Football: Overmatched Princeton falls at Harvard

For the third year in a row, there will be no bonfire. Harvard emphatically made sure of that Saturday afternoon in Cambridge, Mass.

Heading into the matchup, the football team looked to put a disappointing first half of the season behind it and take to the field with confidence. A powerful Crimson (4-2 overall, 3-0 Ivy League) squad quickly squashed those hopes.

The 37-3 loss for the Tigers (1-5, 0-3) was their second worst of the season so far, and their worst loss ever to Harvard, a team they have played against since 1877. Harvard has now won 12 of the last 14 matchups between the teams.

Sophomore quarterback Tommy Wornham explained that the Crimson completely overwhelmed the Tigers, who could not match Harvard’s firepower.

“Honestly, I don’t really know [what went wrong],” he said. “It seemed like they scouted our offense pretty well and made the plays on their offense.”

Princeton elected to start the game on defense, and its first two plays were promising, as Harvard gained only two yards on a rush and a botched pass play. Then, only one minute and 30 seconds into the game, quarterback Collier Winters hit receiver Chris Lorditch on a third-and-eight from his own 23-yard line. Lorditch broke away from the Tiger defense and sprinted 77 yards to the end zone, putting the Crimson up by seven.

When Princeton took over on the ensuing possession, it looked like a team on a mission. For more than four minutes, the Tigers drove down the field, but they eventually stalled at the two-yard line. Senior placekicker Ben Bologna nailed the 19-yard field goal to make the score 7-3.

The teams continued to trade possessions, and it appeared Princeton would head into the second quarter with some momentum. Then with no time left in the first frame, freshman punter Joe Cloud lined up to kick the ball away. The snap was too low for Cloud to handle, and the Crimson gained possession on the Princeton three-yard line.

Harvard scored on the next play to kick off the second quarter and did not look back from there. It racked up 10 more points before the end of the half, behind a Winters run and a 23-yard field goal.

In the second half, Winters added another rushing touchdown, and running back Cheng Ho tacked on one of his own. Harvard had 37 points by game’s end, even with a missed extra point after the Ho touchdown. Meanwhile, Princeton’s offense sputtered, unable to gain enough momentum to mount a genuine challenge.

Indeed, in the first half, the Tigers picked up only 14 yards rushing. They added 21 more yards on the ground in the second, but that was still a far cry from their performance in last year’s game. At Princeton Stadium in 2008, then-junior All-Ivy running back Jordan Culbreath racked up 154 yards and two touchdowns in the Tigers’ loss.

With co-captain Culbreath out for the season, the Tigers have scrambled to fill his shoes. Freshman running back Akil Sharp led the Tigers in rushing on Saturday, with 21 yards on seven carries. Junior tailback Meko McCray added 19 yards on seven carries of his own.

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Princeton’s passing game fared better than the ground game, as Wornham completed 15 passes on 27 attempts, gaining 110 yards. Junior tight end Harry Flaherty led the team in receiving yards, picking up 47 on five receptions.

Still, Harvard held junior receiver Trey Peacock, the team leader in receiving on the season, to only three yards on one reception.

Wornham said he had not entered the game expecting to distribute the ball to unusual targets, but that he simply passed the ball to whomever he found open, often Flaherty.

The Tigers also struggled to convert on third down, only finding success three times in 14 opportunities. In comparison, Harvard converted six of 11 tries.

The Crimson picked up 457 total offensive yards, 300 more than the Tigers did. This total included 267 yards rushing, a stat that exposes how much Princeton missed senior inside linebacker Scott Britton. The co-captain sustained a season-ending blow to his knee during the first half of the Tigers’ loss to Brown last week, and the defense seemed lost in the game against Harvard without its vocal leader and the Ivy League’s third-leading tackler.

Senior cornerback Dan Kopolovich picked up some of the slack, making 12 tackles. Senior linebacker Peter Yorck, freshman defensive back Andrew Starks and junior inside linebacker Steve Cody each had nine. Cody, who also picked up two sacks, entered the game third in the nation in tackles per game.

Wornham explained that the defense clearly missed Britton. Still, he added, the entire team had to move on from Saturday’s letdown.

“[It was] definitely disappoint[ing],” he said. “It really sucks losing to Harvard, especially at their house … We’re looking forward to Cornell next week.”

Princetonians will have to wait yet another year for a bonfire, held whenever the Tigers defeat Harvard and Yale in the same season. Wornham said it stung to see hopes for a bonfire slip away this year, but he noted that the team would not take its next games lightly.

“We have to take it one game at a time,” he explained. “None of us want to finish the season with one or two wins.”

Entering the game, Princeton and Dartmouth were tied at the bottom of the Ivy League. But on Saturday, Dartmouth topped Columbia to snap its 17-game losing streak and leave Princeton alone at the bottom of the league standings. The Tigers have not finished last in the Ancient Eight since their 0-7 league campaign in 1973.

Meanwhile, Harvard’s win kept it tied with Penn atop the league standings. The Crimson won the Ivy crown in 2007 and tied with Brown for the championship last year.