Princeton University
Rutgers
No. 4 Princeton Hosts Rutgers In 102nd Meeting For The Meistrell Cup
March 06, 2025 | Men's Lacrosse
PRINCETON (3-1; No. 4 Inside Lacrosse/USILA/USA Lacrosse Magazine)
vs.
RUTGERS (3-3)
Saturday, March 8 • 7 pm
Sherrerd Field • Princeton, N.J.
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Probable Princeton starters
Career highs
Career scoring/pronunciations
A – Again
Princeton and Rutgers meet for the 102nd time, and the Tigers lead the series 66-32-3, including a 14-8 Tiger win a year ago in Piscataway. Here are the most played rivalries in Division I men’s lacrosse:
142 - Cornell vs. Hobart
127 - Johns Hopkins vs. Maryland
111 - Princeton vs. Yale
109 - Hobart vs. Syracuse
108 - Cornell vs. Syracuse
105 - Harvard vs. Yale
103 - Army vs. Navy
101 - Princeton vs. Rutgers
B – Bath
Michael Bath has at least one caused turnover in all five games this season and in 15 of his last 16 games dating to last year. He also has 33 caused turnovers in his last 20 games.
C – Conference
Rutgers will be the third Big Ten team Princeton will have played in its first five games of the season. The other two games were against teams from the ACC.
D – Depth
Princeton had 11 different players score at least one goal in last weekend’s sweep of Duke and North Carolina. Of those 11, there were eight who had at least two goals.
E – Excellent
Princeton’s first four opponents were all unbeaten prior to playing the Tigers. For the season, those four (Penn State, Maryland, Duke, North Carolina) are a combined 18-3, with all three losses against Princeton. All four Tiger opponents are ranked in the top 10.
F – Filling It Up
Princeton’s offensive midfielders didn’t have any goals in the opener against Penn State but have had 29 in the last four games.
G – Goals
Chad Palumbo scored a goal against Penn with 8:13 left in the second quarter of the Ivy League final against Penn last May. He then went 318:37 without a goal until the third quarter of the game at North Carolina — and then proceeded to have four in the final 22:26 against the Tar Heels. Palumbo also leads the Tigers with eight assists.
H – Head Coach
Matt Madalon has as record of 65-38 (.631). In the last 55 years, only Bill Tierney (238-86, .735) has won more games and had a higher winning percentage as Princeton head men’s lacrosse coach than Madalon. In fact, you have to go back to Dick Colman (also a Hall of Fame football coach) from 1946-49 to find a coach who has a higher winning percentage than Madalon (minimum two years as head coach).
I – Ivy League
Princeton was picked to finish second in the Ivy League’s preseason media poll, behind Cornell and ahead of, in order, Yale, Penn, Harvard, Brown and Dartmouth. Princeton opens its Ivy season next week at Cornell.
J – J.G.
Shortstick defensive midfielder Jackson Green, known as J.G. to his lacrosse teammates, has been a monster through the first four games, with three goals, a runout of the final nine seconds to protect the win over Duke, two caused turnovers (one in overtime against Penn State) and five ground balls, as well as an immeasurable impact defensively and in transition. Green is a wide receiver on the football team who walked onto the men’s lacrosse team.
K – Krammer
Carson Krammer missed all of last year due to injury. Through four games this year, he has four goals.
L – Leaders
Princeton has two captains for the 2025 season — Michael Bath and Coulter Mackesy.
M – Mackesy
Coulter Mackesy has 14 goals in four games, giving him 137 for his career, third best all-time at Princeton. Jesse Hubbard holds the school record with 163, followed by Chris Massey with 146; both of them graduated in 1998. Mackesy is also seventh at Princeton in career points with 204, four behind Mikey MacDonald for sixth.
Career points at Princeton
1. Michael Sowers 302
2. Kevin Lowe 247
3. Ryan Boyle 232
4. Jon Hess 215
5. Jesse Hubbard 211
6. Mikey MacDonald 208
7. Coulter Mackesy 204
N – Next Generation
Princeton has four players whose fathers competed at Princeton, three of whom played lacrosse. Freshman Kevin Morrow is the son of David Morrow, the 1993 Division I Player of the Year. Freshman Porter Malkiel is the son of Jon Malkiel, a member of the 1992 and 1994 NCAA championship teams. Senior Billy Barnds is the second of Tom Barnds, who captained Princeton’s first NCAA tournament team in 1990. Sophomore Cooper Mueller is the son of Kit Mueller, the 1990 and 1991 Ivy League men’s basketball Player of the Year.
O – Offense
Coulter Mackesy ranks second among active Division I players in both career goals (137) and career points (204), trailing Cornell’s C.J. Kirst in both.
P – Penalty Free
Colin Mulshine has not committed a penalty in 24 straight games (including the entire 2024 season), despite usually guarding the other team’s top attackman. For his career, Mulshine has played in 51 career games, with 46 career starts, and has committed only one penalty (a 30-second hold) in 2023 against Harvard.
Q – Quarterly
There were 55 goals scored in Princeton’s two games last week. Only seven (12 percent) were scored in the first quarters.
R – Road Teams
The visiting team is 4-0 in Princeton’s first four games this season.
S – Swish
Colin Burns is fifth in Division I in shooting percentage (.538).
T – Tots
The winner of the Princeton-Rutgers game gets the Harland (Tots) Meistrell Cup, named for the man who restarted lacrosse at both schools in 1920 (Rutgers) and 1921 (Princeton), after both had dropped their teams in the late 1800s. Two fun Tots facts: 1) He looked a lot like the actor James Caan and 2) he became an expert on training dogs and even wrote several books on the subject.
U – Underclassmen
Princeton starts two sophomores on attack (Colin Burns, Nate Kabiri), one sophomore at midfield (Tucker Wade) and one sophomore on defense (Jack Stahl), with three sophomores at shortstick defensive midfield (Cooper Mueller, Jackson Green, Owen Fischer). Princeton also has a sophomore on the second midfield (Carson Krammer) and another defenseman who is getting regular playing time (Hunter Spiess). That’s a total of nine sophomores who make major contributions from a class that was the No. 1 rated incoming class by Inside Lacrosse a year ago.
V – Very Deep
Princeton has been regularly playing six shortstick defensive midfielders (Liam Fairback, Owen Fischer, Jackson Green, Michael Kelly, Quinn Krammer, Cooper Mueller) and eight poles (Michael Bath, Nick Crowley, Finn Fox, Zach Friedman, Cooper Kistler, Colin Mulshine, Hunter Spiess, Jack Stahl)
W – Welcome Back
Joe Juengerkes is a Princeton graduate who is playing as a grad student at Rutgers. As a Tiger, Juengerkes had 11 caused turnovers and 14 ground balls in 32 career games. Through his first six games with Rutgers, he has caused six turnovers with 20 ground balls, with three goals and an assist. This will be the third straight game in which Princeton has faced a graduate of the Class of 2024: Paul Weathington Jr. (Duke) and Michael Gianforcaro (UNC).
X – Face-off X
Rutgers face-off man Matthew Paolatto ranks ninth in Division I in face-off winning percentage (.634). Already this season Princeton has gone against FO men tied for No. 7 (Colby Baldwin, Penn State), No. 16 (Shea Keethler, Maryland) and No. 24 (Luke Engelke, Duke).
Y – Year 6
Colin Burns and Nate Kabiri are in their sixth year playing together on attack. They’re now in Year 2 at Princeton after playing together for two years at Georgetown Prep and four years as club teammates.
Z – Zinged
Coulter Mackesy and Colin Burns are the only two Princeton players with at least one goal in every game this season.