Strong Start Puts Princeton Men’s Lacrosse On Track for an NCAA Run

Early season wins over perennial national powers Maryland, Syracuse, and North Carolina put the Princeton men’s lacrosse team in a position to earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament, and as of early April the team was 9-2 and listed anywhere from No. 2 to No. 3 in the three national rankings.

Highly touted before the season started, the Tigers opened with a 13-7 loss at home to Penn State on Feb. 14, after which the coaching staff moved Chad Palumbo ’26, a preseason candidate for midfielder of the year, to a starting spot on attack.

“He’s a physical force and a skilled player,” head coach Matt Madalon said of Palumbo, who is as effective passing the ball as he is going to the goal. Palumbo was the team’s leading scorer with 25 goals and 15 assists through the team’s first 11 games.

The team rallied on Feb. 21 with a 13-12 win at Maryland, the dominant program in the sport over the last decade and one that had defeated Princeton six straight times since 2022, including twice in the NCAA playoffs. Palumbo, a co-captain along with fellow starting attacker Colin Burns ’27 and longstick defensive midfielder Cooper Kistler ’26, notched two goals and two assists in the win.

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Ryan Croddick ’26 stops a shot against Yale.

Camryn Ley

Peter Buonanno ’28, last year’s Ivy League rookie of the year, took Palumbo’s spot on the first midfield and chipped in two goals and an assist, while goalie Ryan Croddick ’26 secured the victory with a point-blank save in the final seconds.

Croddick was spectacular the next weekend, when Princeton beat Syracuse 11-7 on Feb. 27 and North Carolina 11-9 on March 1. Princeton jumped out to a 6-0 lead on Syracuse and was never seriously challenged by the Orange, who edged the Tigers 19-18 in the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals last year. The game also underscored the emergence of Jack Stahl ’27 
as an elite defenseman after he held Syracuse attacker Joey Spallina, perhaps the best offensive player in the country, without a point.

Princeton gave up 51 goals in its last three games last year (losses to Cornell and Syracuse sandwiched around a win over Towson University), and the Tigers have adjusted defensively. “This spring, we’re a little quicker to support, and we’re using more zone as a program than we have in the past,” Madalon said.

They’ve also relied on “outstanding” goaltending by Croddick, according to Madalon, who was a goalie as a player. Through early April, Croddick had saved 58% of the shots he’d seen. “We’ll go as far as he takes us,” Madalon said.

Croddick made 14 saves against the Orange and 25 against the Tar Heels, including three in a 20-second stretch with about five minutes left in the fourth quarter that preserved a 9-9 tie. On the ensuing possession, midfielder Tucker Wade ’27 scored what would prove to be the game-winner. A first-team all-Ivy performer last year, Wade has become a dominant middie this season with 21 goals and six assists in the team’s first 11 games.

This is the third year in a row that Madalon has scheduled two challenging nonconference games in three days early in the season to increase the team’s chances of receiving an NCAA Tournament bid and to prepare the squad for the Ivy League tournament, which employs the same format. The Tigers’ performance against Syracuse and North Carolina suggests they have the talent and depth to do well in either setting.

In a year without a dominant team in Division I, Croddick and the defense, a balanced attack led by top scorer Nate Kabiri ’27, and a solid faceoff unit led by Andrew McMeekin ’26 give Princeton a chance to reach the national semifinals, which will be held at the University of Virginia over Memorial Day weekend.