Making the most of an extra man

With a one-man advantage, the Tigers are poised to strike again. Sophomore attack Whitney Hayes gets the ball behind the goal and immediately drives against his defender, just getting the half step he needs. Hayes crisply and sharply feeds fellow sophomore attack Scott Sowanick as he swoops in from the top of the box. With the ball now in his stick and his defender lagging desperately behind him, Sowanick winds up for a rip that sears past the goalie for the score.

Sound familiar? While the shooter might not always be Sowanick, Hayes' feed driving from behind the goal is one of the men's lacrosse team's many man-up plays.

In lacrosse, a man-up situation occurs whenever a penalty is called on a defending player, who is then relegated to the penalty box. A referee signals this call by throwing yellow flag. Technical penalties are 30-seconds long, while others are a full minute in duration.

One team is then said to be "man-up" because its six players on the offensive side of the field are playing against five defenders. The situation presents a unique opportunity for a team to score, particularly when a flag is down, since play is then allowed to continue until the team with the ball drops it.

"What man-up can do for you is really be a momentum swinger, [especially in a] flag-down situation," head coach Bill Tierney said. "We talk to our guys about really taking advantage of the flag down, trying to score a goal, and then being man-up and trying to score another goal."

While a two-goal swing is the ideal situation and is an objective of any team, teams like Princeton will prepare themselves for the actual man-down situation with special types of plays and techniques designed to get the ball in the net.

"The way you run [a man-up situation] is very similar to beating a zone in basketball: you try to get yourself into a formation . . . to get the defenders to rotate and get out of sync," Tierney said.

As Tierney noted, the general idea behind any man-up play is to try to create openings in the defense.

"You're trying to do that by cutting, passing quickly or rotating," he said.

Three-three offense

Princeton's man-up offense is usually some sort of variation on what is known as a 3-3 offense, in which there are three men across the top of the box and three men across the middle of the box slightly in front of or roughly even with the goal. This puts all six offensive players in front of the goal.

This year, senior attack Jason Doneger will usually occupy the middle spot of the second line of "3" right in front of the goal. The other five — Princeton's man-up line includes Hayes, Sowanick, sophomore attack Tripp Shriner, freshman attack Bob Schneider and sophomore attack Peter Trombino — will look to either work the ball around the outside, hoping to get a good look at the goal, or to feed Doneger or another teammate cutting across the middle.

"If [the other team is] rotating five players against a 3-3, then the middle guy might be open at some little juncture because different people are covering him," Tierney said. "If they rotate four against a 3-3 and just lock somebody on to Jason in the middle, then you're not going to find him open, but some of the other openings [will emerge] just by moving a little bit and making [the other team's] slides longer."

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The general tempo and strategy behind a particular approach to a man-up situation will also depend on the length of the penalty. For example, a 30-second penalty would require quicker play, whereas a team could wait for the best possible shot — something the Tigers like to do — instead of rushing if the penalty was a full minute.

The Tigers, however, have struggled with their man-up offense this season.

"That's been one of the dilemmas we've had with this team — that they've been overly anxious to get a good shot, so sometimes we go too quickly," Tierney said. He added that patience was especially important, as openings usually reappear because the defense operates the situation the same way.

Princeton has been 3-of-12 (25 percent) on man-up situations so far this season; a good man-up team will usually capitalize about 30 percent of the time.

"We just haven't clicked yet," Tierney said, adding that he felt like the team's man-up offense was "getting there." He noted that only Trombino, Doneger and Sowanick were on last year's man-up squad and that even their positions have shifted since then.

With Syracuse's hard-shooting offense coming down to Princeton on Saturday, the Tigers look to improve their man-up performance and capture their first big win to jump-start their season.