Men's lacrosse beats Brown, wins Ivy title

The Princeton men's lacrosse team has done it once again. In the closest Ivy League race in seven years, the Tigers came away with their eighth straight league title by beating a resurgent Brown team, 12-10.

With the win, Princeton received an automatic bid to the NCAA National Tournament and was given a No. 4 seed in last night's selection show.

The two teams entered the game as the only Ivy teams remaining with just one loss apiece. As a result, the meeting was, in essence, the league's championship game in which the winner would be crowned as the champion and the loser's season would probably end. A crowd of 3,360 fans were in attendance to watch the game, and they got what they paid for — a great college lacrosse game.

Many thought the game was decided late in the first quarter after a 36-second, three-goal Tiger run in which Princeton built a 4-1 lead.

The streak started with junior midfielder Owen Daly scoring off a feed from classmate and linemate Matt Trevenen to make it 2-1, 10 minutes, seven seconds into the first quarter.

On the ensuing faceoff, sophomore Drew Casino won the draw and initiated a fast break for the Tigers. After a couple slick passes, sophomore attack Ryan Boyle fed the ball to senior attack BJ Prager who slammed it home with a low shot by the keeper to make it 3-1.

A Bear defender hit Prager after the shot and was flagged for a one-minute penalty. The Tigers got the ball back in a man-up situation.

With the man-up unit in, senior midfielder Brendan Tierney found Prager for his second of four goals to make the score 4-1 with 4:17 left in the first.

At that point, and especially after Tierney scored in the beginning of the second quarter to give the Tigers a 6-2 lead, it seemed as though Princeton was going to be able to put the game in cruise control and beat Brown by a similar score to last year's 16-2 victory.

That was certainly not the case as the score differential fluctuated between two and four goals for the rest of the game.

The remainder of the second quarter consisted of a bombardment of Princeton shots — 14 in total — but the Brown goalie, Mike Levin, made seven saves in the quarter and sent the Tigers into half time with just three goals on the quarter. All accounted, Brown was fairly fortunate to be heading into halftime with only a four-goal deficit.

While the first half was dominated by the Tigers, Princeton was actually outplayed in the second half and outscored 6-4. In addition, the Tigers were outshot, 20-8, and won just five of 12 faceoffs.

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"The difference was a little luck," head coach Bill Tierney said when comparing the two teams. "It was just a bounce here and there. They were fabulous."

Where Brown was most impressive was its offense. Princeton was expecting a good offense, though, after the Bears had put up thirteen goals against Syracuse and also a respectable nine goals in the overtime win against Cornell.

"They were as dangerous an offensive team as I've seen all year," Tierney said. "They come at you. Their first midfield, and all six guys make you feel like you're on your heels all day defensively."

That Bruno offense helped the team rally several times late in the game, but the rally was always stalled by Tiger goals.

Maybe the biggest was a goal by Daly off an assist from Boyle just 14 seconds after Brown scored a goal to open the fourth quarter.

"The big goal was when it was 10-7 and we got a fast break right away," Tierney said. "When (Brown was) coming back like that, that frustrates the heck out of me, but Owen Daly scored on a fast break to make it 11-7."

The Tigers held on through the rest of the quarter and won the Ivies with the 12-10 victory.

The next thing on the agenda for the Tigers this weekend was watching the NCAA National Tournament selection show to discover the team's seeding in the tournament. After four losses on the season, the squad knew it could not expect a two-seed and was content with the four seed it received.