Déja vu: football loses, 28-13, for second straight week

The football team lost, 28-13, on Saturday. A late-game comeback from the Tigers fell short, and a missed extra point accounted for the strange score. Sound familiar? The same thing happened last week when Princeton lost to Lehigh, but this week the victor was Lafayette.

Princeton's exciting fourth quarter against Lehigh did not carry over into the beginning of the Lafayette game.

"I thought we came out flat," head coach Roger Hughes said. "I noticed it in pre-game. The discouraging thing and the frustrating thing is that we had one of our best weeks of practice from the standpoint of intensity."

Princeton was unable to get anything going, falling behind 28-0 (just like against Lehigh) before a fleeting attempt to steal the game.

A sign of things to come

Lafayette scored on its first drive of the game, rolling 80 yards in a methodical and time-consuming 18 plays on its first drive. Five of those plays were third downs, and the Leopards converted on all of them. Lafayette's balanced attack on this first drive — it had nine passes and nine runs — continued throughout the game.

The Tigers' first chance on the field started well with eleven yards on the first two plays. Two plays later, however, a screen pass to sophomore running back Greg Fields ended with a fumble at the Princeton 33-yard line, which Lafayette's Maurice Bennet recovered.

"You can't turn the ball over and give teams like Lafayette great field position," Hughes said.

Princeton's tired defense slinked onto the field dejectedly and let Lafayette ease its way into the endzone, without having to snap the ball on a single third down. A botched extra point hold led to an impromptu two-point conversion, making the score 15-0.

The Tigers' next drive was a prompt three-and-out. The Leopards took over at their 36-yard line and leisurely moved down the field, content to throw on first and second downs because they knew they could convert on third. Lafayette converted two third-down attempts on the drive, and their star running back, Joe McCourt, caught a nine-yard touchdown pass to cap the drive. He had run for the first two as well.

All for naught

After being walked on to the tune of 22-0 through the first 16 minutes, 26 seconds of the game, Princeton got moving on its next drive, moving the ball efficiently down to Lafayette's 21-yard line. The drive stalled there and on fourth down, junior quarterback Matt Verbit was sacked for a five-yard loss, and a four minute and 21 second drive went for naught. Princeton also failed to convert a fourth down on its next drive, which gained forty yards and no points.

With 4:07 left in the half, Princeton tried to move the ball down the field on only its fifth drive of the game. On the drive's second play, Fields fumbled the ball on another screen pass, giving Lafayette the chance to move the ball 23 yards in 3:18.

They only needed 3:04. Quarterback Marko Glavic scrambled three yards for a touchdown, though he just as easily could have tossed the ball to John Weyrauch who was open in the endzone. The point-after was no good, and the score at the end of the half was 28-0.

Wasting time

Not having to score, Lafayette's main achievement of the second half was to run out the clock, which it did. Without scoring, the Leopards had three drives that lasted over four minutes.

The Tigers' offense sputtered to life in the third quarter. Princeton started to run its hurry-up offense with two minutes, 39 seconds left in the third. Verbit hit freshman wide receiver Eric Walz on a corner route that he caught on the two-yard line. Walz dove from the two while flying out of bounds and extended the ball over the goal line for the score.

The hurry-up offense was about all that could get Princeton going.

"When we do it, everybody starts getting into it more," Verbit said. "It's not like we can run the hurry-up every time."

The drive had not been quite as pretty as that catch, however. The Tigers moved 59 yards down the field for a touchdown, though 15 of that came on a roughing-the-passer penalty after a failed third down. The Walz touchdown pulled the Tigers within three scores, 28-7. Lafayette's next drive moved the ball 39 yards in 4:26, and left Princeton scrambling for time. In only two minutes, Princeton flew 80 yards and scored a touchdown. Verbit provided the offense for all but one play, the scoring run by junior running back Branden Benson. Sophomore kicker Eliot Bishop missed the extra point, and the score became 28-13.

Lafayette burned the clock for the rest of the game, and Princeton failed on another fourth-down try.

To sum up the contest, Hughes was blunt: "They beat us in every phase of the game today."

Relying on the hurry-up offense for its only two scores, Hughes said that he would not rule out using it more often.

"We're going to look at all possibilities," Hughes said," and that's one of the possibilities."

Next week, Princeton hosts Columbia at 7:00 pm. Place your bets on a 28-13 finish.