Tigers hope to finish .500 after fourth straight loss
By: Justin Feil
The Princeton University football team will look frustration in the face when it hosts Dartmouth on Saturday with a .500 season on the line.
The Tigers won’t have a chance at what would have been their second winning season in seven years after again seeing a game slip away, this time 21-9 at Yale on Saturday. The loss was the fourth straight for Princeton.
"It’s very frustrating," said PU head coach Roger Hughes after his team slipped to 4-5 overall and 2-4 in the Ivy League. "Both players and coaches are really frustrated. At times we look like a championship team. And then we shoot ourselves in the foot."
The Tigers fired several metatarsal-damaging rounds at Yale. Both teams scored three times Saturday, the Bulldogs just got touchdowns while Princeton had field goals.
"We’d take it right down and do some good things with it," Hughes said. "But we couldn’t score (touchdowns). That’s what’s been frustrating. We couldn’t have practiced it any more last week. We had special (skeleton) sessions. We had special teams out there. We’re doing everything we can. We just have to maintain our discipline and focus, keep our focus and get better."
Princeton’s Brandon Mueller nearly intercepted Alvin Cowan’s first pass attempt of the game. Instead, it glanced off to Chandler Henley for a first-down on the way to the Bulldogs’ first touchdown of the game.
After scoring on its first possession of the game to pull within 7-3 of the Bulldogs, Princeton gave up a 50-yard kickoff return to the Ivy’s leading returner, Rob Carr. On the 10th play of the drive, a fourth-and-1, Carr scored on a 13-yard run for a 14-3 lead.
But Princeton bounced back strong in the third quarter for two scores, both short field goals by Derek Javarone. The first, a 19-yarder, came when the Tigers’ drive stalled at the Yale 2-yard line. Javarone’s second field goal with one second left in the third quarter was a 22-yarder that came four plays after a false start penalty forced them into a first-and-15 situation.
"If you look at our first drive of the game, we took it right down and scored," Hughes said. "We were executing a lot better in the second half. We were making the right reads. If you look at the third quarter, we held the ball for 12:15 of it, but we only came out with six points. Two penalties kept us out of scores.
"But I felt like then we were clawing our way back in the game. And then unfortunately we fumbled after our defense stopped them. They scored and we never really recovered from that."
Princeton’s defense began the fourth quarter by pushing Yale’s offense back seven yards to force a punt. But Greg Fields, the Ivy League’s second-leading returner behind Carr, had the ball bound off him and the Bulldogs recovered possession in a scramble.
The fumble took away from another otherwise high caliber day for the high-risk, high-reward Fields. The junior receiver had nine catches for 106 yards.
"He’s been great," Hughes said. "There’s a young man that just misjudged the wind I think. I think the ball sailed on him a bit. He was trying to make a play to win the game. He knew we needed some momentum and he thought a big return would be just what we needed to go down to score. I can’t fault him for trying to make a play."
But in the four-game losing stretch, it’s been the old problems of turnovers and penalties that have cost the Tigers. Princeton has lost twice by one point and was within striking distance of Yale when the fourth quarter began before an untimely turnover gave the Bulldogs the ball at the Princeton 17 where they went in for a touchdown in three plays.
"It’s been the turnovers," Hughes said. "Against Penn, we turned it over in the red zone. Against Yale, we turned it over in crucial situations. We had a couple key penalties. At times we overcame them. But when we got down to the red zone we couldn’t. It’s just the little things. The kids are playing hard. We have to play right.
"What’s so frustrating is it’s not the same thing every play. It’s one or two people here and there. Brandon Mueller, it hits him in the hands, and the guy gets a first down. We’d like some breaks, but we have to make our own breaks. We have to keep the intensity level up. We want to get to .500 and get the seniors that last win and give us some momentum for next year."
Senior Matt Verbit passed a milestone in his next to last game. Saturday in New Haven, Conn., his 205 passing yards pushed him over the 5,000-yard total. Verbit became the second Princeton quarterback, joining Doug Butler, to eclipse the mark. Verbit is the 12th quarterback in Ivy League history to pass for more than 5,000 yards in a career.
Verbit, who completed 23 of 39 passes without being intercepted against the Bulldogs, and his senior classmates will be looking to end their season with a win over a Dartmouth team that won its first game of the season, 20-7, against Brown on Saturday. Both teams could use a win in the worst way.
For the Tigers, it’s a win that’s needed to remind the players and coaches that Princeton is still the team that began the season very promisingly with a 4-1 start, and that the Tigers have played like a contender at times. Frustratingly, those moments haven’t come often enough at the end of games.