TOURNAMENT TOUGH: Princeton University men’s soccer player Nico Nee, right, battles for the ball in game earlier this season. Last weekend, senior forward Nee starred as third-seeded Princeton won the Ivy League Tournament, topping second-seeded Cornell 3-2 in overtime in a semifinal contest on Friday and then defeating top-seeded Penn 3-1 in the final on Sunday. Nee scored the tying goal against Cornell and the first goal in the win over Penn. The Tigers (12-6 overall) will play at Akron (11-4-4) in an NCAA first round contest on November 21 with the victor playing at 14th-seeded Indiana on November 24 in the second round. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

By Justin Feil

The Princeton University men’s soccer team put together its finest soccer of the season in a whirlwind weekend to get back in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2021.

Senior forward Nico Nee scored the tying goal in a 3-2 double overtime win for the third-seeded Tigers over second-seeded Cornell in the Ivy League Tournament semifinals last Friday, then the first goal of a 3-1 win over Penn for the Ivy tournament title Sunday. Junior forward Danny Ittycheria scored twice in the win over Cornell, and capped off the win over Penn with a late tally. It’s the Tigers’ first Ivy League Tournament championship in just the second year the event has been held.

“I’m so proud of the guys,” said Princeton head coach Jim Barlow. “They were within like six minutes of their season ending on Friday night and just found a way to stick with it and beat a really good Cornell team and then a really, really good Penn team two days later. They just played their best soccer of the year this weekend and I’m really happy for all of them.”

The emotional wins gave Princeton the Ivy’s automatic berth for the NCAA tournament. The Tigers (12-6 overall) will play in an NCAA first round contest on November 21 at Akron (11-4-4), which reached the semifinals of the Big East Tournament before losing to Georgetown. The first-round victor plays at 14th-seeded Indiana on November 24 in the second round. The Tigers are hoping that their Ivy wins have them ready for their first NCAAs in three years.

“The Ivy tournament is really good preparation for it because you know if you don’t win in the semifinal you’re done and you go home and for us it might have meant the end of our season,” said Barlow. “I don’t know, but that’s the mentality that we had going in. And then, for the first time all year, there’s overtime. So having a little bit of preparation for that in the Ivy tournament, I think is helpful. And we’ve scheduled a lot of really good teams this year. So I think all of those games will help us know what to expect and be ready for all the challenges that we’ll see.”

Princeton was up for a myriad of challenges in the Ivy tournament. The first was the overarching idea that the Tigers might need these big wins to just get into the NCAA tournament.

“We were thinking we probably needed to win at least Friday night, but we weren’t sure,” said Barlow.

Their only two Ivy regular-season losses had come at the hands of second-seeded Cornell and top-seeded Penn. The Tigers hadn’t scored in either regular-season game against their Ivy tournament foes.

“Our attacking was really stymied against both of those,” said Barlow of the regular season games. “We didn’t have a ton of chances in either game. Just recently it seems, I don’t know, maybe starting with the Seton Hall game when we were able to score five, I think our attack has gotten really into sync.”

The Tigers were under immediate pressure to respond Friday when Cornell took a 2-0 lead only 20 minutes into the game. Ittycheria headed in a serve from Jack Jasinski on a corner kick to cut that deficit in half, and Nee tied the game with seven minutes left in regulation. Ittycheria ended it in double overtime with his head again on a pass from Roka Tsunehara.

“I think the game Friday night boosted our guys’ confidence so much,” said Barlow. “I think going into the weekend we have felt like we had made so many strides from the end of last year, and even the beginning of this season to the end of the season, but we still felt like the two teams at the top of the table, Penn and Cornell, we hadn’t been able to get over those hurdles. And I think the guys just wanted it so badly that they just found a way to deal with the soreness from Friday night and the fatigue and threw all the excuses out the window and just said, ‘We have a chance to win a championship, let’s go for it.’”

Princeton scored the first three goals of the game against Penn, meaning they scored a combined six unanswered goals in their wins. Nee knocked in a rebound to give Princeton an edge and some energy. The Tigers flew out to an 11-0 shot advantage at the start of the game. Early in the second half, with Penn still within a goal, Jasinski came up with a huge steal right at the Penn 18 and fed Ian Nunez for a relatively easy score and more momentum. It was Jasinski’s 11th assist of the season. Ittycheria scored late in the game to cement the win and make Princeton the first team to score more than two goals on Penn this season. The Tigers had only scored two goals on Penn in total since 2019.

“Nico Nee is finally healthy,” said Barlow. “He missed a good stretch of the year with an injury, and he’s back and I think that’s made a big impact on our team and Danny’s kind of found his form and had a great weekend and just was such a presence in both games demanding the ball and taking people on and getting shots and getting on the end of crosses. I think every time you score a goal pushes your confidence and I think our guys after scoring three on Friday night against Cornell, thought they could do it again against Penn.”

Princeton didn’t let in a goal until the final seven minutes of the game, and by then they had established a big enough lead that it didn’t feel too dangerous when Penn finally scored.

“We did a much better job defending higher up the field and making it hard for them to find their midfielders and get out of their own end,” said Barlow. “We were able to sustain pressure in their end for longer stretches (Sunday) than we were last week and the guys up the field all did such a really good job with their transition defending and pressing and just worked really, really hard to win the ball back when we lost it and make it hard for them to get comfortable possessions and comfortable with their build-up, which was pretty amazing because we had some guys just run close to nine miles on Friday night and to be able to do it again yesterday without having any games all year that were within 36 hours of another, I think it was pretty amazing that the guys were able to find the energy.”

Both Cornell and Penn both also will be in the NCAA tournament. The Big Red will host Fordham, while Penn received the No. 6 seed and awaits a first-round winner.

“Our league is a really good league; the teams that didn’t make the Ivy tournament were just as capable of making a run in the Ivy tournament as we were,” said Barlow. “I mean, Columbia was beating us in the second half (before Princeton won 2-1). The Harvard game was a really close game. The Dartmouth game was really close. Yale was the champs last year and they didn’t make the tournament this year. It just shows how much parity there is and how easy it is to go from closer to the bottom of the league to the top or from the top to closer to the bottom. Every game is just really close and teams are good and you need to get a little bit hot at the right time and get some breaks. And in the Ivy games this year, that happened.”