Men's Soccer: Bears score late, drop Tigers in OT

Leading Brown 2-1 with just eight minutes remaining in the game, the men’s soccer team appeared poised to take its first Ivy League win and continue to turn its season around. But with two late goals, the Bears stole the victory and disrupted the momentum the Tigers were hoping to maintain after a 7-3 victory over Seton Hall.

“We feel like we are playing so much better now than we were a couple of games ago, and now we are starting to score more as well,” head coach Jim Barlow ’91 said in an email. “We are just conceding too many goals too easily, and, as a team, we’ve got to defend better in our box. This was the case in the last three games against Dartmouth, Seton Hall and Brown.”

For much of the season, Princeton has struggled to convert on the many goal chances it created for itself. The Tigers hoped that their offensive onslaught on Tuesday night against Seton Hall would mark a turning point, but the Tigers’ offense has not been the biggest problem as of late. In the last three games, Princeton has allowed a total of 10 goals.

Heading into the game, the Tigers (2-7-1 overall, 0-2 Ivy League) knew that they had to watch out for a strong counterattacking offense and be sure to stop every ball on the first touch after long passes. However, according to Barlow, the two teams ended up maintaining relatively equal possession of the ball. The principal challenge facing the Tiger defense turned out to be restarts.

“We’re just losing our men too easily,” junior defender David Dubow said. “Brown is a big, physical team and we knew that they were going to pressure to score on us off corner kicks and restarts.”

The Bears (6-4-1, 1-1) were the first to score, when midfielder Evan Coleman shot the ball past junior goalie Max Gallin after a battle in the box immediately following a corner kick. Just over four minutes later on the other end of the field, Brown attempted to clear a Princeton restart.

While the Bears were pushing out, senior forward Antoine Hoppenot snuck past most of the back line along the outside. Sophomore midfielder Patrick O’Neil intercepted the ball and passed it to Hoppenot right away. While he was going one-on-one with the remaining Brown defender inside the box, another player tripped him up from behind, setting up a penalty kick. Hoppenot converted to tie the game.

Less than three minutes into the second half, junior forward Matt Sanner took a pass from O’Neil and scored from 25 yards out to give the Tigers the lead, which they maintained until the 82nd minute.

“We had a 2-1 lead with eight minutes left, so we have to be able to pull that out if we want to be a good team,” Hoppenot said. “We thought we had played a good game; we thought we played well enough to get a win.”

Brown forward T.J. Popolizio scored off a free kick with just under eight minutes remaining, forcing a sudden-death overtime. In the second minute of the extra period, Popolizio — the Ivy League’s leading scorer — struck again off another free kick, netting a header for the game-winning goal.

“We just need to be mentally tougher in both boxes,” Dubow said. “We need to finish our chances off corners and [junior defender] Mark Linnville’s throw-ins, and we need to stay with our man and be really disciplined on restarts.”

Despite its poor start to the conference season, members of the team emphasized that hope to defend their Ivy League championship was not yet lost. Last year, the Tigers needed an undefeated record to clinch the title. This year, with only two teams still unbeaten two weeks into the season, Hoppenot speculated that a team with two losses may still be a legitimate contender for the championship.

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“A lot of teams are losing games right now,” Hoppenot said. “Only two teams have perfect records. Whichever team wins the Ivy League is probably going to have two losses. If we’re able to win our next five games, I think we should be fine.”

Barlow agreed, adding that the team has done its best to move on and not dwell on losses.

“What’s done is in the past, and we take the lessons from those games and then leave them behind,” he said. “We still have five league games and two non-league games that we think we can win. If we can get on a roll late in the season, who knows what can happen.”