No time for Surace and Princeton to pat themselves on back
Before the Princeton University football team had its Sunday bonfire to celebrate victories over Yale and Harvard and a 13th Ivy League championship, coach Bob Surace held a team meeting to remind the returning players of an important thing.
They are 0-0 all over again.
“You start over,” Surace said on Monday on the Ivy League’s preseason call. “You don’t carry over the previous year whether it was good or wasn’t good. All eight teams have the same goal. If you asked every coach what your goal is, it’s to win the Ivy League.”
As much as Surace may not want to talk about the past, winning the Ivy is something he’s become adept at. The Tigers have grabbed at least a share of the league title in four of his 11 seasons, including three of the last five.
Princeton was picked to finish third this season behind Harvard and Dartmouth is the preseason media poll.
“We all start at the same spot,” said Surace, whose team opens at Stetson on Sept. 17. “We’re going to work as hard as we can and prepare as hard as we can to be one of the teams that is progressing during the year and in that mix, but nothing is given to you.”
His players seem to understand that.
“We’ve all known that last year is last year,” senior offensive lineman
Henry Byrd said. “That Monday after Thanksgiving we had to keep guys out of the weight room because they wanted to start training. … From the very get-go, guys have been rearing to go. We haven’t had too much of an issue looking back and that’s how it was kind of instilled.”
Princeton’s largest unknown is at the quarterback spot where it has to replace Cole Smith, who threw for 2,570 yards and 14 touchdowns. Surace, to no surprise, offered little insight into his QB competition other than it’s an open competition between what appears to be three players: junior Blake Stenstrom, senior Joseph Hutchinson and sophomore Blaine McAllister.
Only Stenstrom,
atransfer from Colorado, appeared in games last season. He had a pair of touchdown runs.
“We’ve been able to develop quarterbacks in a way that is really good,” Surace said. “Getting them freshmen year and putting them on the scout team and letting them grow and learn by playing JV games and not throwing them to the fire. We did that a little bit my early years and that was tough. Those were lean times because they weren’t quite ready.
“Competition is something that is a core value for us and it’s no different whether it’s right guard or quarterback. Those guys are going to compete. We run a lot of plays, we run a high-tempo offense, so even though Cole Smith took a majority of the snaps, Blake has played and we’ve been able to develop (Hutchinson) and (McAllister) and the three of them had terrific springs.”