Tigers look to bounce back against Yale
By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
PHILADELPHIA — Accountability that has grown so important to the Princeton University football team’s success came out immediately following their latest setback, a 7-0 loss at Penn on Saturday.
PU linebacker Tim Boardman had barely finished explaining that he had been out of position on the lone touchdown of the game, a 26-yard run by Joe Sandberg, when fellow senior Rob Toresco broke in.
”I think our defense played the best they’ve played all year,” said the Tigers’ running back. “They were pretty much shut down. You ask them to hold Penn to seven points, you expect the offense to score some points. Hats off to our defense. They gave us plenty of opportunities, plenty of great field position to do something with. We just did not do anything.”
The closest the Tigers came was when Toresco took a pass down the middle from Greg Mroz on the Tigers’ first possession of the second quarter and rambled 66 yards before he was chased down by Chris Wynn at the Penn 4-yard line. After two unsuccessful runs, Mroz’s pass to Toresco was intercepted by Britton Ertman in the left flat of the end zone.
Coaches don’t want their teams placing blame on either side, but it would be hard to say that the Princeton offense pulled its weight at Franklin Field. Princeton had just 99 yards of total offense in the first half, 66 of it on the one play, while the Quakers were held to 82 total yards. Both teams are 3-5 overall, 2-3 in the Ivy League now.
”Defensively, we defended some bad field position,” said PU head coach Roger Hughes. “I was proud of our defense for that. But at times, we need to tackle a lot better. Our special teams, especially our kickoff and kickoff return team continue to hurt us a little bit. We have to get those things straightened out.”
Princeton hosts Yale 1 p.m. Saturday. The Bulldogs are tied atop the Ivy League standings, unbeaten along with Harvard. Princeton is tied with Brown and Penn for fourth, one game behind Dartmouth, who the Tigers finish the season against Nov. 17.
”It’s been a long road,” Toresco said. “We need to get this last one at home. I don’t think we have to worry about getting up for Yale. If we do, we’re in trouble. We scrimmage them every year. It’s nasty. There’s bad blood between us. We expect everything and they should too.”
In the Tigers, Yale will find a frustrated team. Princeton gave no indication that it would follow one of its most inspirational wins of the year, a three-point comeback win over Cornell, with Saturday’s offensive non-display.
”It’s not only frustrating for the coaching staff, but for the players, and for the program in general,” Hughes said. “One of the things we try to pride ourselves on is the consistency with which we play, the intensity and passion with which we play the game every week regardless of the situation. And we’re not. Clearly, we need to find that answer and find it quick.
”We have Yale coming in and they’re pretty good and then we go up to Dartmouth and they’re always tough up there. We have two left to win and we’re going out to practice and play like we’re going to win them.”
Princeton has to get over its loss to Penn quickly and figure out how to correct the errors it saw. The Tigers killed their momentum a variety of ways.
”We had fall break last week and we’d done what done the last two years during that time,” Hughes said. “I thought we had great practices. I thought our kids were pretty focused, but when we got on the field, we just didn’t execute.
”On offense, what happens if you get one person having a breakdown, you can take him out,” he added. “But it was a different person on various plays. Every time we got something going, we’d have a miscue. We had the quarterback get stepped on and fall down on third-and-8. If you could pinpoint one person, you replace him. It was a situation where we weren’t in sync offensively, we weren’t executing like we needed to.”
Bill Foran returned to the Princeton lineup and started at quarterback after missing the Cornell game. The Tigers lost three offensive players in the course of Saturday’s loss, which didn’t help their cause. Mroz and Will Thanheiser suffered concussions. Brendan Circle was lost to a hip pointer.
”The loss of Greg and Brendan Circle and Will Thanheiser, all within the same 10 plays, (meant) we were playing Trey Peacock and Matt Ransom at receiver pretty much the whole second half,” Hughes said. “I think they’re going to be very good players, but Adam Berry was giving a tutorial every play as to what everyone was going to do. The combination of those losses certainly made us different.”
It was a difficult day to get anything going with the two teams combining for 21 punts. They might have had 22, but Princeton succeeded in faking one on their first possession of the fourth quarter. The Tigers couldn’t use the momentum, however, and quickly put it back in the hands of their defense, which played well all game. Collin McCarthy led the Tigers with 14 tackles and Boardman had 12 tackles.
”It’s frustrating when you get out there and you practice all week and we look good all week,” Toresco said. “They were physical, but they didn’t show us anything we didn’t know they were going to do. That’s what’s most frustrating. We knew what they were going to do and we just couldn’t run it up in there.”