Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Princeton Alums Look For More Championships In MLL Playoffs
August 23, 2007 | Men's Lacrosse
Ryan Boyle and Matt Striebel have played together for one season at Princeton, two World Championships with Team USA and for four seasons on the Philadelphia Barrage in Major League Lacrosse.
During that time, they've won a total of four championships, with at least one on each level. This weekend in Rochester, they look to add another.
Standing in their way will be, among others, Chris Massey, who also has four championship rings, and Josh Sims and Trevor Tierney, who will be looking to add to their own extensive jewelry collections.
Major League Lacrosse brings its championship playoffs to PaeTec Park in Rochester this weekend, and as always the event will have a definite Princeton presence to it.
The first semifinal Saturday (2 pm) pits the top-seeded Barrage against the fourth-seeded Denver Outlaws in a rematch of last year's MLL title game, won by the Barrage. The second game features the Los Angeles Riptide, seeded second, against the Rochester Rattlers. The winners will meet Sunday at 1 on ESPN2; the semifinals can be seen live on ESPN360.com.
Philadelphia and Rochester both finished with 9-3 records in the Eastern Conference, but Philadelphia earned the top-seed with a better conference record. The Riptide, making their first playoff appearance, won the West, also at 9-3, and earned the No. 2 seed and a semifinal date against the home team.
Boyle and Striebel have been a huge part of the Barrage success, one that saw Philadelphia win six of its final seven games. Of course, the one loss during that time was to Denver, a 15-13 Outlaws win in Denver on July 21.
Boyle finished the regular season second in MLL in assists (31) and third in points (58). Striebel tied for 15th in the league in points with 39 and 19th in goals with 25. Peter Trombino also played in one game for the Barrage this year.
Tierney and Sims are among the leaders of the Outlaws, who finished second in the West to Los Angeles. Tierney started nine of the 12 games in goal, missing the others due to a mid-season concussion; those games were started by Jesse Schwartzman, the MVP of the 2007 Final Four after helping Johns Hopkins to the NCAA championship.
Sims had 11 goals and nine assists on the year despite being slowed by injuries. Sims and Tierney won an MLL title together with the Baltimore (now Washington) Bayhawks two years ago before reaching the title game with the Outlaws a year ago.
Scott Sowanick, who played the final six games of the season, had three goals and two assists. Zachary Jungers, like Sowanick and Trombino a 2007 Princeton grad, was drafted by the Outlaws but missed the entire season with a knee injury that slowed him at the end of his senior year and resulted eventually in surgery.
The Riptide have two Princetonians on the roster. Lorne Smith, a 1999 grad, will not be on the playoff roster after scoring four goals in four regular season games. Chris Massey '98, a late-season addition from the Long Island Lizards, will play with the Riptide in the playoffs. Massey has already won an MLL championship with the Lizards.
Rochester does not have any Princeton alums, but it does have John Grant Jr., a Delaware grad who sent an MLL single-season scoring record with 71 points.