HANOVER – Upset-minded Princeton doubled Dartmouth’s first downs (26-13) Saturday, gained 408 yards to the Big Green’s 289, and had an extra seven-plus minutes of possession time, all of which coach Sammy McCorkle had to know before studying the final statistics package in his hands.
But McCorkle wasn’t having any of it.
“I think sometimes people get caught up on stats, stats, stats,” he said. “The most important stat is the one at the very top of this paper. That’s the final score.”
He’s right, of course, and that stat read Dartmouth 20, Princeton 17.
Holding off a late charge by the Tigers, the Big Green improved to 6-2 overall and stayed alive in the Ivy League race at 3-2. As a result of the win, Dartmouth now needs to win its final two games, have undefeated Harvard (8-0, 5-0) lose to Penn while Yale is losing at Princeton next week, and then Yale beat Harvard in New Haven on the final day of the season.
Princeton, which lost for the third week in a row, falls to 3-5 overall and 2-3 in the conference.
“We didn’t make it easy for ourselves at times,” admitted McCorkle, “but I tell you what. The guys did a great job. They kept plugging away, kept battling. We made plays when we needed to make plays.”
Perhaps the biggest one came with seconds left after Princeton – which had seen an 11-point lead evaporate in the final four minutes of last week’s double-overtime loss at Cornell – tried to put the finishing touches on its own 11-point comeback.
The play that locked up the Big Green’s third win in a row in the series came after the Tigers drove 80 yards in 11 plays to pull within three points on a five-yard touchdown run with 33 seconds remaining.
With anyone who knows a football is filled with air and not feathers knowing what was coming, Dartmouth sent in its “hands” team in advance of Princeton’s onside kick. It is something the Big Green practices ad nauseam during the week.
At 6-foot-5, and used to catching and holding onto the ball, Dartmouth tight end Chris Corbo might recover as many onside kicks as anyone on weekdays, and to the relief of many in the crowd of 3,392 at Memorial Field, he extinguished Princeton’s comeback hopes by pulling in the bouncing onside kick and returning it 20 yards to the Tigers’ 30. Even if the Tigers had recovered, they were whistled for being offsides on the play, so it wouldn’t have counted. But with Corbo’s recovery, Dartmouth declined the penalty and ran out the clock.
For Corbo, who led the Big Green with four catches for 66 yards – including the touchdown that made it 20-3 early in the second half – setting up for the Princeton onside kick was nothing new.
“Thankfully, it wasn’t my first,” he said. “I recovered a couple last year. So I went out there with confidence, ready for the ball to come my way and seal the game.”
The recovery and winning touchdown catch that helped drop longtime Tigers’ coach Bob Surace’s record in Hanover since taking over the reins in 2010 to 0-7 was doubly sweet for Corbo, a Jersey guy who grew up about an hour north of Princeton.
Asked if his home-state team recruited him, Corbo broke into a grin.
“No, they didn’t,” the All-American said. “They didn’t. So it feels a little better than it would already. But yeah.”
Dartmouth came into the game wary of fast starts that jump-started the Tigers to a couple of early wins, including one at Lafayette, No. 26 in the latest FCS coaches poll. On this day, it was the Big Green that would get the jump with a little help from the visitors.
Princeton quarterback Kai Colón came into the game with just three interceptions in 168 pass attempts, the fewest giveaways for any Ivy League quarterbacks. But on a windy day in Hanover, he was picked off twice in the first quarter, and both miscues led to Dartmouth touchdowns.
The first interception came on an overthrow on a second-and-three pass from his own 42 that Patrick Campbell pulled down and returned 27 yards to the Princeton 35. A 21-yard completion from Grayson Saunier to tight end Taysire Williams keyed a five-play, 35-yard drive that the quarterback capped with a one-yard run for a 7-0 lead just 4:25 into the game.
The second interception came on the Tigers’ next series after they drove from their own 25 to the Dartmouth 19, only to see the line of scrimmage pushed back to the 30 on an intentional grounding call. On a second-and-20 pass down the middle after the penalty, the ball was tipped and an off-balance Big Green safety Harrison Keith pulled it in – with one hand as he crashed to the turf – at the Dartmouth 12, stopping a potential scoring drive going one way and starting one going the other.
The interception was the fourth of the year for Keith, tying him with Sean Williams for the team lead.
“We talk about it going into every week. We have got to create turnovers. We have to,” said Keith, a junior who is enjoying a breakout season. “So starting off with a pick on the first drive is always good, obviously. We were able to punch it in, and then the second drive, it was right place, right time. The ball came my way, and I was able to make a play.
“Then I think we scored on that drive, too.”
Yes they did, courtesy of a 15-play, 88-yard march that featured three third-down conversions, including a third-and-nine completion of 26 yards to Corbo, who tap-danced his toes down just inside the left sideline at the three. One play later, DJ Crowther (20 carries for 96 yards) powered in behind an offensive line that had Will Prince and Cisco Caballero again filling in for injured starters Delby Lemieux and Vasean Washington for the touchdown and a 14-0 lead one play into the second quarter.
Princeton was down but it wasn't going away.
“You keep fighting,” Surace said about the early hole his team found itself in. “It’s a lot of time left. And I thought we did. We gave ourselves plenty of opportunities in the game.”
Their first opportunity to cut into the Dartmouth lead came when the Tigers took the kickoff after the second touchdown and put together a 12-play drive to the Big Green 15. But after a third-and-four pass fell incomplete, Esteban Nuñez Perez doinked a 35-yard field goal attempt off the right upright, his first miss of the season after five makes and one the Tigers would come to rue, given the final score.
Princeton’s only points of the first half came when Nuñez Perez hit from 36 yards out on the final play before halftime, sending the game into the break with Dartmouth leading, 14-3.
The Big Green wasted no time stretching its lead to 20-3 when play resumed. On the first play after a touchback on the third-quarter kickoff, Crother ran through a handful of tackles for a 36-yard gain to the Princeton 39. The senior tailback carried on four of the next five plays as the run game – which Dartmouth was emphasizing after managing just 64 yards in the first half – pushed the ball into the red zone.
The points came on a 25-yard, third-and-seven strike straight down the hash from Saunier to Corbo, who pulled the ball in without breaking stride for his third touchdown of the year. “That was fun,” said the pro prospect. “Great play call by coach (Shane) Montgomery, trusting us. And Grayson threw in on a seam.”
On a day of missed opportunities, Princeton answered with a gorgeous 17-play drive that covered 73 yards and ate up exactly eight minutes only to die on the Dartmouth two when first Cameron Best-Alston and Sean Chester forced a hurried third-down incompletion, and then Campbell finished off with a breakup.
A three-and-out stop by the Princeton defense and a 41-yard Dartmouth punt set the Tigers up at their own 48 late in the third quarter, and they cashed in early in the fourth on a two-yard run that made it 20-9. It stayed that way when their two-point conversion pass failed.
A missed 31-yard Big Green field goal attempt with 3:19 left gave the ball back to Princeton, which drove 80 yards in 11 plays, the last a five-yard run by Colón that, with the QB’s two-point conversion run, led to the failed onside kick that sealed the game.