Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 11/24/15
From Press Release
There will be one new face and 12 familiar ones on the 2016 Princeton men’s lacrosse schedule.
And while most of the faces will be familiar, Princeton will be inviting most of them to its campus this coming season, unlike a year ago.
A year after playing just five of its 15 games at home in 2015, Princeton has eight home games on its 2016 schedule, beginning Feb. 20 in a game against second-year program NJIT and then continuing with 12 of the 13 regular-season opponents from 2015. Princeton shared the Ivy League championship a year ago and then reached the Ivy League tournament championship game.
“We pride ourselves on playing a top strength of schedule each year,” says Princeton head coach Chris Bates. “It’s one of the reasons that our guys decide to come to Princeton. They know they will compete at the very highest level. The Ivy League matchups are our natural rivals, and the league is very strong these days so those will critical Saturdays for us. We can’t wait to get going with the 2016 season.”
The 2016 season will see Princeton play three straight home games on two different occasions. It will also have the first home game against Maryland, the NCAA runner-up last year, since 1977, and the first home game against Stony Brook since 1992.
Princeton will play at Johns Hopkins for the second straight year as both teams agreed to the change, hoping to balance the home and away portions of their schedules. Had Princeton played Hopkins at home this year, that would have meant nine home games and four away games.
The home schedule this year does include Rutgers and Lehigh outside the league, for Princeton’s two midweek games. The home Ivy games are against Penn, Dartmouth and Cornell (which will either be Friday April 29 or Saturday April 30, still TBD).
With eight home games, Princeton will hope for better weather than a year ago, when two home games were played in snow and four of the five were played in temperatures 40 degrees or below. This time, Princeton has four home games in April.
The 2016 Princeton men’s lacrosse schedule:
2/20 NJIT
2/27 at Hofstra
3/5 at Hopkins
3/12 MARYLAND
3/14 RUTGERS
3/19 PENN
3/26 at Yale
4/2 at Brown
4/9 STONY BROOK
4/12 LEHIGH
4/16 DARTMOUTH
4/23 at Harvard
4/29 or 4/30 CORNELL
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