The first event in the new stadium in the Meadowlands will feature the Princeton men's lacrosse team. Well, maybe the third event. Either way, it'll be a big day.

The opening game of the 2010 Princeton men's lacrosse season, like every game from the 22 seasons before it, will feature a head coach named Tierney. The second game will not.

Chris Bates will open his first season as Princeton head coach on Feb. 27 at home against Hofstra and head coach Seth Tierney, whose uncle Bill Tierney left Princeton for Denver at the end of last season after spending 22 years with the Tigers.

The schedule that Bates' first team will play differs radically from the one that Tierney's last team played, largely because of the advent of the Ivy League tournament. Princeton's schedule features 13 regular-season games, including seven against teams that made the NCAA tournament a year ago.

Princeton will again play in the Konica Minolta Face-Off Classic and Konica Minolta Big City Classic, and the second Big City Classic - held on April 10 - will be the first event in the new Meadowlands stadium, which is replacing Giants Stadium. Princeton will face Syracuse in the third game of a tripleheader that day, beginning with Hofstra-Delaware at 1 and followed by Virginia-North Carolina at 4:00 and Princeton-Syracuse at 6:30.

The Tigers will play in the Face-Off Classic at M&T Bank Stadium for the fourth straight year, all against Johns Hopkins. This time, the Face-Off Classic will also be a tripleheader, beginning at 11:00 a.m. with a game between Duke and Maryland, followed by the Tigers and the Blue Jays at 1:30. Notre Dame-Loyola will be the third game.

Princeton swept its two games in NFL stadiums a year ago, and the Tigers' 12-8 win over Syracuse was the last loss for the Orange before its run to the NCAA title.

The major changes include a shake up in the order of Ivy games for the first time since 2002, the first against North Carolina since 1999 and a new season-opening opponent for the first time since 2005.

The opener with Hofstra will mark the first time in five years that the Tigers have not opened with Canisius. Instead, the first game will come against one of the two teams whom Princeton lost to a year ago.

The only other team to beat Princeton in 2009 was Cornell, who did so during the regular season (Cornell lost to Brown as Princeton and Cornell shared the Ivy title) and again in the NCAA quarterfinals. The Tigers will host the Big Red to end the league schedule on Saturday, May 1, and the first Ivy League tournament will be held the following Friday and Sunday at the home of the regular-season champion.

Princeton's Ivy schedule since 2002 has started with Yale and then included a game against Penn on Tuesday, followed by games in order against Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth and Brown. For 2010, the order changes to Penn, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard and Cornell, all on Saturdays.

North Carolina was on the schedule each year from 1992 through 1999, as well as games in 1975 and 1978, and Princeton and the Tar Heels also played in the 1992 NCAA semifinals. The teams will meet Tuesday, March 16, in Chapel Hill; Princeton leads the all-time series 7-4.

The rest of the schedule includes return games against UMBC (in Princeton) and Manhattan (in New York), as well as the annual matchup with Rutgers, which moves to Tuesday, April 13, for the 88th meeting between the schools.

Princeton Stadium will host the NCAA quarterfinals on Saturday, May 22, marking the fourth time the facility has been a quarterfinal site.

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2009-10-19