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Opening day of the 2026 NCAA Division I men's lacrosse season is Jan. 31.
Throughout the month of January, we'll pose three burning questions for each team ranked in the USA Lacrosse Division I Men's Preseason Top 20, presented by CWENCH Hydration, starting with No. 20 Michigan and finishing with No. 1 Maryland.
Join the conversation on social media @USALMag (IG/X/FB). Wrong answers only.
The greatest luxury Coulter Mackesy provided Princeton for much of the last four years was the sense the Tigers were never out of any game. After all, the attackman graduated as the program’s career goals leader (167) and second behind Michael Sowers with 248 career points.
It should not be overlooked — and it certainly isn’t in Princeton’s lacrosse offices — that Mackesy bought time for Nate Kabiri and Colin Burns to develop without maximal attention paid to them.
To be certain, neither Kabiri (32 goals, 29 assists in 2025) nor Burns (29 goals, 17 assists) was an afterthought on opposing scouting reports in the first half of their respective careers. The longtime teammates, who played high school ball together at Georgetown Prep outside of Washington, D.C., have started every game the last two years.
And now the spotlight shifts to them, and both attackmen will play a big part in Princeton’s attempt to make it back to Memorial Day weekend for the first time since 2022.
“I think both those guys have become a lot more vocal — on the field, off the field, in our locker room,” coach Matt Madalon said. “I just think becoming upperclassmen, you become so much more confident in the standards and what’s expected and the processes. Those guys are now able to drive the train. Those guys have been right alongside Coulter the past handful of years. In some of those pivotal moments where we may need a play made, I think those guys will be able to step up.”
They’re likely to be joined on attack by Peter Buonanno, the Ivy League’s rookie of the year last spring. He scored 18 goals and added 11 assists while primarily coming out of the midfield and playing alongside two other holdover starters: Chad Palumbo (28 goals, 19 assists) and Tucker Wade (27 goals, eight assists).
Scoring wasn’t a problem last spring, when Princeton scored 15 in an Ivy League final loss to Cornell and dropped a frenetic 19-18 NCAA quarterfinal to Syracuse. That it could lose a Tewaaraton finalist in Mackesy and potentially be about as potent this year is a testament to the abilities of Kabiri and Burns to run the offense.
“I think they’re going to be pretty mature juniors, and then Pete coming along at the end of last year and being able to play alongside those guys,” Madalon said. “I think it’ll be a pretty strong and diverse unit.”
Beyond the starting attack, there’s more to dig into with what could prove to be the program’s best team in more than 20 years, namely …
There are candidates all over, so it’s hard to provide a definitive answer. But Palumbo, who torched Syracuse for six goals last year to match Jesse Hubbard, Chris Massey and Mackesy for Princeton’s NCAA tournament single-game record, has to make the short list of possibilities.
Sidelined last summer while taking care of his body in what Madalon called being “on the IR a little bit,” Palumbo didn’t stray far from the game. He started hosting a PLL-focused podcast aptly titled “LaxRatsTV.”
“He’s got dreams of MLL, PLL, Team USA,” Madalon said. “He never stops watching it. He truly loves the game. He loves talking about it. He’s leading our team from a captain’s position this year, so hopefully it’ll continue to impact his love for the game. That’s an everyday thing.”
We expect a lot from those guys. We expect no steps back.
Matt Madalon on Princeton's defense
The Tigers’ anchors on the back end in recent years have included defenseman Colin Mulshine and long pole Michael Bath. Both were graduation losses for defensive coordinator Jeremy Hirsch, whose unit played well the final two months of the regular season but wouldn’t claim to have turned in an optimal showing in the NCAA tournament against Syracuse.
Princeton doesn’t view defense as a question mark internally, but it’s clear some new names will have to emerge this spring.
“The young guys behind them with [Jake] Stahl, [Hunter] Spiess and Finn Fox, we think those guys are really top tier,” Madalon said. “They’re led by seniors — [Cooper] Kistler and [Zach] Friedman — who have been mainstays in our defense for years now. We expect a lot from those guys. We expect no steps back. We have to get a little tougher and develop some secondary and tertiary defenses down the stretches and make sure we’re stopping some of the best teams in the country.”
A run at a first-team All-America nod? Madalon thinks it’s possible after Croddick took over for the graduated Michael Gianforcaro and promptly made 22 saves in an opening victory at Penn State, stopped double-digit shots in all but one game and finished with a .566 save percentage.
“We think he’s one of, if not the best, goalie in the country,” Madalon said. “Big kid, good hands, great attitude and is really poised back there. We hope he takes a big step forward this year.”
Possibly, though the 2002 team played on Memorial Day, too. Nonetheless, that’s still almost a quarter-century ago, and Princeton has only two trips back to the semifinals (2004 and 2022) since then.
Madalon said there is an internal understanding that an NCAA crown is something that can and has been done at Princeton. And while he didn’t bring it up, it probably didn’t go unnoticed that even in the current topsy-turvy world of college sports, another Ivy League team (Cornell) celebrated the end to a long title drought last Memorial Day.
Then there’s the acute understanding of just how precarious the postseason can be. Much of the roster that saw a one-goal lead slip away in the final five minutes against Syracuse last May understands just how much a loss at that stage can sting and is incentivized to avoid a similar experience.
“I think it’s a really motivated group,” Madalon said. “We get the sense of that, that we’re pretty high-urgency, so we’re pretty lucky as a coaching staff that you have a group that shows up every single day.”
Patrick Stevens has covered college sports for 25 years. His work also appears in The Washington Post, Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook and other outlets. He's provided coverage of Division I men's lacrosse to USA Lacrosse Magazine since 2010.
