The Princeton men's lacrosse team will be playing a familiar opponent Thursday night - 4,000 miles from where the teams last met.

Princeton will play two fall events in three days, beginning Thursday night when it hosts the English national team at Class of 1952 Stadium at 7:00 pm in a matchup that will be free and open to the public. Princeton will also play at Delaware Saturday, facing the host team at noon and then Loyola at 2:15 on a day that will also include Bucknell-Loyola at noon and Bucknell-Navy at 2:15.

While Princeton hasn't played Delaware since the 1995 season or Loyola since the 2003 season, the Tigers and the English go back a mere 16 months, to a pair ofhighly entertaining and well-played games between the teams in La Manga, Spain, as part of Princeton's trip to Spain and Ireland. Princeton won both of the games, defeating the English 9-7 and 8-7, and the teams also spent time practicing and socializing together.

Senior midfielder Scott MacKenzie is the only current Princeton player who scored a goal in the first of the two games. Current Tigers Peter Gudmundsen, Chris McBride, Tyler Moni and Long Ellis all scored in the second game, and defenseman Ellis scored the game-winner with an end-to-end run for the only goal he's ever scored in organized lacrosse.

Much of the English team is from near Manchester, which will be the host site for the 2010 World Championships. Princeton will be the fourth of six Division I teams the English team plays in five days, a stretch that began with Loyola and will include Johns Hopkins, Lehigh, Drexel and Hofstra.

The games will be the first for Chris Bates as head coach of the Tigers and will be the first for assistant coach Greg Raymond at Princeton since the 2008 European trip. Raymond spent last year with Bates at Drexel.

Princeton returns two second-team All-Americas, sophomore defenseman Chad Wiedmaier and junior attackman Jack McBride, as well as honorable mention All-America goalie Tyler Fiorito. In all Princeton has two starters on attack (the two McBrides), one starter at midfield (MacKenzie), two starters on defense (Wiedmaier and Jeremy Hirsch) and goalie Fiorito back, as well as longstick midfielders Ellis and John Cunningham, face-off man Paul Barnes, second midfield members Moni and Alex Capretta and a huge group of young players pushing for playing time.

The Tigers did graduate eight players, all of eight of whom were significant contributors for four years: first-team All-America middie Mark Kovler, defenseman Chris Peyser, attackman Tommy Davis, shortstick defensive middies Josh Lesko and Brendan Reilly, longstick midfielder Charlie Kolkin, middie/attackman Greg Seaman and first line midfielder Rich Sgalardi.

2009-10-13