Sports: February 24, 1999
A rebirth on ice
Men's hockey leads the ECAC, ranked sixth in the nation
Perhaps only at Princeton could there be a link between the root of
a word and a team's losing streak. You see, the month of January is named
after the Roman god Janus, who had two heads that pointed in opposite directions.
And, in January, the men's hockey team has often been a Janus-like team
-- entering the month an efficient machine and exiting as Tentative on Ice.
Last season was a perfect example. The Tigers went into the break 10-4-4,
fresh off an impressive win over #1 Boston University, yet emerged wearing
an entirely different face and went 3-5-3 down the stretch.
In fact, only once in coach Don Cahoon's seven seasons has the team played
better than .500 hockey after the break. To be fair to both Cahoon and his
players, the exam break does come at a brutal time -- while other teams
are working out the kinks and settling into the ECAC schedule, the Princeton
players have to fit practice around their exams. Therefore, it's not surprising
that the Tigers are perennially flat when they come out of the break --
and the ECAC isn't a league for teams not playing their best hockey.
So although the Tigers often looked sloppy while winning their first
three games after break -- beating Army 4-1, Cornell 3-2, and Colgate 2-1
to stay atop the ECAC -- the fact they won at all showed Cahoon more about
his team than if it had played with the grace and fluidity of the 1987 Edmonton
Oilers. "We weren't sharp," Cahoon says, "but I'd give these
kids high marks on grittiness and competitiveness. They showed their maturity
and got the job done."
That maturity has been on display all season as the Tigers have consistently
won the tight games -- they are 6-1 in games decided by one goal. Explaining
that statistic, Cahoon says, "Confidence has been a factor, but it's
also pivotal that you play good team defense." Led by All-America candidate
Steve Shirreffs '99, the defense has been superb and is ranked second in
the ECAC. "Everyone's been contributing," Shirreffs says. "The
forwards have been getting back, and the goalies are playing really well."
In fact, the goalies -- Nick Rankin '99 and Dave Stathos '02 -- have proved
that having two keepers split time isn't necessarily a sign of weakness.
Rankin is first in the ECAC in Goals Against Average, and Stathos is seventh.
"We know that whoever's back there is going to do a good job,"
Shirreffs says.
Coming into the season, it appeared that the offense would be a strength.
But the Tigers' offensive production is down, and the offense is currently
tied for sixth in the ECAC. Last year, the team scored 3.4 goals per game
during league play; this year it's averaging exactly three. The decline
in production has been felt almost equally across the team. For example,
last year's top line, the high-flying "Orange Line" of Jeff Halpern
'99, Scott Bertoli '99, and Casson Masters '98, put up an average of 3.4
points per game -- or 40 percent of Princeton's offense. The top line this
season of Halpern, Bertoli, and Benoit Morin '01 has produced 2.8 points
per game -- 37 percent of Princeton's offense.
Shirreffs points out that it's possible the whole team has just become
more defensive-minded. "Maybe we haven't been taking as many chances,"
he says. "Maybe we're doing better in the defensive zone." Cahoon,
who said in Sports Illustrated that the talent level on his team
was "just a little above the middle of the pack," believes that
the Tigers are a team that needs to play defensive, hard-checking, fundimental
hockey rather than take risks in the offensive zone. "Team defense
is where we live and die," he says.
And the first line has increasingly come to personify that philosophy.
Even though the only change between this year and last was the substitution
of Morin for the graduated Masters, comparing the two lines is like comparing
forecheckers and oranges. Halpern and Bertoli, the two constants, both check
all over the ice, and Bertoli is a beast doing the dirty work along the
boards. Morin, however, is a very different player than the speedy Masters.
Morin may be fast, and he may be dangerous around the net, but he is also
one of the scrappier players in the league -- watching Morin play you get
the feeling that if Cahoon left him on the ice between periods he'd try
to hit the Zamboni. He plays with the kind of ferocious intensity that has
both generated extra chances for his line and earned him a team-high 50
penalty minutes. "I have only good things to say about playing with
Benoit," Halpern says of his wingmate. "And Scott deserves more
credit. His playmaking ability is underrated."
Still, Halpern is frustrated that his line isn't scoring more. The real
culprit may be the defensive mind-set of the teams in the ECAC -- and the
accompanying clutch-and-grab tactics. Whenever he's on the ice, Halpern
usually has more players hanging off him than the basketball rim at an NBA
All-Star game. "Other teams certainly don't give our game breakers
-- Halpern, Apps, or Shirreffs -- a lot of room," Cahoon says. "But
that's part of the strategy of playing this game. We've been in situations
where we've had to do that to other teams." Halpern, who admits that
playing through the constant clutching and grabbing can be frustrating,
says, "that's just a part of college hockey that you have to deal with.
Cycling and throwing picks -- for [Bertoli and me], that's been a big part
of our game." Halpern has also noticed that other teams seem to go
into a defensive shell when his line is on the ice -- an idea supported
by the fact that his plus/minus rating is a sterling +11.
