Tigers ease past Yale

Sophomore goaltender Colleen O'Boyle played 35 minutes in the women's lacrosse team's first nine games. On Saturday against Ivy League foe No. 18 Yale, she played the entire second half, made eight saves and only allowed one goal.

O'Boyle and the defense helped the No. 3 Tigers (8-2 overall, 3-0 Ivy League) top the Bulldogs (5-5, 1-3) by an 11-5 score in New Haven and remain undefeated in the league with their fourth straight win.

Head coach Chris Sailer told O'Boyle on the bus ride up to New Haven that she was going to be playing in the game on Saturday. Her decision was mostly due to the fact that O'Boyle had been playing so well in practice the week prior to the game.

"I think I played well," O'Boyle said. "I thought that the shooting of our team in practice is just so good that I did not see anything in the game I hadn't seen before."

Princeton held Yale scoreless for 41 minutes — from the 13 minute, 21 second mark of the first half when Marya Myers' goal tied the game at four to less than two minutes left in the game when the Bulldogs' Lara Melniker added a meaningless goal, the only goal O'Boyle surrendered.

The Tigers broke a 4-4 tie late in the first half and turned the game into a rout with seven unanswered goals, three of which came in the late stages of the first half. Senior attack Ingrid Goldberg scored at 21:39 off a feed from fellow senior attack Leigh Slonaker. Sophomore attack Mary Minshall added another goal 14 seconds later off a Goldberg feed to make the score 6-4. Senior attack Lindsey Biles' unassisted goal with just over two minutes left in the half gave Princeton a comfortable 7-4 halftime lead.

The Tigers began the second half in the same manner that they ended the first. Sophomore midfielder Kathleen Miller and senior midfielder Elizabeth Pillion added two goals early in the second half to extend Princeton's lead to five goals. Biles completed the scoring when she scored two goals 1:17 apart midway through the half — the first on a free-position shot and the second off an assist from Miller.

Slow start

Early in the game, life was not as easy for the Tigers. Yale took an early 2-1 lead seven minutes in off Katherine Sargent's and Marya Myers's goals. Princeton responded quickly, with goals by Goldberg and freshman attack Katie Lewis-Lemonica. The Tigers led, 3-2, until the Bulldogs Lauren Taylor forced another tie at 3-3 with her goal midway through the half.

Minshall scored for Princeton to put her team back on top, but Myers answered for Yale, knotting the game at four and scoring the Bulldogs' last goal until late in the second half. Myers led Yale in scoring with two goals in the game.

The Tigers outshot the Bulldogs, 27-20, on the afternoon and picked up one more groundball, 22-21, but the deciding factor proved to be turnovers. The Bulldogs converted only seven of 14 clear attempts — Princeton converted eight of nine — and committed 15 turnovers as the Tigers' midfield transition defense proved to be too aggressive to handle. Princeton also won 11 of the 18 draw controls. This was the first game in which the Tigers had fewer turnovers and more groundballs than the other team.

Biles tallied three goals in the win on seven shots on goal. The game was Biles' ninth of the year in which she scored at least two goals. Pillion, Goldberg and Minshall had two goals apiece, and Goldberg added two assists for a total of four points. Goldberg now has 13 points in her last four games — eight goals, five assists.

Senior goaltender Sarah Kolodner, who played the first half on Saturday, finished with four saves, and O'Boyle finished with eight. More impressively, three of O'Boyle's saves came off free-position shots.

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"Our team is so supportive of everyone," O'Boyle said. "Everyone knows how hard people work and how much they play, and they want to see [their teammates] do well."

Bulldog goaltender Ellen Cameron had 10 saves in the loss.

Princeton has beaten Yale every season since 1992 except in 2003. With the win, the Tigers extended their Ivy League winning streak to 14 games. Princeton hopes to add to that streak Wednesday night, when the Tigers visit Penn (5-2, 2-1) in Philadelphia at 7 p.m.