Late Lafayette touchdown stuns Tigers
By: Justin Feil
EASTON, Pa. — The Princeton University football team’s
season opener started with such promise, but ended in disappointment.
With a new coach, Roger Hughes, a renewed commitment
to excellence and a new outlook, the Tigers were excited for their 2000
opener against Lafayette, a team they historically had owned to the tune of
a 32-2-3 series record.
The Leopards, however, under
a new coach of their own, earned their third win of the series with a 24-17
victory that went to the wire.
After rallying twice in
the second half, Princeton’s high hopes faded away when Lafayette mounted
an 80-yard drive that took 43 seconds and ended with a two-yard scoring
pass from Marko Glavic to Phil Yarberough.
The Tigers
came out full of optimism and capitalized quickly when Chris Roser-Jones
picked off a short pass and twisted and hurdled 33 yards for a touchdown
barely five minutes into the game. Taylor Northrop’s extra point gave the
Tigers a 7-0 lead.
"Maybe we had a little
overconfidence in the beginning of the game," said PU quarterback Tommy
Crenshaw who finished 21-for-39 for 193 yards. "We scored right away on
defense and moved the ball real well. I personally thought, ‘We’re going to
wipe this team out.’ From that point on, we got complacent, I guess. We
just kept waiting, and waiting and waiting to take the game over and while
we were waiting, they took the game from us."
Their
first two possessions resulted in solid scoring opportunities, but Northrop
could not convert first a 44-yard field goal attempt and then a 25-yard
try. When Andy Bryant mishandled a punt, the Leopards capitalized with
their first points of the day on a 27-yard field goal from Martin Brecht.
Lafayette defense then clamped down. It would hold
Princeton’s offense in check until late in the fourth quarter. The Tigers
managed just 109 yards of total offense in the first half, but thanks to a
second interception by Roser-Jones as Lafayette was threatening at its
3-yard line late in the second quarter, Princeton maintained a 7-3 lead at
halftime.
"In the first half, I thought we played from
an offensive and special teams perspective pretty poorly," Hughes said.
"Our defense did a great job of holding us in the football game. They came
up with some big turnovers. In the second half, we were a little spasmodic
offensively. I thought we got on track a little bit. We got a couple
drives, we went down and scored in the last minute to tie it and then they
took advantage of their good receivers, and a credit to them, hung in there
and found a way to win the game."
It didn’t come
without resistance from Princeton. Roser-Jones’ second pick of the
afternoon prompted a change of Leopard quarterback. Harry Armstrong went to
the bench after a 9-for-22, 67-yard day. Glavic, a lanky, deceptive
freshman, came in to replace Armstrong and promptly began to pick on a
youthful Princeton secondary in the second
half.
"They’re a tremendously talented bunch, and I
don’t want to use youth as an excuse," said Hughes of the defensive
secondary that gave up 321 yards passing to the Leopards. "We knew that
(they were young) and our schemes are set up to help them… The kids are
going to get better. There are great athletes back
there."
Glavic found Andrew May down the right side
for a 66-yard scoring pass with 8:02 left in the third quarter. Lafayette
took a 10-7 lead following a Martin Brecht extra point, but Princeton would
fight back. Northrop tied the score on a 37-yard field goal to finish off a
12-play, 66-yard scoring drive with 9:14 left in the fourth
quarter.
Lafayette responded immediately with an
11-play drive capped off by a 32-yard run by Bill Stocker, who finished
with 19 carries for 94 yards. Down, 17-10, with barely five minutes to
play, Princeton mounted its most impressive drive of the
game.
Starting at their own 14-yard line, Princeton
drove to the Lafayette 8-yard line. On the drive, the Tigers got an 18-yard
reception from Chisom Opara, a 15-yard run from Ismael El-Amin and a
fourth-and-10 conversion on a pass from Crenshaw to Nathan Lindell. Then it
was Crenshaw himself who scampered around right end and extended the ball
for a score. Northrop’s extra point tied the score again, 17-17, with just
45 seconds to play.
But in 43 seconds, Princeton saw
its hopes dashed by a 80-yard scoring drive from Lafayette. The key play, a
55-yard heave that Phil Yarberough came back to pull away from three
disoriented Tiger defenders, was only a precursor to a bitter ending for
the Tigers, who weren’t able to get much else going offensively all
day.
"If you look at the other drives we had, there
were sparks and sparks, but nothing ever ignited," Hughes said. "We hit the
corner route. Any time we had a third and long, Tommy did a great job of
hitting that route. I think we picked up a lot of third-and-longs… I
think the run game kind of got going."
Lafayette
would take two more snaps, eventually scoring the game-winner with two
seconds left on a 2-yard pass from Glavic to Yarberough for his 11th catch
of the day. Glavic finished 18-for-30 for 243 yards, 216 of which were in
the second half.
On the ground, Kyle Brandt led the
Tigers with 11 carries for 46 yards, while Chisom Opara led a group of
eight different receivers with six catches for 74 yards. Princeton was
penalized nine times for 88 yards and also fumbled three times, though it
lost just one of them. Some of the offensive effectiveness and the sloppy
play could be blamed on first-game jitters, but Hughes wasn’t looking for
excuses. He remained positive after a disappointing season
opener.
"I didn’t expect it to take until the fourth
quarter," he said of the offense’s awakening. "I did expect for some
mistakes to occur early in the game. I didn’t expect the miscues on special
teams because we’ve spent a lot of time on it.
"The
exciting thing for me is the fact that these kids hung in there and played
their tails off. They didn’t go south. They had a lot of chances to pack it
in, and they didn’t do it, on both sides of the ball. I take that as
encouraging. If we continue to build, we’re going to correct the mistakes.
Once we correct the mistakes, I think we can have a pretty good football
team."