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Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Dartmouth Visits for Women's Soccer's Ivy Home Opener Saturday
September 30, 2010 | Women's Soccer
PRINCETON -- With back-to-back shutout victories in tow, the Princeton women's soccer team will head into Saturday's contest against Dartmouth on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium looking for another three valuable Ivy League standings points.
Dartmouth (3-4-1, 1-0-0 Ivy) at Princeton (5-3-0, 1-0-0)
Saturday, Oct. 2 at 3:30 p.m.
Live Stats | Live Video | TV: FiOS1 (Tape)
Tuesday's 2-0 win over Fairfield, in which sophomore Caitlin Blosser scored two second-half goals to take the Ivy League's points lead with 14 on the season, was the Tigers' second shutout in four days after opening Ivy play with a 1-0 win at Yale. Blosser was also the only Tiger to score in last year's 2-1, double-overtime loss at Dartmouth that dropped Princeton to 0-2 in the Ivy.
Posting zeroes on the opposite side of the scoreboard has been a trend in the 15-plus seasons under head coach Julie Shackford, who ran her win total to 165 at Princeton with Tuesday's victory. Shackford's teams have posted 112 shutouts at Princeton (including seven scoreless ties), and 41.5 percent of all of Shackford's matches with the Tigers have ended with the opponent being blanked. That percentage is the highest of any of the six coaches to lead the team since its varsity inception in 1980. To relinquish the percentage lead back to the program's first coach, Bob Malekoff (who has the second-most shutouts overall with 30 in 75 games, or 40 percent), the Tigers would have to give up a goal in each of the next 10 games. The longest stretch without a shutout under Shackford is nine games, bridging the 2004 and 2005 seasons.
Sophomore Kristin Watson has been in goal for all three of Princeton's shutouts this season and saw her goals-against average dip to 0.74 with the latest clean-sheet. That's good for second in the Ivy behind Columbia's Lillian Klein (0.53). Fellow sophomore Jen Hoy is tied with Harvard's Melanie Baskind at an Ivy-best five goals, including a league-best three game-winners, while Blosser's six assists also lead the league.
The 2010 season marks the ninth time in the last 11 seasons that the Tigers have opened the Ivy slate with Yale and followed the Bulldogs on the league circuit with Dartmouth. Of the five times during that run in which Princeton beat Yale, four times the Tigers also defeated Dartmouth, most recently in 2008.
But Dartmouth is one of four Ivy teams along with Princeton, Columbia and Penn to lay claim to a 1-0 Ivy record to start the season, having defeated Brown to open the Ivy slate for the sixth time in seven such opportunities since 2003. Seven of the Big Green's eight games have ended with a margin of one goal or fewer, and all eight have been within two goals.
Colleen Hogan has been in goal for all of Dartmouth's contests and has a 1.09 GAA. On offense, six players have scored the team's seven goals with Marina Moschitto's team-best second goal serving as the eventual game-winner against Brown last Sunday.
All-time, the series is tied 14-14-1, with recent results reflective of the overall total. After an eight-year winning streak for Dartmouth from 1991-98 and four straight for the Tigers from 1999-2002, Princeton has won four of the last seven. In Princeton, the Tigers lead 8-6 all-time and have won four of the last five with Dartmouth winning in its final visit to Lourie-Love Field in 2006.