Tuesday Night Lacrosse

Did you see that shot off the turnover that went in with less than a second to go in the game Sunday? 

No, not the Duke-UConn one — though upon further review, should UConn coach Danny Hurley have been called for a technical foul for getting in the ref's face and bumping him afterwards? Would you have called one there? 

The shot TB is referencing was a few hours earlier, when Rutgers scored with 0.1 seconds left to tie its men's lacrosse game against Johns Hopkins. The play didn't quite get the national attention of the one in basketball, though the result was basically the same. 

Hopkins had the ball up one but turned it over with 12 seconds left. Rutgers was just able to beat the final horn after an incredible clear. Rutgers won the game, this one in overtime. 

Rutgers (No. 13) is one of the four RPI top 20 teams that Princeton has defeated this season. Ironically, Maryland (No. 21 currently) is not one of them. 

The others are No. 1 North Carolina, No. 3 Syracuse and No. 20 Yale. Princeton is No. 2 in the most updated RPI.

Where else are these Tigers ranked? 

Well, they're No. 2 in RPI, No. 3 in USA Lacrosse Magazine, No. 4 by the coaches and No. 5 in the Kane Inside Lacrosse Media Poll. What would you do if you were making a pregame graphic for the team's game tonight against Lehigh. 

Face-off on Sherrerd Field is at 7 tonight. If you're interested in Division I men's lacrosse this weekend, well, guess what? Between the end of the two games Sunday (UNC defeated Harvard 17-7 in the other one) and the Merrimack-Manhattan game Friday, tonight's game is the only one scheduled. 

This is also Princeton's lone midweek game of the 2026 regular season. Back when TigerBlog started covering the team in the early 1990s, there were three or four of them. 

The Ivy League has seven men's lacrosse teams, which means each team gets one in-season Saturday off from a league game. This is Princeton's week; in addition to the game tonight, Princeton will also play at Vermont Saturday. 

For all of the men's lacrosse games TigerBlog has seen, there aren't too many that can rival the statistical oddities that came out of Saturday's 20-14 win at Brown. Consider these little nuggets:

* Princeton had 11 failed clears
* Princeton had one caused turnover
* Princeton allowed six extra man goals despite committing only four penalties (two were full time)

Despite that, Princeton had the lead for the final 55 minutes of a 60-minute game. The Tigers led by at least four from the end of the first quarter through the end and by at least five for all of the final 37 minutes. 

That is not easy to do. 

Princeton senior midfielder John Dunphey had five goals and three assists in the game. That's one fewer goal than he had in the first seven games combined, and the eight points he had Saturday were also one fewer than he'd had all season prior. 

Dunphey's five goals came on five shots and followed a two-goal, two-shot game the week earlier against Cornell.  His seven straight goals on seven shots match what Chad Palumbo (who also had five goals against Brown) did in the NCAA tournament a year ago. 

It's been quite a season to date for the Tigers, who are hoping to improve on last season's excruciating loss to Syracuse in the NCAA quarterfinals. The Princeton resume, with those big non-league early-season wins, pretty much as the team looking good for the NCAA tournament again; if that does happen it would be the Tigers' fifth straight trip. 

After the two games this week, Princeton finishes the regular season with games at home against Penn, at Harvard and home against Dartmouth. Penn is now No. 18 in RPI, and Harvard is No. 5.  

Meanwhile, again, what was once a very busy night on the college lacrosse schedule has only one game on it tonight — and that is on Sherrerd Field at 7, where Princeton and Lehigh will meet for the, well, who knows how many times they've actually met. 

After all, there is this:

The series history between Princeton and Lehigh is somewhat uncertain. The Princeton record book and the Lehigh record book agree that the first game in the series was a 3-1 Princeton win in 1888. They also agree that there were 10 more games through 1933, though they disagree on the final score of the 1933 game - Lehigh has it 8-4 Princeton; Princeton has it 8-1. It gets a little murkier in 1934 and 1935, when Lehigh has games against Princeton but Princeton has games against Lehigh L.C., not Lehigh, like the first 11 games. Then there's 1940 and 1941, when Lehigh has a pair of games against Princeton that Princeton has no record of having been played.