Princeton University Athletics
Princeton University
Cornell
Fiorito's "Herculean" Day Not Enough As Princeton's Season Ends
April 30, 2011 | Men's Lacrosse
The entire 2011 Princeton men's lacrosse season was basically reproduced in 60 minutes in Ithaca Saturday afternoon.
Princeton struggled with injuries that robbed the team of front-line players and any chance at continuity. Princeton grabbed an early lead that got away. In the end, Princeton came up just short.
Oh, and goalie Tyler Fiorito was, in the words of his coach, "Herulean."
Despite the fact that Fiorito made 20 spectacular saves against the No. 1 scoring team in the country to set a new career high, Princeton fell to No. 2/3 Cornell 9-7 in front of 4,993 on a perfect day at Schoellkopf Field.
"In many ways, it was the story of our season," Princeton coach Chris Bates said.
On day that began for Princeton with possibilities for win, lose or random draw, the season ended shortly after the loss to Cornell did, when Harvard closed out its 9-5 win over Yale to take the final spot in the Ivy League tournament, which will match No. 2 Penn and No. 3 Harvard and No. 1 Cornell and No. 4 Yale beginning Friday at Schoellkopf.
Princeton finishes the season 4-9, 2-4 in the Ivy League.
That the Ivy tournament will be held without Princeton seemed unlikely the day fall practice began, what with a deep offense led by Jack McBride and Mike Chanenchuk and a defense led by Fiorito. That was before McBride and Chanenchuk - who combined for 63 goals and 24 assists last year - both suffered injuries as Chanenchuk withdrew from school for the spring and McBride was limited to three quarters of one game and one goal.
Those two were the biggest losses for the Tigers, though they weren't the only ones. In all, Princeton had five players suffer season-ending injuries and 15 total get injured.
Even down to moments before the opening face-off Saturday, Princeton had no idea if starters Chris McBride, Luke Armour, Alex Capretta, Long Ellis and Jonathan Meyers would be able to play. As it turned out, they all did, though McBride was only able to play about half the game.
Princeton began the day 30 minutes before Harvard hosted Yale and Dartmouth hosted Brown, and Princeton needed, if nothing else, a Harvard loss to still have a chance at the tournament. In fact, Princeton could have gotten into the tournament with a Harvard loss and Princeton win or a Princeton loss, Harvard loss and Dartmouth win, as long as Princeton won the random draw that would have followed.
And then there were the two Princeton-Cornell subplots.
First, there was the matchup between Chad Wiedmaier and Rob Pannell, the nation's leading scorer who averaged 5.67 points per game coming into the Princeton game. Still, in four previous matchups against Wiedmaier, Pannell had scored more than two points below his average in all other games.
Then there was the opening face-off itself. In every Princeton-Cornell game since 2005, Cornell had won the opening face-off and scored early. Last year, in splitting two games with Princeton, Cornell scored in 1:03 and then just 16 seconds.
This time, it was Princeton who got off to the fast start. In fact, it was 4-0 before Cornell scored and then 6-1 after Tom Schreiber's two goals to start the second quarter, the second coming with 10:48 to go in the half. Cornell even changed goalies during the run, putting Andrew West into A.J. Fiore's usual place.
From there, Princeton would score only once more, and it would come in the fourth quarter on a Long Ellis-to-Armour fastbreak after Cornell had scored seven straight to take an 8-6 lead.
Princeton had several chances to tie it after that, but turnovers took away those chances. Pannell scored a late goal to ice it, giving him two goals and one assist on the day. in five career games against Princeton, Pannell now has four goals and 10 assists, and his four goals have come on 44 shots.
As for Fiorito, he came into the game off back-to-back 16-save performances, both of which were one save off his career-high of 17 set last year against Brown. Against Cornell, he was nothing short of amazing routinely snuffing out one-on-one chances in close, including one on Pannell in the final minute.
"To beat a team like Cornell, we needed our goalie to give us a Herculean effort," Bates said. "And he did that and more."
In the end, though, it was Cornell who won.
The last time Princeton played on Schoellkopf Field, Fiorito was busy winning the Ivy tournament MVP award and Jack McBride was busy scoring in overtime to beat the Big Red. This time, while Fiorito was eclipsing his 2010 heroics, McBride stood on the sideline, as he has basically the entire year.
How different it all could have been.
