When the Dartmouth men's soccer team traveled to New Jersey on Saturday to face off against a Princeton team that was nationally ranked at the start of the season, they were fully expecting a battle.
And that's exactly what they got. Despite some good scoring chances, the Big Green had to settle for a hard fought 1-1 tie with the Tigers.
"This game was definitely a battle," Captain Dave Moran '97. "We definitely had the better scoring opportunities. We just couldn't capitalize."
The Big Green drew first blood when Brendan Reidy '99 fed Russell Penn '00 deep in the Dartmouth zone. Penn then sent a long ball down field, which was picked up behind the Princeton defense by Augie Lopez '97. Lopez, fighting off a Princeton defender, proceeded to drive a low shot between the keeper's legs giving Dartmouth a 1-0 lead at the 37:55 mark of the first half.
"We were trying to get in behind them with a lot of long balls," Moran said. "Princeton plays a control game in the midfield, so we figured that we could take advantage of that."
Unfortunately for the Big Green, Princeton came right back to tie the game just four minutes later as the Tigers converted a corner kick into a score with a well placed headball.
The next 78 minutes proved to be a physical struggle, 39 fouls and five yellow cards, between the two foes with both teams having their chances to gain the upper hand.
Princeton had the last second opportunity to win the game when Tiger's Sloan Bermann attempted a game-winning goal that just missed, bouncing off the crossbar with two seconds remaining.
With this in mind Moran says that the Big Green can't be that disappointed with the outcome.
"This is a game that won't really help us, but it won't really hurt us either," Moran said. "We just want to forget about this game and move on."
Next up for the Big Green is a home game with Northeastern on Wednesday at 4:00 p.m.
