Boldness

There was less than a minute to play in the first half Saturday between Princeton and Yale on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.

Of course, given the crazy weather that came through pregame, this meant it was closing in on 4 in the afternoon, but hey, that no longer mattered in the moment. Now Yale had just kicked a field goal take a 17-14 lead in the showdown for first place in the Ivy League, and all the momentum seemed to be in favor of the Bulldogs. 

Making it potentially worse for Princeton was that Yale would get the ball to start the second half. It could be 24-14 Yale in a blink.

Maybe that's why Bob Surace decided the time was right for boldness. It's one of his defining characteristics as a head coach, his willingness to take chances. 

The Yale kickoff resulted in a touchback. The first play of the drive went nowhere. Clock running. Wind swirling but mostly in the Tigers' faces at that point. Up in the press box, TigerBlog was thinking it might be the time to play it safe. 

Five plays later, the ball was in the end zone. Thanks to its coach's gutsiness, Princeton had the lead – a lead it would not give up. 

The final score was 35-20 Tigers in a game they needed to have in the Ivy race. Thanks to the victory, Princeton is now 5-1 in the league, tied for first place with Dartmouth. Harvard and Yale are both 4-2.

The games next week have Princeton at Penn, Dartmouth at Brown and Harvard at Yale. Both Princeton and Dartmouth are assured of at least a share of the league title with a victory. Should one win and the other lose, there would be an outright champ. Should both lose, there would be a three-way tie between those two and the winner of Harvard-Dartmouth.

In other words, there was a lot on the line for Princeton.

Before TB gets back to the drive at the end of the half, let him go back a bit further. First, there was the previous weekend's 31-7 loss at Dartmouth, the one that dropped the Tigers into a tie for first. Princeton had to turn the page on that quickly – TB called it "putting it in the rearview mirror" last Monday. 

There had to be more than one Princeton player, coach or fan who remember the numbers 51-14, the final score of the 2019 Princeton-Yale game, after the Tigers had been 7-0 but fell to Dartmouth. Would history repeat itself this past Saturday at 1?

No, it wouldn't. For starters, when 1 rolled around, so did the weather. TB was just about to get to the press box when he said "is that thunder?" As it turned out, it was, with lightning and rain and wind. Each time there was a lightning strike, it set the clock back to wait for 30 more minutes.

As it turned out, the delay would be 90 minutes, with kickoff at 2:30. Princeton would get first half touchdowns on a 12-yard pass from Cole Smith to Dylan Classi and a 64-yard catch-and-run by freshman John Volker. 

Still, as TB said, it was 17-14 Bulldogs before the game turned in the final minute of the half. This drive was a showcase of Princeton's three extraordinary wide receivers, with a long run after a catch from Dylan Classi that featured a downfield block from Andrei Iosivas that gave him an extra 15-20 yards and yet another routinely extraordinary catch from Jacob Birmelin for a seven-yard TD that came with three seconds left before the break. Instead of being down at least three or maybe 10, suddenly the Tigers had the lead.

From there, the defense completely locked up the Bulldogs. Actually, the defense pretty much locked up Yale all day. 

Yale had scored two touchdowns in the first half, but they totaled just 32 yards on the two scoring drives combined. Princeton's defense would allow only 220 yards all day and had three interceptions. In the second half, Yale's only points would come on one field goal.

With this win, Princeton now gets to play for a championship next weekend on Franklin Field. It was a huge statement performance Saturday and it showed a lot about the Tigers' resilience, cohesion and depth (Princeton was without several injured standouts, including Collin Eaddy, Delan Stallworth and Uche Ndukwe).

It also said a great deal about how their head coach approaches the game. Boldly. And it paid off again in a big way.