Heading To Monmouth

For its final non-league game, the Princeton football team will be traveling to Monmouth for what figures to be a pretty good matchup.

Before any of that, though, here are TigerBlog's three favorite facts about Monmouth football: 1) the Hawks have only had one head coach in the 29 years of the program, 2) head coach Kevin Callahan is one of 11 children and he is married to a woman who is also one of 11 children and 3) one of his wife's 10 siblings is former Princeton men's basketball coach Bill Carmody. 

That's pretty good stuff, right. First, can you imagine how many cousins that leads to on both sides? Second, it's Bill Carmody, one of TB's favorite people ever.

As for the game itself, well, it's already Week 4 for the Princeton football team.

Time doesn't ever seem to move faster during the year than it does during Princeton football season. It's a 10-week sprint, and it's over in a blink. That's always how it seems to work.

This week is always an interesting one for the Tigers. It's the final non-league game, after opening with two other non-league games and then the league opener.

The last time Princeton's schedule did not start out that way was in 1999, when the Tigers opened with Cornell. Before that, you have to go back to 1975, when Rutgers was the Week 1 opponent, to find a year when the Tigers didn't play at either Cornell or Dartmouth to start the year.

Back then, Princeton and Penn would alternate opening the season at either Dartmouth or Cornell and then end the season at home against the other one. It wasn't until 1991 that Princeton and Penn ended the season in either Hanover or Ithaca. 

This was supposed to be because of the threat of bad November weather in those two places. As it turned out, it was in the 50s that day in Hanover.

Meanwhile, back in the present, Princeton is heading on the road tomorrow for its final non-league game of this season. The ride is a short one, and the opponent is a good one.

The Tigers will make the one-hour drive east to the Shore, where they will take on the Monmouth Hawks. Princeton is 3-0 on the season, having outscored Lehigh, Stetson and Columbia 119-7 between them. Monmouth is 3-2 and has been ranked in the top 25 at times this year.

Monmouth has played five games, and four of them have been decided by at least 27 points, with two wins (over Charleston Southern and Gardner Webb) and two losses (to Middle Tennessee and Holy Cross). The other game was a 26-23 win over Fordham.

Monmouth's two wins have come in the team's first two league games, in the Big South, to be exact. Monmouth has five league games remaining. You might be surprised by one of the remaining five: Robert Morris, which is no longer in the Northeast Conference. The other four games are against Campbell, North Carolina A&T, North Alabama and Kennesaw State. 

Princeton and Monmouth have played once before, back in the Tigers' unbeaten 2018 season. The final score that day was 51-9 Tigers; this one figures to be closer.

Monmouth averages more than 30 points per game and nearly 400 yards of offense per game, including 151 on the ground. Princeton allows 2.3 points per game and has allowed seven rushing yards in three games. Princeton leads the FCS in both of those areas, as well as in sacks per game.

Actually, Princeton leads all of college football in scoring defense and rushing defense. That's FBS, FCS, Division II and Division III. Only Division II Michigan Tech and Division III Lakeland average more than Princeton's 5.33 sacks per game.

Princeton's defense has been extraordinary through three games. Only twice since 1933 has Princeton allowed fewer than seven points in its first three games combined. Any guesses? 

The last time was in 1963, when Princeton shut out Rutgers and Penn and held Columbia to six in between. In Week 4, Princeton added another shutout, this time against Colgate.

Before that, it was 1956, when Princeton gave up six to Rutgers on opening day and then shut out Columbia and Penn before allowing 20 to Colgate (a 28-20 win) in Week 4.

Offensively, the passing game stood out in the first two games. Last week, it was the running game, especially Collin Eaddy, who ran for 103 yards and became Princeton's seventh career 2,000-yard rusher. 

Once this game is over, Princeton has six more Ivy League games to go, only two of which are at home. There are big Ivy games this weekend, with Yale-Dartmouth and Cornell-Harvard. Princeton can't look ahead to any of that now, though.

First up is a very, very good Monmouth team. Hey, who is Bill Carmody rooting for in this one?