Princeton Opens Its 112th Season By Hosting Monmouth

Princeton (0-0) vs. Monmouth (1-0)
Sherrerd Field at Class of 1952 Stadium • Princeton, N.J.
Feb. 15, 2020 • 1 p.m.

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The opening face-off for the 112^th season of Princeton's men's lacrosse coincides with the start of Game 2 of the seventh season of Monmouth men's lacrosse.

One week after opening its season with an 11-8 win over NJIT, Monmouth travels to Princeton for the third meeting between the teams. This is a matchup of two teams who are looking to play into their conference tournaments and beyond come May.

Princeton vs. Monmouth
Five storylines

Round three
Princeton and Monmouth meet for the third time ever, and the third-straight year in Princeton's first game of the season.
The first two meetings have been radically different, as Princeton won two years ago 9-8 in two overtimes on a Riley Thompson goal from Michael Sowers and then followed that with a 23-7 win a year ago in West Long Branch.
Monmouth took a program-record 57 shots in the game two years ago and outshot Princeton 57-36. Princeton outshot Monmouth 59-39 in the game a year ago.

On attack
Princeton's starting attack against Monmouth will be the same one from two years ago but not the same one as a year ago. Princeton will start with Chris Brown, Phillip Robertson and Michael Sowers, as was the case in 2018, but Robertson missed the game last year due to injury.
Brown and Sowers both had seven-point games against Monmouth a year ago (Brown was 5-2-7 and Sowers was 2-5-7), and the three of them together had 12 points in the game two years ago.
In two career games against Monmouth, Brown has seven goals and five assists, while Sowers has three goals and eight assists.

More offense
Princeton graduated two starting midfielders (Emmet Cordrey, Charlie Durbin), who were third and fourth on the team in scoring, with 73 points between them. Other than Cordrey (30-19-49) and Durbin (21-3-24), the only seniors a year ago who scored were SSDM Mike Morean (5-2-7), extra-man specialist Dawson McKenzie and starting defenseman Aran Roberts (one assist each).
Princeton returns 232 of the 314 points it scored last year (73.9 percent).

Fresh faces
Princeton will start two freshmen against Monmouth, with Ben Finlay on defense and Alex Slusher in the first midfield. Sam English will be on of the top three shortstick defensive midfielders.
Slusher is one of 24 players on the roster for the U.S. team for the U19 World Championships this summer, while English is still in the pool with Team Canada.
Finlay would be the first defenseman at Princeton to start the first game of his freshman year since Matt Madalon became head coach. In fact, the last time Princeton had a freshman defenseman start the first game was in 2014, when both Bear Goldstein and Will Reynolds did so.

Staff update
Matt Madalon is now in his eighth season with the program and fourth as full-time head coach after serving as interim coach for the last five games of the 2016 season. Madalon has a .574 winning percentage, which is the second-best of the seven Princeton head coaches of the last 70 years (trailing only Bill Tierney).
At one point not too long ago, Princeton had six defensive coordinators in six years. For 2020 Jeremy Hirsch, the 2010 Princeton captain, is in his third year as the defensive coordinator.
Princeton does have a new offensive coordinator for this season as Jim Mitchell has joined the staff, replacing Pat March, who is now at Syracuse. Mitchell was the head coach at Bellarmine a year ago.
Chris Aslanian, one of the leading scorers in Hobart history and a member of the Denver Outlaws, is now the volunteer assistant coach. Tucker Mizhir, who was the volunteer assistant last year, is now in the new position of Director of Lacrosse Operations.

Other notes

* Michael Sowers enters his senior year already as Princeton's all-time leading scorer with 255 points. Sowers, a first-team All-America and Tewaaraton Award finalist last year, has 105 career goals and 150 career assists, making him the only player in program history and one of seven players in Ivy League history with at least 100 career goals and 100 career assists.

* Michael Sowers ranks seventh in Ivy League history with 255 career points, leaving him one point behind Cornell legend Eamon McEneaney. Up next would be Mike French, another Cornell legend, who had 296 points.

* Michael Sowers is one of 23 players in Division I history with at least 150 career assists. Only 14 players in Division I history have reached 160.

* Michael Sowers needs 24 assists to tie Kevin Lowe's Princeton career record of 174. He needs 58 goals to tie Jesse Hubbard's record of 163.

* Chris Brown has at least one goal in all 27 games of his career. Brown enters his junior year with the second-longest streak in Division I in consecutive games with at least one goal, tied with Notre Dame's Bryan Costabile and Penn State's Mac O'Keefe, trailing only Delaware's Charlie Kitchen (33 games).

* Should Chris Brown equal his total of his first two years in the next two years, he'd finish his career with 178 points, which would rank 10^th all-time at Princeton.

* Princeton's top seven ground ball leaders from a year ago return, led by Jake Stevens (60) and Andrew Song (56).

* George Baughan, a unanimous first-team All-Ivy League selection last year, was a preseason second-team All-American selection by Inside Lacrosse

* Junior longstick midfielder Andrew Song has five career goals. The last Princeton longstick to have at least five goals after his sophomore year was John Cunningham, who had six goals (one in 2009, five in 2010), and no Princeton longstick has ever had double figures in goals.

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