'Not a euphoric feeling' for men's lacrosse after season's first Ivy victory

After the tough weekend loss against Yale, the Princeton men's lacrosse team (3-4 overall, 1-1 Ivy League) rebounded with an easy 18-4 victory over visiting Penn yesterday afternoon at 1952 Stadium.

It was a bittersweet victory, however, playing so well only three days after playing so poorly and losing to Yale.

"[Winning today] is certainly not a euphoric feeling," head coach Bill Tierney said. To be honest, the feeling that came over me first was disappointment. Seeing how well we played today makes you go back 72 hours. It's hard to think about today and then how poorly we played on Saturday."

Remember Saturday's loss, the Tigers started off strong against Penn and never let down, building the score to 4-1 after the first quarter, 10-2 at the half, and cruised on to make it 17-3 going into the third.

With so many Princeton goals, there was no true play of the game that stands out above the rest.

One impressive play, though, was a defensive stop by the Tigers in the first quarter when junior defender Damien Davis took the ball to the Penn goal and dumped it in for the team's second goal of the day with nine minutes, 28 seconds left in the first quarter.

Maybe the biggest event of the afternoon was senior attack BJ Prager's second goal in the third quarter that made him just the sixth player in Princeton lacrosse to score 100 career goals. He was assisted by a very familiar player — sophomore attack Ryan Boyle, who has assisted him more than any other active Tiger. Like is so often the case, Prager took the ball around the cage and beat the Penn keeper with a quick flick of the wrists. Prager finished the game with two goals.

Boyle, a player many are comparing to ex-Tiger great Josh Sims '00, showed a couple more similarities to the old attacker besides the fact that they are both from Maryland.

Boyle has always shown his uncanny ability to pass, but yesterday, he demonstrated a Simsian method of scoring. Sims' favorite way to score was to start from behind the goal, beat his man one-on-one, hustle around the corner of the crease and beat the goalie.

Boyle did that three times against the Quakers, adding three goals to his two assists.

"I just try to take whatever the defense gives me and lately I've been trying to make the simple play," Boyle said, recognizing that the simple play yesterday was beating his defender time and time again.

The other starter on the highly touted Princeton attacking line is junior Sean Hartofilis. A player who had just three goals in the first four games of the season, he scored four yesterday.

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One of the exciting aspects of Hartofilis' goals is that he scored them from all over the field. When hard-shooting Rob Torti '01 left the team last year, Hartofilis was supposed to be the player to fill the void of Torti's 94 mph outside shot. Last night, Hartofilis both filled that void and created goals a couple other ways as well.

He beat the keeper on the doorstep, had another goal off of a faceoff when nobody stepped up on him. He rifled a 28 footer over the goalie's right shoulder, and got another goal that was perfectly placed from 20 feet out. When it was all said and done, he finished the game tying his career high with 5 goals and also added two assists.

The defensive player of the game was, perhaps, junior goalie Julian Gould who saved just four of 12 shots on goal in one half on Saturday, but 12 of 15 in three quarters yesterday.

"I thought I was a significant factor in the loss," Gould said. It's tough coming off a game when you only save like 30 percent of the shots. It all depends on the defense. When they play well, I play well. They played well today from the start."

The defense, as usual, played very well, limiting Penn to just 16 shots on goal. The line also did a great job in clearing the ball, getting it to the attack in 15 of 16 attempts.