Tigers not overlooking Harvard

While Harvard (4-5 overall, 0-2 Ivy League) may not feature the nation’s best face-off man, U.Va.’s dynamic Braxton duo or Johns Hopkins’ clamping defense, the Tigers (5-4, 2-0) still enter the game as if the season were on the line.

“We need to be completely focused on Harvard on all fronts,” senior goalie Alex Hewit said. “This game is as important as any other game we will play the rest of the season, so we need to prepare ourselves for anything they throw at us.”

The Crimson has yet to win an Ivy League game. On paper, Harvard trails far behind Princeton. Of the nine opponents Harvard has faced, only three have been nationally ranked. Those three teams dismantled the Crimson in the last three weeks, outscoring Harvard by a combined 31-19. Princeton, on the other hand, has faced six ranked opponents and accumulated a 2-4 record in the process. Stats, however, seem to mean very little when game time arrives.

“All the teams in the nation this year are pretty even. Just look at who has beaten [whom] around the NCAA. Whatever the media says about a team means nothing on game day,” junior midfielder Mark Kovler said.

Currently ranked No. 15 in the USILA coaches’ poll, the Tigers find themselves with a prime opportunity to begin wrapping their season up in style. The key to the Crimson game and their other remaining contests will be to take the stellar offense and lockdown defense the Tigers have displayed at different points in the season and combine them in the same game.

“We know we have to win the rest of our games. We need to play with the energy and intensity that we played with in the second half against Penn. We need to feed off each other,” Kovler said. “When the defense is holding them, we as the offense need to feed off of that and get a few goals. When the offense is playing well, the defense has to make sure they don’t let up at all. Winning is a lot more fun when neither the offense nor the defense bails the other out.”

With a record just over .500, Princeton now settles in for the meat of its Ivy League schedule, playing four games in three weeks to close out the regular season. The Ivy League, however, boasts its fair share of talent. Among Princeton’s four remaining opponents are No. 5 Cornell and No. 16 Brown, both of whom have better records than the Tigers.

The Crimson and Princeton met in Tiger territory last year, with Princeton dishing out a 9-3 beating. Playing at Harvard might present some unique challenges, however. Winless on the season when playing away from Class of 1952 Stadium and facing three more away games, including Harvard, the Tigers will have to find a way to calm their homesickness if they wish to end the season strong.

“The key for this weekend is just to play a good road game. We’ve had struggles on the road both this season and the last one, and we just need to get over it and play well,” Kovler said.

Another key factor to racking up wins seems to be getting out to a fast start. Not once in its four losses this season has Princeton led, and not once in its five wins has the team trailed in the second half.

“This weekend I think we really need to focus on coming out right from the opening whistle and having a good start. In a lot of the games this year we’ve had slow starts, and we need to change that,” said freshman attack Jack McBride, who ignited the offense with six goals Tuesday night against Penn.

McBride is just one of many potent offensive weapons in Princeton’s arsenal and is also the youngest member of the four-headed beast of senior attack Bob Schneider, Kovler, McBride and junior attack Tommy Davis, which has combined for 55 goals and 17 assists this season. On defense, a squad of experienced and battle-proven All-Americans led by Hewit and senior defenseman Dan Cocoziello will look to stop the Crimson cold in its tracks.

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“We’re working towards putting together a complete game at both ends of the field for the full 60 minutes,” Schneider said. “We’d like to win the rest of the Ivy League games by [the same margin as against Penn], but every team left on the schedule is very talented, and we’ll need to continue to finish shots and play great defense to do that.”