Defense, Boyle carry men's lacrosse to midseason with high marks all around

If you haven't been following the men's lacrosse team this season, you've missed some excellent lacrosse, but it isn't too late to jump on the bandwagon. Princeton (8-1 overall, 4-0 Ivy League) is ranked No. 1 in the nation heading into its showdown Saturday with co-Ivy leader Cornell (7-3, 4-0) that will decide the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

So how did the Tigers get to this point, and who is most responsible for their success?

Most valuable player: Princeton's defense has carried the team so far, and it wouldn't be fair to single out any one defender. To cite one example of the defensive dominance, the Tigers shut out then-No. 4 Johns Hopkins for a half and held it to one goal in three quarters. The Tigers lead the nation in scoring defense, giving up a paltry 5.22 goals a game and just 3.75 in the Ivy League. Also, Princeton is the nation's best team at defending man-down opportunities, stopping 22 of 24 chances for a .917 percentage.

Senior Trevor Tierney, second in the nation in save percentage at .688, mans the net for Princeton. Tierney, along with the same set of three defenders — senior Ryan Mollett, junior Scott Farrell and sophomore Damien Davis — has started every Tiger game for the last two years. Princeton also boasts two of the top defensive midfielders in the nation in senior Winship Ross and junior Kyle Baugher.

Best offensive player: Freshman Ryan Boyle. He leads the Tigers with 33 points (13 goals, 20 assists), including an incredible 18 points in the last three games. To go along with his gaudy statistics and his chance to be the first freshman since Kevin Lowe in 1991 to lead Princeton in scoring, Boyle has assumed the role as the Tigers' quarterback on the attack. His pinpoint accuracy on passes has given him assists on 10 of junior attackman B.J. Prager's 17 scores this season, and Boyle has scored his 13 goals on just 24 shots.

Princeton's attack is at its best when the attackmen are getting each other involved. In terms of leadership, senior captain Matt Striebel (13 goals) deserves the award. If sentiment were considered, junior B.J. Prager, who missed part of last year's regular season and the entire NCAA Tournament run with a torn ACL, could win — he seems to be back to full form, with 17 goals.

Finally, forgetting sophomore Sean Hartfolis and his team-leading 18 goals or senior midfielder Rob Torti, who has been on fire of late, would be a mistake. But overall, Boyle's outstanding performance so far earns him the award.

Worst game: Easy — the Tigers' only loss on the season, a 14-8 drubbing at the hands of defending national champion Syracuse March 24 in the Carrier Dome. Princeton started slow, falling behind 11-5 after three quarters, but mounted a comeback to close to gap to 11-8. The Orangemen, however, proved too much in the end, scoring the last three goals to win.

Best game: The Tigers whipped the Scarlet Knights 14-5 just three days after their loss to Syracuse, allowing them to move on their Ivy schedule and put their loss in the Carrier Dome behind them. Prager's four goals paced Princeton. The Tigers have blown out Yale, Penn, Brown and Harvard by a combined margin of 62-15 in recent weeks, and they also beat national powers Johns Hopkins and Virginia earlier in the season, but the Rutgers victory kept the early-season momentum from slipping away.

Best coaching move: Allowing freshman midfielder Drew Casino to take some faceoffs fixed one of Princeton's nagging problems. Casino has won 72.3 percent of the draws he's taken, which would lead the country if he had taken enough faceoffs to qualify. Since he started to share the duty with senior midfielder Matt Bailer, the senior has improved on the draw as well.

And finally, the biggest problem: After beating Harvard, 15-1, head coach Bill Tierney said, "We've never had so many good players. If there's a problem for this team, it's just that there isn't enough playing time."