Play Of The Day

Princeton men's lacrosse attackman Coulter Mackesy caught a pass from goalie Michael Gianforcaro on the Princeton side of the midline Friday night at North Carolina in a game the Tigers would win 15-9.

When he looked up, he saw a 10-man ride, which meant the goal was empty. Mackesy turned and tossed the ball towards the net, which was probably 45 yards away. Swish.

The next morning, that play was the No. 2 Play of Day on SportsCenter. TigerBlog saw that Princeton men's lacrosse had the No. 2 Play of the Day before he saw which one, and the fact that you don't immediately know which play was the one honored is a sign that your team had a good night.

For that matter, if you had told TB that Mackesy's goal was honored, his first thought would have been "which one of the five he scored?" As it turned out, it was the one against the 10-man ride. 

Did Princeton men's hockey forward Ian Murphy watch that and say to himself "I can beat that?"

Whether he did or didn't, later that day, Murphy did in fact one-up Mackesy, coming in with the No. 1 Play of the Day on SportsCenter. 

That's two days. Two Princeton athletes. One came in second. One came in first. 

And that's a Tiger first, TB is almost positive.

What did Murphy do? See for yourself:

#1️⃣2️⃣ is #1️⃣!@Ian_Murphy12's spectacular one-handed goal lands in the top spot on @SportsCenter's Top-10 Plays!@ecachockey | @NCAAIceHockey | @IvyLeague | @TeamECH | @MikeGrinnell_ pic.twitter.com/6KbPCETIXo

— Princeton Men's Ice Hockey (@princetonhockey) March 3, 2024

Yes, that's worthy of being No. 1.

Look at what he did. If you go to the roster, you'll see that Murphy is listed as righthanded. 

If you look at the play, you see that his right arm gets pinned against his body by a check as the puck drifts to the middle of the ice. With no other option, he swipes at it with his left hand, and he gets enough on it to put it into the top corner on the near side of the goal.

How did he get enough on the puck to get it past the goalie? How did he get it into the air in the first place?

That's an impressive effort. Yeah. Definitely No. 1.

Princeton finished its regular season this past weekend and now heads into the ECAC opening round playoff at Harvard this Friday night (face-off at 7). The first round is now single-elimination, if you forgot, as opposed to best of three as it was for years before last year.

Princeton is the No. 9 seed in the tournament, playing at No. 8 Harvard. The other first round matchups are No. 7 St. Lawrence and No. 10 Yale, No. 6 Union and No. 11 Brown and No. 5 Clarkson and No. 12 RPI.

The top four seeds are, in order, Quinnipiac, Cornell, Colgate and Dartmouth. The quarterfinals, which will be best of three, will match the lowest remaining seed at the No. 1 seed, the next lowest at the No. 2 and so on.

The game Friday night will be Princeton's second this season in Cambridge. The first? That was a 4-4 tie, after which Princeton won the shootout. The other meeting between the teams was a 5-2 Princeton win at Baker Rink.

And when were those games? 

The first was on Nov. 3, which was the same night Princeton played football at Dartmouth. The second game was eight weeks later, Dec. 30. 

The game Friday will be 70 days after the second game and 127 days after the first. That should give you a sense of how long a college hockey season is.

Murphy, by the way, was a first-team All-Ivy League selection two years ago and a second-team selection last year. He is currently tied for the team lead in goals with 11. 

He holds the team lead for goals that were SportsCenter's No. 1 Play of the Day.