Princeton, Cornell Square Off In Ivy Tournament Semifinal

PRINCETON (7-8, 5-2 Ivy) vs. CORNELL (12-4, 5-2)
Berylson Field • Cambridge, Mass.
Nov. 3, 2023 • noon

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The first Ivy League field hockey tournament begins with a rematch of an epic regular season game as third-seeded Princeton meets second-seeded Cornell Friday at noon at Harvard. The second semifinal will pit the top-seeded Crimson against fourth-seeded Penn.

If the Princeton-Cornell game is half as exciting as the first time the teams met this season, then the tournament will get off to a dramatic start.

Princeton vs. Cornell
Five Storylines

The last time
Princeton defeated Cornell 3-2 in a penalty shootout back on Sept. 29 on Princeton's Bedford Field.

Princeton played its best first half of the year and led 2-0 at the break after completing shutting down the Cornell offense. The deadly Big Red penalty corner game was non-existent, as the Tiger defense repeatedly kept the ball out of the circle, and Princeton cashed in two chances of its own off corners, the first on an Ottilie Sykes blast and the second when Ella Cashman tipped in a drive from Ava Dempsey.

Cornell, though, chipped away, getting one late in the third and then tying it after a great run by Olivia Friedberg that led to an equally beautiful tip in from Antonia Packard, making it a 2-2 game with 5:42 to go. Both teams had chances after that, including penalty corners in the two overtimes, but nobody broke through. Cornell actually had a breakaway on a steal from Ashley Plzak in the second OT, but Thompson was able to just knock it away before Plzak could end it. When Ella Cashman deflected away a blast from Caroline Ramsey on a corner in the final minute of the second OT, it was off to the shootout.

Both teams scored on their first attempts, with Cornell's Claire Wolf answered by Princeton's Talia Schenck. After that, it went miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss to end the regulation part of the shootout and then miss, miss in the first extra round. Helena Große finally scored on the seventh attempt of the shootut, and Thompson turned one more aside to end it.

Second place
Princeton, Cornell and Penn all finished tied for second place in the league at 5-2, having gone 1-1 against each other, 0-1 against Harvard and 4-0 against everyone else. The seedings were determined by goal-differential in the games between the three tied teams, in which Cornell was +1, Princeton was even and Penn was minus-1.

Only once since 1994 has Princeton not finished either first or second in the league (that one time was 2004).

Princeton has won 27 Ivy League championships, more than every other team in the league combined.

All-Ivy Tigers
Ottilie Sykes became Princeton's 14^th freshman to earn first-team All-Ivy and 24^th player to be named the league Rookie of the Year, in a vote of the league's eight head coaches. Sykes has played every minute of every game this season as the center back, and she also has three goals and two assists.

Princeton had seven All-Ivy honorees in all. Ella Cashman, another freshman, was named second-team All-Ivy, as was sophomore Talia Schenck. Seniors Liz Agatucci, Bridget Murphy and Robyn Thompson were honorable mention choices, while senior Sam Davidson was named Academic All-Ivy League for the second straight year.

The All-Ivy League first team had 11 players, of whom six were freshmen or sophomores and five were juniors or seniors. The second team had 13 players on it, and the breakdown was seven freshmen/sophomores and six juniors/senior.

Close calls
The Princeton-Cornell game was one of 10 the Tigers have played this year that have been decided by one goal. That's 10 of the 15 the team has played.

Princeton went to overtime six times and won two of its other games in the final two minutes of regulation.

Most recently, Princeton went into overtime last Friday night in New Haven against Yale, winning that game 2-1 on Bridget Murphy's goal 51 seconds into the OT. For Murphy, it was her second overtime goal of the year, after she also scored the winner against Delaware.

Of Princeton's 15 games this season, nearly half — seven — finished with a score of 2-1.

Strength of schedule
Princeton has played seven of the top 11 teams in the country according to the current RPI. Among those games, the Tigers defeated No. 7 Maryland 3-2 and lost in double overtime to No. 1 North Carolina and No. 5 Rutgers.

Other notes
* Princeton leads the all-time series with Cornell 36-6-3 and has won the last six meetings, as well as 14 of the last 15.

* Cornell leads Division I in scoring offense (3.62 goals per game).

* Princeton field hockey is being represented by two players at the Pan Am Games. One is Beth Yeager, the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year and a first-team All-American each of the last two seasons as a freshman and sophomore, who has taken this year off from school to be in the US National Team. The Americans play Thursday in the semifinals against Chile, the host nation, while Canada — featuring 2018 grad Elise Wong — plays Argentina in the other semifinal. The winner of the Pan Am Games gets an automatic entry into the 2024 Olympics. The other three teams that reached the semifinals but do not win the Pan Ams gold will advance to the final round of Olympic qualifying at events in either Belgium or China in early 2024.

* The Ivy League tournament final will be Sunday at 1, and the winner will receive the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

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