Princeton University Athletics
Matt Striebel and Ryan Boyle - The Ring Bearers
April 08, 2011 | Men's Lacrosse
TigerBlog And The 2001 NCAA Championship Game
Ryan Boyle is angry.
The sounds coming through the phone a few minutes ago were unmistakably those of the Manhattan morning. Now Boyle is in a cab, unhappy about the route being taken to the Brooklyn Bridge.
"Which way are you going?" he asks.
The answer, given in either an Eastern European or Middle Eastern dialect, is not to Boyle's liking.
"What are you doing? We could already have been there."
"Maybe," the accent says, "you'd like to fly there? Maybe you'll drive and I'll sit back there?"
Matt Striebel is apologetic.
The sounds coming through the phone now suggest rain, heavy rain. Striebel explains that he's in the car, driving through "a torrential New England rain," and hopes that he can be heard. He thinks otherwise, and for that, he's sorry.
Windshield wipers slosh back and forth as Striebel's voice races, going much faster, presumably, than the car. He talks college basketball, throws out the name of a mutual friend, asks about life in general, all to the metronomic cadence of the wipers.
The conversation with each lasts about 20 minutes, and they talk about the other for maybe 10 of those 20 minutes.
They are two of the best players in the history of the sport of lacrosse, Matt Striebel and Ryan Boyle are, sure-fire Hall-of-Famers one day. In a sport where there has been a direct correlation between the marketing of its superstars and an unimaginable explosion of the game in the last 10 years, there haven't been too many players who have been more in the eye of the hurricane than Striebel and Boyle.
They are lacrosse icons, instantly recognizable and awe-inspiring on any field where kids are carrying sticks.
They are lacrosse winners with few equals. They each have won six major lacrosse championships, on the collegiate, professional and international levels. Each time one has won such a title, the other was on the team. Without the other, they are ringless.
They are teammates. They are in business together. They are like brothers, these two, something that, in their own quite distinct styles, they scream out during their 20 minutes on the phone.
And yet, it all could have been so much different.
There could have been resentment. There could have been disappointment. There could have been anger. There could have been none of those shared championships.
They could have been enemies.
It's been 10 years since their first championship, accomplished on Memorial Day 2001, when both were members of the 2001 Princeton men's lacrosse team that won the sixth NCAA title in school history.
Their 20 minutes on the phone a decade later are a reminder of just how amazing that championship was - and how remarkable their story is.
The final seconds of the 2000 NCAA championship game were ticking away as Ryan Powell sprinted from the goal to the Syracuse bench at Byrd Stadium on the campus of the University of Maryland. This day belonged to the Orange, and the final score of 13-7 doesn't really capture how much this game was never in doubt.
Earlier that season, Syracuse had destroyed Princeton 16-4 at the Class of 1952 Stadium. It would be the most lopsided loss of Bill Tierney's 22 years at Princeton.
There is no question that Syracuse was the better team in 2000, and it wasn't really all that close. In two meetings, the Orange outscored Princeton 29-11.
"We were missing something," Striebel says. "We were one piece shy of being a championship team. And that piece was Ryan."
Except for one problem. Striebel was an honorable mention and second-team All-Ivy League attackman, and he led the Tigers in assists in 1999 and 2000. In addition, he was a senior captain on a team coming off an NCAA championship game appearance.
And then, from the Gilman School in Baltimore, came Boyle. Princeton has had an army of great players in its history, but it has never had anyone with the charisma of Ryan Boyle.
He's a great athlete and lacrosse player, to be sure, but his best quality might be his unmatched vision, which enables him to get the ball to the right person at the right time almost without fail. Well, that, and his lacrosse IQ, which might be the highest in the history of the sport.
Bill Tierney, then the Princeton coach, has called him a "lacrosse savant;" Striebel, while driving through the rain, calls Boyle "tough" no fewer than 11 separate times.
Beyond that, he has the looks and persona of a movie star or rocker. When he walks into the room - or huddle - everything else stops.
"I know Ryan pretty well," Striebel says. "There's an aspect of Ryan's persona that is sort of like Peyton Manning, where he's the quarterback and he's all business. But there's a toughness about him that people underestimate. Look at his career indoors. You wouldn't peg him as a guy who would thrive in that league. I've never played with someone who gets physically beaten up the way he does, but he always gets up. That competitiveness, that fight, translates into leadership. He's the one who steps in and says 'this is what we're going to do; this is how it's going to be,' and you just believe him. He's a tough little bastard, and that's where it all starts."
Boyle speaks confidently, but he also speaks softly. He thinks about what his answer is going to be before he gives it. He chuckles moderately when he says something funny and then moves on.
Even when the cab driver is going the long way, he doesn't raise his voice too much. Instead, he's questioning the decision to go this particular route, explaining other options, with just a hint of aggravation in his voice.
