Hat trick kicks off barrage

The first three-and-a-half minutes of the men’s lacrosse game Saturday afternoon did not look promising for Princeton. Cornell’s Max Seibald gave the Big Red an early 1-0 lead with 13 minutes, one second remaining in the first quarter, and Chris Finn struck a minute and a half later to deepen the Tigers’ deficit to two. It isn’t uncommon for Princeton to trail early in the game — in five of their last six games the Tigers have failed to score first — but being down early against the third-ranked team in the nation in a do-or-die situation was certainly not part of the game plan.

Senior midfielder and tri-captain Bob Schneider was determined not to let Cornell (9-3 overall, 4-1 Ivy League) defeat the Tigers (7-4, 4-0) in the Class of 2008’s final home game, however. The reigning Ivy League Player of the Week put Princeton within one on an unassisted goal at 9:43. After junior attack Tommy Davis made a lagging Cornell defenseman pay for his mistake at 5:22 and knotted the game at two on a 15-yard bullet, Schneider scored twice to lift the Tigers to a 4-2 lead.

“If anything [changed],” Schneider said, “it was our attitude. We just decided ‘that is enough,’ and we weren’t going to let ourselves get down by four or five goals like last weekend. That was going to be the turning point, and that was it.”

Schneider’s second goal came with just over four minutes remaining in the first frame as he received a pass from freshman attack Chris McBride and slipped a shot beneath the crossbar. With 10 ticks left on the clock, he completed his hat trick after collecting a ground ball and firing uncontested at Big Red goalie Jake Myers.

“If you’ve been around our program for a long time, you’ll remember that when we were really good, we had seniors who would step up and come out of nowhere,” head coach Bill Tierney said. “Not that Bob has come out of nowhere, but he’s certainly doing the things we thought he was capable of doing but hasn’t done until this point. He was just fabulous. He has been a warrior for us.”

The Tigers would score the next four goals — keeping Cornell scoreless for just over 30 minutes — and never relinquished the lead, ultimately triumphing 11-7. The victory snapped Cornell’s four-game win streak over the Tigers, not to mention its 14-game undefeated run in the Ivy League, and kept Princeton undefeated against other Ivy schools this season.

Senior midfielder Pete Striebel came alive in the second quarter for the Tigers when he scored an unassisted goal at 10:11, beating Myers stick-side high. Striebel also set up Princeton’s next goal when he found senior attack Alex Haynie on the perimeter, who unleashed a side-arm shot to give the Tigers a four-goal lead with just over four minutes left in the half. The assist was Striebel’s 10th of the year.

Freshman attack Jack McBride scored his 18th goal of the season a minute later when he sniped Myers from 15 yards out. Though Cornell outscored the Tigers 5-4 in the second half on two goals from Seibald, two from Ryan Hurley and one from Finn, it was clear the game was over at the half. Striebel and McBride added insurance for the Tigers in the third quarter while Davis added one in each of the final two frames, increasing his goal total to 20 on the season.

While the attack undoubtedly deserves credit for the Tiger victory, the much-needed win wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of the defensive corps and senior goalie Alex Hewit. Hewit entered the game with a 6.93 goals-against average, the third best in Division I history, and made 10 saves on the afternoon. Most of the shots he faced were telegraphed or released from poor angles, which can be attributed to the success of Princeton’s defense.

Senior tri-captain Dan Cocoziello led his fellow defensemen in his final home game for the Orange and Black and tallied an assist on McBride’s second goal. Senior midfielder Zach Goldberg played tremendously, managing to keep Cornell’s John Glynn, who ranks second on the team in points, quiet for the entire game. Goldberg forced countless turnovers on takeaway checks and facilitated the transition to the Tigers’ attacking end.

Assistant coach Greg Raymond, who heads the defense, should be proud of the way his squad played. The miscommunications and slow slides that plagued the defense early in the season seem to have vanished. It’s a testament to Raymond’s efforts how much the defensemen have grown as a unit and that they kept a team averaging nearly 11.5 goals per game to a rather unimpressive seven.

Though the win further cemented the Tigers’ hope for a postseason run, Princeton will have to remain focused on its upcoming games against Dartmouth and Brown. But should the Tigers show up in Hanover and Providence the way they did at home today, an Ivy League championship celebration will be in order.