In preparation for nationally ranked No. 3 Princeton, the men’s lacrosse team got quite an offensive warmup Tuesday afternoon.

In a blowout where every roster member played, the No. 16 Bulldogs crushed Holy Cross, 22-3. Twelve Elis recorded goals, including four apiece from Scott Kenworthy ’04, Ned Britt ’04 and Colin Neville ’06.

“It doesn’t matter what the score is to me,” head coach Darryl Delia said. “It matters if we score in quality situations. I wanted to make sure our offense was doing the things we needed to in order to beat Princeton on Saturday.”

After a relatively close score midway through the first quarter when Holy Cross cut the score to 3-1, the Bulldogs blew the game open as expected.

The hapless Crusaders have won just one of their last 21 games. Seth Goldberg ’05 (4 assists) and Ryan Floyd ’03 (2 assists) helped the majority of first half tallies, including one by long-stick defenseman Ned Smith ’03.

In the second half, it was more of the same for the Bulldogs, who were able to clear their bench for younger players like Dan Brillman ’06 and Marcus Ruopp ’06, who scored a goal apiece. Captain Mike Scaglione ’03 set up three goals in the 13-goal half.

“Offensively, in a game like this, we try to focus on running our offense with discipline,” Delia said. “Defensively we play a physical, tough game.”

Rookie goaltender Dave Wright ’06, who played in the second half, finished with seven saves on nine shots, including a flurry of attempts at the end. Wright said that while Holy Cross entered the game with a poor record, the Bulldogs still could not afford to look ahead to Princeton.

“We don’t like to think of any teams as easy wins; we take them all seriously and know that they can beat us,” Wright said.

This weekend the Elis have their toughest challenge of the season ahead: the Tigers. Not only has Princeton dropped only one Ivy League contest in its past 43 games, but the one game they lost was to the Bulldogs last season, giving the Tigers added incentive.

“They’re coming at us,” Delia said. “They’ve had that date circled for 365 days.”

A perennial powerhouse, the Tigers broke into their current No. 3 spot with some recent wins, including a playoff-like 11-10 squeaker over Syracuse and a victory over previously undefeated Rutgers.

All-American defenseman Damian Davis, recently named the Inside Lacrosse Division I Player of the Week, will make things interesting for Yale’s scorers. So will goaltender Julian Gould, who has stopped 49 shots thus far this season.

Yale’s defense will have a handful with Princeton’s Sean Hartofilis and Jason Doneger, both with 15 goals this season. Luckily, Yale’s top one-on-one defenseman, Noah Glass ’03, returns from injury after sitting out the Holy Cross game.

“We can’t worry about who we’re playing. Our concentration needs to remain on us,” defenseman Brad Liff ’03 said. “We need to execute our game plan and minimize our mistakes. That’s what we did last year, and that’s how we plan to win this year.”