippichio dashed downfield, nudged the ball through the legs of one defender, darted around two more and sent a dazzling cross to freshman midfielder Marty Shaw, who deflected in a shot off a Harvard defender.

The Tigers had scored. They had scored first. And a bounce had finally gone their way.

"Thank God," Trippichio thought as the team roared around him. Eighteen seconds later Princeton scored again en route to an easy 3-0 victory — the Tigers' first Ivy win."I was always thinking about one pass — to put someone one-on-one with the goalie," Trippichio said. "I was hoping I could help create a goal."

But, he said, "I wasn't necessarily saying, like, 'What I really want to do this next game is beat three guys and cross and have Marty finish it.' "

"We hadn't scored the first goal in a long time," freshman defender Jeff Hare said. "It was a huge relief."

Good timing

And it could not have come at a more crucial point in the season.

"We were definitely starting to second-guess ourselves," Trippichio said. "The fact that we weren't scoring was always in the back of everyone's mind — even between the defense feeling the offense wasn't pulling its weight."

"It was beginning to feel that none of the bounces in our season were going to go our way," he added.

And then a ball skipped in.

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"It was electricity," Trippichio said. "We felt as a team, 'Yeah, we can definitely cause some waves in the Ivy League and win this game and win some others, too.' "

Saturday Princeton will be able to test the true lift from this latest success in its see-saw season when it travels to Cornell.

The slumping Big Red (5-7, 2-2) is coming off its most lopsided loss of the season, a 7-2 debacle against Hartwick — a team the Tigers have already defeated, 1-0. It was Cornell's third straight loss.

Junior forward Mike Nugent, injured two weeks ago, will be a game-day decision.

In the games following his injury, the Tigers struggled to stitch together a seamless offense. With three goals, Princeton resurrected its feeble hopes of securing a spot in the postseason tournament.

Now Trippichio has new things to dream.