MLax: Princeton 7 @ Cornell 10 (Final)

Al DeFlorio · April 18, 2009, 02:58:05 PM

[quote Jacob '06]And the parity in college lacrosse this season continues. Will Virginia be back to #1 now?[/quote]
I'm guessing Virginia, Syracuse, Cornell.

Cowboy · April 18, 2009, 03:02:56 PM

Does anyone know where Cornell stands in the RPI? They are #12. Isn't this the sole criterion used by the NCAA committee to seed teams?

Al DeFlorio · April 18, 2009, 03:26:53 PM

[quote Cowboy]Does anyone know where Cornell stands in the RPI? They are #12. Isn't this the sole criterion used by the NCAA committee to seed teams?[/quote]
No, not the sole criterion.

But to show how absurd RPI is, Hopkins, #1 in RPI, has a 2-4 record against teams ranked #2 through #9 in RPI. How in the world can that make them #1? Ridiculous.

Tom Lento · April 18, 2009, 06:18:41 PM

From laxpower:

QuoteJohn Glynn, who tallied one assist on offense, was the difference-maker in the game, winning 13 of 18 face offs to go along with a career-high 11 ground balls.

That's beastly.

Edit - and, apparently, mathematically impossible. Two paragraphs later:

QuoteCornell (9-2, 5-0) held the advantage in shots (34-24) and ground balls (29-12), while winning 14 of 15 face-offs. The Big Red also went 2-for-6 on the extra-man, while holding Princeton to an 0-2 performance.

Edit again - later in the article it says 14 of 19, so that must be a typo. Remind me to avoid laxpower game recaps in the future - the one for this game is incredibly disorganized.

Al DeFlorio · April 18, 2009, 08:00:23 PM

Great picture of Max on the Inside Lacrosse home page: http://www.insidelacrosse.com/

Lead story is essentially an in-game blog: http://blogs.insidelacrosse.com/2009/04/18/in-game-blog-princeton-at-cornell/

Jim Hyla · April 18, 2009, 09:04:11 PM

Quote from: insidelacrosse.comAn unruly band member summed up Princeton's woes by yelling, "How does it feel to be #1 for less than a week?" as time expired.

Unruly? Why, because he/she yells?

mnagowski · April 18, 2009, 10:23:46 PM

QuoteUnruly? Why, because he/she yells?

Some Princeton fans were giving me looks for shouting out inquiries as to the whereabouts of their band for such an important game.

Apparently I never got the memo on Eating Club etiquette.

billhoward · April 19, 2009, 12:28:18 AM

Eight thousand people showed up. That's better than the football team is getting. After predictions of showers and temps in the 50s, it was in the 60s and no rain. Awesome day.

Pannell got shut down, such as three points is shut down (he got the first Cornell goal and thereafter two assists), and everyone else stepped up, including some people who don't score much. In addition to Seibald's two goals, he hit two pipes in the fourth.

Can't recall such a dominating fourth quarter as Cornell played. The ball must have been in the Princeton box 13 of the 15 minutes. Tambroni scared us 3 years ago going to a stall late against Princeton and barely hanging on for a one-goal win, and doing it here with a 3- and 4-goal lead, which allows for breathing room. Not so much the slowdown / stall for the first 10 minutes of the quarter, because we did score twice to increase the lead, but the choice not to go to open nets late in the quarter with the goalie out and red-dogging. A Princeton team down by four with five to play is not yet dead and I would have been happier seeing a six or seven goal lead. My question as a non-expert is:

If you've got an open net to shoot at ...
And your faceoff guy is winning better than 2 of 3 faceoffs ...
Why not build your lead? ...
Especially since once Princeton puts on pressure, you know (at least fear) Cornell will eventually turn the ball over. That's what happened and it's why Cornell didn't shut out Princeton at the very end of the 4th Q. I would have rather seen the scoreseheet read: Princeton 4th Q, 0 shots, 0 goals. (Instead, 1 & 1.)

Every time Princeton closed to 1, Cornell managed to get the lead back to 2. It was nice that we built a 3-0 lead and made Princeton play catch-up all the way.

We beat Princeton but I could see a rematch being dicey. Princeton has the ability to find an open man in front of net and score quickly. We had one like that I believe in the fourth by Hurley, that was a gem. More of our goals seemed to be workmanlike shots where we were patient and eventually found an opening to score. It felt like the kind of offense that works when you're ahead but not once that inspires quite as much confidence when you're behind. But I guess the point is: We got ahead and got to dictate the game tempo a bit more than Princeton.

Again, it was so impressive to see Cornell play a deliberate, slowdown attack in the fourth that Princeton couldn't handle and at least early in the fourth, didn't try to pressure. Their mistake, I think.

I watched Jake Myers through binoculars for part of the game and he had some really good saves at the end of the third. Princeton took a timeout, worked the deliberately, and came up with blanks when they could have made it a game. Myers may have made the difference between a squeaker and the 3-goal margin we won by.

Great to see the Cornell pep band out in force, and a nice counterpoint to the (not) Princeton band.

I hope some of the HS seniors around for accepted students day took in the game and got excited by what Cornell lacrosse offers fans. Memo to self: Next time you come up for lax the same day the accepted students are in Ithaca, get to the campus store early. It's pretty badly picked over after the game if you want a specfic T-shirt or sweatshirt.

