Princeton Tops No. 17 Harvard, Throws Ivy Race Into Chaos

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Football

September 27, 3PM

at Lafayette

Easton, Pa.

Football

October 3, 7PM

vs Columbia

Princeton, N.J.

Football

October 11, 12PM

vs Mercer

Princeton, N.J.

Football

October 18, 12PM

at Brown

Providence, R.I.

Football

October 25, 12PM

vs Harvard

Princeton, N.J.

The two-touchdown lead was gone. The three-and-outs were piling up. The season was slipping away.

Princeton needed something to turn it all around, and quickly. Who would make the biggest play of the game? Freshman punter Brady Clark, that's who.

Midway through the fourth quarter of a suddenly tied game, Clark unloaded a 51-yard punt that died on the Harvard 3 yard line. Princeton's defense was able to get a stop; Princeton's offense was able to get a score, courtesy of Blake Stenstrom to Connor Hulstein pass with 1:28 to play — and the Tigers got a win they absolutely had to have, knocking off Harvard 21-14 in front of a loud Homecoming Day crowd on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.

The win was the sixth straight for Princeton over Harvard, which is the Tigers' longest streak against the Crimson since a seven-game run from 1947-53.

How much did Princeton need this game? Harvard came in unbeaten, and had the Crimson gone home the same way, Princeton would have been two games back in the standings with four games to play. Now, after that win and the wildness around the rest of the league, there is a five-way tie for first with Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, Penn and Dartmouth all at 2-1. Princeton is at Cornell this coming Saturday.

Princeton built a 14-0 halftime lead on a 34-yard Jiggie Carr touchdown run in the first quarter and an eight-yard pass from Blake Stenstrom to AJ Barber with 36 seconds to go in the second. Sam Massick hit both extra points, and the Tigers had a two-touchdown edge at the break.

Harvard, who came in averaging more than 40 points per game, was completely wiped out in the first half. In fact, the Crimson had one rushing yard, this after averaging 262 per game in the first five.

In the second half, though, Harvard put together two 10-play touchdown marches, tying it at 14-14 with 9:40 to play in the fourth. If you were a Princeton fan, you were thinking back six days earlier, when Brown erased a two-touchdown second-half Tiger lead and won in OT.

It certainly looked like that was a possibility again, especially since Harvard forced four three-and-outs on five Princeton drives. The one that did get a first down ended when Princeton stalled at its 46, and that's when Clark pinned Harvard at its 3. Had the Crimson gotten field position, it might have been a different story.

Instead, the Princeton defense also forced a punt, but this one set the Tigers up on the Harvard 45 with four minutes left. From there, Princeton needed eight plays to get it into the end zone, with the two biggest plays a 3^rd-and-9 conversion from Stenstrom to Luke Colella (five catches, career-high 98 yards) that got 18 and then the final 10 to Hulstein on a 3^rd-and-5.

Harvard's last chance ended with an Ozzie Nicholas sack and then a Will Perez interception. Nicholas had another dominant game, with 10 more tackles, while Stenstrom threw for 244 yards and the two touchdowns.

Princeton hounded Harvard quarterback Charles DiPrima all day, holding the Ivy League's leading rusher to 10 yards on 17 carries on the ground, sacking him three times, intercepting him three times and forcing him into 15 for 36 passing for 152 yards.

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