The field hockey team will look to keep its Ivy League title chances alive as it takes on the No. 14 Princeton Tigers at 5 p.m. this evening on Schoellkopf field.
Last year’s contest saw the Tigers shut out the Red, besting Cornell by eight goals. Three of them came from current Princeton senior Ivy Friebe.
Princeton also shut down Cornell on the offensive end, preventing it from earning a single shot on net in the first half.
Don’t think that head coach Michelle Tambroni has forgotten about any of this. Her current game plan is to shut down Friebe, who recently earned her 21st goal of the season. Tambroni feels that neutralizing the senior will catch the Tigers off guard.
“We’re going to force them to make decisions,” said Tambroni.
Also look for Cornell to bunker in defensively in order to avoid a repeat of last season. One of Tambroni’s goals is to prevent Princeton from crossing the defensive 35 yard line. Aside from these few changes, however, Cornell will continue with its usual style of play.
“We need to work on playing our game,” said Tambroni.
Along with a strong defense, this also means fast penalty corners.
Though it seemed to suffer in the middle of the season, the corner unit has gotten back on track. The most recent evidence of this comes from the Brown game, in which Cornell was able to get off most of its corners. With better drainage on Schoellkopf field, fans should also look for improved speed and accuracy from the usual ringers.
Princeton has dominated the Ivy League this entire season with its most recent wins being a 9-1 contest over Brown, and a 4-1 showing over Harvard. When facing top 10 opponents, however, things change. The Tigers have dropped contests to the likes of Michigan State, Old Dominion and Boston University.
Cornell has performed well in games against ranked opponents. Syracuse, Maine and Kent State were all tight games that could have gone either way. Perhaps the most memorable contest so far was a 2-1 overtime win against current No. 19 Virginia.
While the Red controls what happens tonight and against Dartmouth on Nov. 10, it will not be able to control much else in the Ivy Title race. For a two or three-way split to occur, Princeton would have to lose its final Ivy game to Penn, and Harvard would have to drop a game to either Brown or Columbia.
Besides making the contest for the league title more interesting, a win today might also force open the Cornell record book. Currently, the team has nine wins. One more would break the single season mark set by the 1996 team.
Junior attack Carissa Mirasol is also on the brink of breaking a personal milestone. She needs three assists in the next two games to break the single season assist record set by Cari Hills ’98.
Archived article by Matt Janiga