Sophomore goalie Joe Pike set his career high for saves for the second consecutive game, stopping 16 Princeton shots. But it wasn’t enough as nine of 38 Princeton shots found the back of the net.

In any battle between a strong offense and a dominant defense, more often than not, the ‘D’ can prove the triumphant factor. Saturday afternoon in Princeton, N.J., things were no different.

The Harvard men’s lacrosse team (3-6, 2-2 Ivy) could not find an answer for the No. 5 Tigers (8-2, 3-0), as Princeton held the Crimson scoreless for nearly 38 minutes of play on its way to a 9-3 victory.

The first half was a disaster for Harvard, as the Crimson was unable to capitalize on three man-up opportunities and extended possessions.

Co-captain John Henry Flood managed to continue his dominance at the faceoff X, winning six of eight in the opening quarters and 12 of 15 overall. The problem was not lack of minutes on offense, but rather an inability to put the ball in the back of the net.

“Princeton has a great goalie,” co-captain Brian Mahler said. “Some shots weren’t the best decisions, some just didn’t go our way.”

“Princeton is a very disciplined team,” he added. “We knew that going in—we knew what they were going to do. For us, it was hard to crack their defense and get things generated.”

Both squads boasted similar strategies coming into the game: slow the ball down, and go for quality shots rather than quantity. Princeton did exactly that, taking its time to net its first goal.

The match remained even until 4:27 left in the first frame when the Tigers scored on their second man-up opportunity. From then on out, Princeton did not waste any time, netting two more goals by the end of the quarter, including one with seven seconds left to take a 3-0 lead.

Things could have gotten out of hand were it not for a strong performance from sophomore goalie Joe Pike. The keeper posted his career high in saves with 16, including five in the first quarter to keep the Crimson in range.

“He has been playing really well all year, and our defense is finally getting better around him, so the games have been lower-scoring,” Mahler said. “He really kept us in the game for a long time. 9-3 is misleading—[without] 16 saves, the game really could have gotten out of control.”

In the second frame, things just got worse. Princeton lost no time in adding to its lead, scoring just 53 seconds in. The team would add three more—all at even strength—to go into the break with an insurmountable 7-0 lead.

A major problem came from the lack of fluidity in Harvard’s offensive core. In the final minutes of last Tuesday’s game, sophomore Max Motschwiller went down with a severe leg bruise that, while not season-ending, prevented him from playing in any capacity on Saturday.

“You could tell just by looking at it that he wasn’t going to play,” coach Scott Anderson said. “We just don’t have the kind of depth offensively with players with the same skill sets. The offense worked hard, but stuff just didn’t roll our way. The man-up group was not particularly effective, and a lot of that was trying to piece things together at this point in the season.”

With the game essentially out of reach and nothing left to lose, Harvard tried to come out strong in the third quarter. Senior Carle Stenmark notched his 11th goal of the season with 7:03 left on a feed from freshman Travis Burr.

The assist was the rookie’s first this spring.

But the Tigers had an answer, as sophomore Mark Kovler rattled off two straight in less than a minute to give Princeton its biggest lead at 9-1.

The Crimson had a little fight left, and with Flood a perfect 4-of-4 on faceoffs, Harvard capitalized to post the only goals in the fourth frame.

Senior Greg Cohen got in on the scoring action with 9:18 left, and his classmate Evan Calvert added his eighth of the season on a feed from Mahler with 4:35.

“In the second half we wanted to focus on the little things of the game: be smart with the ball, make good passes, don’t try to do too much,” Mahler said. “The shots will come, and they will go in, is what we were saying. We played a lot smarter, and we capitalized on the opportunities. It was just too little too late.”

—Staff writer Madeleine I. Shapiro can be reached at mshapiro@fas.harvard.edu.