Turnovers hurt football in match-up against Penn

Head football coach Roger Hughes entertained questions at a press conference last Wednesday, expressing optimism about his team's chances against Penn that weekend. That's the undefeated Quakers, the team with the nation's second-longest winning streak.

Hughes was crazy, right?

Princeton lost the game, 37-7, committed five turnovers, and was down 30-0 at the half, but the defense did its best to bend but not break. Had the turnovers been cut down, this could have been a very different game.

On their first possession, the Tigers looked feeble. Two tackles for losses and a short run left them facing a fourth-and-13 after three plays and two minutes had elapsed.

Penn started the next drive in good field position at its own 46-yard line. Running back Sam Mathews then rushed twice for 15 yards before quarterback Mike Mitchell threw a 39-yard touchdown to receiver Dan Castles on a flea flicker.

Three minutes gone. Total domination by the Quakers.

But the Tigers showed the resilience that Hughes has stressed all season. Princeton went three-and-out on the next drive, then Penn followed that with a 63-yard drive down to the Tiger 10-yard line. First and goal.

The Princeton defense held, however, and forced a field goal to minimize the damage to just 10-0.

Again, the Tigers went three-and-out, but in a worse way. On the third down play, junior quarterback Matt Verbit found senior fullback Tim Bowden bouncing into the flat. As Bowden fought for extra yards, he fumbled, and set the Quakers up with a first-and-10 just 19 yards away from another score.

"It's very difficult to put your defense in that kind of field position to defend a very good offense," Hughes said.

Indeed, it was too much to ask of a tired defense, which had been on the field six of the last eight minutes. Three more plays led to another Penn touchdown and a 17-0 lead.

The Quakers rattled off another long drive against the Princeton defense as the second quarter began. It spanned 11 plays and 64 yards, but the Tiger defense held after facing a first-and-10 at its own 17-yard line, forcing another field goal to hold Penn's lead to 20-0.

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Verbit fumbled on Princeton's next drive, and the Quakers got the ball back at the Princeton 30-yard line. Battered and frustrated, the defense prevailed again, holding Mathews to nine yards on four rushes and forcing a turnover on downs.

Penn's next drive was another long one, spanning 12 plays and 55 yards, but again the Tiger defense dammed the flood. Despite having a first-and-goal at the three, the Quakers only added three more points to the lead on another field goal, increasing the lead to 23-0.

On the ensuing kickoff, it was the special teams unit that hurt the defense. Princeton fumbled the kickoff at its own 21-yard line, and turned it over to Penn. Soon after, Mitchell found Castles again to make the blowout official: 30-0.

"We practice that [kickoff return] every week," Hughes said. "What the up-returners should do and how they should get on it. For whatever reason they didn't get on it. We practice every one of those scenarios, and that's frustrating."

The Tiger defense held Penn to one touchdown and three punts in the second half. The offense only had one turnover in the half, a fumble by senior wide receiver Blair Morrison after catching a 15-yard completion from Verbit on third down. It was the second time in the game that Princeton had fumbled while driving in Quaker territory.

"I guess you could call it a step back," Verbit said. "Anytime you turn the ball over five times, it can't be a positive thing."

Penn scored on six of its first seven possessions Saturday, but the defense was not at fault. The offense's short drives kept its teammates on their heels. Princeton did not have a drive longer than two minutes, six seconds until its impressive 96-yard scoring drive in the third quarter.

Fourteen of the Quakers' points came after turnovers inside the Tiger 30-yard line, and the defense essentially saved 12 points by holding the best team in the Ivy League to field goals three times on drives that lasted over 10 plays and 50 yards each.

That leaves just 23 points that the defense was directly responsible for, when it quite easily could have allowed 49, a 26-point spread.

The defense was not perfect Saturday, allowing big plays and missing tackles. But with a more efficient offense, who knows what the result would have been.

"They're a great team," Hughes said of Penn. "And we made them look even better."

Suddenly, Hughes' optimism does not seem so crazy.