.png&width=24&type=webp)
Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Men's Squash Eyes Difficult Road, Ultimate Prize During Team Championships Weekend
February 23, 2011 | Men's Squash
If the Princeton men's squash team can win its first College Squash Association Potter Cup national team title since 1993, it's certainly going to earn it. A brutally tough road awaits the Tigers, though it's also one they believe can be navigated over one magical weekend.
Princeton enters the CSA team championship weekend as the third seed, and has won 10 of 12 matches during a challenging regular season. The Tigers' only losses have come to top-seeded Trinity (6-3) and second-seeded Yale (5-4), and those two teams would likely be Princeton's final two obstacles in its hunt for a national championship.
But to reach those obstacles, Princeton has to open the weekend with a win over sixth-seeded Harvard, which just happens to be hosting the championship weekend. And as the Tiger women proved at the Howe Cup, lower-seeded teams can prevail when playing in the comforts of their own courts.
Princeton and Harvard will open competition at 2 p.m. Friday on Courts 1-3 of the Murr Center. Two of the three other quarterfinal matches (#1 Trinity vs. #8 Franklin & Marshall and #4 Rochester vs. #5 Cornell) will go on at the same time, while the quarterfinal between #2 Yale and #7 Dartmouth will begin at 11 a.m.
Should Princeton advance to the semifinal, it would play Saturday at 3 p.m. on Courts 4-5 and the glass court. That would be the second semifinal, and both winners would meet Sunday at noon for the Potter Cup; like the semifinals, those matches would be held on Courts 4-5 and the glass court.
Friday's quarterfinal will be a rematch of the Feb. 6 match played between Princeton and Harvard at the Jadwin Squash Courts, where the Tigers claimed a hard-fought 7-2 win. Barring injury, eight of the nine matchups will likely be the same as the regular season; the Crimson has moved William Ahmed from No. 10 to No. 9, meaning he would be a new opponent for Tiger senior Nikhil Seth.
Princeton won each of the top five matches against Harvard, including four by 3-0 margins. The toughest contest came at No. 2, though Princeton senior co-captain David Letourneau battled through both illness and Reed Endresen for a 3-2 win that punctuated a perfect regular season career within the Ivy League.
Harvard won matches at both 6 and 7, including a five-game win in the latter for Tom Mullaney over Philip Sopher, but Princeton scored 3-1 wins in the final two to provide the winning margin.
Should form hold on Friday, Princeton would face Yale in the national semifinal. The Bulldogs are the two-time reigning Ivy League champions, and they did both with exciting 5-4 victories over the Tigers each season. This year, Yale's Naishadh Lalwani scored the winning point over Peter Sopher at No. 4 to clinch the win at home; this time around, the two teams would be playing at a neutral site.
There isn't much to take from the regular season meeting on January 29, as only two of the projected matchups are the same. At No. 1, Princeton's unbeaten Todd Harrity scored a 3-0 win over Hywel Robinson, which included a tough 12-10 win in the first. At No. 8, Yale's Robert Berner rallied from a 2-0 deficit to edge Clay Blackiston in match that turned the momentum for the Bulldogs.
Other than those, there will be seven new matchups, including a potential showdown between Yale's Richard Dodd and Princeton's Kelly Shannon at the No. 4 spot. With the three-shift format in place, it's very possible that the No. 4 spot could once again provide the decisive margin.
If Princeton can safely get through the first two days, all it would have left to do is end what will be a 243-match win streak and a 12-year run of national championships. The Trinity Bantams haven't lost a match since Feb. 22, 1998, though Princeton has come as close as possible on multiple occasions, including a trio of 5-4 championship losses over the last decade.
While this Tiger team may not have the same credentials as past ones, it certainly has to be taken seriously if it reaches the final against Trinity. Princeton lost 6-3 in the regular season, so it would need to hold those wins and turn two others, but four of their losses were in either four or five games.
A key match to watch should those two teams make the final would be at No. 6, where countrymen Antonio Diaz Glez (Trinity) and David Pena (Princeton) would likely meet. Diaz Glez won 3-1 in the regular season, but Pena scored the win during the 2010 CSA championships.
Besides competing for the team title, seeding for the following week's CSA individual championships will be affected by the team competition. Harrity would be the top seed should he keep his unbeaten season going, while Letourneau could earn his best seeding ever with a perfect weekend.