Tigers' swoon continues

"I'm bewildered," men's lacrosse head coach Bill Tierney said after his team dropped its fifth straight game in a demoralizing loss to Yale in New Haven, Conn., on Saturday.

The Bulldogs (5-2 overall, 2-1 Ivy League) upset the Tigers (0-5, 0-0), 9-8, pushing them into a hole the usually phenomenal team is unaccustomed to inhabiting. The same factors that have hurt Princeton all season — weak face-off play and poor shooting — sunk the Tigers yet again.

For a team looking to jump-start its season, Princeton's first-quarter play certainly didn't reflect that desire. Yale held the ball for most of the first 10 minutes, running up a 3-0 lead early on.

"It certainly put us on our heels, as we've been all year [in the] first quarter," Tierney said, noting that the Tigers' opponents have outscored the team 12-5 in the first quarter, compared with 12-10, 13-12 and 11-10 deficits in the remaining quarters, respectively.

"I take the blame for that because that's just getting your team ready to play the game," Tierney added.

Sophomore midfielder Mike Gaudio finally put a stop to Princeton's defensive hemorrhage with a goal that put the Tigers on the board, and fellow sophomore attack Peter Trombino added another to make the score 3-2.

By halftime, though, the Bulldogs had increased their lead once again and enjoyed a 6-4 advantage. Princeton then came out strong in the third quarter, shutting down Yale's offense. After a goal by sophomore attack Scott Sowanick, Gaudio added another score to what would be a three-goal game for him.

The game was tied at six going into the fourth, and it looked like the Tigers might finally take control of the game and avoid the upset. The Bulldogs weren't done yet, though. They killed Princeton's hopes for a win with a score 55 seconds into the fourth.

Even though Yale won all six face-offs in the fourth quarter, Princeton came painfully close to tying the game. After trailing by two, 9-7, with about seven minutes to play, Trombino finally managed a goal three and a half minutes before the final whistle.

The Tigers needed only one goal to tie, but they were unable to capitalize on two key opportunities. Both Trombino and Gaudio had looks. Gaudio had Princeton's final chance, but he bounced a pointblank shot off Bulldog goalie George Carafides with about 15 seconds left. Yale successfully cleared the ball as time expired to hang on for the upset.

Missed chances were the story of the game for the Tigers. Tierney noted that the team "had plenty of opportunities to win" but couldn't get it done in the end.

Despite strong performances against Syracuse last week, face-offs reemerged as a problem in New Haven. The Bulldogs claimed a whopping 17 of 20 face-offs in the game. Moreover, despite more than an hour of shooting at Friday's practice, Princeton still hasn't been able to exorcise its shooting demons.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

"We lose 17 of 20 face-offs, [but] we still ended up only being outshot by one shot, and we put 20 of our 30 shots on goal. [The problem is] our shooting is just abysmal — we just kept throwing it to their goalie's stick," Tierney said.

Other than the Tigers' domination of ground balls, 30-16, most of the final statistics would seem to indicate a far worse game for Princeton than a one-goal loss.

It was the Tigers' second close loss of the year: the score against Hofstra was also 9-8 against Princeton.

The Tigers, after their fifth loss, face important and difficult questions about how to turn themselves around before it is too late.

"I'm at a loss for answers, and that's got to be my job — I've got to find those answers," Tierney said. "We're trying to do everything — praise the players, cajole them . . . anything we can that just gets them to realize that they're a good lacrosse team, albeit young. We should be at this point, at the very worst, 2-3."

Without a big victory over teams like Johns Hopkins, Virginia or Syracuse, Princeton will need to win the Ivy League in order to advance to the NCAA tournament in May. The Tigers have a chance to get on the right track this Tuesday against Penn.

"Having only two days to prepare for Penn is probably a good thing. Maybe we've over-thought a lot of things, and maybe we need to just let the kids go out and play," Tierney said. "We're all trying to find the answers for each other."

A team that has won six NCAA national championships now finds itself winless and in danger of not even advancing to the tournament.

Bewildering, indeed.