By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
Because the Princeton University football team has established itself as one of the Ivy League’s top programs, it is sometimes easy to forget just how young the Tigers are this season.
Coming off their first loss of the season, the Tigers will play as the host to Georgetown on Saturday at 1 p.m. in their final non-league game of the season.
Princeton will line up on defense with just three senior defensive starters listed on their two-deep, as well as starting three sophomores and a freshman.
The inexperience was evident last Saturday when Columbia scored in the closing minute to pull out a 28-24 victory in Princeton. The game was the Ivy League opener for both teams.
“They made plays,” Princeton coach Bob Surace said of Columbia after the loss. “That’s a team with seniors all over. They’re a good team. We’re not better than that team. We have a bunch of freshmen out there. We made some mistakes in discipline that I need to correct. That team over there is a group of seniors at every key position. We took them seriously. We just came up a little bit short.”
Princeton trailed Columbia, 21-14, late in the third quarter before rallying to grab a 24-21 lead with 2:48 left in the fourth period when Chad Kanoff connected with Stephen Carlson for a 27-yard touchdown pass. The TD pass was the third of the game for Kanoff, who had thrown two earlier touchdown passes to Jesper Horsted.
But Columbia came back to grab the lead when Anders Hill completed a 63-yard touchdown pass to Ronald Smith. The Lions converted a third-and-10 play early in the drive, then scored the winning touchdown on a third-and-11 play. For the game, Columbia converted on 11 of its 21 third-down situations.
“We didn’t do a good job stopping them on third down,” Surace said. “We were on the field way too much on defense. It probably affected us with our pass rush. There were some plays where we had some miscommunication. We’ll fix that.
“We have to be more disciplined. We made errors. I have to do a better job making them understand that these games .we have to execute better on third down. We are a very young team on defense. I have to do a better job of putting them in the right positions.”
The loss put the Tigers in a tough position in the race for the Ivy title. They are now one of four teams opening 0-1, leaving them looking up at 1-0 teams Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard and Yale. Overall, Princeton is 2-1 for the season.
“The league from top to bottom is very strong,” Surace said. “We are not the most talented team. We have to be a team that is disciplined. I have to do a better job coaching because we are not the same team we were last year. We’re missing six All-Ivy players on our defense. So we need to be more exact.
“We’re a little bit banged up and we don’t have the depth we’ll hopefully have in the coming weeks.”
Senior linebacker Mark Fossati was injured in the loss to Columbia and is not expected to play against Georgetown. Sophomore John Orr, who made some big plays against Columbia, will start in his place.
On offense, Kanoff had another strong statistical game in the loss to Columbia. The senior quarterback completed 24 of his 40 passes for 312 yards and three touchdowns. The rushing attack was led by Charlie Volker, who ran for 71 yards on 19 carries.
After the game with Georgetown, the Tigers will play six straight Ivy League games to close the season. Princeton is at Brown on Oct. 14 and will play at Harvard in a night game on Oct. 20.
