The Roberts Brothers

The Princeton men's lacrosse team is home tonight at 6 against Siena in the final non-league game of the season.

And before TigerBlog talks about that, he saw a story yesterday about a 17-foot, 140-pound python that was found in the Florida Everglades. Within the story, there was a picture of four guys who were holding it.

Can you imagine stumbling upon that snake? And then actually holding it? What the heck?

The whole idea creeps TigerBlog out to no end. Seriously. He'd have to do a lot of hand-washing after touching that thing.

Yuck.

Anyway, back to lacrosse.

TigerBlog was at Stony Brook Saturday for the Tigers game there, and he walked from the hotel to the stadium in the morning (about a mile) for the team's walkthrough. He got there when the Stony Brook football team was finishing up a spring practice, and he watched a little of that.

It actually was more of a scrimmage, of which TB saw the last two plays. When it ended, the parents who had been watching started to walk out of the seating area, and TB overheard a conversation in which one of them pointed to where a poster was hanging from a pole.

Essentially, it had been a football poster in the fall, and her son had been on it. When another parent asked about it, her husband said "it's lacrosse season."

TigerBlog noticed on the poster that after the game against Princeton, Stony Brook had only three more games left. At first he figured it had to mean home games, but no, Stony Brook had just three more regular season games to play after the game Saturday.

Nothing flies by faster than lacrosse season.

For Princeton, extending this men's lacrosse season means repeating what happened a year ago, when the Tigers won their final five games after a 3-5 start. Princeton was 0-3 in the league in 2018 and then beat Stony Brook, Siena, Dartmouth, Harvard and Cornell, finishing 3-3 in the league and tying Brown and Penn for third place.

Unfortunately, Princeton did not win the tiebreakers, having lost to both, and missed the Ivy tournament.

This year, Princeton got out to a 3-6 start, again losing to Penn, Yale and Brown to go to 0-3 in the league. After tonight's game, Princeton will be at Dartmouth Saturday, home with Harvard April 20th and then at Cornell April 27th.

Princeton's task is to do again what it did last year and then hope to have the tiebreakers this time.

Princeton would beat Stony Brook 14-4 Saturday in a game in which the Tigers would get five points each from Michael Sowers, Chris Brown and Emmet Cordrey. For Sowers, he moved into third place all-time at Princeton with 219 career points, behind only Kevin Lowe (247) and Ryan Boyle (232). Keep in mind that 1) Lowe and Boyle are two of the greatest college lacrosse players of all time and 2) Sowers is only a junior.

The real story Saturday night was the Princeton defense, which hounded Stony Brook into 4 for 45 shooting. Sophomore goalie Erik Peters had his best career day, with 13 saves and a .765 save percentage of the game.

George Baughan did what he does, which is wipe out his guy, and Andrew Song had a goal as he moved back to his regular longstick midfield position from close defense. Mike Morean had two goals in transition as a shortstick defensive midfielder, meaning Princeton's defense almost outscored Stony Brook's offense.

The best part of the game, though, was the Roberts brothers, Aran and Cathal, both of whom started alongside Baughan on defense. For Cathal, a freshman, it was his first career start.

TigerBlog isn't sure how many teams have ever had two brothers start together on defense in a Division I lacrosse game. It's probably happened before.

What he doubts has ever happened before is having two brothers start together on defense who were born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, like the Roberts brothers were.

They grew up playing hurling, a sport that is sort of a very violent version of field hockey. They hadn't played lacrosse at all before moving to California when Aran was a high school freshman, but they obviously took to the game quickly.

It was great to see the two of them get a chance to play together. It was even better to see Cathal have three caused turnovers and two ground balls and be a strong physical presence.

There's a lot still to play for in this men's lacrosse season. Tonight's game against a very-improved Siena team doesn't impact the league race, but then again, there aren't that many games left, and they're all big.

Another lacrosse season is flying by.

The part where the two brothers from Ireland got to start alongside each other was pretty special.