Football faces toughest test to date in Harvard

Hope springs eternal this weekend in the world of sports. The Boston Red Sox, longtime losers in so many ways, finally threw the proverbial monkey off their backs. In becoming the first team to come back and win a seven-game series after facing a 3-0 deficit, the self-proclaimed "idiots" from Beantown finally vanquished the Yankee demons that have plagued them for so many years.

The Red Sox heroes of 2004 have given birth to the greatest redemption song ever heard in the world of sports. And as Derek Lowe, Johnny Damon, and the rest of the Olde Towne team have discovered, painful history only makes victory more perfect. The bitter memory of a loss can serve as the grapes for a sweet wine of deliverance.

The football players here at Princeton no doubt tuned into the epic baseball series in Boston and the Bronx this week, despite the intense academic pressure of midterms at the University. These Tigers (4-1, 2-0 Ivy League) are in the midst of their best season since head coach Roger Hughes took the helm four years ago.

With success comes high expectations, and as they watched the baseball games the Princeton footballers likely empathized with the Boston ballplayers who have battled the mighty Yankees year after year. For just as the road to a Red Sox championship goes through the Bronx, all roads to a championship at Princeton must pass through one daunting obstacle — Harvard.

The rivalry between the Tigers and the Crimson began in 1877, and since that first meeting the teams have played each other 96 times. Princeton has won 50 of those meetings, but all 50 of those victories were before 1995. Since then, Harvard has owned its ancient rival, winning eight consecutive times, often by a huge margin.

This weekend, however, the Tigers will have reason to hope for a reversal of fortunes. Two of these reasons are Princeton's all-league middle linebackers, Zak Keasey and Justin Stull. The two dynamic playmakers man the middle in Princeton's 3-4 defense, and they have bruised and battered opposing backs all season long. With the season at its halfway point, Stull, a junior captain, and Keasey, a senior who missed last season for academic reasons, have already combined for 118 tackles.

The two linebackers will need to play their best if the Tigers hope to contain the Harvard offense. The Crimson showcases two of the best players in the league, tailback Clifton Dawson and quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. Dawson leads the league in rushing, while Fitzpatrick is the leader in total yardage.

In Princeton's lone loss this season, to Colgate, it was the powerful running back-quarterback duo of Jamaal Branch and Chris Brown that ultimately proved to be too much for the Tigers to handle. Dawson and Fitzpatrick may be an even more dangerous pair of stars.

"(Branch and Brown), that combination is not as powerful as Clifton Dawson and Ryan Fitzpatrick," Stull said on Wednesday. "This will be a great test for our defense."

If the defense holds, the pressure will be on the offense to perform efficiently. Coach Hughes expects senior quarterback Matt Verbit to see a steady diet of blitzes and exotic pass coverage. How Verbit responds will likely determine who wins the game.

"We expect to see the same thing as Brown last week — high pressure a lot of the time," Hughes said. "We have to account for everything if we are going to be successful."

If the offense reacts to the blitz, and Dawson and Fitzpatrick are contained, Princeton may earn its most important win in years. The home crowd at Princeton Stadium, which on this homecoming weekend should be significant, should help give the Tigers a slight edge. Victory will give the Tigers a 3-0 league record and a legitimate shot at a league title for the first time since 1995. A loss, and history will only be repeating itself. The Tigers hope that the weekend of redemption keeps rolling.