Men's Soccer: Princeton cements best-ever season

Princeton also clinched sole possession of the Ivy League championship with the win over the seventh-place Bulldogs (3-12-2 overall, 1-5-1 Ivy League). If Princeton had lost and Penn had won, the two would have shared the Ivy League title. But the Quakers didn’t help themselves, losing to Harvard 2-1 in double overtime on Saturday night.

“It’s an incredible feeling, to accomplish something not only for myself, my team and the coaches, but for the program in general,” senior defender Benjamin Burton said.

Burton put the Tigers ahead with 10 minutes remaining in the first half, after they had struggled to find opportunities early on. Sophomore defender Mark Linnville was credited with the assist, as one of his signature long throw-ins found Burton, who headed it in.

“I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I put it in the back of the net,” Burton said.

Burton and the rest of the back line played strongly throughout the game, limiting the Bulldogs to just three shots. Before the game, Princeton players had said that they needed to make sure they continued to consistently press teams even when they were dominating the game. On Saturday, they managed to contain the threat of a long throw-in and shut down the generally unproductive Yale offense.

“Yale has some talented and fast forwards, and our guys in the back were solid,” head coach Jim Barlow ’91 said in an e-mail.

But just two minutes after going up 1-0, the Princeton defense, trying to prevent the equalizer, ended up providing it. In one small blemish on what has been an otherwise outstanding season — featuring stellar defense, dangerous throw-ins and his first career goal — Linnville misread a cross from a Yale forward. Barlow had expressed slight concern before the game about Yale’s turf field, a surface the Tigers don’t have much experience with and have struggled on this season. The cross took an unexpected bounce, and Linnville, intending to head the ball out of bounds, instead headed it past senior goalkeeper and co-captain Sean Lynch and into the back of the goal.

“It just kind of glanced off my head,” Linnville said. “Those are the breaks in soccer. It happens every now and then. You’ve just got to keep moving on. I was confident that we would get more goals.”

Led by Linnville, the Tigers did just that in the second half. While Linnville was not credited with the assist, his 62nd-minute throw-in found freshman defensive midfielder Patrick O’Neil about 20 yards out. O’Neil’s first shot was deflected, but he recovered it and scored off a left-footed shot.

In recent games, the back line has provided the Tigers with a boost of offensive output. Burton in particular has recorded either a goal or an assist in five of Princeton’s last six games.

“One of our strengths this year has been our ability to score goals in many different ways,” Barlow said. “We have scored many goals on long throw-ins and restarts, and our defenders are good in the air and join in on our restarts.”

This is Princeton’s first Ivy League championship since 2001 and its second consecutive NCAA tournament appearance. While they have dominated their opponents in stringing together a 12-game winning streak to close off the season — a program record — the Tigers understand that they will face a higher level of competition in the games to come, and that the season is far from over.

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“We finished strong, and we’ve been playing really well lately,” Burton said. “The fact that we’ve accomplished something that hasn’t been done before by the team is cause for celebration, but we can’t just be content with that. We have to move forward.”