Here’s a puzzle without an easy solution: Is Princeton a young old team? Or an old young team?
The simple answer might be a little bit of both.
“We have an experienced team, culture-wise, at Princeton, but we don’t have a lot of game experience within our team,” coach Matt Madalon said.
Prior to last weekend, the Tigers hadn’t been seen since March 2020, when they were 5-0 and on the verge of finally re-emerging as a national title threat after picking off Virginia, Johns Hopkins and Rutgers before the balance of the season was canceled.
Most notably, they were built around Michael Sowers, who was averaging 9.4 points and was the early Tewaaraton Award favorite. No one knows how things would have turned out, but at minimum, Princeton appeared headed for its first NCAA tournament berth since 2012.
Sowers is gone, having played on Memorial Day Weekend last season for Duke as a graduate transfer. But he still left a strong residue on the Tigers’ program, which re-emerged to drop 22 goals on both Monmouth and Binghamton to open the season.
“There are a lot of guys on our roster who played in those games [in 2019 and 2020] and had really impactful moments,” Madalon said. “Now you come into this year and our systems are a little different. We share it a little more offensively in terms of guys touching the ball, and I’m sure our point production is going to be spread out a little more.”
It’s a logical transition, going from making sure arguably the best player in the country was orchestrating things as much as possible to adopting a balanced approach.
In that sense, Princeton’s first two games have been even more successful than its lopsided margins would indicate. Nine Tigers have already scored multiple goals, and attackmen Chris Brown (seven goals, seven assists) and Alex Slusher (eight goals, two assists) have settled in.
Junior midfielders Christian Ronda (six goals, two assists) and Sam English (two goals, five assists) are also off to strong starts, as is former short stick Jake Stevens (seven goals).
But things are about to get more challenging, with a trip to Maryland looming Saturday. It’s a busy opening stretch for Princeton, which is getting answers in a hurry after being sidelined for nearly two years.
“The three games in the first [eight] days for us, we like this format of scheduling just because it allows us to get off and running, get going, get a couple of games under our belt,” Madalon said. “As much as we love practice as coaches, you learn a lot about your team in the games.”
And Madalon makes it clear: There is still plenty for he and his staff to learn about the Tigers. He sensed both an added hunger in the fall but also extra maturity. Neither was a surprise for a team that didn’t play last season and also had a group of players preemptively withdraw from school last spring to ensure they kept a year of eligibility.
It’s also evident that even with the missed opportunity 2020 represented, Princeton’s strong recruiting has it on an upward trajectory as a program. The priority now is figuring out how the pieces will fit together. It will need to happen quickly; after visiting Maryland, Princeton faces Georgetown, Rutgers, Penn and Yale on consecutive Saturdays in March.
“We’ll be comfortable at the end of the season if we’re playing at the right time,” Madalon said. “But as far as now, we’re still shuffling the deck. Work in progress is probably the best phrase for our team right now. We’re trying to learn who steps up in the prime in certain moments of the games, who gets stops at certain times.”