With other teams focusing on the first line, the Tigers can do two things
to score more goals. First, as Cahoon says, "We need other players
to step up." Syl Apps '99 has done a superb job as the center of the
second line, but there are some very talented underclassmen who could be
scoring more. Second, the power play could still improve. With Halpern and
Shirreffs at the point and Apps and Bertoli down low, the power play should
be lethal, but it's currently tied for fourth in the ECAC. "We're getting
a lot of quality chances," Halpern says. "We're just not finishing."
Last season, everything came together for this team at the right time
-- injured players returned, the power play started clicking, the top line
became unstoppable. The Tigers managed to fight through a brutal road route
to the ECAC championships, where they had to play an extra qualifying game
before the semifinals. This year, if the team keeps playing well, they could
make that route much easier for themselves. "We've never had a home-ice
advantage," Halpern says, "so that's a major goal right now. And
it would be nice not to have to play three nights in a row if we make it
[to the ECAC championships]."
Barring a complete collapse down the stretch, Cahoon ought to receive
some serious attention for coach of the year honors. While he admits that
getting a team to peak at the right time is uncertain alchemy, his approach
is fairly simple: "I tell the guys that you're either getting better
or getting worse -- nobody stays the same. All I ask is for them to keep
improving." In a sense, Cahoon is describing his program, which he
has dragged from the indignity of 26 consecutive losing seasons into being
a legitimate top-10 team. And he isn't done yet. "The players are getting
better and better," Halpern says. "We're still putting pieces
into place."
Although Cahoon agrees that this team, like all teams, is a work in progress,
he quickly points out that the character on this squad is something special
-- which is perhaps the only way to explain how the Tigers, who are only
outscoring their ECAC opponents by 10 goals, can be 9-2-1 in the league.
"The whole of this team is better than the sum of its parts,"
he says. "That's a good thing."
-- Wes Tooke '98
Women's basketball blends tattoos,
Carril, and mentors
Late January in Jadwin Gym. After a weekend sweep of Cornell and Columbia,
the women's basketball team headed for the heart of the Ivy schedule with
five League wins in its pocket and sole possession of first place. Thanks
to an eight-game winning streak, coach Liz Feeley's Tigers (10-7) had remade
their season after a frustrating 2-7 start.
So the talk after the Cornell win, naturally, turned to tattoos.
"What about the tattoos?" someone asked Feeley.
"Those things sure are working, aren't they?" a reporter said
to senior forward Julie Angell, whose career-high 21 points paced Princeton
past the Big Red.
Tattoos?
Tiny, ball-spinning tiger caricatures affixed to the biceps.
The story: After being winless for nearly three weeks and looking to
take something positive home for Christmas, the team lightened things up
before a December 21 game at the University of Dayton. In the locker room,
Feeley handed out the "Tiger Cub" fake tattoos given to the team's
junior fan-club members. Wearing the temporary tattoos, the Tigers promptly
swiped a 13-point win from the Flyers. Princeton players have been decorated
-- and winning -- ever since.
They beat local favorites La Salle and Valparaiso to take the four-team
First Union Classic in Philadelphia after Christmas. Along the way, the
team picked up a scrawny toy dove that now sits at the end of the bench.
("I could tell you how we got it, but then I'd have to kill you,"
says freshman guard Hillary Reser, one of two freshmen getting a lot of
minutes.) The bird-talisman then watched the Tigers fight out an overtime
win at Penn January 4 and notch two more Ivy victories the next weekend
at Brown and Yale.
"We're not superstitious," says Feeley, who is in her fourth
year as Princeton's coach. "But we haven't lost with the bird and the
tattoos, so why change it up?"
If there had been a more telling marker of the team's turnaround -- some
tactical change or lineup shift -- then Feeley or her players might have
duly noted it. But the team didn't alter much from its dismal beginning;
Princeton has simply grown into a new style of play.
Feeley, who had borrowed components of former men's coach Pete Carril's
offensive architecture during her first three years, decided this season
to completely mirror the men's strategy. Grasping the high-post, back-screen
offense was not easy. As senior center Lea Ann Drohan says, "I'm just
starting to fully understand it after seeing it for four years." Junior
sharpshooters Maggie Langlas and Kate Thirolf snuck over to men's practices
early this season in order to find where shooting pockets might open up
outside the three-point arc. While things started to come together in practice
for the women, it somehow didn't show on the floor during games.
"We were executing in practice so there was really nothing to say
in the locker room after games," Drohan remembers of the stretch that
included losses to mediocre Lehigh and Siena teams.
Feeley refused to abandon the new scheme. Finally, smack in the middle
of a 43-day stretch during which Princeton would play all its games on road,
the Tigers found their offensive legs. Three-pointers, most from Thirolf
and Langlas, rained down from the Princeton back court, and the team started
converting on the simple but elegant backdoor layup.
Other hallmarks of the Pete Carril system have appeared -- such as balanced
scoring and stingy defense. So far, six different players have led the Tigers
in scoring at least once, and Princeton tops the Ivy League in scoring defense.
"We haven't made too many adjustments," Feeley explained after
the Cornell win. "The shots have just started to fall."
