For the second straight year, Cornell men’s lacrosse welcomed Princeton to Schoellkopf Field with the Ivy League tournament title on the line. Last year’s final went the way of the Big Red en route to its first national championship in 48 years.
The rematch told a different story.
The Tigers toppled the Big Red 19-9 to win their third Ancient Eight crown in four years. Not only had Cornell gotten the better of Princeton last year, it also came out on top when they met in the regular season with a 13-11 victory on the road back on March 21. Since then, Princeton rattled off eight straight wins and showed vast improvements to exact vengeance on the Big Red.
“They’re a talented group, and they executed at a really high level at all facets of the game,” said Cornell head coach Connor Buczek. “Kudos to their goalie [Ryan Croddick] and their faceoff guy [Andrew McMeekin] that really put some pressure on us. Once they started having some success there, we didn’t stop the bleeding. [They’re a] great group, really well coached, play hard. [There’s] a lot we can learn from that.”
Croddick made 18 saves as he and the Tigers’ defense was able to stymie a potent Big Red attack and hold them to single-digit goals for just the fourth time this year. It was all even at the faceoff X with both teams winning 16 of those battles.
The first and second quarters played out in similar fashion. The Tigers scored the first three goals of each stanza, but the Big Red had a response each time to keep it a tight contest and was only down 7-5 at halftime. But the Tigers came out on fire to start the second half, going on a 9-0 run to go up double digits. The Big Red could only get within eight as the Tigers built up more than enough of a cushion to come out on top.
“[You] got to make a next play, and you got to find a way to stop the bleeding,” Buczek said. “Today we just didn’t. Whether that’s a stop and a clear, whether that’s a faceoff win, whether that’s a good possession that ends in a goal, that complimentary lacrosse that we’re always looking for in the three phases, we didn’t find those when we needed to.”
There were some positives from this weekend’s action for the Big Red. The fact that it hosted the Ivy League tournament for the third straight year meant that it was a three-peat of Ancient Eight regular seasons title. It secured the title with an 11-9 win over Harvard on April 25, and it faced the Crimson in the Ivy League semifinals six days later.
The Big Red had a much easier time against its rivals, routing the Crimson 17-8. Willem Firth was the star of the show with six goals and two assists on the afternoon. The junior paces the Big Red attack with 51 goals and 80 points, proving how much of a focal point he is in its attack.
“He sets the tone for what we do on offense every day,” Buczek said. “[It’s] his ability to be poised in his shot selection and disciplined. He’s a great shooter. He’s able to put it in the back of the net. When we work for great ones and he’s at the end of the rainbow, really good things happen… We trust him implicitly to go get the job done.”
Ryan Goldstein also had a productive day against Harvard, tallying two goals and four assists. The junior is right behind Firth on the scoring and points charts with 33 and 64 respectively and leads the teams in assists with 31. Like Firth, he too has stepped up his game following the graduation of the all-time leading scorer in NCAA history, CJ Kirst.
“I just think he’s been fundamental,” Buczek said. “I think he’s really taken another step in terms of buying into the little things that really make him successful [and] make really any offensive player successful. At times, they were a little inconsistent in the middle of the year where he’s always been a great player, an incredible producer, creates opportunity. But his ability to clean some of those things up and continue to hone that game has really helped him take it to a new level in the last few weeks.”
Cornell will look to wash the bitter taste of defeat out of its mouth as the NCAA Tournament gets underway. The Big Red will host Johns Hopkins, who are led by former head coach Peter Milliman for second round action on May 9.
“[We] got to learn from it,” Buczek said. “We got to take the good with the bad and understand what we did really well Friday night and what we felt we were putting together and how they kind of put us out of it and how maybe we didn’t show up with the right stuff. The hope is that this is not fatal. It’s not final, but we got to learn from it and be ready to attack next week, because there’s plenty to get better at.”
