Princeton Falls To No. 1 Maryland

Saturday, February 26

College Park, Md.

1:00 PM

Princeton University

2-1

Maryland

4-0

Princeton

Maryland

Sam English celebrates one of his four goals in Princeton's 15-10 loss to No. 1 Maryland.

Photo by: Brian McWalters

February 26, 2022 | Men's Lacrosse

Box Score

If Maryland is the best team in the country – and its No. 1 ranking and recent pedigree suggests that's certainly a possibility – then the Princeton men's lacrosse team had itself a valuable experience Saturday.

On a day when the final score was 15-10 in favor of the top-ranked Terps, Princeton took another step forward in the process that a team on the rise has to face. This time, it was on the field of a team that lost by one on Memorial Day last year and has every intention of improving on that this time around.

Princeton was led by senior goalie Erik Peters, who was outstanding while making a career-high 19 saves. Sam English eclipsed his previous career goal total (three) with four in this game to lead the Tigers.

"It was a big learning experience for us," said Princeton head coach Matt Madalon. "Maryland is a team that never hurts itself. They don't do anything to hurt themselves, and we learned a lot today about what it takes to compete on that level."

Princeton started out from behind in two figurative ways and then one literal one.

For the majority of the team, this was either the first or second road trip. As in ever. This is a team whose definition of "veteran player" still refers to those who have played in eight or fewer career games.

Second, there was the Tiger face-off game. Tyler Sandoval, who had won 64 percent of his face-offs in two games, couldn't play against Maryland because he was in the Covid protocol. Koby Ginder, the back-up face-off man for the first two games, is out for six or so weeks after dislocating his elbow against Binghamton Tuesday night. That left senior Jack-Henry Vara to take all 29 face-offs in the game – this after he was only released from the Covid protocol Saturday morning, when he traveled down to Maryland by himself. Vara took all of those face-offs after not practicing for more than a week.

As for the literal sense, Maryland scored two goals in the first minute of the game, and Princeton was left to push the rock up the hill the rest of the day. The Tigers cut it to 5-4 at one point in the second quarter and got it within two at 8-6, but the lead was 9-6 at the half and no closer than three the rest of the way.

English, who had three career goals prior to this, had four in the first half against the Terps. Chris Brown had two goals and an assist and extended his streak of consecutive games with at least one goal to 35, the second-best streak in Princeton history.

Princeton's other goal scorers were Alexander Vardaro with two and Tommy Barnds and Alex Slusher with one each. Slusher and Beau Pederson also had assists.

Peters was incredible all day, and his best sequence was his back-to-back point black saves in the fourth quarter for his 16^th and 17^th, which tied his old career high, before he broke it with two more. Ben Finlay had his best game as a Tiger on defense, with a caused turnover and four ground balls that don't really describe how he played.

Next up for Princeton is a trip next Saturday to Georgetown, the No. 3 team in the country, as this stretch of games against highly ranked opponents continues on. It started with the No. 1 team, a loss and a lot of lessons learned.