Striebel speaks faster, much, much faster. He probably says three times as many words in a minute than Boyle does. He pauses only to laugh uproariously at what he's said - or perhaps at what he's heard - and then continues. With Boyle, the humor is more subtle - "kids dream of scoring the game-winning goal, perhaps not necessarily assisting on it," he says - whereas with Striebel, the laughs come charging directly at you.
He changes subjects on a dime, and he speaks with complete passion about whatever that minute's subject is. Then, in another second, it's on to the next.
Boyle refers to Striebel as "very, very close to my heart" and says "I love him dearly." Striebel calls Boyle "the dude who used to struggle to get to practice on time" and says it to mean exactly what Boyle said about him.
"Even though they appear to be an odd couple," Tierney says, "what they really are is the confluence of one guy who's passion is ridiculous and one who's knowledge is even more so."
They are definitely men with different personalities. A little over a decade ago, they were two college kids with different personalities - who happened to play the same position.
"It really wasn't much of a decision," Tierney says. "We tried them together in the fall, and I've never seen two great players get more in each other's way. Plus, B.J. was healthy, and we had [Sean] Hartofilis and Brendan [Tierney], who had started the year before."
Striebel was a soccer player at Princeton as well, so he missed most of the fall practices anyway. Plus, it didn't take long for it to be clear that Boyle's was a special talent.
"With any team I'm on, and Ryan is the same way, I just want to win," Striebel says. "I realized quickly that Ryan was the guy who'd be instrumental in making us win. When they told me they were bumping me to midfield, I said 'let's do it if it's going to make us win.' "
Had he said something like "but I've been an All-America at that position and it's the only one I know how to play," it might have all been different.
Or, if he said to the coaching staff "okay" and to every other senior "who's this freshman think he is," it likewise could have been a disaster.
"Our biggest worry was how Matt would handle it," Tierney says. "It's easy to look back now and see how it all worked out, but really, going back to the moment, knowing Matt Striebel, we had the assumption that he'd handle it like he did everything else, which was to do whatever he needed to for the good of the team."
If the move bothered him, he never let on.
"The fact that accepted it the way he did was incredible," Boyle says. "It speaks volumes about his character and leadership. It takes a special kind of person to move over so some freshman punk can take over. It takes a special kind of person to accept that and move forward."
The team that opened the season against Johns Hopkins started Boyle on attack and Striebel at midfield. Boyle had four assists in the game, and Princeton won 8-4.
Striebel looks back on it in typical - for him - fashion.
"It could have gone really badly," Striebel says. "But hey, I'm better suited to be a midfielder anyway. Now if they moved me to the bench instead, I might not have liked it."
Princeton went 11-1 during the 2001 regular-season, with only another relatively big loss to Syracuse - 14-8 at the Carrier Dome in the fourth game of the year - and then beat Loyola 8-7 in the quarterfinals at Hofstra and Towson 12-11 on a late Hartofilis goal to reach the championship game. Waiting there would of course be Syracuse.
From the 1999 NCAA tournament through the 2001 final, Princeton was 0-4 against Syracuse and 25-1 against all other teams.
"Our confidence level was high going into the game," Boyle says. "We had made some adjustments strategically. Mostly, though, it was the neutral site. When they play in front of the big crowd cheering them on, it's easier to perform. This wasn't a contained arena with solid attendance cheering them on."
No, this was at Rutgers Stadium, 20 minutes from the Princeton campus.
"We won the semifinal game, and we were going to go back to Princeton to practice," Tierney says. "A bunch of the seniors came to me, and one of them, I think it was Ryan Mollett, said that we didn't need to practice. He said to just give them the plan and they'll carry it out, and that's exactly what they did. We changed a lot of things overnight. We played things differently."
Ironically, the biggest issue for Princeton heading into the game wasn't physical at all. After four consecutive losses, including three straight that weren't competitive, Princeton had to convince itself that it could win the game.
Still, as Boyle said, this wasn't going to be in a "contained arena," which of course, meant he was referring to the Carrier Dome, Syracuse's intimidating home field.
Unlike a normal college lacrosse facility, the Dome is just that, a dome, an indoor building, one with silver seats that make picking up the ball difficult - at least the ones that aren't occupied by one of the sport's most passionate fan bases.
If Princeton had anything going for it heading into the 2001 final, it was the knowledge that the regular season game had been in the Dome and therefore was largely irrelevant.
"It was all psychological," Tierney says. "When you play them in the Dome, it's a whole different ball of wax. We had confidence. We had beaten everyone else we'd played. We knew we'd played poorly at Syracuse earlier. It was just a matter of mentally believing we could do it."
Princeton trailed Syracuse 10-2 at halftime of the 2000 regular-season game at Class of 1952 Stadium before falling 16-4. The 2000 NCAA final saw Syracuse go up 6-0 before Princeton finally scored. The Tigers trailed at various times by 6-1 and 11-4 in the 14-8 regular-season loss at the Carrier Dome in 2001.
