Princeton Travels To Baltimore For 88th Meeting With Johns Hopkins

PRINCETON (1-1) at JOHNS HOPKINS (1-2)
Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018 • Homewood Field • Baltimore, Md.
Series - Hopkins leads 57-30
Last meeting - Princeton defeated Johns Hopkins 18-7 • March 3, 2017

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Princeton vs. Johns Hopkins, Five Storylines

1) Will there be a carryover from last year?
Princeton defeated Johns Hopkins 18-7 last year on Sherrerd Field in a game that was 3-2 after one quarter and then 10-2 at the half after Princeton played a perfect second quarter. The game was the largest margin of victory for Princeton in its 87 games against Johns Hopkins.

The question is what effect will that game have on the 88th meeting. Well, looking back just one year earlier might give a clue. The 2016 Princeton-Hopkins game was won by the Blue Jays by a 17-7 score, and Princeton was able to put together a 21-goal differential from one year to the next.

In fact, there will be no player in this game who has ever won or lost two straight games in this series, as the last four years have gone Hopkins (2014), Princeton (2015), Hopkins (2016), Princeton (2017). Going back further, the teams have split the last 18 games since the year 2000.

If you want to go back way further, Princeton and Johns Hopkins first played in 1892, with a 3-2 Princeton win that was the only game the teams played until they met again in 1930. The teams would play in 1931 and 1932, not play from 1933-36 and then play again every year since except for 1944.

Hopkins won every game from 1967 through the first round of the 1990 NCAA tournament. Princeton is 3-0 against the Blue Jays in NCAA games.

2) The face-off
Princeton won 17 of 28 face-offs against Johns Hopkins last year, including a 6-for-8 second quarter. Hopkins didn't have Hunter Moreland for that game, but he is back now, winning just short of 59 percent so far this season. Princeton did have Zach Currier for that game. If you forgot, Currier's line from the 2017 game was this: 15 for 19 facing off, 10 ground balls and a caused turnover, not to mention three assists. If there's one player the Blue Jays won't miss, it's Currier, who had a similarly dominant game in 2015 (a 16-15) and then didn't play in the 2016 game (the 17-7 loss). In other words, in the last three years, Princeton has averaged 17 goals per game when Currier has played and seven in the game he didn't.

Princeton was .500 facing off against Monmouth and then saw UVa win 26 of 36 last week. Virginia got a Currier-like effort from Ryan Conrad, who had 10 ground balls, mostly off the face-off wings.

For Princeton, Andrew Song was the Ivy League Rookie of the Week after his performance against Virginia, which included strong play of his own on the face-off wings, including a goal off a ground ball off a face-off.

3) The Sims effect
Austin Sims torched Johns Hopkins with six goals a year ago, including what was likely the Princeton goal of the year for the first goal of the day. On that goal, Sims fell, got up, split three Blue Jay defenders and then rocketed one low-to-high. He followed that with five more and then another six-goal game against Quinnipiac three days later.

This year, Sims is playing on all three of Princeton's midfield lines, and he had two goals and an assist against Virginia. Of Princeton's 15 goals against UVa, seven - just about half - came from other Tiger middies who were playing alongside Sims, and four separate middies besides Sims scored.

Emmet Cordrey, a junior, entered the game against Virginia with three career goals; he matched that in the first half. Riley Thompson had two, and Bradeon Gait and Connor McCarthy had one each. Go back one more week against Monmouth, and you can add Dawson McKenzie to the list of middies playing alongside Sims who have scored at least once in the first two games.

4) Spreading it around
Michael Sowers had 41 assists as a freshman. Of those 41, there were 20 that went to Gavin McBride alone, as McBride set the program record with 54 goals in 2017.

Through two games this year, Sowers has seven assists. That's a pace for 46 for the 13-game regular season; the school record for a season is 48, shared by Jon Hess and Ryan Boyle. Those are pretty good guys to be chasing.

So far through two games, an admittedly small sample, Sowers has an assist on goals from five players, with no player who has more than the two that both Phillip Robertson and Riley Thompson have. The other three have gone to Dawson McKenzie, Emmet Cordrey and Austin Sims.

Freshman Chris Brown has gotten off to a fast start as well, with three goals and six assists of his own. In fact, Princeton has scored 24 goals this season,. and 16 - exactly two-thirds - have been assisted goals. Of those 16, Sowers and Brown have obviously combined for 13.

5) In goal
Princeton's Tyler Blaisdell, the 2017 first-team All-Ivy goalie, has seen 105 shots in two games. That averages to a lot of shots per game.

Blaisdell, who has started 35 straight games in goal, leads Division I in save per game at 15.5 per game through just the two games. That number isn't as high as his average saves per game in his two starts against Johns Hopkins, with 16 saves and seven goals against last year and 17 goals-against but with 20 saves in 2016. Blaisdell's 20 saves at Hopkins in 2016 are the most by a Princeton goalie in 12 years.

A year ago, Brock Turnbaugh had five saves and four goals against in the Princeton game for Hopkins. For the year, Turnbaugh is at .516, up from .408 last year.

Assorted Princeton Notes

* Phillip Robertson has six goals on six shots this year (3 for 3 in each of the first two games). He is 9 for 10 for his career, with the only miss a shot that went wide against NJIT last year. That means that in his short career, Robertson has never had a shot saved by an opposing goalie.

* Andrew Song became the sixth Princeton player since caused turnovers became a stat in 2009 to have at least one goal, ground ball, caused turnover and face-off win in the same game. The other five: Paul Barnes, Peter Smyth, Jeff Froccaro, Jake Froccaro, Zach Currier.

* Daniel Winschuh has started every game on defense since the start of last season, and Arman Medghalchi started the final 13 games on D a year ago and the first two this year. Aran Roberts started the last 13 games on D as a freshman in 2015 (and won Ivy Rookie of the Week honors after Princeton's win over Hopkins) and now, after missing almost all of the last two years due to injury, has started the first two games this year. That's a total of 47 career starts among the three of them.

* Chris Brown had five points against Monmouth, joining Michael Sowers as the only two Princeton freshmen ever to have at least five points in the first game freshman year. Those two are now also the only two Princeton freshmen to have at least four points in each of the first two games.

* Michael Sowers has 91 career points in 17 career games. If he can get nine points in the next four games, then he will beat the record for fastest to 100 in Princeton history. David Tickner and Wick Sollers both reached 100 career points in 22 career games.

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