Tigers move into first-place Ivy tie
By: Justin Feil
The Princeton University football team remains in control of its Ivy League destiny after starting 5-2 for the second time in four seasons.
Fast starts in each of its victories this season have made the difference, though the wins aren’t getting any easier. The Tigers got off to a quick start, stalled, and then finished strong for a 20-17 overtime win over visiting Cornell in front of 9,315 at Princeton Stadium on Saturday. A 35-yard field goal by Derek Javarone ended the game and gave the Tigers’ placekicker the Ivy record for career field goals with 42.
"It’s the team record that matters," said the Princeton senior. "The fact that that last field goal broke the record and won the game makes it really special."
Princeton’s win has it at 3-1 in the Ivy League and sets up a showdown next week at Penn, which suffered its first Ivy loss, 34-20, to Brown on Saturday to leave four Ivy teams – Brown, Penn, Princeton and Yale – with one loss apiece. The Tigers, who play the Quakers and Yale before finishing with Dartmouth, remain on track to win their first Ivy crown since 1995 if they win the rest of their games.
The Tigers, who had a 14-0 lead Saturday, improved to 5-0 in games in which they score first. They are 0-2 in games when opponents score first. Despite early leads, the Tigers have needed fourth-quarter rallies in each of the past two weeks. Against Cornell, Princeton, which had just 56 yards of offense in its first three second-half possessions, drove 63 yards for Javarone’s first field goal of the game, a 32-yarder to tie the game, 17-17, with 2:18 left in the fourth quarter. He missed a 29-yard attempt, his first miss of the season, to end the first half.
"It was great to come back from missing that first field goal," Javarone said. "I give my teammates and my coaches credit for that. At halftime, they all came up to me and said, you’ll be in there and you’ll win it for us. I came out and I can’t really remember the kick that much. I was just in the zone."
Princeton needed its fast start to survive a Big Red unit that threw everything at it except the fumble-rooski. Cornell succeeded with a wild onsides kick, got a first-down on a fake punt, attempted a flea flicker and generally tried to keep the Tigers guessing offensively and defensively all afternoon.
"We’ve struggled on the road and done a good job at home," said Cornell coach Jim Knowles, whose team fell to 3-4 overall, 2-2 in the Ivies. "Princeton is a very good team. We needed to find a way to get an edge. We decided we’d be more aggressive going into the game."
The Tigers were able to overcome all of Cornell’s wrinkles as well as five fumbles of their own for the win. Princeton gave Javarone the opportunity to win it in overtime after Tim Strickland intercepted Ryan Kuhn’s third-down pass to end Cornell’s overtime possession.
"It feels good especially to make a big play in a big game like this especially after I had given up a deep ball earlier in the game," Strickland said. "I was hoping I’d get another opportunity to make up for it, and fortunately I did.
"We were in man coverage across the board and they ran a little out route, and also earlier in the first half they had run a similar route. I had thought, it’s third down and the same thing might be coming. It was a similar route and I was able to jump on it."
Princeton’s defense also held on the final possession of the fourth quarter after Javarone’s tying kick. The Big Red got the ball back with 2:14 left and drove to the Princeton 30. But Kuhn was harassed by an onrushing Tiger defense and drew an intentional grounding penalty that took the Big Red out of field goal range to end regulation.
"One of the nice things is we run a similar offense from the standpoint of game stuff," said PU head coach Roger Hughes, whose team held the Ivy League’s leading rushing team to 150 yards on the ground, 99 yards below their average. "So we ran a lot of 1 vs. 1 stuff this week. In fact, we actually did some on Thursday, which we don’t normally do. It’s hard to get a scout team to do what opponents do. We were doing that stuff and I think that helped us in the long run. Our front three played very well and our linebackers closed very well. If you had told me before the game that we’d hold them as we had, I’d have been a bit surprised. But their effort was outstanding."
Abi Fadeyi led the Tigers with a career-high 14 tackles. Princeton made the most of its 118 yards on the ground and Jeff Terrell completed 13 passes for 190 yards and was not intercepted for the second straight week. He led an efficient offense early.
The Tigers survived fumbles in both of their first-half scoring drives. Greg Fields fumbled the punt return, but the Tigers recovered for their third possession of the game at the Cornell 39-yard line and scored five plays later when Terrell connected with Jon Dekker for a second time on the drive for an 11-yard touchdown with 5:42 to go in the first quarter and a 7-0 lead.
Terrell and the Tigers ran misdirection right while Dekker slipped out under the linebackers to the left. Dekker caught the ball at the 7, powered out of Matt Grant’s immediate tackle attempt and bowled over Jason Cloyd at the goal line for his second career touchdown catch against the Big Red.
The Tigers scored a touchdown on their first drive of the second quarter as well. They drove 72 yards, the key play being a 39-yard completion from Terrell to Fields to set the ball up at the Cornell 3. On its first play inside the red zone, Terrell’s option pitch went off blocking back Joe Kovba but was recovered at the 1. Rob Toresco ran through a massive hole on the left side for the touchdown to make it 14-0 with 12:37 to go before the half.
Cornell bounced back late in the quarter when A.J. Weitsman connected on a 46-yard field goal at the 6:36 mark. The Big Red followed with an imaginative onside kick as Weitsman pretended to trip on his approach to kick off the ball. Back-up kicker David Korn kicked the ball along the ground and recovered the onside kick at the Cornell 45-yard line. The Big Red drove 34 yards before settling for a 38-yard field goal.
The Tigers didn’t get as lucky when Toresco fumbled on second-and-4 from the Cornell 39. The Big Red recovered and took advantage of more trickery on a 13-play, 54-yard drive before Weitsman’s 24-yard field goal brought them within 14-9 with 14:09 left in the fourth quarter. Cornell kept the drive alive with a 15-yard completion from Nick Maxwell to Troy Follmar for a first down on a fake punt.
The Big Red took their first lead of the game after holding Princeton to a three-and-out after their third field goal. Cornell used a 35-yard pass from Kuhn to Anthony Jackson, who beat Strickland, to move deep into Princeton territory. After two rushes, Kuhn hit Luke Siwula on a third-down screen pass on the left side for a 6-yard touchdown. Siwula then burst through the right side for the two-point conversion to give Cornell a 17-14 lead with 10:32 left.
The Tigers tied the Big Red when they answered with the 18-play drive that consumed 8:06. On the drive, Princeton converted three third-down possessions, the first with 12 yards to go, the second with 11 yards to go and the third with four yards to go. The Tigers also converted a fourth-and-5 when Terrell found Dekker at the Cornell 26. Dekker finished with five catches for 71 yards. Brian Brigham had the first two third-down conversions on the drive on 20- and 21-yard catches from Terrell.
"We weren’t as crisp as needed to be today," Hughes said. "But the thing that this team has shown us time and time again, and it goes back to the leadership, when the chips are down, and our backs are against the wall, they’re not panicking. It’s, OK, fellows, it’s time to go. Let’s go. And that’s what happened on the last drive.
"That’s one of the things we work on a lot," he added of the third-down conversions. "That’s one of the things we’ve drastically improved from last year. That speaks to why we’ve been successful."
And why the Tigers are in the thick of the Ivy championship hunt with three weeks to go. Two weeks after ending a nine-year losing streak against Harvard, Princeton looks to do the same at Penn, which has won the last nine meetings.