In the NCAA championship game, though, Princeton finally
was able to play from ahead. Brad Dumont scored 2:44 into the game, and
Striebel had a goal and assist in the first quarter to make it 3-0. It became
4-0 before SU scored, and the Tigers would lead 5-3 at intermission as Striebel
scored again.
By the end of the third quarter, Princeton led 8-4, as Striebel had his second assist and Boyle had his first assist. With 15 minutes to go, Princeton was in complete control.
"Mostly, I remember random details about the game," Striebel says. "Like the Princeton socks. We all had to wear these traditional Princeton socks, but for that game, I cut my socks and wore lower ones. I remember feeling so prepared for that game and so confident that all of superstitions went out the window."
Princeton in 2001 had two gifted shortstick defensive middies, Kyle Baugher and Winship Ross, and both would figure in what happened that day.
Baugher broke his arm in the semifinal game and couldn't play in the final, but he still had an impact.
"Kyle Baugher gave a great talk to the team in the lockerroom before the game," Striebel says. "I remember going out after that thinking that this was going to be ours. And then we got off to this blistering start. It was almost a giddy feeling."
Had Princeton fallen behind, there's almost no way it would have been able to get over the psychological hurdle, so getting off to the good start was a must. Otherwise, it might have turned into another rout.
"Brad had a few early inverts," Boyle says. "That's exactly what we'd talked about. We ran some crease plays to free up B.J. [Prager]. Defensively, I remember we didn't slide as much. We didn't create offense for them. We felt we matched up well enough against them."
Syracuse, of course, had no intention of giving up.
"To their credit," Boyle says, "they recognized the kind of game it was and realized they'd have to execute six-on-six. And to their credit, they did."
Even with the lead at four after 45 minutes, Princeton wasn't able to start celebrating.
"I knew they'd make a run," Boyle says.
Syracuse needed less than half the fourth quarter to tie the game at 8-8. Spencer Wright started the comeback just 21 seconds into the fourth quarter, and that goal seemed to knock Princeton out of its comfort zone. Mikey Powell - then a freshman and known as Michael - scored his first of the day, and Brian Solliday made it 8-7 with 10:03 left. The tying goal came from Wright with 7:40 left.
Princeton would get a 30-second man-advantage opportunity a minute later, and Boyle made it count, feeding Prager from up top to the crease for a nice catch and turnaround shot that made it 9-8 with 6:13 left, which is an eternity.
In the fourth quarter, Syracuse would outshoot Princeton 19-5, but Trevor Tierney made two big saves in the final minutes, including one that led to a clear with less than a minute left. Ross, the great shortstick D-middie, then did the unimaginable - he ran into the box and immediately out of it, giving possession back to the Orange with 34 seconds left. With 26 seconds left, SU got the ball across midfield and called timeout.
Only one person touched the ball after that, and it was Powell, who dodged All-America defenseman Damien Davis and bounced a shot past Tierney to knot it at 9-9 with 16 seconds left and force overtime.
"I don't think I've ever watched the tape," Tierney says. "When I got back to that, I don't do it on tapes. I do it on memories. The memories are so vivid."
Syracuse had forced the overtime and appeared to have all the momentum, not to mention the best face-off man in college lacrosse, Chris Cercy. Still, Tierney wasn't panicking between the end of regulation and the start of the overtime.
"That timeout was memorable," Tierney says. "Mostly because I had to stop Trevor and Mollett from killing Winship."
While Tierney was playing peacemaker, Boyle had other thoughts.
"I knew it wasn't going to be a five-goal win for us," he says. "I knew it was going to be one goal. Mikey made a great play at the end of regulation. But Damien was such a warrior, and I knew if they went at him again, the next one would be Damien's. I was thinking that all we had to do was score one goal and we'd win a national championship. That's how I looked at it. You always hear about how every possession is important, but that's a cliché. Here, it was a really true."
If Boyle was being logical, Striebel was being his own usual self, which meant being emotional.
"I remember standing there thinking that there was no way that we we're losing this game," he says. "No way. Somehow, some way, we were going to make a play."
Matt Bailer won the face-off to start the overtime, and Striebel took the first shot of the extra session, an effort that went wide, with possession to the Orange. Syracuse cleared, and Powell would eventually go after Davis, who this time stripped the ball. Princeton controlled but couldn't get it across midfield before SU caused a turnover, but in an attempt to create a fast break opportunity, Powell threw the ball past the cutting Liam Banks.
As it rolled to the corner, Powell and Mollett went after it, and it would skip out of bounds off Powell, possession to Princeton.
