Guest Appearance

TigerBlog saw a football game in an Ivy League stadium Saturday.

It just wasn't the stadium he figured he'd be in on Oct. 1. 

Instead of being at Wien Stadium at Columbia, TB was instead at the Yale Bowl, site of the game between Yale and Howard. It's a somewhat long story.

TB went Friday to see Princeton-Yale field hockey, a game the Tigers won 6-1. He was thinking of driving down to New York City to see Princeton-Columbia football Saturday and then drive back up to Storrs for yesterday's field hockey game between the Tigers and UConn.

That, though, figured to be a lot of driving, especially after it took him five hours to get to Yale Friday afternoon (there's nothing quite like seeing a sign on the Merritt Parkway that says "Exit 8 - 17 miles, 58 minutes"), so he figured he'd watch the Princeton football game in his hotel room. Instead, at the field hockey game Friday, Yale athletic communications star Sam Rubin asked him if he could help out at the football game. The Yale game. 

Since this would be helping out Sam and his colleague Tim Bennett, TB said that of course he would. And so there he was Saturday, in New Haven, part of the Yale stat crew.

Of course, he was wore a "Princeton Lacrosse" sweatshirt and Princeton hat, which drew some looks from the Yale faithful throughout the stadium. But hey, he didn't pack for the weekend thinking he'd be part of Yale's staff for the day.

Yale won its game 34-26. TB was happy to help out. For all the Ivy League football games he's seen, he's pretty sure it's the first one he was at where Princeton wasn't involved since he was a student at Penn.

The Yale game began at noon.  The Princeton game started at 1. When it began, TB put it on his computer while he helped keep stats for the game in front of him. There were a few times that he almost called out the play on the computer, as opposed to the one in New Haven.

Princeton defeated Columbia 24-6 in its Ivy League opener. It was a huge test for Princeton, as TB mentioned Friday, when he talked about how Columbia was (and still is) a legitimate Ivy title contender. 

Princeton won this game with its defense and special teams and some timely offense mixed in. Punter Will Powers was tremendous, with five punts inside the 20. In all he punted nine times, and Columbia managed 28 yards in punt returns — with 23 of them on one return. That means the other eight added up to five total punt return yards. Almost by himself, Powers kept the field tilted. 

Also, one of Powers' punts resulted in the score that broke the game open, when his towering kick was muffed by the Columbia return man and recovered by Princeton on the two by Dawson Di Illulis. Nico Vangarelli scored on the first play after that, turning a one-possession 14-6 game into a 21-6 game that was essentially out of reach given the way the Tiger defense was playing. 

Columbia had 13 offensive possessions and didn't score on any of them. The six Lion points came on a fumble recovery in the end zone. The Princeton defense was everywhere, with three interceptions (two for Joseph Bonczek, one for Will Perez, who added six tackles and a sack) and a fumble recovery, six sacks and only 235 total yards allowed. 

Offensively, Blake Stenstrom threw for 257 yards and a touchdown to JoJo Hawkins and Dylan Classi caught six passes for 133 yards. 

The win was a pretty complete one, on the road against a good team. Now three weeks into the season, each Ivy school has played one league game and two non-league games, and the four teams who are 1-0 are Princeton, Yale, Harvard and Penn (who knocked off preseason co-No. 1 Dartmouth Friday night in overtime). 

Princeton has its final non-league game this coming Saturday at Lafayette. TB went to look up Lafayette's team on its webpage and was greeted with this headline after the Leopards defeated Bucknell 24-14: "Football Collects Dominant Road Win In PL Opener."

As he saw that, TB figured that was a pretty good description of Princeton's game at Columbia. Maybe he wouldn't use "dominant." Maybe "impressive" or "important." It was certainly both of those.