RichH · April 19, 2009, 02:37:55 AM

Quote from: insidelacrosse.comAn unruly band member summed up Princeton's woes by yelling, "How does it feel to be #1 for less than a week?" as time expired.

That's my band!

Josh '99 · April 19, 2009, 03:48:27 AM

[quote Tom Lento]From laxpower:

QuoteJohn Glynn, who tallied one assist on offense, was the difference-maker in the game, winning 13 of 18 face offs to go along with a career-high 11 ground balls.

That's beastly.

Edit - and, apparently, mathematically impossible. Two paragraphs later:

QuoteCornell (9-2, 5-0) held the advantage in shots (34-24) and ground balls (29-12), while winning 14 of 15 face-offs. The Big Red also went 2-for-6 on the extra-man, while holding Princeton to an 0-2 performance.

Edit again - later in the article it says 14 of 19, so that must be a typo. Remind me to avoid laxpower game recaps in the future - the one for this game is incredibly disorganized.[/quote]If I'm not mistaken Laxpower actually reprint each school's game recap one after the other, so that might explain internal inconsistency (though of course there's only one correct number of faceoffs).

Josh '99 · April 19, 2009, 03:52:50 AM

The stat that tells it all, to me:

Ground balls: Cornell 29, Princeton 12. That's just dominant. Great effort by the guys.

Al DeFlorio · April 19, 2009, 06:04:31 AM

[quote Josh '99]The stat that tells it all, to me:

Ground balls: Cornell 29, Princeton 12. That's just dominant. Great effort by the guys.[/quote]
I think ground balls picked up on face-offs are counted in the ground ball statistic (see Glynn credited with 11 ground balls) so the ground ball statistic is heavily influenced by the outcomes of face-offs. A bit of a double-counting.

Jim Hyla · April 19, 2009, 11:55:35 AM

[quote billhoward] My question as a non-expert is:

If you've got an open net to shoot at ...
And your faceoff guy is winning better than 2 of 3 faceoffs ...
Why not build your lead? ...
[/quote]Bill, I'm a non-expert, but the reason for doing it is, if you've got the ball they can't score, if they can't score they can't win. If you score you give them a chance to get the ball back and score. Once they score they could get the ball back again and score again, ...

The decision is up to the coach; which is the best chance for them to get the ball, a faceoff or take it from us. He obviously felt we had a better chance at preventing take-away than a faceoff, and based upon the 4^th quarter possession, he was right.

Al DeFlorio · April 19, 2009, 12:26:55 PM

[quote Jim Hyla][quote billhoward] My question as a non-expert is:

If you've got an open net to shoot at ...
And your faceoff guy is winning better than 2 of 3 faceoffs ...
Why not build your lead? ...
[/quote]Bill, I'm a non-expert, but the reason for doing it is, if you've got the ball they can't score, if they can't score they can't win. If you score you give them a chance to get the ball back and score. Once they score they could get the ball back again and score again, ...

The decision is up to the coach; which is the best chance for them to get the ball, a faceoff or take it from us. He obviously felt we had a better chance at preventing take-away than a faceoff, and based upon the 4^th quarter possession, he was right.[/quote]
The classic example is, IIRC, the 2004 NCAA quarterfinal where Princeton scored twice in the last two minutes to catch Maryland and then won in OT. Maryland's hotshot attackman Joe Walters took a shot at the open goal, hit the post, and Princeton took it down the field to score one of the two goals (I think the tying one) that tied the game.

CUontheslopes · April 19, 2009, 01:07:25 PM

[quote Al DeFlorio][quote Jim Hyla][quote billhoward] My question as a non-expert is:

If you've got an open net to shoot at ...
And your faceoff guy is winning better than 2 of 3 faceoffs ...
Why not build your lead? ...
[/quote]Bill, I'm a non-expert, but the reason for doing it is, if you've got the ball they can't score, if they can't score they can't win. If you score you give them a chance to get the ball back and score. Once they score they could get the ball back again and score again, ...

The decision is up to the coach; which is the best chance for them to get the ball, a faceoff or take it from us. He obviously felt we had a better chance at preventing take-away than a faceoff, and based upon the 4^th quarter possession, he was right.[/quote]
The classic example is, IIRC, the 2004 NCAA quarterfinal where Princeton scored twice in the last two minutes to catch Maryland and then won in OT. Maryland's hotshot attackman Joe Walters took a shot at the open goal, hit the post, and Princeton took it down the field to score one of the two goals (I think the tying one) that tied the game.[/quote]

I believe you're quite right on that incident. I remember watching the game with my family (all Princetonians) and they were SCREAMING at the tv hoping that Maryland would shoot. Cornell absolutely did the right thing NOT shooting on the empty net.

Plus Princeton likes to pack it in close on defense, limiting the opposing team to outside shots. This is normally an excellent strategy, EXCEPT it fails to pressure the ball and makes it easy for the other team to play keep away. Tambroni exploited this weakness in Pton's system. Also, it's one thing to play keep away, but it's another to do it for 5 mins and then cap it with a goal which is what CU did yesterday. That made it a backbreaker. Also, don't forget Seibald hit 2 posts on those possessions as well. If the article accounts the game correctly, Princeton possessed the ball for 65 seconds in the 4th quarter. That's incredible - GO RED and way to beat Princeton by playing like Princeton. It was fun to watch.