Women's Lacrosse: Tigers make key trip to Harvard

The women’s lacrosse team will travel to Cambridge, Mass., on Saturday to take on Harvard in the Tigers’ fifth league game of the season. As the postseason looms closer and the brackets for the Ivy League and NCAA tournaments are slowly filled, the next couple of weeks will be crucial for the Tigers (6-5 overall, 3-1 Ivy League).

Princeton came into this week as the nation’s No. 18-ranked team but has since dropped a game to the Maryland Terrapins. No. 4 Maryland, a perennial powerhouse and last year's national runner-up, netted 15 goals to best the Tigers at 1952 Stadium. Prior to its mid-week defeat at the hands of the Terrapins, Princeton was on a two-game winning streak, including a 12-4 rout of conference rival Yale.

The Crimson (6-6, 2-2) enters Saturday’s meeting with a two-game winning streak and victories in four of its last six contests. Harvard’s recent success includes a pair of convincing victories over Holy Cross and Brown. However, the Crimson has not defeated a team currently ranked in the national top 20. The closest it has come was an 8-7 defeat to No. 19 Johns Hopkins.

The Tigers dropped both of their regular-season games against Harvard in the last two years. However, Princeton defeated the Crimson 12-10 in the finals of last year’s four-team Ivy League playoff, earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

This year’s regular season matchup will again have a major influence on the Tigers’ postseason hopes. A loss to the Crimson would put Princeton in a three-way tie with Cornell and Harvard for third place. Due to the Tigers’ 13-12 overtime loss to the Big Red on March 31, if the three teams fall into a tie, Princeton will lose the tiebreaker to both teams and will be in serious jeopardy of failing to qualify for the four-team playoff.

This threat is made even more serious by the fact that the Tigers’ only two Ivy League opponents remaining after this weekend are Penn and Dartmouth, both of which currently sit atop the Ivy League at 4-0. Contributing to this weekend’s significance in the chase for an Ivy League title, Penn and Dartmouth will also be facing off on Saturday.

Midfielder Melanie Baskind leads the Crimson’s offensive charge with 21 goals and six assists in 12 games. Other significant contributors to the Harvard offense are attacker Jennifer VanderMuelen, with 20 goals and three assists, and midfielder Danielle Tetreault, with 19 goals.

As a team, Harvard has scored 8.8 goals off of 20.4 shots per game, both last in the league, and only 26 of the team’s 106 goals have came off an assist. The Tigers, on the other hand, have recorded 78 assists on 135 goals.

Junior attacker Jaci Gassaway continues to lead Princeton in scoring with 30 goals, but she is followed closely by senior midfielder Cassie Pyle, who has netted 29. Princeton’s leader in assists, freshman attacker Erin McMunn, is only one shy of the Crimson’s team total at 25. Princeton's more explosive offense has averaged 12.3 goals per game.

Saturday’s face-off is slated for 1 p.m. in Cambridge. The Tigers will then have six days off before returning to action for a pair of home games against the league leaders, hosting Dartmouth on April 21 and Penn four days later.