Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Matt Evans, Record-Holder

So the game to which TigerBlog was referring yesterday should be obvious.

In yesterday's entry, TB mentioned that Army-West Point had replaced Princeton on its football schedule with the Citadel. Instead of the Tigers at West Point Saturday, it was instead the Citadel.

Final score: Army 14, the Citadel 9.

That final score leapt out at TB as the same final score of the 2018 Princeton-Dartmouth game.

If you remember that game - and of course you do - it was the first of two straight Princeton-Dartmouth games that matched 7-0 against 7-0. In the 2018 game, Princeton defeated the Big Green 14-9 on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.

The Big Green won the rematch last year 27-10 at Yankee Stadium. The difference between the two games was that in 2018, the two combined to go 19-1, which meant the head-to-head matchup became winner-take-all for the championship. A year ago, both teams lost the following weekend, and the game between the two did not end up being for the title.

The most amazing thing about that 2018 game is how the first 11 minutes of the game were and how the 49 after that played out. Dartmouth took the opening kickoff and then marched down the field, going 75 yards on 14 plays. Just like that, it was 7-0.

Princeton took the kickoff and then, on its first possession, answered with a 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive of its own. That made it 7-7, and it left everyone in attendance to wonder if either offense would be stopped that day.

And then the defenses rose up, and every yard, every inch for that matter, was an achievement. TB can't remember seeing another game quite like it.

The offenses were unstoppable on their first possession. The defenses were unmovable after that.

The 2018 game was also the most intense Ivy League football game TB has ever seen, and that was a function of how great the defenses were. It just seemed like whoever got the next touchdown would be the winner - and that's how it played out - and therefore it put that much more pressure on every possession for both sides of the ball, but especially the defenses.

The coordinator of the winning defense that day was Steve Verbit. In addition to being the team's defensive coordinator, Verbs has been busy these days on social media tweeting out pictures of a player or a few players from their playing days and from today, with what their overwhelmingly successful careers have been.

It's a very effective way of making the point that the Princeton football experience is a rewarding one for the four years you are a Tiger and then one that breeds lifelong success after that. 

The most recent one that TB has seen is of Matt Evans, who was a punter for the Tigers in the late 1990s.

Evans holds the Princeton records for career punts and punting average in a season, and he is second in career punting average. 

In fact, he punted 239 times in his career, or 59 times more than the next-best total of 180, held by Colin McDonough. Only Ryan Coyle (41.2) has a better career average than Evans did (40.8), and Evans averaged 44.0 yards per punt as a senior in 1998.

As a freshman, by the way, Evans was the punter and classmate Alex Sierk was the placekicker on the 1995 outright Ivy League champion Tigers. Evans was a three-time first-team All-Ivy League selection as a punter.

Ah, but Evans was also a baseball player at Princeton. And he wasn't just any baseball player.

More than 20 years after his final game at Princeton, Evans still holds the career records for home runs, doubles and extra base hits at Princeton. Evans, a first baseman, was also a three-time All-Ivy baseball pick, though he was never first-team in baseball, despite his 26 home runs. 

As a senior he won the William Winston Roper Trophy as the top senior male athlete.

And of course, this get TB to thinking about how many people hold career records in two different sports at Princeton? 

Now TB has something else to look up.

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