Last weekend, the Dartmouth football team had an opportunity to nail down its first winning season in 13 years. The Big Green was up 11 points against Brown with three minutes left in the third quarter, but at the end of the game the scoreboard read 35-28 in the Bears’ favor.
On Saturday, the Big Green will have one last chance to earn a winning record. Princeton (1-8 overall, 0-6 Ivy League) will host Dartmouth (5-4, 2-4) in both teams’ final contest of the year, as the Tigers look for their seventh straight victory over the New Hampshire team.
Head coach Bob Surace ’90 commented on the influence of injuries on the Princeton squad.
“As the year’s worn down and our depth has worn down, we haven’t covered and blocked ... as well as I would’ve liked ... That’s going to be huge this week because their return game is as good as I’ve seen from [the years I was] playing, all the way through [to today],” Surace said. “They do a great job blocking also.”
When he mentioned the Big Green’s phenomenal return game, Surace was almost certainly thinking of Dartmouth return specialist Shawn Abuhoff. Abuhoff leads the Football Championship Subdivision in punt returns for touchdowns this season and wowed fans last week with a 76-yard punt return. Even more impressively, Abuhoff excels in the defensive backfield, alternating as cornerback.
“They’re averaging 17-plus yards a punt return,” Surace said. “That’s unbelievable. Last year, I looked at our statistics, we hadn’t had one over 10 yards in 12 or 13 games coming into our season. So for a guy to average 17.2 or 17.4 or whatever it is, that’s phenomenal. He is a dynamic player; certainly he changes field position every time he touches the football.”
According to Surace, the perennially lackluster Dartmouth team will be a formidable opponent this year.
“They do a terrific job, I think, on all three sides of the ball,” Surace said. “They do a terrific job schematically, and they run the ball really well, [and they do well in their] quarterback play ... They have some offensive weapons.”
Freshman quarterback Connor Kelley has experienced significant playing time since junior quarterback Tommy Wornham was injured in mid-October. Kelley was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week after a breakthrough performance at Yale last week, when he completed 13 of 17 passes for 122 yards and a touchdown.
“[Kelley] is a guy who makes things happen with his feet,” Surace said. “He’s doing a much better job taking care of the football, making reads, and he’s throwing the ball better. He was much more accurate against a really good defense this past weekend.”
Senior linebacker Jon Olofsson will also look to add to his standout performance against the Bulldogs, when he led the Tigers with 14 tackles and contributed to a defense that almost upended the potential Ivy League championship team.
“It was by far our best 60-minute defensive effort of the year, and I thought we did a real good job in our tackling, pursuit, ball disruptions, all those things,” Surace said. “[We] forced some turnovers ... Both teams did a good job stopping the other when they were in adverse field-position situations.”
The Big Green is in a similar situation, as head coach Buddy Teevens acknowledged a recent improvement in his team’s defense.
“Defensively, we’ve played better in each of the past two weeks, and we need that trend to continue this weekend,” Teevens said. “We had opportunities that we did not convert as successfully offensively in our third-and-short situations, and we didn’t come up with points when we needed to ... The key [to winning on Saturday] is minimize mistakes and retain possession of the football.”
If Princeton wins Saturday, it will prevent the Tigers from having the worst league record in program history. If Dartmouth wins, the all-time series between the two programs will be tied at 43 each.
In describing the evolution of Dartmouth’s program, Teevens sounded like Surace might several years from now.
“[The seniors] came in when Dartmouth was really struggling and have gone through and seen facility changes, strength improvements ... They have some level of satisfaction that they weren’t on a losing team,” Teevens said. “They’re the first team in a long time to be able to say that.”
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