Preview: No. 2 men’s lacrosse travels to Ithaca for the Ivy League tournament

“The team Yale is going to see on Friday is not the team that they saw a month ago,” senior captain and attacker Chad Palumbo told The Daily Princetonian.

On championship weekend, No. 2 men’s lacrosse (11–2 overall, 5–1 Ivy League) will travel to Ithaca as the No. 2 seed in the Ivy League tournament. The Tigers are set to play third-seeded Yale (9–4, 4–2), ranked No. 9 nationally, in the semifinals on Friday evening. 

Both sides met previously in mid-March, with Princeton narrowly winning 11–10 in a game Palumbo described as “messy.”

“We’ve gotten better every single week since then,” Palumbo said. “That game, particularly, offensively, riding, and clearing were our biggest concerns. In each one of those three facets, we’ve gotten significantly better.”

The winner of Friday’s match will play either No. 4 Cornell (10–3, 5–1) or No. 13 Harvard (9–4, 3–3) in the final on Sunday afternoon.

The season began with high expectations as the Tigers were ranked No. 2 in the Inside Lacrosse preseason poll. However, Head Coach Matt Madalon’s squad dropped its home opener to then No. 14-ranked Penn State (7–5, 3–2 Big Ten). 

“Every time we’ve fallen down, we’ve not only gotten back up, but we spring back up and gain ground,” Palumbo said.

What followed over the next three weeks rewrote the Tigers’ narrative entirely. The Orange and Black traveled to College Park on Feb. 21 and narrowly won against No. 2 Maryland (7–5, 3–2 Big Ten), beating the Terrapins for the first time since 2004. 

Madalon called the team “a very resilient group.”

“We’ve had many weeks where you have a couple losses, it’s easy to learn after those, but to have a team that can learn after wins and get back in the locker room and be self-aware and very critical of themselves, has made for a great team to coach,” Madalon said.

Back home the following weekend, junior defensemen Jack Stahl held Syracuse star Joey Spallina — who had put up 17 points across two prior career meetings against Princeton — scoreless in an 11–7 win over then No. 6 Syracuse. Days later, senior goalie Ryan Croddick notched a career high 25 saves to upset then No. 1 University of North Carolina 11–9. 

“We were staring down the gauntlet with UNC, Cuse, Maryland, the best teams in the country,” Palumbo said. “And we looked internal, and we figured out some stuff and went hard in practice, and then we ended up coming out of that stretch 3–1. So we’ve been really resilient.”

Following out-of-conference play, the Tigers continued to work their way up the polls in Ivy play, finishing 5–1 with the lone loss coming at home to Cornell. That loss proved to be decisive, with the Big Red earning hosting rights for this weekend’s tournament.

“It’s always a special opportunity to earn your way into the Ivy League Tournament. It’s hard to do,” Madalon said. 

For the first time since 1997, the Tigers had six first-team All-Ivy selections in 2026. Stahl and Croddick highlighted the group, with Stahl winning Defenseman of the Year and Croddick winning Goalie of the Year.

Stahl — who was named Inside Lacrosse’s midseason breakout player of the year — has anchored a defensive unit that graduated Colin Mulshine ’25 and Michael Bath ’25. He joins junior attacker Nate Kabiri and Plaumbo as among the Tewaaraton Award’s 25 finalists, given annually to the top player in college lacrosse. 

Palumbo and Kabiri were two of the three first-team All-Ivy attackers alongside Cornell attacker and attacker of the year Willem Firth. Kabiri led the Tigers with 58 points (30 goals, 28 assists) while starting every game.

Palumbo — who was selected No. 7 overall in this month’s PLL draft by the Carolina Chaos — finished with 30 goals and 20 assists from the attack, a role he only moved into at the start of the year after three seasons as a midfielder. 

“The biggest adjustment for me has just been [being] in the game, 24/7. When I was playing midfield, I was subbing off. So I have to be way more dialed,” Palumbo said.

Junior midfielders Tucker Wade and Cooper Mueller rounded out the first-team selections. Senior midfielder John Dunphey, junior midfielder Jackson Green, and junior defender Hunter Spiess were named to second-team All-Ivy. 

The one name missing is sophomore attacker Peter Buonanno. Buonanno — the Ivy League rookie of the year in 2025 — missed over a month of the season due to injury. Buonanno featured in limited minutes in Saturday’s win over Dartmouth (4–9, 0–6) and is “working himself back in,” according to Madalon, who expects to see Buonanno in the midfield role this weekend. 

“Anytime a guy returns from injury, we try to keep him out of those 60-minute roles, so I think he’ll probably be back into the midfield,” Madalon said. 

The Tigers are also playing with something larger in mind. A No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament remains within reach with a 2–0 showing this weekend. 

“As a coaching staff, mission critical,” Madalon said. “We want to put ourselves in the best position possible. But as a team in a program, they're just trying to take one day at a time, play a great game on Friday, hopefully earn an opportunity to play on Sunday, and then take it from there.”

On the other side, Yale will be playing for something much larger: a chance to extend their season. Should the Bulldogs lose Friday night, they will likely be on the wrong side of the NCAA tournament bubble. Yale has not made the tournament since 2023. 

The Bulldogs, who started the season 3–4 and were unranked for the first seven weeks of the season, have rattled off six straight wins and now find themselves ranked inside the top ten. Led by attacker Connor Gately, Yale boasts one of the nation’s best man-up conversion rates. 

The Bulldogs also bring extensive experience on defense and in the midfield, as defenders Patrick Pisano and Konrad Miklaszewski and midfielders Cole Cashion and Peter Moynihan have all earned All-Ivy honors. Pisano was the lone Bulldog named to the first team.

For the Tigers, the keys heading into Friday are straightforward: Play a clean 60 minutes, limit Yale's man-up opportunities, and not look past the opponent in front of them.

While Palumbo emphasized staying laser-focused on Yale, he made clear that the results this weekend, good or bad, will not define their season.

“This group is insatiable,” Palumbo said. 

“Whatever happens this weekend, we will not be satisfied with it. Win or lose, 2–0, 0–1, 1–1, whatever it is, we’re not gonna be satisfied by it. We’ve got really big goals, and we’re just gonna continue to improve.”

Hayk Yengibaryan is a  senior Sports writer for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Glendale, Calif. He can be reached at hy5161[at]princeton.edu.

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

A correction was made May 1, 2026: A previous version of this piece described Palumbo as a midfielder, which he is listed as on Princeton’s roster. However, he has recently been playing as an attacker.