Column: Drawing battle lines on the court
Two important lines are painted on each half of Carril Court, just like every other basketball court in the world.
Two important lines are painted on each half of Carril Court, just like every other basketball court in the world.
NEW YORK – With nine minutes to play in its second Ivy League game, the men’s basketball team had its backs to the wall. But nine players contributed significantly down the stretch as Princeton took command with an 11-0 run and held on for a 62-58 victory, keeping their hopes of a second straight Ivy League title alive.
If the football team were playing with rules from 1911 — when the forward pass was legal but restricted and few teams used it as an offensive weapon — it might be near the top of the Ivy League. The Tigers lead the league in rushing yards and rank second to conference champion Harvard in run defense. But after a 33-24 loss to Yale, in which Princeton outgained the Bulldogs 277-121 on the ground with only eight more attempts, the Tigers have just one win heading into Saturday’s season finale at Dartmouth.
Saturday’s homecoming football game featured two offenses that were as different as possible. Led by running back Chuck Dibilio, who became the first Ivy League freshman ever to run for 1,000 yards, Princeton (1-8 overall, 1-5 Ivy League) wore down the Yale defense with a relentless rushing attack. But Patrick Witt and the visitors’ passing assault trumped the Tigers’ ground game, giving the Bulldogs (5-4, 4-2) a 33-24 victory.
How do you follow a historic season?Coming off a 25-7 campaign that included the program’s first Ivy League title in seven years, two comeback victories in the final week of the season, a buzzer-beating playoff victory and a last-second loss in the NCAA Tournament, it seems almost impossible for the men's basketball team to match last year's excitement. The 2011-12 Tigers, led by new head coach Mitch Henderson ’98, will instead form their own identity in an increasingly competitive conference.
Fifty-two weeks ago, the football team could not stop Columbia. The Lions scored 42 points and amassed 528 yards of total offense, dominating and demoralizing the Tigers in Manhattan. Princeton — off to a reasonably promising start — took a turn for the worse, losing the rest of its games that season.
Twice in the first six games of the field hockey team’s young season, freshman midfielder Sydney Kirby set up freshman striker Allison Evans to score. Twice on Saturday afternoon, Evans returned the favor. Those goals made the difference between a win and a fourth consecutive loss for the Tigers, who snapped their skid with a 3-2 victory over Yale at Class of 1952 Stadium.
There is plenty of fault to be had in the football team’s 10th consecutive defeat, the culmination of a full season’s worth of losses. But the defense should rank low on that list, after it was placed in an unwinnable position by a series of failures from the other units on Saturday night. In fact, the Tigers would have allowed more than the nine points they scored even if the defense had never conceded a single yard.
Saturday evening marked the beginning of a new season for the football team — new wrinkles in the playbook, new faces in new roles and a brand new 0-0 record. But in Princeton’s 34-22 loss to Lehigh, the problems were all too familiar, all the way up to the final score.
In football, more than in any other sport, one play can define a season. Senior linebacker Steve Cody learned that the hard way in 2010.