Box Score No. 6 Elis Have Won 6 Straight
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Yale has won six straight games and is 6-1 on the season but has yet to experience a completely satisfying performance. Home cooking may have been just what the No. 6 Bulldogs needed to get something very close to a complete game.
Brendan Rooney, Jack Tigh and Ben Reeves each had three goals while Jackson Morrill chipped in four points as the Elis beat Princeton, 16-8, before 1,391 at Reese Stadium.
The Blue, which hadn't played at home since beating Michigan on Feb. 24, never trailed in a game that began with an offensive explosion by the home team. The season-high goal output included contributions from 9 different Bulldogs. However, the difference in the game may have been possession time.
Conor Mackie, who enjoyed another outstanding day against the New Jersey rival, won 20 of 24 faceoffs and scooped up 18 ground balls to limit a talented Princeton offense to just 20 shots. The senior from Glen Rock, N.J., has enjoyed big days against the team from his home state the last two seasons, winning 46 of 57 faceoffs combined and notching 36 ground balls.
"We've been relatively inconsistent at the faceoff X, and that has to do with what our opponents are doing against Conor. I give a lot of credit to him; we challenged him this week. It was not an easy week for him," said Yale Head Coach Andy Shay.
Mackie's prowess on the X combined with great, physical play from Elis like defensemen Christopher Keating (6 ground balls) and Will Weitzel (4) and midfielder Tyler Warner (4) enabled the home team to dominate overall groundballs 46-14 while having 31 more shots than the visitors.
"We had a great week in practice," said Mackie. "The result is a testament to our entire faceoff group and coaches. They did a great job preparing us for the different looks we saw out there. I felt very prepared from the week that we had."
Yale was up 4-0 before Princeton attempted its first shot. The Blue scored 4 times in the first 4 minutes while the Tigers' first attempt, which happened to find the net, made it 4-1 with 8:22 left in the first. Mackie was the primary reason for the great start, winning all but one faceoff in the first half.
The opening tally looked like it was part of the script. Yale won the ball and it got to John Daniggelis, who rifled a rising shot past Tyler Blaisdell (18 saves) 36 seconds in. Mackie won the next one before Rooney converted a Morrill feed.
Reeves, who passed Conrad Oberbeck on the school's career goals list with his 134th late in the game, made it 3-0 on another Morrill distribution. The Tigers never recovered from Yale's fast start.
Princeton cut into the deficit a few times at 5-2 and 7-4, but that's as close as it got. A couple of Tigh tallies sandwiched around a Jason Alessi goal in the third put away their hopes for a comeback. But that didn't mean the highlights were over.
Yale's second-to-last goal was as pretty as any, a tic-tac-toe, one-timer that ended up with Morrill feeding Rooney on the edge of the crease.
Rooney, who has been a man-up specialist most of his collegiate career, used his first start on attack to show what he can do for the Blue in a new role, and his coach certainly noticed.
"We are challenging some guys, and we want to see what they can do. Brendan [Rooney] is a junior who has practiced a lot," said Shay. "We are very pleased with what he ended up doing. That means that we have more guys to go to. It doesn't mean that it's the way we are now going. We want to play as many guys as we can and give as many guys a chance."
This was so atypical for a Yale-Princeton game in recent years; the two rivals had played one-goal, regular-season games in 7 of the last 8 years. That doesn't mean the Eli boss was pleased.
"We just have to worry about the fundamentals. We are starting to get a little cleaner, a little better. It certainly wasn't perfect for us. We have a lot to correct, and we will attempt to do that this week," said Shay.
BULLDOG BITES
The Yale defense deserves a lot of credit for holding Princeton to 8 goals while limiting top point man Michael Sowers to a goal and an assist… Yale is 4-0 in road games and 2-0 at home… The one loss was a neutral site game at Frisco, Texas in the Patriot Cup… Ben Reeves leads the team with 22 goals and 37 points… Christopher Keating leads the defense with 13 caused turnovers and 24 ground balls… Yale plays at home again next Saturday at 1 pm against Penn.
By Steve Conn, Yale Associate AD/Sports Publicity Director – steven.conn@yale.edu
