D Plus

So what do the last 32 offensive drives against the Princeton football team's defense have in common?

You already know the answer, right? TigerBlog doesn't need to tell you, even though he will in a second.

First, he'd like to take a second to refer you to the feature story his colleague Warren Croxton wrote about Princeton defensive back C.J. Wall last week. It was on goprincetontigers.com, but it might have gotten lost to you with all the football content that came along after it.

You can read it HERE.

This is what head coach Bob Surace had to say about Wall:

"Most of our athletes' careers don't completely point with an arrow up, but few have had the health and success roller coaster CJ had, and his ability to battle through the highs and lows shows the remarkable young man he is."

Meanwhile, back at those 32 drives, none of them ended with points. 

The Princeton defense has done some history making stuff here of late. Back in Week 2, Lehigh scored a touchdown on its first drive and then kicked a field goal on its second. 

Since then, it's all bagels. For the record, the 32 drives since the field goal have resulted in:

* 16 punts
* 2 fumble recoveries
* 6 interceptions
* 5 fourth-down stops
* 3 end of halves

That's pretty amazing defense. Of course, even though most of one game and then two full games after that are part of that streak, Princeton doesn't have any shutouts.

Princeton has allowed eight points the last two weeks, six of which came on a fumble recovery in the end zone (by Columbia) and two of which came on a defensive PAT (by Lafayette). And that's it.

Has a team ever done that before? When's the last time a team did not allow a defensive point in two games but had no shutouts to show for it? TigerBlog has no idea. 

And keep in mind, this is a defense that graduated five All-Ivy League selections, including four first-team honorees. One of those, Jeremiah Tyler, was also the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year.

And yet, even with those holes to fill, the performance speaks for itself.

Princeton's most recent win was 23-2 over Lafayette Saturday in Easton. The Tigers allowed 206 total yards of offense and Lafayette never made it past the Tiger 25. Princeton had 20 different players make at least one tackle, eight who made at least three tackles and nobody who made more than eight. That's team defense at its best.

Wondering when the last time it was that a Princeton opponent finished a game with two points? That would be back in the final game of the 1933 season, when the Tigers defeated Yale 27-2.

On that day, Yale blocked a punt in the first quarter to take a 2-0 lead before Princeton scored the next 27, including a touchdown on a blocked punt return. When it was over, Princeton had finished a perfect season and was about to be named national champion.

As an aside, that Yale game was played on Dec. 3, 1933. 

Offensively against Lafayette, it was round-number Saturday. Blake Stenstrom was 30 for 40 passing (for 290 yards), and Andrei Iosivas caught 10 passes for 150 yards.

The win came in the Tigers' final non-league game of the season. Next up is a six-week run of Ivy League games, the next two of which are on Friday nights, beginning this week against Brown on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium and then the following Friday at Harvard.

The Bears will come to Princeton this weekend at 2-2 after a 27-20 win over Central Connecticut this weekend. Brown is 0-1 in the Ivy League, with a 35-28 loss to Harvard.

There are currently four teams who are unbeaten in the league: Harvard and Yale are 2-0, and Princeton and Penn are 1-0. Penn will host Columbia this coming weekend, while Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Cornell all have non-league games. After that, it'll be five weeks of only Ivy games.