While most attention in the Ivy League for the past six weeks has been focused on last year's co-champions--Yale and Cornell--a highly underrated Princeton eleven has quietly won all four of its league games. And when the Tigers take the field tomorrow afternoon, they will be in a position to go into the League lead, a half game ahead of Yale.
This has been an unexpectedly good year for Charley Caldwell's Tigers. When the season opened, they were thought to have a strong backfield consisting of Royce Flippin, but a very inexperienced weak line. Thus when Flippin injured himself early in the year, things looked more black than orange for Princeton.
An unheralded senior, however, named Sid Pinch, who stands only 5-9, took over Chaptain Flippin's vital position of tailback, and began to do things that only the great Flippin was expected to do. He has scored four touchdowns, and passed for two more. And he leads the team in offense with 564 yards.
Ivy Rushing Leader
Senior fullback Dick Martin has also come through for Caldwell, leading the League in rushing with 364 yards, scoring four touchdowns, and kicking eight extra points. Wingback Frank Agnew, who has been bothered by an injury all week, has been very effective in Caldwell's wide-open single-wing. Sophomore John Sapoch is the quarterback.
It is in the line, it is said, that football games are won, and no one knows this better than Caldwell. When the Kazmaiers and Smiths performed so brilliantly for him, there were always Brad Glasses and Frank McPhees to do the heavy work up front. But this year, there appeared to be little brilliance in the line--that is, up to the first game.
In the opener, against a usually pesky Rutgers team, the Tiger line moved the losers all over the field, and paved the way for a decisive 41-7 victory. A week later, the Tigers defeated Columbia, 20-7, and then Penn, 7-0.
It was about this time that Caldwell began praising some of his little publicized linemen. He called 205-pounder Bob Aldrich his most improved player, and one of the reasons for his team's surprising record. Aldrich was a tackle who was converted to a guard this year, after two poor seasons at the former position.
One of the three sophomores on the team is David Grubb, a relatively lightweight 196-pound guard. The center on the team is senior John Thompson, and the tackles are senior Earle Harder and junior Fred Melges. This center of the line is fast and good, and has been providing Pinch and Martin with wide holes up front.
At the ends are big Ben Spinelli and sophomore Joe DiRenzo. Neither is a particularly dangerous offensive threat, having scored but one touchdown between them.
The Tigers' one defeat was to a once-defeated Colgate team, 15-6, but they came back the next week to disappoint a Cornell homecoming crowd, 26-20. Last week, Brown lost to Princeton, 14-7.
As the scores indicate, none of the victories, with the exception of the opener against Rutgers, has been an easy one for Caldwell, but the master of the single-wing will win them any way he can, and he certainly wants to win tomorrow.
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