Football looks past Lehigh collapse to game with Lafayette

I'll start with a confession. I wrote the back page headlines for Monday's 'Prince' after Lehigh beat the football team, 31-24.

"Collapse in Bethlehem," "Football blows 24 point lead," "Fifteen minutes of shame." I was particularly proud of the Andy Warhol reference.

The Tigers played poorly in the second half, but fans — including me — need to put the loss in perspective. So does the football team, but we hope they've already done that.

If you would have told me that Princeton would lose to Lehigh by a touchdown on the road, I'd take that result.

And I'm sure that almost everyone outside the team and coaching staff would agree with me.

Lehigh was the #3 team in Division I-AA at kickoff. No one's sure if Princeton is the third-best team in the Ivy League. But after Saturday's game, everyone knows the Tigers have the potential to win the conference.

But the loss to the Mountain Hawks — because it was a collapse, because it happened in the fourth quarter, because we've seen this before — could also send the Tigers into a tailspin.

The onus is on head coach Roger Hughes and his staff. Burn the game film, perform an ancient abluition ritual, offer a freshman to the gods of Palmer Stadium.

Just make sure Splithoff isn't reliving that interception for the next nine weeks. Make sure the offense forgets being shut out in the second half and remembers putting up 24 in the first 30 minutes. Make sure the defense remembers stopping the Mountain Hawks for most of the game, not the few drives Schwenk played to form.

What worries me most, however, is that I'm starting to expect late-game weakness from the Tigers. It was a trend last season. Success this year may depend on making last Saturday's game an aberration.

I'm the sort of sports fan who downplays the notion of the clutch hitter. Sure, some athletes might perform better than others when the pressure is highest, but most of the time, that's because they're faster or stronger or more prepared.

But when a team starts believing a fourth-quarter lead will be lost, it's too late. Princeton is not at that point, and I think Hughes and his staff are too good to let that happen here. And the schedule should help them out.

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The panacea for any psychological issues brought on by the Lehigh game might be the Mountain Hawks' traditional Patriot League rival, Lafayette.

Now, the Leopards are 3-1, but Lafayette is the Penn to Lehigh's Princeton.

That means Lehigh has better students than Lafayette. The Mountain Hawks rank higher in U.S. News and World Report. They have a better basketball team, a prettier campus, more modern athletic facilties.

Well, I'm not sure about any of that, except for the U.S. News ranking, but I do know Lafayette's football team has been about as good as Columbia's for the last few years.

The Leopards can play spoiler, but if the Tigers do their job, the faithful will leave Princeton Stadium happy. Editor's Note: This is the second column in a weekly series about the football team.