W. lax to face Harvard, try to recover from Yale

Being a great sports team comes at the price of having to deal with high expectations.

No one expected that the women's lacrosse team (7-4 overall, 2-1 Ivy League), which had won its previous 12 games against Ivy League opponents, would lose to Yale, 7-6, last Saturday. The Tigers, now No. 6, entered the game ranked fifth in the Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association Poll, while the Bulldogs were looking up from No. 14. The Tigers were riding a six-game winning streak and seemed to be improving with every game, while Yale had just lost to unranked Rutgers, 15-12. Finally, the Tigers had rolled over Yale, 11-5, the year before.

Granted, the Elis, now ranked No. 13, is by no means an easy team to beat. The loss was still a surprise to experienced observers. As senior defender Rachael Becker said, "We didn't expect to win, but we definitely didn't expect to lose."

Even though the game was hardly a wipeout — Princeton actually won the battle in many of the statistical areas and lost by only one point — the shock of the loss made it harder to accept.

If nothing else came from the loss to the Bulldogs besides a more difficult chance at the Ivy title, the Tigers learned the lesson that all great teams eventually learn the hard way: that sometimes games against historically weaker opponents can be even more difficult than games against top-ranked ones. Teams with powerhouse reputations too often let their expectations lead to complacency.

The Tigers, who dropped to third place in the Ivy League behind Dartmouth and Yale will doubtless carry this lesson with them into Saturday's contest against Harvard (2-8, 0-3). The biggest challenge they will face this weekend is yet again not playing down to the level of a traditionally weaker opponent.

"We know we can't take any team lightly," Becker said. "Now we have to win the rest of our Ivy games to win the title and get a bid into the national tournament.

"We are treating every game like a playoff game because that's what it is. We won't make that mistake [of losing to a weaker team] again."

The Crimson is currently in the basement of the Ivy League next to Columbia. Harvard's first win was a narrow 9-8 victory over Boston College on March 12, and its second was its most recent game against New Hampshire on Tuesday.

Senior midfielder and co-captain Katie Shaughnessy led the Crimson with three goals and three assists en route to the convincing 10-4 win over New Hampshire.

On March 19, Harvard lost its Ivy opener to Brown, who is currently tied with Princeton for third place. The second Ivy loss came on April 5, when Yale rolled over the Crimson, 16-5. Finally, against fifth-place Penn on April 12, Harvard built a 5-1 lead in the opening frame but could not overcome a second-half pounding by the Quakers and lost, 11-5.

The all-time series between Harvard and Princeton is even at 14-14, but the Tigers have won the last 10 meetings, winning by an average of nine goals in the last four seasons.

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Last year, Princeton crushed the Crimson, 14-4, to extend its winning streak to 11 games. The Tigers dominated the game from the first draw control, off which Brooke Owens '02 gave Princeton a 1-0 lead just seconds into the game.

The Tigers enter Saturday's game with their defense playing well. Princeton has held its opponents to under 10 goals in nine of its 11 games and to an average of 4.6 in the last three, including the seven goals by the Elis. Becker, who leads the team with 35 caused turnovers, is now seventh on the career ground balls list with 175.

Junior Theresa Sherry leads the offense with a team-high 29 goals on the season. She has scored in all 11 of Princeton's games this year and is four away from 100 career goals.

Interestingly, head coach Chris Sailer is a graduate of Harvard. She came to Princeton in 1987 after being the captain of both the lacrosse and field hockey teams at Harvard. She defeated her alma mater for the first time in 1993 and has not lost to the Crimson since.

After the loss to Yale, the Tigers know to expect nothing except an opportunity to play lacrosse, pure and simple, the way they know they are able.