Powell, who thought he had been pushed, was slow to get up, causing a short delay before the restart. Once play began, Mollett threw the ball crossfield to Ricky Schultz, a freshman longstick, and Schultz brought it up the sideline before getting it to Chris Harrington, who helped clear it behind the goal to Boyle with less than a minute left in the first OT.
As Boyle began to settle the ball, he saw Prager cut to the goal, and Boyle put it right into Prager's stick. Prager then flipped it into the goal, giving Princeton the win 10-9 with 41 seconds remaining.
"It was all weirdly simple," says Tierney, who won four of his six NCAA titles at Princeton in overtime. "We cleared it. B.J. got open. Ryan threw him the ball."
In fact, the first instinct would have been to hold for the final shot of the OT and not give Syracuse another chance. Princeton had already spent its timeout, but with Boyle on the field, it didn't need to go over anything.
"We didn't set anything up," Boyle says. "It was like we were harmlessly moving the ball around, getting ready to do whatever we were going to do. The next thing I knew, B.J. was open. I almost didn't throw him the ball, because I couldn't believe how open he was. I hesitated for a split-second and luckily not a full second, because he wouldn't have been open anymore."
Prager's goal was his fourth of the day and came on Boyle's third assist. Prager would earn Most Outstanding Player honors.
After the goal went into the back of the net, there were two kinds of reactions.
The first was the one for all the players.
"I just ran and kept running," Boyle says. "I didn't know where to go. I was just running with my arms up in the air, away from our bench. Then I jumped into D.C.'s [Dan Clark's] arms."
Striebel was having a similar experience.
"I remember seeing the play develop, and I had this sense that B.J. was going to get the goal," he says. "It's almost like it happened before it really happened. I just started sprinting and grabbing my closest teammates and yelling."
Not everyone was laughing and jumping up and down.
Tierney, the head coach, had won his sixth NCAA title, but this one was the only one in which both of his sons, Trevor and Brendan, were on the team. Unable to handle the emotion of having his wildest coaching dream come true, Tierney collapsed to the grass and began to weep.
"Throughout my career, I've spoken to kids all the time about being unselfish," Tierney says. "That was my one selfish moment."
To his credit, Tierney never spoke to the team about the personal significance of the 2001 season, how it was his last chance to win with both sons.
"That was such a personal moment for him," Boyle says. "You know how parents say they love all their children equally? All coaches will say they love all their championships equally, but I'm sure if Coach T had a favorite national championship it'd be that one. But he also knew that telling us about it wouldn't resonate, so he just kept it to himself. He never made a big deal out of it."
The image of Tierney as he kneels on the grass, head in hands, completely overcome, is seared into the memory of anyone who saw it.
"I remember seeing the photo afterwards," Striebel says. "I remember the picture of him, breaking down on the field. I saw it, like, four years later, and it immediately hit me again what an incredible moment that was for him."
Princeton and Syracuse met again a year later in the NCAA final, also at Rutgers Stadium. Syracuse won that game 13-12; it was the last NCAA championship lacrosse game played on a college campus.
Boyle would play in the 2004 Final Four as well, and he finished his career second all-time at Princeton in points with 233.
The 2001 season was the first year of Major League Lacrosse, and Ryan Mollett was the first overall selection. With the advent of an outdoor professional league, a generation of lacrosse mega-stars emerged, with Boyle and Striebel among them.
Together they would win three Major League Lacrosse championships with the Philadelphia Barrage, and they would win World Championships together with the U.S. national team in 2002 in Perth, Australia, and 2010, in Manchester, England. In an ironic twist, Striebel has at times been called the best midfielder in the world, though he only plays the position because Boyle came to Princeton and knocked him off of attack.
In addition, they work together with Trilogy Lacrosse, an educational venture that helps bring the game to youth players throughout the country.
"It's absurd, what they've done together," Tierney says. "Why are they so successful? They have a passion for the game that's unmatched. They have a longevity. And they found each other."
And so today, they continue to move down the same road, even on the same corporate team. Boyle is the Trilogy CEO; Striebel is the Director of Research and Development.
They both continue to play professionally at the highest level, even as Striebel is into his 30s and Boyle is approaching his. There's a new generation of high-profile, highly marketed stars coming up behind them, and their time on the field figures not to last too many more years.
"I'll ask some of the kids we work with if they know who Jesse Hubbard is," Striebel says of the all-time leading goal scorer at Princeton, who led the Tigers to the 1996, 1997 and 1998 NCAA titles. "And I'm shocked by how many don't know. That's just how it is. They all know who [former Duke star] Ned Crotty is now."
Still, they are two of the all-time greats in their sport, two players who first met up on a special team that won a very special championship 10 years ago and who went on to win big on every level after that.
But that's not completely what their legacy will be. It won't just be Ryan Boyle. It won't just be Matt Striebel.
It'll be both of them together, inseparable in their place in lacrosse history.
Together.
As players, as friends, as competitors, as winners.
As brothers.
- by Jerry Price