Field hockey focused on the finish in season's final games

In life, lessons are everywhere. For instance, the field hockey team could learn an important lesson from a cinematic supervillian. There is little doubt that Dr. Evil was smarter than Austin Powers. He had a better plan, he had a better sidekick, he even had a better costume. But, like most cinematic supervillians, he had no end game. He couldn't finish.

Instead of icing the international man of mystery when he had the chance, he got sidetracked by the poetry of ill-tempered sea bass with lasers on their head and then, lo and behold, his henchmen lost their heads and the tables turned.

Though the Tigers have almost nothing in common with Dr. Evil, they can still learn from his mistakes. As the Tigers head into the last week of the regular season and take on Cornell, Yale and Penn, Princeton should look to Dr. Evil's failure to efficiently dispose of his enemy as an example of what not to do.

If Dr. Evil had maintained his focus, the world would have been his. Similarly, if the Tigers maintain their focus, the Ivy League title should be theirs.

Of course this is not to belittle the challenges facing Princeton in these next three games. Just as Austin Powers was a formidable opponent in his own way, so are at least two of the three of the Tigers' impending adversaries.

The first of the three, Cornell, is a team that seems to have run amok of Lady Luck. The Big Red lost an overtime game to Penn, a 1-0 squeaker to Harvard, and a 3-2 back-breaker to No. 19 Syracuse.

Though statisticians insist that there is no "law of averages," it still seems hard to ignore the likelihood that things might start to go right for a team that seems to have suffered so much.

Similarly, Penn should not be overlooked. As of now, the Quakers are in second place in the Ivy League, and if things go right or disastrously wrong, depending on which side of the Delaware River you are on, Penn and Princeton could have switched places by the end of next weekend's game in Philadelphia.

Luckily for the Tigers, the second of the three games over Fall break should be something of a respite.

Though it might not be diplomatic to say so, Yale is about as threatening as a de-clawed koala bear. For those of you not familiar with koala bears, they are not very threatening. They are cuddly.

The Elis have yet to win an Ivy League game, and when they arrive at 1952 Stadium on Oct. 30, they had better hope that the Tigers feel like cuddling.

One factor that seems likely to mitigate against the possibility of a Tiger letdown in these next three games is their awareness of the gravity of the situation.

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"We know all three games are of equal importance and we are going to take all of them very seriously," junior goalkeeper Kelly Baril said.

The Tigers have not come this far to let it all slip away; the pull of the NCAA Tournament –– just weeks away, is too strong to be ignored, too strong to let the Tigers fall into a disastrous end-of-season stupor.

"Each and every game is bringing us one step closer to the Final Four and we have to do absolutely everything in our power to get there," Baril said.