Schoenig, DeSantis do battle in face-off circle

As No. 13 men's lacrosse has trudged through its four consecutive losses to start the season, head coach Bill Tierney has unendingly stressed the need for improvement on three aspects of the game: goalie play, shooting and face-offs. Despite dropping another game this past weekend against Syracuse, the Tigers (0-4 overall) made progress in the all of these aspects, especially in the third: face-offs.

Princeton's face-offs are handled almost exclusively by two Tiger midfielders: junior Ryan Schoenig and sophomore Mike DeSantis, with occasional help from freshman midfielder Alex Berg and junior attack Hakim Thompson. Prior to the Syracuse game, the team had yet to do better than their opponent in a game and averaged winning 40 percent of face-offs on the year.

In the week of preparation for the matchup against the Orange, Tierney had his players drilling nonstop in order to win the games within the game: face-offs and clearing.

"Two things we worked really hard on last week were clearing and face-offs," Tierney said. "I thought it was very evident those two parts of our game were much better."

That was certainly true. Of the 21 face-offs in the contest, Princeton took 16 of them. DeSantis was eight-for-10, Schoenig was seven-for-10 and Berg came away with the ball on his only opportunity.

A critical part of their success in face-offs this weekend was the officiating. A rule change was implemented over the offseason that was designed to improve the quality of face-offs and to make rule violations more obvious. While previously the players' stickheads were allowed to be right next to the ball, this season they must be four inches apart. It has been unclear how much this rule change has affected play, but it seemed to help the Tigers against Syracuse as seven of its 16 face-off wins came on violations by Orange players.

Deciding who will take each face-off is a difficult strategic choice that is often left up to the players, but it can have far-reaching consequences depending on the styles of each opposing player. Generally, Schoenig is the first choice to take the face-off, but due to the amount of time he plays in each game and varying styles of opposing players, he often cedes the option to DeSantis.

"It's really up to them," Tierney said. "Ryan starts and takes most of them, unless we feel during the week that Mike would be better, or even Alex Berg or Hakim Thompson would be better. My big deal with Ryan is that he plays so much for us that usually, though not all the time, if you see him not take the face-off, it's because he's tired or he thinks that Mike could do a better job."

On the year, Schoenig is 17-37 — a 45.9 percent winning percentage — and DeSantis is 21-39 — 53.8 percent. The play of DeSantis has been impressive, since last year DeSantis took only 17 face-offs all season; the job was mostly split between Schoenig and Drew Casino '04. Schoenig won just over half of his for the year.

Winning despite losing

Despite the fact that it has been one of the most dominant teams in college lacrosse recently, Princeton has never had a face-off winning percentage anywhere near its season winning percentage, and in fact only once in the past five years has it won more face-offs than it lost.

Last year, when they were 11-4 and made it to the Final Four, the Tigers won only 48.8 percent of their face-offs. Even in 2001, when Princeton was 14-1 and won its most recent national championship, it won only 48.4 percent.

As the Tigers look forward to next weekend's game against Yale, yet another difficult aspect of the face-off dimension will be evident, as they must get ready for the Bulldogs' Dan Kallaugher. Kallaugher handles nearly all of Yale's face-offs and has won 63.7 percent this year.

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With an unusual and highly effective technique, Tierney has hinted that he may look beyond DeSantis and Schoenig for the means to prevail over the Bulldogs and pull out the Tigers' first win.

"Alex [Berg] does a really good job of studying each week as if he's going to be the first guy," Tierney said. "This week is a really different-style guy from Yale. He has what we call a 'motorcycle grip,' and he's a powerful guy, so maybe this is the week for Alex."