Tigers capture Ivy Championship

All it took for senior quarterback Jeff Terrell to end 12 years of Ivy football frustration was a simple snap of the wrist.

Looking to insure a narrow three-point lead late in the fourth quarter and facing third and goal from the three, Terrell rolled out to his right on a halfback option. The co-captain absorbed a hit from the final defender moments after flipping the ball to junior fullback Rob Toresco, who waltzed into the end zone to secure the win with 63 seconds remaining.

"As soon as I pitched it, I knew he would score," Terrell said. "That was their last defender, so I didn't mind the hit. I stayed down on the ground for an extra second just to soak it all in."

The score gave Terrell and his teammates the first chance on the afternoon to soak in the Tigers' (9-1 overall, 6-1 Ivy League) first Ivy League title in 11 years.

Despite coming into the game near the bottom of the Ivy League, the resilient Dartmouth (2-8 overall, 2-5 Ivy League) squad refused to go quietly and kept the outcome in doubt until the final minute. Nevertheless, Princeton battled its way to a 27-17 win and its ninth Ivy championship in school history.

"I knew we were going to have to work for this one, just like we had to work for every one all year," Terrell said.

Princeton jumped out to a 17-3 lead in the second quarter but let the Big Green come back to tie the game at 17 with 1:24 left in the third quarter.

The Tigers managed a response on the next drive thanks to strong rushing by sophomore tailback R.C. Lagomarsino and Toresco. Princeton pushed the ball well inside the red zone before settling for a field goal by freshman kicker Matt Lichtenstein, making the attempt in place of the usual kicker, sophomore Conner Louden, who had a kick blocked in the third quarter.

"I felt like [Louden] kicked it low," head coach Roger Hughes said. "I thought Matt had earned his opportunity through his hard work in practice to get an opportunity to kick, and to his credit he came through and hit it."

On Dartmouth's next possession, junior defensive back Kevin Kelleher intercepted a pass on second down to give the Tigers the ball at the 50-yard line. After getting one first down, an incompletion on fourth-and-three gave the Big Green the ball back. Princeton was winning with a three-point lead.

The Tiger defense, however, had other ideas and a big third-down sack by senior linebacker Brig Walker forced Dartmouth to punt.

Princeton thus found itself with the pigskin on its own 33-yard line with 6:35 to play. Plays of seven and nine yards got the Tigers a first down at the 49. Two more runs from Lagomarsino and another from Toresco pushed the Orange and Black another 15 yards downfield.

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On second-and-eight from the Dartmouth 36, Terrell realized soon after taking a few steps toward the near side that he wasn't going to get anywhere. That motion, though, had opened up a gap in the middle, and Terrell found Toresco on a short shovel pass for the first down to the 27.

Lagomarsino then took a drilling when he got Princeton up to the 20 and had to walk off the field, but his impact had already been felt.

On third-and-five on the 22, with Princeton needing to convert to ice the game, Terrell, from the shotgun, found junior wide receiver Brendan Circle amid a gap in Dartmouth's coverage by the Big Green sideline at the 15. With a quick catch and turn, Circle darted down to the nine.

Just to make things dramatic, the Tigers quickly found themselves facing the third-and-five that resulted in the game-sealing score.

The touchdown was largely thanks to a key change in play calling.

"[Dartmouth] started playing their secondary with hard corners rather than bailing out," Hughes explained. "That means their secondaries have to play deep ... we knew they would line up the same formation every time, and we knew they would be aware of our option game outside. The other play that really brought us back to life was our shovel series. The guy calling the plays [just] hadn't called it yet — that guy's me."

The statistics certainly bear out a change of plans. In the first half, the Tigers rushed for 64 yards but passed for 165; in the second, though, Princeton notched 90 yards rushing while Terrell threw for only 92.

It isn't hard to guess that those stats also indicate how much better the first half went for Princeton compared to the second — Terrell was able to effectively air the ball out.

The Tigers scored on the game's first drive, with senior wide receiver Brian Brigham making a great catch as he fell out of bounds on first-and-15 at the Princeton 42 to give his team some momentum. Two plays later, Terrell found Circle for the third first down of the drive to make it first-and-goal on the eight.

On third-and-two a few snaps later, Terrell found sophomore fullback Jordan Munde wide open in the end zone when Dartmouth expected a run. It was Munde's first career touchdown.

Terrell continued to pick apart Dartmouth's secondary, notching a school record 16 straight completions before the quarter expired. Still, he led his team on a 10-play, 60-yard drive early in the second quarter that Toresco capped off with a touchdown run to put the Tigers up 14-0.

Both teams then matched field goals before Dartmouth scored a touchdown to make the score 17-10 about a minute before halftime. But just as they've been able to do all season, the Tigers weren't about to let Dartmouth come back on them.

"We weren't going to lay down for it," Terrell said. "We were able to keep our confidence [and] our poise."

Terrell's poise, in particular, has been instrumental this championship season. Last weekend against Yale, he alone accounted for 92 percent of Princeton's offense between his arm and his feet.

Though Princeton beat Yale, each team's 6-1 Ivy record means that both the Bulldogs and the Tigers will share the Ivy title this year. That detail, however, is of little significance to a program that has been waiting for over a decade.