Some Yale Princeton notes

The focus quickly will shift to The Game.

Yale’s stinging 34-31 loss to Princeton made its road to its first Ivy League title since 1999 a bit more difficult, but by no means did it throw up a complete roadblock.

Yale coach Jack Siedlecki and players knew they could only allow the pain of Saturday’s loss linger so long, before preparing for the final game of the season at Harvard.

“There’s no question we’re pretty down right now,” Siedlecki said. “But we’re still in first place, although we’re not acting like it. We’ve got to start acting like it (today). We need to make our corrections from the film, we’ve got to make a great game plan for Harvard, have a great week of practice and go up there and win a football game and be Ivy League champs. They have a few hours to feel sorry for ourselves, then we need to move on, because no one else is going to feel sorry for us.”

Yale has lost five straight games to Harvard, which fell one game behind Princeton and Yale with a 22-13 loss at Penn.

“We’ve got to just focus on Harvard now because there is nothing we can do now about this result,” senior linebacker Chris Barry said.

Yale was picked to finish fifth in the Ivy League, so the opportunity to play for an Ivy title is a welcomed one.

“If someone had said at the beginning of the season you’re going to have the chance to win an Ivy League championship playing at Harvard, I would have taken that in a second,” McCarthy said. “Honestly, if you have to lose one of those games, you don’t want to beat Princeton, then lose to Harvard, that would make it bittersweet. To go up there and beat Harvard would make it all that much better.”

POROUS PRANK

Games like Yale-Harvard and Yale-Princeton have been known for their pranks over the years, but Saturday’s display was downright vandalism.

Between Friday and Saturday, people broke into the Bowl and spray-painted about 40 rows of Yale’s recently renovated benches orange.

The paint job did not completely cover the benches in orange, rather after being washed off just leaving streaks of orange throughout. An investigation has begun. The paint jobs were just completed on the seats last month and were expected to last for up to five years. Now Yale needs to work with the contractors to have those areas below the pressbox redone.

PHASE II SET TO START

It was announced at Yale’s alumni association meeting that the university hopes to have Phase II of the Yale Bowl restoration project completed by the Harvard game next season.

Phase II includes the Jensen Family Plaza entrance near Central Avenue, the Kenney Family Field Center, which would include a halftime room and skyboxes, and a new and a video scoreboard that will be located above the end zone on the opposite side of the present scoreboard.

WACKY PLAYS

This game was filled with crazy plays.

Princeton pulled to within 14-7 on a strange play as Yale forced a fumble after Terrell advance to the 13-yard line. The ball squirted loose. There was a pileup and an alert Adam Berry scooped the ball up and ran in for a touchdown with 8:18 left in the second quarter.

Late in the second half, the Princeton offensive line was called for offside. Not one player. The call actually said the entire offensive line jumped offside.

Princeton had an incomplete pass bounce off the umpire.

TIGER TRADITION

Princeton will hold a bonfire Thursday evening on campus to celebrate its sweep of Yale and Harvard. It’s a tradition to hold a bonfire for such a sweep, but it has not happened since 1994.

EXTRA POINTS

Yale’s crowd of 43,406 was the largest at a college football game in the state this year.