Silver Linings

TigerBlog doesn't have to look at the forecast for Friday night in Princeton to know two things.

First, the weather will be better than it was this past Saturday. Second, there's a 100 percent chance of 0-0.

As frustrating as Princeton's home-opening 16-13 loss to Bryant Saturday was, there were a few silver linings. What's that they say about clouds? Well, there were certainly enough in Princeton Saturday. 

The game was played in driving rains and strong winds, all the residue of Hurricane Ophelia. But as TB says, there were silver linings.

First and foremost is that it did not come in an Ivy League game.

Princeton's first shot in the league comes up Friday night, when the Tigers host Columbia at 7. The Tigers may be 1-1 overall, but they are the aforementioned 0-0 in the league.

If early Ivy results have shown anything, it's that this season will be completely unpredictable.

And, as an aside, that Bryant, a Big South member for football, would make a serious run in the Ivy race. The Bulldogs have the win over Princeton, and they also lost 29-25 to Brown the week before Brown lost to Harvard 34-31. 

In other words, those are all toss-ups.

Then there's the No. 1 team in the preseason poll, Yale. Those Bulldogs lost Saturday to Cornell 23-21 on a 37-yard field goal as time expired. Such results predict one thing: no predictions in the league will be easy.

Meanwhile, back at the silver linings from Saturday, the weather made it hard to do anything other than run the ball offensively, and Princeton was able to do just that. John Volker continues to show what he's able to do as he ran for 149 yards on 18 carries, including a 49-yard touchdown run.

Volker averaged 8.3 yards per carry. Take away the long run and he still had a 5.9 average on 17 carries. Given how tough the footing was, those are big numbers.

Speaking of big numbers, there was the performance of Princeton's three top defenders: Ozzie Nicholas, Liam Johnson and Will Perez. Those three combined for 33 tackles on 67 offensive plays for the Bulldogs. 

Nicholas had 15 tackles. Johnson and Perez had nine each. Of their 33 tackles, a total of 25 were unassisted. Perez also recovered a fumble. 

The fourth Princeton linebacker, Nicholas Sanker, had five tackles, with a sack mixed in. 

Also, when you play two non-league games before your first league game, your tendency is to ease into things and not put too much on film for your future Ivy opponents. The film from Saturday? It's hardly worth watching, because of the idea of keeping things a bit simple and the fact that the weather didn't allow for opening up the playbook too much anyway. 

To say that all is well, of course, is not accurate. Certainly no Princeton player or coach walked off the field Saturday feeling "hey, no big deal. Not an Ivy game."

But that's the reality of it.  

There have been two league games played so far. One was decided by three points (Harvard's win Friday night over Brown) and the other by two points (Cornell's win over Yale). This coming weekend's other Ivy game is Penn at Dartmouth. The Big Green, playing with the emotional weight of the loss earlier this week of head coach Buddy Teevens, defeated Lehigh 34-17 Saturday.

So who is favored? What can anyone expect? Those answers are both the same. No idea. 

If you've paid attention at all, you agree.

This is a big week in practice for Princeton. Its opponent Saturday defeated Georgetown 30-0 Saturday. The Tigers will need to dry out and turn the page from Saturday quickly. Getting off to a good start in the league is important if you want to be playing big games in November.

Oh, and by the way, TigerBlog just looked at the forecast for Friday in Princeton. It's for a high of 74, which probably means around 68 or so at kickoff, with no chance of rain.

Now that sounds perfect, right? 

Princeton will be 0-0. So will Columbia. 

That's the biggest silver lining out of Saturday.