Winless Tigers open League slate

The Ivy League may be familiar territory for the Tigers, but there's something less familiar about this season: Princeton's men's lacrosse team isn't accustomed to starting league play winless.

The Tigers (0-4 overall, 0-0 Ivy League) have not started a lacrosse season 0-4 since 1986. Princeton will look for its first win on Saturday in New Haven against Yale (4-2, 1-1).

The Tigers, who traditionally start off the season against their strongest opponents, have already lost to Johns Hopkins, Virginia, Hofstra and Yale to start off 2005; in the past several years, Princeton has entered league play with, at the very least, a win over Hofstra. Despite the Tigers' slow start, though, head coach Bill Tierney isn't overly worried.

"As crazy as it sounds, I'd rather be in this situation than [be 1-3], because when you beat Hofstra, you tend to think, 'Okay, all's okay with the world. We lost to the three best teams, but we know who we are,' and you have a tendency to let down," Tierney said.

The Tigers will certainly have to be on guard against the Bulldogs, who have a split record in the Ivy League. Yale dealt Penn a 15-7 blow earlier this season before losing by a similar score, 15-6, to league power Cornell last weekend.

"We're very concerned about this game, and it becomes multiplied by our situation," Tierney said.

Several of Yale's top players look to give the Tigers trouble this weekend. Seth Goldberg, the team's standout attackman, is the team's primary finisher, making off-ball plays to get open and score. Tierney characterized him as "one of the best scorers in the league."

Star midfielder David Schecter will complement Goldberg. Additionally, midfielder David Kallaugher will go head-to-head against the Tiger midfielders, junior Ryan Schoenig and sophomore Mike DeSantis, for face-offs. Because of Kallaugher's small size, though, freshman face-off specialist Alex Berg may also see more time on the field.

Princeton has defeated Yale four times in the last five meetings between the two, with the lone exception coming in 2002 when Yale broke the Tigers' 37-game Ivy League win streak.

With the way Princeton's record looks, though, some worry about this year's meeting. Even with Ryan Boyle and a strong senior class, the Tigers defeated Yale by a score of just 12-9 last year. To get the first win of the season, Tierney and company are considering at all their options.

"Are we going to tweak things? Absolutely," Tierney said. "We're going to spin the midfields around a little bit and make them different. We've obviously got a goalie situation we need to deal with . . . We're going to certainly simplify things and hope, by keeping it simple, our kids can respond and play good lacrosse."

Indeed, Princeton has already shown strong improvement on several weaknesses from earlier in the season. After struggling with face-offs, clears and shooting earlier in the season, Saturday's matchup against Syracuse clearly demonstrated that the Tigers had made great strides in at least two of those categories.

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Princeton won 16 face-offs in the game, compared to the Orangemen's five, and went 16-for-21 clearing the ball.

The shooting problem, though improved, still exists due to a combination of several factors, including bad luck. Tierney said that he had never seen anyone hit more pipes than senior attack Jason Doneger has this year. He added that he was concerned that the rest of his offense was not getting Doneger the ball as much as he'd like him to have it.

"Guys will start to find [Doneger], and he'll start to beat people off the dodge," Tierney said, noting that Doneger had taken three of his five shots off the dodge against Syracuse — something he's unaccustomed to doing after being on the receiving ends of Boyle's incredible feeds last year.

While a few problems remain, one thing is for sure: the team is clearly getting better and is not in dire straits by any means. None of the Tigers' four losses— all to topflight teams — have been by more than four goals. And sophomore attack Peter Trombino's three-minute hat trick to open the second half against Syracuse hints at how well Princeton's offense can function when everything falls into place.

Certainly, with Ivy League play about to start, now would be a perfect time for Princeton's game to gel. With an at-large bid looking less and less likely, Princeton may have to win the Ivy League title in order to advance to the NCAA Tournament in May. Six of the team's remaining eight games are against league competition.

A victory for the winless Tigers, who have traditionally gotten much stronger as the season progresses, would be a good first step on the road to May.