Football: Cornell at Princeton

The Cornell-Columbia game is shaping up to be a clash of titans. So far this afternoon the two have given up a combined 106 points.

53-20

1-9 or 2-8 at best. David Archer has his work cut out for him, I wish him luck.

This was the most amazingly short-sleeve-wonderful weather for an early November game, about like the 2010 at-Columbia game (not last year's Hurricane Sandy aftermath at-Columbia game). We went expecting to see more passing heroics and were surprised that it was not by Jeff Matthews but Princeton's QB Quinn Epperly, who ran off 29 straight completions (a record for the NCAA D1 Academics Division) and finished 32 of 35 with 3 TDs as we got blown out 53-20. Once again we had a great couple of deep penetrations and could not capitalize: nothing like a 30-yard Luke Hagy run to the Princeton 2 followed by a Cornell false start, followed by a 3-yard-pass, a 1-yard run and an incompletion and then settling for a FG. (If there's an Ivy football record for most long plays stopped inside the 5 that wind up without a TD, it must be Cornell last year or this.) That was the series before Cornell's Kevin Marchand stripped the ball loose from Epperly and Justin Harris ran it 2 yards for a TD and closed the score to 15-13. At that point it seemed like we had a ballgame, but really it just set us up for the disappointing second half. Matthews got sacked seven times, had two interceptions, and passed for 230 yards; it felt as if none of his passes were thrown longer than 10 yards forward until the second half. Most every pass play was a toss to the sidelines, hoping we'd picked up yards-after-catch. He did pass 10,000 yards total offense for his career. I talked with Princeton's coach after the game and he said Matthews still is an amazing player and a pretty fierce competitor and he feels badly that this year didn't turn out better for Matthews.

Four years ago Cornell and Princeton both were mired low in the standings and hired new coaches (Kent Austin, Bob Surace). We're on the second coach in the same period and look destined to finish 2-8 if we beat Columbia and lose to Dartmouth/Penn and next to last in the Ivies, where Princeton is now in first place and could finish unbeaten in the Ivies, 9-1 overall. Even if Matthews got sacked seven times, it felt as our defense had the bigger challenge. We're giving up 38 points a game this year, 8 worse than last year, the most points we gave up was to Princeton, and that's after hiring Princeton's D coordinator. One Princeton fan joked that Princeton's D got 10 points better this year (actually 4 points worse) and Cornell's is 10 points worse (close enough); the big difference is Princeton is scoring an extra 19 points a game this year and Princeton looks set to be a league power for a couple more years at least, where David Archer has lots of work cut out for him.

At least we beat them in hockey at Lynah. We'll see about lax.