May 22, 2004

Recap| Final Stats

MARYLAND COACH Dave Cottle

When you lose there's a hundred different reasons. When you win, you played better than the other team. We had a lot of different plays we were in position to make that we didn't make, some broken clears, our shooting. But give credit to Princeton. They made the plays when they had to, when they were down, and we didn't. We came up short.

Ryan'[Boyle]s a senior. He's pretty crafty around the crease, and he was diving through there, making shots. He made great plays.

I thought this would be a grind it out game. The only way we could have speeded up the pace would have been to have won more faceoffs. We didn't win enough faceoffs. We ran some, but they did a good job of transition defense.

[On game-winning goal] [Peter] Trombino made a nice catch, slid two steps to get clear, and made a good shot. The kid made a good catch, the feed was there. We slid [to Boyle] because we got caught when we didn't slide,

PRINCETON COACH BILL TIERNEY

We were very fortunate to beat a great Maryland team, and to hang in there is an amazing thing. I just thought we dug down deep. Anybody who doesn't know the size of Ryan Boyle's heart hasn't been around this guy for four years. Every day there's another amazing thing that this man does.

This isn't about coaching. You hope that the legacy part of it [the program] is imparted on the young guys, and they find a way. Princeton kids never say die and try to find a way. We go a man down starting overtime. I've never seen that before. I thought I'd seen everything, but that was a new one for me.

[On being down by two goals late in the game] I'm not a real believer that you learn from losses, but I just changed my mind. When we played Cornell, we were down 11-8 with two minutes left and scored three straight goals to tie it. You find in these situations that you know you're okay when the huddle is pretty under control. I thought the guys were listening.