Princeton University Athletics
Friday TigerBlog - Quarter Horses
May 15, 2026 | Tiger Blog
The forecast for Sunday in Newark, Del., is for sunny skies and a high of 85 degrees.Â
It'll be there that top-seeded Princeton will play Penn State in the NCAA men's lacrosse quarterfinals. It'll be the second meeting of the year between the teams, after Penn State defeated Princeton 13-7 in the Tigers' season opener back on Valentines' Day.Â
The high temperature for that game was 34.Â
As is always the case, another season has flown by. Just when the weather is getting better, it's time to determine a champion. Â
There are exactly 10 days left between now and Memorial Day, which means that 10 days from today will be the championship game, at Scott Stadium at the University of Virginia.Â
There are, obviously, eight teams left heading into this weekend's quarterfinals. The math is easy: one of those eight teams will be in a dog pile 10 days from now and seven others will be left to think of how close they came and regroup for next year.Â
The first two games will be played tomorrow at Hofstra, where second-seeded Notre Dame will face Johns Hopkins at noon and then No. 3 North Carolina will take on No. 6 Syracuse. Those winners will play in one semifinal.Â
The Princeton-Penn State game is the first one at Delaware, also at noon, followed by a game between two unseeded teams, Georgetown and Duke. The winners of those games play in the other semifinal.Â
Princeton is 11-7 all-time in NCAA quarterfinal games, not that a stat like that matters at all right now. Both Princeton and Penn State are loaded with NCAA tournament appearance, as the Tigers are in their fifth straight tournament and Penn State went to the Final Four a year ago.Â
You remember last year's quarterfinals, right? It was there (at Hofstra) that Princeton and Syracuse played the best game of the 2025 season. As they say, it's a shame either team had to lose. Unfortunately, one did, and it was Princeton, 19-18.
The season opener this year between Princeton and Penn State was not the best game of this season. It was an awful one for the Tigers, who fell behind 7-1 after one quarter and were never in it.Â
Since then? Princeton is 14-1, the lone loss during the regular season to Cornell. That was nine games ago. One of those nine wins was over the Big Red in the Ivy tournament final.Â
This Princeton team has scored more goals than any in program history (238) and has allowed 28 fewer goals this season that last (in one fewer game). Princeton has won 247 face-offs, which obliterates the existing single-season program record.Â
Face-off wins, though, will not be easy to come by Sunday for either team. Penn State has won just over 60 percent of its face-offs this year, with Reid Gills sixth in Division I and Colby Baldwin 25th. Both have more than 100 face-offs wins this year.Â
Of course, if the face-off X is going to be a heavyweight bout, TigerBlog refers you to the Princeton corner, where 6-2, 235-pound Andrew McMeekin sits with his program records for face-off wins and groundballs in a career and his overwhelming postseason success (191 for 336 with 118 GBs in 13 games).
Nate Kabiri comes into the game with 99 career goals and Chad Palumbo comes in 98. Palumbo's last two NCAA games have seen him score 12 goals on 15 shots with three assists.Â
Did you read TB's feature story on John Dunphey yet? You can HERE.
If you don't want to read the whole thing, well, TB doesn't know what to tell you. There is a part of it, though, where Dunphey talked about last year's loss to Syracuse:
The takeaway is that one little play here or there and it can get away from you and suddenly you lose 19-18 instead of win 19-18. It shows you how important every little thing is. Maybe you missed a groundball or took a bad shot in the second quarter and didn't think about it in the moment. You can't take anything for granted. This time is so sacred and so special. It's fleeting. How can you make the most of every day? Like I said, maybe you don't think about it in the moment you didn't get that groundball. This year, we can't let that happen."
Maybe Princeton needed to go through that to get to this point. Lesson learned? Will Princeton be able to reverse what happened three months and 50 degrees ago?Â
The prize for the winner is a big one. Â
