Getting Defensive

Tonight is opening night for Princeton basketball, as the women host Temple at 5 and the men play Hofstra at 7:30. For ticket information, click HERE.

There are just two weekends left in the Ivy League football season, and between now and Nov. 19, you could see anything from a perfect season and outright championship to the league's first-ever four-way tie.

TigerBlog is rooting, of course, for the former, since the latter would require Princeton to lose both of its remaining games.

Right now, Princeton is 8-0 overall and 5-0 in the Ivy League. Yale and Penn are both 4-1 in the league. Harvard is 3-2. Those four each have two games remaining against the other three.

Doing the simple math, should Harvard win twice, it would be 5-2 and Yale and Penn would both have a second loss. Should Princeton lose to both Yale and Penn, then viola - four-way tie, something that's never happened in Ivy League football history.

As TB said, he's not rooting for that, as much as he loves a good historical anomaly. 

Princeton, on the other hand, would have no worse than a share of the championship with one win in its last two games. 

Princeton got to 8-0 Saturday with its 17-14 win over Dartmouth. It was never going to be easy to get a win over the Big Green. It just never is. Even after Princeton scored touchdowns on its first two drives, TB didn't think the game was going to be easy.

In each of its last four seasons, Princeton got to 7-0 and had to play Dartmouth. The Big Green won the previous two, last year in Hanover and in 2019 at Yankee Stadium. The 2018 game was the last one between the teams on Powers Field, and like that one, Princeton won a close, defensive battle.

Also like in 2018 — a 14-9 Princeton win — the majority of the scoring came in the first quarter. In that game, it was 7-7 after each team had the ball once and 7-2 the rest of the way. This past Saturday, it was 14-7 after one and 7-3 the rest of the way.

When you play a game like that, it puts incredible pressure on your defense, as any score shifts the entire dynamic and momentum of the game. As was the case in 2018, Princeton's was up to the task Saturday as well.

From the time Dartmouth scored to make it 14-7 Princeton until the Big Green drove 78 yards in 14 plays for a touchdown with 17 seconds left, Princeton's defense forced three punts and a missed field goal, as well as one kneel down to end the first half. 

In all, Dartmouth had eight possessions for the day (minus the kneel down) and punted five times. Princeton's defensive effort resulted in a 15-minute time of possession edge for the Tigers.

It was a different defense than the week before against Cornell, when the Tigers relied on turnovers for a 35-9 win. In that game, Cornell gained 433 yards but turned it over five times (six if you count the return of the two-point conversion attempt). Dartmouth didn't turn the ball over at all against the Tigers, who were the No. 1 team in the country in turnover margin coming in, but the Big Green managed 256 total yards, or 178 prior to that last drive. Of the 20 first downs Dartmouth got on the day, six of them came on that last drive as well.

In other words, Princeton's defense was awesome. And who was the star? They all were. Princeton had no player with more than six tackles, but there were 10 Tigers who made at least three. That's as impressive as any other stat from the day.

Oh, and Dawson De Iuliis deserves a special mention. After Dartmouth scored, there was still the matter of an onsides kick. Had Princeton not recovered, then the Big Green would have at least had one chance for a Hail Mary. 

So who recovered it? De Iuliis. He seems to make a lot of big plays. He's done so on special teams his whole career and has done so more and more on defense this year, including a big pass breakup on the final Dartmouth drive. When the ball was squibbed in the direction of No. 30, TB had no doubt he would do exactly what he did, which was to secure it and not let anyone get a crack at it.

Once he did, there was one more kneel down, and then the Tigers were at 8-0. Next up is a trip to Yale Saturday at noon. The Bulldogs come in after a 69-17 win over Brown this past weekend. After that it's Penn at home in Week 10.

Neither of these last two weekends will be easy. This past one didn't figure to be, and it wasn't. 

Like the seven that preceded it this year, though, it was a win for Princeton football.