Princeton, Looking To Build On Momentum, Hosts Brown In Key Ivy Matchup

PRINCETON (3-5, 0-2 Ivy League) VS. BROWN (3-5, 1-0 Ivy League)

Sherrerd Field at Class of 1952 Stadium • Princeton, N.J.
Saturday, March 30, 2019 • 1 pm
Series history Princeton leads 32-26
Last year Brown defeated Princeton 14-13 • March 31, 2018

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In case you don't feel like going back through the goprincetontigers.com archives to the recap from the 2018 Princeton-Brown, here's the really, really prescient part:

The difference between the teams on the field was slight, but the impact in the standings was significant.

Brown defeated Princeton 14-13 a year ago in Providence, tying it on a Carson Song goal with 1:10 left and then winning it on MIchael Panepinto's goal with 14.3 to play. It was a great game, but it was also a crushing game for Princeton.

As the story said, the difference in the standings was significant. As in, it kept Princeton out of the Ivy League tournament and got Brown in, since those two and Penn all tied for third place but Brown and Penn had the tiebreaker over Princeton by virtue of the head-to-head wins. Had Princeton won the game and all other results stayed the same, it would have been Princeton instead of Brown in the ILT.

Yup, the impact in the standings was significant.

Now it's 52 weeks later, and Princeton this time is hosting Brown in another huge matchup that will also directly impact the Ivy League tournament race. Princeton comes into the game with the most momentum it's had in awhile after its 14-13 win over Denver Tuesday night.

Princeton vs. Brown
Five Storylines

Busy Bodies
Princeton and Brown will both be playing their third game in eight days, though Brown does have one extra day of rest. On the other hand, Brown is playing its fifth game in 15 days, so this is a really busy stretch for both.

Brown and Princeton are both 3-5, with the difference that Princeton is 0-2 in the Ivy League (losses to Penn and Yale) while Brown is 1-0 in the league (having beaten Harvard).

Brown comes in having lost three straight, including to UMass 14-7 last Saturday and then Villanova 11-10 Monday. Princeton snapped its four-game losing streak with the Denver win Tuesday, which came after a 15-10 loss to Yale last Saturday.

22 for 22
Michael Sowers (No. 22 for the Tigers) had a huge start to his week with three goals, three assists and some spectacular highlights in the 14-13 win over Denver.

Sowers will be facing Brown for the fourth time in his career, having already faced Brown in two regular-season games and the 2017 Ivy League tournament. In those three games, Sowers has 22 points on 11 goals and 11 assists.

More about Sowers:
* he is tied with Jesse Hubbard for fourth all-time at Princeton with 211 points, four away from Jon Hess for third. Ahead of that would be only Ryan Boyle with 232 and Kevin Lowe with 247.
* he leads all active Division I players with a 5.86 career points per game average; it is also the sixth-best all-time and the best since 1981
* he and Cornell's Jeff Teat are tied with 211 career points, second among active Division I players behind Loyola's Pat Spencer (322)

The goalies
Phil Goss has played against Princeton three times and made 52 saves in those three games. Princeton has reached double figures in goals in all three of those games and averaged 16.3 goals, but Goss has stood tall – literally, he's 6-4 - against 144 Princeton shots in those three games. Goss is used to seeing a lot of shots, and he leads all active Division I goalies in saves per game for a career, with 12.56.

Erik Peters has started the last three games in goal for Princeton, and he has played 224:11 so far this season. In that time, he has faced 173 shots, also a lot. Peters made 14 saves in the 14-13 win over Denver Tuesday night.

Jon Levine, who started the first five games, is out indefinitely with an injury.

By the way, the 224:11 that Peters has played this year is also his career total. Goss has played 2,236 career minutes.

Possessions
Princeton and Brown rank 12^th and 13^th in Division I in ground balls per game. Princeton averages 35.25 per game, which is one quarter of a ground ball more than Brown.

Brown has done better on face-offs, and in fact the Bears' Jason Simaan ranks third in the Ivy League at .557, behind only Yale's TD Ierlan and Penn's Kyle Gallagher. Princeton's Jack-Henry Vara is fifth in the league at .474.

On the other hand, Vara has gone against both Ierlan and Gallagher, two transfers who have made a huge immediate impact on the Ivy League, while Simaan has not. If you take away Vara's games against Ierlan and Gallagher, his percentage jumps from .474 to .536.

One thing in common
Princeton and Brown have one common opponent, and that's Virginia. And they both had basically the same thing happen: They both lost in overtime.

Princeton lost 12-11 to the Cavs, who are coached by former Brown coach Lars Tiffany. Brown then lost 14-13.

Princeton and Brown both outshot Virginia. Princeton had a 42-35 edge in ground balls in the game, while Brown lost that stat 59-43. Princeton won 16 of 26 face-offs; Brown won 13 of 29.

Both teams were done in by big performances in goal by UVa, though by different goalies. Patrick Burkinshaw made a Sherrerd Field-record 24 saves against the Tigers, while Alex Rode made 19 against Brown.

Other notes

* If it had not been for the extraordinary numbers that Michael Sowers has put up in his career, then Chris Brown would be talked about as having one of the best starts any Princeton player has ever had. In fact, Brown has at least one goal in all 21 games of his career, which is the longest streak by far of any Princeton player since freshmen became eligible in the 1970s. He is one of seven players in Division I who has at least one point in every game of his career with a minimum of 20 games played (Sowers is another). Brown leads the Tigers in goals with 18 and is second in points with 30.

* Princeton and Brown played a long series of low-scoring games prior to the 2017 season. In the 13 meetings between the two prior to that, the total number of goals scored was 16.38, and the losing team averaged 5.97 goals in those 13 games. Going back 34 times prior to 2017, both teams had reached double figures in goals three times – in 1991, 2002 and 2014. The scores of the three meetings since then have been 21-11 Princeton, 17-15 Brown and 14-13 Brown.

* Emmet Cordrey's huge senior year continued with three more goals and an assist in the win over Denver Tuesday night. Cordrey had 10 goals and three assists for his first three years and now has 17 goals and 12 assists in eight games of his senior year.

* George Baughan had a career-high five caused turnovers against Denver. Baughan, who led the Ivy League a year ago as a freshman, is 16^th in Division I in caused turnovers per game with 2.13.

* Princeton was one of the worst clearing teams in the country a year ago, ranking 65^th in Division I. This year the Tigers lead the Ivy League and are 14^th in Division I.

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