Josh Smith's Three Touchdowns Lift Princeton past Cornell 21-20
Josh Smith caught four passes all day. Three of them were touchdowns. The last one, an 8-yarder from Ty Ciongoli with 1:33 left, gave Princeton a 21-20 win over Cornell and turned a 13-point hole into a squeaker.
Cornell led 20-7 after Jordan Triplett's 7-yard run with 12:10 left in the third. It had opened with a field goal, a 1-yard run from Brendan Lee and another field goal as time ran out in the second quarter. Princeton's only points before the break were Smith's 44-yard touchdown from Ciongoli with 1:41 left in the second. Then Wyatt Becker threw Smith a 53-yarder with 4:02 left in the third, and it was 20-14. That was the last score until the final one.
The box score looks upside down. Cornell outgained Princeton 462 yards to 325 and ran 46 times to Princeton's 14. Princeton rushed for 26 yards in total, and threw for 299, with Josh Robinson catching 11 of them for 122 yards and no touchdowns. Cornell threw an interception and Princeton did not throw one, and Princeton sacked Cornell twice. So Princeton won a game it lost on every yardage line.
Princeton is 4-2 now and Cornell sits at 3-3, a one-point loss in a game it led by 13. Cornell had 20 points with 12:10 left in the third quarter and never scored again, while Princeton scored 14 after that. Add it up and that is a team that dominated the stat sheet, kicked two field goals and ran for 183 yards, and still has a loss to show for it. I would not wish that on anyone.
Fantasy-wise, Smith had 32.7 points, more than double his season average. Robinson was second with 23.2, and Ciongoli third with 19.