Men's Soccer: Late goal salvages 1-1 draw

The Princeton men’s soccer team and opponent Adelphi each ended a streak last night, but neither team was satisfied with the result.

The Tigers (4-4-1 overall, 0-1 Ivy League) broke their four-game losing streak with a 1-1 tie against Adelphi (7-1-3), which entered the game with six straight wins behind them.

“We’re frustrated,” head coach Jim Barlow ’91 said. “We played well enough to win. We thought we were in their end most of the game … It was a very frustrating result for us, because I thought we played pretty well.”

The first half was a case study for missed opportunity for the Tigers. While Princeton recorded six shots and created several other opportunities near the goal, Adelphi scored the game’s first goal on its first shot just more than 20 minutes into the game.

Adelphi’s goal started with two of its forwards running even with the Princeton offense. One attacker touched the ball back with the inside of his foot, surprising the defense and giving the Panthers a long shot on the open goal. The ball breezed past junior goalie Sean Lynch’s outstretched hands, and Adelphi went up, 1-0.

The Tigers tried to respond several times before the halftime buzzer. Freshman defender Mark Linnville’s long throw-ins set up a few dangerous situations in the box, but to no avail. With three-and-a-half minutes on the clock, senior forward Ben Harms beat two defenders and took a close-range shot that bobbled in the hands of Adelphi goalie Thorn Holder’s hands before Holder gained control of the ball. Similarly, sophomore midfielder Antoine Hoppenot dribbled through the offense with less than a minute to go, but Holder made an easy save.

“We had several times when it was us and the keeper, and [we] didn’t put it away or waited a little bit too long or just panicked,” Barlow said. “We have to be sharper on those opportunities.”

The second half was much of the same, and while the Tigers once again outshot the Panthers, only a few of these shots were on goal. Princeton came close when sophomore forward Colby Hahn received the ball directly in front of the open goal. Hahn took an extra touch, however, allowing the extra moment necessary for the goalie to set up and make the block.

The Tigers’ luck turned with just less than 10 minutes left on the clock. Sophomore midfielder Brandon Busch was fouled deep in Adelphi territory, setting up a free kick to the left of the box. Busch took the kick, and junior forward Max Hare connected on a diving header into the net. This was Hare’s first goal of the season.

“We were trying to get forward as much as possible, so they wanted a goal,” Hare said. “I was happy to get on the end of that.”

Before regulation ended, Adelphi earned two free kicks in Tiger territory. On the first, the Panther forward whiffed a bicycle kick but provided a high second-chance shot that was nabbed by a leaping Lynch. With one minute left, Adelphi earned another free kick directly in front of Princeton’s goal, just feet from the box. Fortunately for the Tigers, the shot sailed far above the crossbar.

In overtime, Adelphi got aggressive, garnering eight fouls and two yellow cards, while Princeton committed no fouls. In keeping with the flow of the game, the Tigers outshot the Panthers, 6-3, in the overtime periods, but despite several close opportunities, neither team managed to score.

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“We’re starting to create more opportunities, and the ball is moving better,” Barlow said. “But at the end of the day, we shouldn’t have given up the goal we gave up, and we didn’t put enough in.”

Princeton nearly tripled the number of shots attempted by Adelphi, though the Tigers only managed two more shots on goal than the Panthers. Adelphi committed 18 fouls to the Tigers’ nine, with more than a third of the Panther fouls coming in overtime. Junior goalie Sean Lynch recorded four saves, while the Adelphi goalie saved six.

“The whole game was pretty frustrating,” Hare said. “We felt like we controlled the game ... We just need to have that scoring attitude, and hopefully we can have that in the next game.”

Princeton will resume Ivy League play against No. 19 Brown (5-0-4, 1-0) in Providence, R.I., on Saturday night. Brown is coming off a 2-1 win over Columbia, and it defeated Adelphi — one of the two opponents shared with the Tigers thus far — 2-0 in mid-September. Against Lehigh, Brown tied 1-1 while Princeton took home a 1-0 victory.

Brown boasts a strong balance of offense and defense. Austin Mandel leads the Bear attack with four goals, and Sean Rosa has netted two and assisted with four. Three other players have scored two each this season.

In the Ivy League, the Bears are tied for first after one weekend of play and are outranked only by Harvard. They have only played one ranked opponent thus far, No. 16 Boston University, with whom they tied, 3-3.

“Every game is huge. We have a really hard schedule, and every team we play has a good record,” Barlow said. “Every win we get will be a good win, and we just can’t get any more losses … It’s the nature of college soccer: Every game is so even and anyone can beat anyone. We know that, and we just gotta turn things around in this next stretch of games.”