Burns Goal With 17 Seconds Left Gives No. 2 Princeton A Thrilling 15-14 Win Over No. 9 Harvard

Saturday, April 18

Cambridge, Mass.

1:00 PM

Princeton University

10-2, 4-1

Harvard

9-3, 3-2

Team	1	2	3	4	Final F
Princeton	3	3	4	5	15
Harvard	2	7	1	4	14

Colin Burns scores the game-winner with 17 seconds left to give Princeton a 15-14 win over Harvard.

Photo by: Camryn Ley

Burns Goal With 17 Seconds Left Gives No. 2 Princeton A Thrilling 15-14 Win Over No. 9 Harvard

April 18, 2026 | Men's Lacrosse

Box Score

Without the fourth quarter, what happened between No. 2 Princeton and No. 9 Harvard Saturday afternoon would have been a great game anyway. The final 15 minutes? That just elevated things to epic status.

Colin Burns' goal with 17 seconds remaining gave Princeton a thrilling 15-14 win over the Crimson and a huge step forward in the Ivy League race. The game-winner, which was the fifth of the day from Burns, ended a wild fourth quarter that began 10-10 and featured nine goals, five ties and five lead changes.

The win improved the Tigers to 10-2 overall and 4-1 in the Ivy League, tied with Cornell for first place with one weekend to go in the regular season. Princeton would have no worse than a share of the Ivy League title with a win at home against Dartmouth this coming Saturday and would win the outright championship with a win and a Harvard win at Cornell. The opposite is true, of course, as a Cornell win and Princeton loss would give the outright championship to the Big Red. There can also be a three-way or four-way tie depending on the outcomes of those two games, plus Yale at Brown. Princeton, Cornell and Harvard are assured of Ivy tournament spots already.

OH MY BURNSIE pic.twitter.com/XcHTVEeSlG
— Princeton Men's Lacrosse (@TigerLacrosse) April 18, 2026

The fourth quarter was just nuts. It started with Harvard with the final 1:11 of a two-minute non-releasable extra man opportunity, one that came up empty. Then Harvard put home the first of those nine goals to retake the lead, and the craziness was officially underway.

Princeton tied it. Then Princeton took the lead. The next two went to the Crimson. Now it was 13-12 Crimson with 4:45 to go. Game over? Nah. Game just starting.

Jake Vana tied it with 3:47 to go. Ah, but Teddy Malone put Harvard back on top, 14-13, 2:13 to go. Was it over now?

Nope. Chad Palumbo tied it with 1:41 to go. Harvard won the face-off briefly, but Zach Friedman came away with the ball when it came loose. With a chance to win it, the ball went to freshman Parker Reynolds, who missed wide, with possession to Princeton. Reynolds tried to dodge again and then got the ball to Burns, who was behind the cage with the shot clock about to expire. He beat the goalie and the clock for the game-winner.

There was still the matter of the final face-off. Harvard, who came into the game with one of the lowest ranked units in Division I, had battled all day to the point where each team had won 15 to that point. This time Andrew McMeekin won it forward and collected the groundball, allowing the Tigers to run out the clock.

Nate Kabiri had three goals for the Tigers, while nobody else had more than one. Princeton did get one goal each from five different midfielders — Tucker Wade, Parker Reynolds, Jake Vana, Porter Malkiel and Aidan McDonald — or six if you count face-off man McMeekin, who won 15 of 27 and had 10 groundballs.

Princeton led 5-2 early before Harvard went up 9-6 at intermission. After making five first-half saves while allowing nine goals, Croddick reversed those numbers, with nine saves and five goals against in the second half.

McMeekin became the second Priceton player ever to reach 600 career face-off wins and now has 614, which trails all-time leader Greg Waller, who had 646, by 32.