Much, if not championship, is at stake as football plays Yale

The football team has not gotten the attention around campus it deserves. The perception is that the team just is not that good.

That perception is wrong.

After falling to the two No. 1 ranked teams, Penn and Harvard, in the last three weeks in games that were certainly not Princeton's best, the football team was eliminated from contention for the Ivy League title. While some would call a season without the hope of winning a title over and done, the Tigers find themselves in a position where they can still reestablish their name in the realm of Ivy League football.

At 5-3 overall, 3-2 Ivy League, Princeton has the opportunity to finish third in the Ancient Eight, but the team must win its next two games, starting tomorrow with perennial rival Yale in the Yale Bowl.

Because of Princeton's loss to Harvard, they will not have a chance to celebrate the victory with a bonfire that comes after beating both Harvard and Yale during a season. The game is still important, however, for Princeton's hopes of a third place finish in the League. It is also important because it should determine the answer once and for all of a question that has plagued the football team under the Hughes era: how resilient are the Tigers?

After taking key losses this season, the team has managed to return to top form by defeating tough opponents — Lafayette after Lehigh and Cornell in overtime after Harvard. But it was not always that way for Hughes' s Tigers.

In his first two seasons, the team struggled with bouncing back after big losses. One thing, however, remained true — the Tigers were always able to bounce back from Penn to pick up key wins at the end of the season. Last season, Princeton gave away the game to the Quakers in the fourth quarter, then came back the next weekend to decimate Yale at home, 34-14. And the year before that, Penn beat the Tigers at home, with Princeton bouncing back to squeak by the Elis in a last-minute win.

"We want to wipe the bad taste out of our mouth," head coach Roger Hughes said. "We want to sustain momentum going into the last game of the year."

In order to bounce back from a devastating loss such as the one suffered at the hands of the Quakers last weekend, the Tigers are going to need a jump-start on offense. In both losses against the major Ivy League opponents, the Princeton offensive production suffered drastically.

Against Harvard, Princeton's top rusher, senior running back Cameron Atkinson, had only 34 yards.

The passing game suffered as well. Junior quarterback Dave Splithoff went down with a dislocated shoulder late in the game and has not yet returned to action.

Against Penn, the offense suffered much the same way — the rushing offense only managed 32 yards on 32 carries. The Tigers managed just two touchdowns the entire game.

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While sophomore quarterback Matt Verbit has done a good job under center for the team while Splithoff has been injured, Splithoff simply has more experience with the offense than Verbit does — and more experience with Yale. However, the coaching staff is still not sure about the condition of Splithoff's shoulder.

"Structurally, he's fine," Hughes said. "We're trying to ratchet up his arm strength."

On the defensive side of the ball, the Tigers face one of the best quarterbacks in the League, Jeff Mroz.

Mroz finds his targets amid the defenders, and his receivers haul the ball in. One of his favorites is reigning ivyleaguesports.com Offensive Player of the Week, Ralph Plumb. Plumb had nine receptions for 107 yards in the Elis' win over Brown last week.

Facing Mroz, though, is a tough defensive team who has gone toe-to-toe with some of the better offensive teams in the League. But the key weakness to the defense is field position — if the offense cannot drive enough to give Yale worse field position than it gave Penn last week, then the defense will be hard-pressed to keep the Elis out of the end zone.

On the line for the Tigers is a chance to have their best finish in the Ivy League under Hughes and to make a statement that Princeton football is back. But that chance lies almost solely on whether the offense can bounce back this week.