In the third year of the Hughes era, the football team saw vast improvement across the board to the point that it became a contender to remove Harvard and Penn from the longstanding positions atop the Ivy League.
The Tigers finished the 2002 campaign 6-4 overall and 4-3 in the Ancient Eight, good enough for the middle of the pack.
Princeton opened its season against Lehigh. Going into the opening game, the Hawks were ranked third in Division I-AA. In the first half, however, it appeared that that fact had not intimidated the Tigers, as the team came out firing. Everything clicked for Princeton, and the squad went into the locker room at half time sitting atop a 24-7 lead.
The Tiger offense would not score again. Lehigh turned things around in the fourth quarter and scored 24 unanswered points to take the game, 31-24.
Following the heartbreaking loss, the status quo of Princeton teams under Hughes has been to come out rusty the following week — but not the 2002 squad. Instead, the Tigers went on a four-game winning streak — the longest in coach Hughes' tenure at Princeton.
The team fought off its last two out-of-conference opponents, Lafayette and Colgate, while posting its first two Ivy League wins against Columbia and Brown.
That streak came crashing down as the Tigers butted heads with the Crimson in the homecoming game at Princeton Stadium. While the throughout the contest, offensive stalls in the shape of turnovers destroyed Princeton's chance at a H-Y-P championship and a bonfire. Additionally, the Crimson knocked starting quarterback Splithoff out of play in the fourth quarter. The able-handed backup, sophomore Matt Verbit came in and took the Tigers to within one touchdown of Harvard. But it was not enough, as the Crimson took the game, 24-17.
With Splithoff virtually sidelined with a shoulder injury for the remainder of the season (he would return briefly against Dartmouth), Verbit took the helm and led the team to a comeback overtime victory at Cornell the following weekend, 32-25.
Yet doom was still at hand for the 2002 team. Returning home to face Ivy powerhouse Penn helped destroy any vestiges of confidence garnered in the win over the Big Red. The Quakers decimated Princeton, 44-13, in front of the home crowd, handing the Tigers their worst loss of the season.
Defensive battle at Yale
That scar carried over to the following weekend as the team traveled to perennial rival Yale for redemption. But it was not to be found, and Princeton wound up on the losing end in a defensive battle, dropping the game, 7-3. With that loss, the Tigers were the outright losers of the H-Y-P championship, while Harvard would win it yet again with a 20-13 victory over the Elis the following weekend. No current class at Princeton has partaken in a bonfire because of the championship.
The final game of the season would prove to be the game of a lifetime for one senior. Tailback Cameron Atkinson had been the leading rusher for the Tigers for two years, becoming only the sixth player in Princeton history to join the 1,000-yard season rushing club. Atkinson led his team to victory over Dartmouth on the strength of his 181 yards in the fourth quarter.
With his team down 16-10, Atkinson chipped in two long touchdown runs to help catapult Princeton to victory. The most memorable was a 86-yard run down the right sideline, a run that set a Princeton Stadium record.
The Tigers have lost much to graduation and extenuating circumstance. While Splithoff's shoulder continues to improve, shoring up plenty of depth at quarterback, that position's defensive counterpart (linebacker) will ache next season. Losing seniors Drew Babinecz and J.R. Sauder to graduation hurt the team, but the announcement that junior standout Zak Keasey was declared academically ineligible has effectively destroyed the linebacking corps. Though Atkinson's departure leaves that position in the able hands of Benson and sophomore Jon Veach, the team faces more questions than answers in the 2003 campaign.
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