Anthony Gaffney may be the best player in the Ivies
Over the past two seasons, Princeton has defeated Columbia
in both meetings by a combined score of 86-13.
QB Quinn Epperly, (who is back for his senior season this
fall), has gone a combined 26 of 35 passing for 375 yards, five TD’s and no INT's.
As a runner, he’s gone a combined 17 carries for 96 yards and two TD’s.
Well, the Lions shouldn’t be so ashamed because Epperly has
been nothing short of a superstar for the Tigers for two years running. Last
year, he won the Bushnell Cup after passing for 2,137 yards, running for 570
more, throwing for 25 TD’s with just three INT’s, and netting another 18
running touchdowns.
Yes, Epperly was responsible for a whopping 43 TD’s in 2013.
And he’s back, and judging by his Twitter account, he REALLY
thinks he’s good too.
One possible hopeful note: for the last decade or so in Ivy
play, juniors who have super blowout seasons have not tended to repeat those
feats in their final years. Maybe the same jinx will afflict Epperly.
If only Quinn Epperly were the only returning player to
worry about.
The Tigers also have possibly the best athlete in the entire
league in CB Anthony Gaffney.
Lion fans should remember Gaffney as the guy who scored a TD
the very first time he touched the ball in an Ivy game when he returned the
opening kickoff for a TD against Columbia in 2012.
Since then, he’s only improved. Gaffney is considered a
shutdown corner and opposing teams rarely test him anymore.
Both Gaffney and Epperly have been named preseason All-Americans.
In addition to the two big superstars, Princeton has a lot
of returning talent. Senior OL Spencer Huston was 1st Team All Ivy
last year. Junior RB DiAndre Atwater, who many believe still hasn’t really
shown what he can do, was a 2nd Team All Ivy honoree in 2013. WR
Seth DeValve was one of Epperly’s top targets and he’s back for a senior
season. But his top WR from 2012 and 2013, Roman Wilson, is gone to graduation.
On defense, the Tigers will have to recover from some heavy
graduation losses. Top of the list is DT Caraun Reid who is now in the NFL. They’ve
also lost DB Phillip Bhaya and DL Greg Sotereanos.
But they do have LB Mike Zeulim a 2nd Team All
Ivy who was the leading tackler for Princeton last year. And the Princeton
secondary is still stacked. Along with Gaffney, the Tigers return All Ivy
Honorable Mention Matt Arends and the talented Khamal Brown returns after
missing a season and a half with an aneurysm.
The incoming freshmen class is simply stellar. D-Linemen Kurt Holuba and Khalil Bryant are considered to be two of the top incoming college players in the country, not just
the Ivies. LB Joe Percival is another standout.
But the best news for Princeton is that the Tigers get home
field advantage against the other two best teams in the league, Harvard and
Dartmouth.
Princeton was shocked by the Big Green in the 2013 finale,
not so much because they lost but because they lost because of a weak day on
offense. No one was supposed to be able to stop Epperly and co. and Dartmouth
did.
But with the game shifting to New Jersey this fall, the
Green will have a hard time repeating that feat.
So after beginning their season against one of the best
teams in all of FCS football in Fordham, the Lions get to open their Ivy schedule
with the team favored to repeat as Ivy champs.
When does it get easier?
14 comments:
It will get easier when we field more competitive teams.
While Fordham is no longer an appropriate or fair opponent, Princeton and the rest of the league are our natural competition, and we must be able to go toe to toe with all of them. So,minus the Fordham game, I don't see how we can make any excuses for non-competitiveness.
Forget a title; just give us respectability. Oh, wait. I think that may have been said here before once or twice. Sorry.
I remember Bob Surace being on the heat seat after starting with consecutive 1-9 seasons ('10/'11). I also recall seeing a few of those games broadcast. They looked clumsy and as out of synch as Columbia does these days. It was a sure bet Surace would be fired based on alum commentary on the web. Then, he goes 5-5 and now 8-2 last year. The difference? My observation is he started stocking up on better athletes. It sounds simple but really, that is what it comes down to. You can see it play itself out. Columbia was outmatched athletically last season. So how to bridge that gap is the objective of whoever coaches and recruits for Lions football.
Part 2:
Like the Fordham debacle last year, I was also at the Rutgers game referred to by oldlion in the new (at the time) Giants Stadium. It was a runaway, but still not as bad as the Fordham game. If we can cancel within our contract terms, the series has to go.
I won't call them "thugs", just bigger, better, stronger and faster. The results are to be expected.
Tough to exactly define respectability, but in my book,
it's the feeling that we competed with a chance to win every game, regardless of the opponent. Couldn't
say that about any contest in the
2013 season. Say what you will about the Nories Wilson years but, the clear majority of the games then were competitive.
Hey, no fair! Princeton = thugs! Let's play Wagner! Let's play Davidson! Lions indeed!
Mitch S 68CC
Wagner would best us pretty easily. The only surefire Lions wins would be against defunct teams like St. John's (NY) and Iona.
Davidson would be a good game to define who exactly is the worst team in the FCS.
This is pathetic. What's the agenda, to find the next crappiest team in all football so CU might win one game every few years? I thought the goal was to build a consistent, competitive Ivy team, not to beat Iona once in a while.
It would be better to give up football.
I can guarantee you CU would defeat Iona in football. The Lions don't even have to show up to win.
I repeat, pathetic. Let's have a two-team league, CU and Iona. Call it the ICU league. We might win a title eventually.
There should be a new football conference:
Columbia
Davidson
Georgetown
St. Mary's (CA)
Santa Clara (CA)
Univ of the Pacific (CA)
St. John's (NY)
Iona (NY)
St. Mary's dropped football 15 years ago. Have they resumed?
More important, I don't want to forsake Columbia's history in the Ivy League nor, previously, in all college football.
Columbia played in the very first college game, as all here know, and also won a Rose Bowl. Why the powers that be are content to see Columbia on the garbage heap is beyond me.
Only 3 of those teams have active programs. An interesting tidbit. Pacific originally had the same mascot/colors/motif/uniforms as Princeton. The helmet design eventually went away. Didn't Michigan adopt the helmet design as well? I guess when Princeton guys migrated to other areas of the country they took that with them.
Pacific is a great school in a horrible city (Stockton, CA) but I guess it used to be a nice place to live after WWII. Same with Oakland, CA, which interestingly enough, used Pacific's all black practice uniforms as their game day unis since the original 1960 Raiders were so poorly organized and funded. If it was not for Princeton's legacy of using black unis then who knows, the Raiders may have chosen a different color scheme. It just so happened they acquired Pacific's hand me downs to establish their identity.
here is the new football conference
CU
Don Bosco HS
Kennedy HS
Prairie View
Rye Country Day
St. Anthony;s in Atlantic City
TBD (read win)
TBD (read win)
Little sisters of the blind (read not sure if we can win, but have a chance)
I would schedule TheLittle Sisters of Mercy, for obvious reasons.
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