48-16

Of the 1,000 varsity athletes plus all of the coaches and staff who make up the Princeton Department of Athletics, TigerBlog has no doubt who the happiest of all of them was around dinner time last Friday.

That would be women's lacrosse associate head coach Kerrin Maurer.

Since Maurer joined the women's lacrosse staff, the team is 47-16, with Ivy League championships, Ivy tourament championships and NCAA tournament appearances each full season. 

As of Friday evening, Maurer improved to 48-16 on the Princeton sidelines. This time, though, it was one field over from where the lacrosse team plays.

With the three field hockey assistant coaches out sick, Maurer came to the rescue as the only assistant to head coach Carla Tagliente for the Tigers' game against No. 7 Syracuse. With the team off to an 0-2 start after one-goal losses to No. 2 North Carolina and No. 4 Louisville a week earlier, Princeton was looking to get a win against another highly ranked ACC team, one that happened to be the highest scoring team in the country.

The challenge was to prepare and play the game without any assistant coaches. 

Into that void stepped Maurer. There was a time several decades ago when anyone who played women's lacrosse also played field hockey, and in fact there was a time when Chris Sailer was the head women's lacrosse coach and assistant field hockey coach, while Beth Bozman had the reverse roles. Those days, though, are well in the past.

Maurer laughed before the game that she'd played field hockey in seventh grade. Then Princeton went out and topped Syracuse 5-1. 

After the game, there was nobody anywhere smiling wider than Maurer. TB texted her afterwards to say that she seemed to be having fun during the game, and her response was "That was awesome."

Come Sunday, Princeton then knocked off No. 15 Rutgers 4-1. When the rankings came out this week, Princeton had gone from 17th to eighth. Tiger goalie Robyn Thompson, who had back-to-back eight-save games, was an easy choice for Ivy Defensive Player of the Week.

Maurer wasn't able to be on the sideline for the Rutgers game, with the acceptable excuse that she was needed by the lacrosse program. That led to a rarity for any college team, which is to have only the head coach with no assistants.

It reminded TB of the story of when Pete Carril was alone with the men's basketball team at a game at Virginia in 1975 and then got thrown out after arguing a call. What would have happened had Tagliente gotten tossed at Rutgers? Of course those odds were long and it never came close to happening. 

Still, after the game, she admitted that she'd thought about it. She also said that Maurer had loved her one game on the field hockey sideline and that she had done a really good job, something that resulted in instant acceptance on the part of the players.

Beyond that, Tagliente talked about the commonalities that exist in coaching, beyond the Xs and the Os. It was pretty interesting.

Princeton will begin a remarkable stretch of five games in 10 days tomorrow, when Delaware comes to Bedford Field. In fact, all five games of this stretch are home games.

Next up after Delaware? That would be No. 1 Northwestern Sunday at noon. It must get easier after that, right? Barely. That would be No. 3 Maryland, another Final Four team from a year ago, for a game Tuesday. The Ivy opener will be a week from tomorrow against Penn, and then the run ends with a game Sept. 25 against Lafayette. 

The win over Syracuse was huge for Princeton and its confidence as the schedule continues to be brutal. How big will that game prove to be in the long run of the season? Well, confidence is an interesting thing. After not having the lead at any point in the first two games, Princeton never trailed in the last two. It is of such things that very successful seasons are born.

On the other hand, a loss to Syracuse would have left the team uncertain heading to Rutgers. Who knows what might have happened next?

So does Kerrin Maurer deserve the credit for turning Princeton's field hockey season around? Well, that might be overstating.

It's not overstating anything, though, to give her credit for stepping in and making a real difference, not to mention having a blast.