Princeton grew so accustomed to winning on the road that when the team
returned to action at Jadwin for its somewhat sluggish 68-48 win over Columbia
January 29, Feeley quipped that the building seemed almost "foreign"
to her players. Though a healthy crowd of 750 turned out the next night
to see a decent Cornell (8-8) team, the cavernous, 7,500-seat Jadwin drained
much of the life out of the Tiger faithful. "It's a weird place to
play," says Reser.
Lost in space
Home has not always been cozy for the Tigers. Even with two second-place
Ivy finishes in the last three years, the team has been constantly overshadowed
by the higher-profile men's team. The "Jam Jadwin" athletic department
promotion for last season's Harvard contest brought 1,500 people, a new
record for the women. But on an average night, drawing many students (other
than a contingent from Cap and Gown Club, where most of the upperclassmen
on the team eat) remains difficult. And the tendency of the men's and women's
schedules to flip-flop -- one team home while the other travels -- precludes
opportunities for hyped doubleheaders.
Recently, the Tigers have been nurturing support from nonstudent groups.
Feeley and her players' Saturday junior clinics have steadily grown over
the past few years, and this year mushroomed to include hundreds of girls.
The clinics have familiarized the youngsters with Princeton faces and have
therefore brought swarming hordes of spindly, pony-tailed grade-schoolers
to Jadwin on game nights. After providing the halftime entertainment in
a scrimmage, the young hoopsters flock to the locker room door after the
game to get their shirts and programs signed.
"They're the greatest fans in the world," Drohan says. "They
tell you 'Great game' whether you lost by 20 or won by 20."
After the 10-point win over Cornell, during which a kid's ball rolled
across the floor and stopped play, Drohan gathered a group of 20 girls for
a picture in front of the scorer's table. Feeley asked another group whether
they won that day. Heads nodded. "Great, we'll call it a sweep,"
she said.
For now the fate of Feeley's team may be tied up with the smiling aspirants.
They (and their parents) will provide a strong fan base while Princeton
makes a run for its sixth Ivy title and first-ever NCAA tournament bid.
And the tattoos, which were originally for the kids but are now also on
the arms of Feeley's players, will stay -- just so long as the Tigers' winning
streak rolls on.
-- Oakley Brooks '99
Men's volleyball returns to the
pack
Had the end of the world arrived 20 months early on April 30, 1998, the
then-11th-ranked men's volleyball team would have faced the Apocalypse with
relative contentment. On that date, although the Tigers fell to Pepperdine
in the NCAA semifinals in Honolulu, they also fulfilled the dreams of a
program that for 20 years had been striving for national recognition.
But time marches on, and as much as they may want to lounge perpetually
on the shores of Hawaii, this season a wholly unfamiliar Tiger lineup --
which after losing four members of an extraordinary class of '98 returns
only setter Jason Morrow '00 and outside Steve Cooper '01 -- may find out
what lies at the other end of the rainbow.
The good news for the Tigers is that in their annual post-exams trip
to California, they nearly went 3-1; the bad news is that they went 1-3.
A 15-11, 15-4, 15-10 sweep of LaVerne preceded a 15-3, 15-8, 15-5 throttling
at the hands of UC Irvine, and two tight five-game losses to Cal Baptist
and UCSD suggest that even victories over mediocre foes will not come automatically.
Outside Pablo Clarke '00 insists that no matter how the Tigers play,
they'll "have more flavor [this] year." That flavor includes generous
portions of Princeton's trademark passing and defense, but, due to a much
shorter lineup, much less offensive power and weaker blocking.
"At first I thought we'd be terrible," says head coach Glenn
Nelson, who now ranks second in all-time wins among active coaches. But
after some impressive play from previously unproven players, he admits that
"now I've changed my mind."
Against both UCSD and Cal Baptist, the Tigers squandered some big leads
and failed to take advantage of their point-scoring opportunities, and with
no true big guns, the Tiger front row is forcing Morrow to spread his sets
equally among all his hitters.
"Everyone needs to be getting kills," Morrow says. "No
one player is going to dominate."
As they return home to their Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association
schedule, the Tigers know that the days of merciless sweeps and baffling
defense are gone. Still, a realistic goal for this young team is a respectable
league finish and a spot in the EIVA final four.
In addition to Brandon Vegter '99, who represents the Tigers' most imposing
offensive force (and only senior), middle Tom Dowd '00 and Garden State
natives John Lerch '01 and Kevin Roche '01, whose 27 kills at UCSD led the
Tigers for the trip, will all have to adjust to their starting roles if
the Tigers wish to achieve greater distinction than merely being, in Vegter's
words, "the only team in the country starting two dudes from Jersey."
All the other teams in the EIVA are relishing the chance to exact revenge
on a Tiger squad that has ravaged them over the past three years. With nationally
ranked Penn State and Rutgers-Newark the favorites, Princeton will battle
the likes of George Mason, Juniata, and N.J. Tech for playoff seeding come
April.
"We should be better than the middle of the EIVA," Vegter says.
"But it's going to be a battle."
-- Josh Stephens '97
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