There’s no secret who the Princeton Tiger soccer team looks for on corner kicks.

Jonah Taylor kicked the ball from the corner, and as he often does senior Jacoby Smallwood rose above the crowd in front of the net and got a head on it. His header went right in, giving the Tigers a one-goal lead at 30:44.

Smallwood scored two more times, leading the Tigers to a 4-0 nonconference win Tuesday evening over Stillman Valley at Bryant Field.

“I read it, just hit it, and it went in. I was happy,” Smallwood said of his header. “They’re set pieces. We have a plan for every corner kick, and I’m the main target.”

“Physically, Jacob’s a really good player in the air, and he scored a few on headers on corners,” Gray said. “He got his first goal on that, and we started building a little momentum that we carried to the first half, anyway. He’s gotten on the end of a lot of those corner kicks.

“He’s gets up in the air pretty well. He’s brave, so he’s not afraid to get his head on the ball.”

Erfaan Yousufy scored for the Tigers at 23:00 on an assist by Tyler VandenVenter.

Cayden Beaber got the assist on Smallwood’s second goal at 14:42 in the first half to run the Tigers’ lead to 3-0 before intermission.

Smallwood said the Tigers had a good passing game, and Gray agreed.

“We just moved the ball together, good chemistry,” Smallwood said,

“Little bit better linking plays together,” Gray said. “Couple of the goals came off stringing four or five passes together in a row, which is good build-up soccer. That’s the you want to play. It’s nice to see.”

Smallwood didn’t cool off any after the break, completing the hat trick on a run at the goal at 22:30.

“As a player, Jacoby’s been one of our best all year. As a leader, he’s been good on the field with hard work, getting forward and backwards,” Gray said.

Princeton finished out the game with its JV players against the Stillman Valley varsity (3-14), which had no subs.

“It feels good. Hopefully, we learned some lessons and build on it and see some of the success on the field and build our confidence and play better going forward,” Gray said.

The Tigers (4-15-1) have one more regular-season game left at Byron (13-4-1) on Thursday before hosting No. 9 Stanford Olympia (1-17) as the No. 8 seed in a regional play-in game on Saturday, Oct. 18.

“I’m hoping we can put a few more things together before we have to kick off regionals, but I feel like we’re getting there,” Gray said. “There’s been improvements here and there. There’s been moments where we’ve gone two steps forward and one step backward.

“Hopefully, we can string it together next couple games and get ready for that playoff game.”