HANOVER – Wipe it, flush it, turn the page. Super-excited. Attack mode, and attention to detail. Urgency, energy, and focus and finish. One-and-oh. Super-excited. Our standard and our brand of football.
Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle has a regular catalog of words and phrases he chooses from both when he’s talking to, and talking about the Big Green.
While his players were quietly changing in the locker room behind him after the disappointing outcome at Princeton, McCorkle fell back on a few of those phrases.
“We weren’t ready to play, and I have to take responsibility for that,” he said in the bowels of Princeton Stadium. “They had more energy than us, and more of a sense of urgency. We had uncharacteristic penalties in critical situations and that’s on me. They outcoached us.”
Big Green safety Harrison Keith, like his teammates, has come to use many of the expressions McCorkle uses.
But for as much as he’s on the same wavelength as his head coach – even using some of the same language talking about the Princeton loss – the senior captain disagreed with McCorkle on one count.
“No,” he said when asked if it was fair for the head coach to pin the loss on himself. “You can always look back as players and coaches and say, ‘I wish I did that different.’ That’s how football works.
“But at the end of the day, we pride ourselves on being a collective unit, and that’s top to bottom, coaches to players. No one person can put the blame on themself for something like this. Coach Mac can say that, but it’s not the truth. It’s on everyone.”
And then, in the best tradition of his head coach, Keith laid out what the future holds for their team at 3-2 in the Ivy League race (and 4-4 overall) with two games to go.
“I mean, you hate to be in this position,” he said. “You want to be the ones to control your own destiny. But it's safe to say we've been in this position before. As a senior, I feel like we've had this feeling pretty much every year where you have a tough little bump in the road towards the end of the season.”
“But we're still in the hunt. We know that. And so we just have to take it one week at a time. The only thing we can control is what we do the next two Saturdays, and so we have got to attack that starting (Sunday).”
STATISTICALLY SPEAKING
Dartmouth had nine players catch two or more passes, with freshman running back Jacob Henry collecting four for 24 yards. Ky’Dric Fisher had three for 39 yards, and Nick Lemon three for 31. Ian Scott pulled in two for 49 yards, and Kristian Strong two for 42.
With lead back Myles Craddock in uniform as an “emergency back” but held out because of injury, Henry led the ground game with 14 carries for 51 yards, while Dylan Elder had 11 for 43. Quarterback Grayson Saunier ran for 41 yards, but sacks and lost yardage dropped his net to 18 yards.
Cameron Best-Alston topped the defensive charts with seven tackles, while Steve Simpson Jr. had six and Keith five. Another five players finished with four tackles apiece. . . . Johnny Stephens had an interception to go with one of three Dartmouth pass breakups. Simpkins had a PBU, and lineman Bruce Williams was credited with one for batting a throw at the line.
Princeton got 13-of-20 for 188 yards passing from its tandem of quarterbacks Ty Ciongoli and Wyatt Becker, with the former recording both the touchdown and the interception.
Like Dartmouth, the Tigers played without their leading rusher, Kai Honda. Ethan Clark, the projected starter before the season who returned from injury a week ago, looked sharp in the early going but was lost for the game early in the second quarter after taking a big hit. Stepping up was Kaio Agudinho de Oliveira, who finished with 61 yards on 15 carries. As a team, Princeton had 164 yards on the ground with a 4.6-yard average.
Speedy Josh Robinson was a thorn in Dartmouth’s side with four catches for 79 yards and one touchdown.
Despite Dartmouth’s slow start, the final team statistics were similar. Princeton had a slight edge in first downs, 20-19, and the Big Green a slight edge in total yards, 368-352.
Dartmouth was just 5-of-15 on third down but a healthy 5-of-7 on fourth. Princeton was 6-of-11 on third and 2-of-2 on fourth. . . . The Tigers had three sacks for a loss of 18 yards while the Big Green never got to the quarterback, a credit both to the home team’s veteran offensive line and the QBs pulling and running when they felt pressure.
With his 90th win at his alma mater, Bob Surace broke a tie for the most wins for a Princeton coach. He had tied Bill Roper’s school record set almost a century ago in the narrow win over Cornell a week ago.
Attendance was 4,549, a disappointing number for a late-season showdown for the Ivy League lead on a brilliant early November afternoon in Princeton.
Dartmouth drives in order (plays/yards/result): 3/9/punt; 9/48/missed field goal; 7/75/touchdown; 9/51/downs; 3/0/interception; 13/56/interception; 16/76/touchdown; 11/29/downs.
Princeton drives in order: 8/75/touchdown; 12/72/touchdown; 7/73/touchdown; 9/70/interception; 1/-2/halftime; 7/28/missed field goal; 3/5/punt; 6/22/punt; 4/4/end of game.
THEY SAID IT
Princeton coach Bob Surace addressing his team and well-wishers after the game: “That was big boy football today, wasn’t it?”
Surace to his team after being honored for breaking the Princeton win record: “We know the recipe means tomorrow we erase all this stuff, right? It can be celebrated later. We’re playing for bigger things. . . . You ever hear that analogy? You climb one mountain and then there’s a bigger one? Well, there’s a bigger one next week, so we have got to go back to work and do all those things. . . . Tomorrow’s going to be one heck of a learning time (to) get ready for Yale.”
Harrison Keith taking responsibility: “I got beat personally on that third touchdown, so that’s going to haunt me, obviously. But that’s part of being a DB. You get beat and everyone sees it. So I have got to be able to sort of just wipe it. – And that’s the same as the entire defense. The entire team. Everyone's going to have plays they wish they could have back, but you can’t, you can't let it haunt you.”
Keith on the loss as a whole: “Obviously, it stinks. We’re going to watch the film and learn from it, but dwelling on the past isn’t going to help us in anything.”
Sammy McCorkle: “Hats off to our guys. They came on in the second half and we battled. Even when we threw an interception down there in the red zone, the guys didn't quit. They came back and scored.”
McCorkle on what doomed the Big Green: “We had critical turnovers in bad situations. And not finishing plays, not finishing drives. We have to do a better job of putting our guys in a position to make plays; you’ve got to make sure our guys are ready to make those plays.”
McCorkle on what changed in the second half: “We just kind of settled down a little bit and allowed our guys to go play. I think (early) we were trying to do a little bit too much here, a little too much there. Guys were playing a little hesitant, so we adjusted. Basically, we figured out what they were doing offensively and what they would do defensively, so we adjusted. But it just wasn’t enough.”
McCorkle looking back and ahead: “I told them we’ll find out about our character. I said I know who we are as a football team. We’ve got guys who are battlers and warriors. . . . It hurts, but they have got to be able to wipe this off, and we have got to be able to come back ready to go.”