Cornell running back Grant Gellatly carries the ball in a game against Yale at the Yale Bowl on Sept. 24. The Big Red fell to the Bulldogs 37-17. (Photo by Jeremy Hartigan)
Published on Sept. 27, 2011
Cornell head football coach Kent Austin looked to pull a rabbit out of a hat Saturday afternoon against Yale.
Questionable, gutsy, wrong, Austin elected to attempt an onside kick trailing 17-10 midway through the third quarter, and appeared to have everyone fooled, except the one Bulldog defender who stayed alert, recovering the ball and swinging momentum the other way.
“At the end of the day, I love that call,” sophomore Big Red quarterback Jeff Mathews said in a phone interview. “He wants to get the ball in the offense’s hands and has that confidence in us to go down and score.”
And confidence is exactly what the typically conservative coach had. However, the Bulldogs (2-0, 1-0 Ivy League) ended up scoring on the short field to take a 23-10 lead.
Although the Big Red (1-1, 0-1) bounced back on the next drive to cut the lead to 23-17, the gutsy call was a microcosm for a day that was not meant to be in a 37-17 loss that was nationally televised on VERSUS.
Big Red cornerback Rashad Campbell returned the opening kick off 102 yards for a score, only to have the play negated by a holding penalty. Two plays later, Mathews threw behind his intended receiver, and the pass was tipped and intercepted by the Bulldogs’ Nick Okano.
A costly penalty to start, an untimely turnover soon after, a call with momentum on their side gone wrong, the Big Red were inevitably dealt their fate: a tough loss in New Haven, Conn.
Mathews not only liked Austin electing to gain the ball right back on the onside kick, but also preached the importance of winning the field possession battle.
“When you’re down, it gives you another possession,” he said. “That [Yale] player just made a good play on it.”
And the long road of a season does not get any easier when the Big Red host Wagner tomorrow afternoon.
The Seahawks were the same team that spoiled Kent Austin’s debut as the Big Red head coach, blowing out the Big Red 41-7 in their 2010 season opener.
But for Mathews, the loss to Wagner to start the 2010 season is simply water under a bridge.
“That [loss to Wagner] was so long ago to be honest–our first game of the year, our first game under Coach Austin,” he said. “I feel that we have come so far since then that it’s hard to look back on that game and believe that was our [same] team.”
The Seahawks are 1-3 and come in as the losers of three straight, but that will not stop the Big Red from making the game mean any more or any less to them.
“We don’t want to make this one game an indicator of our season,” said Mathews.
“There’s a long year [ahead of us] and we’re going to have lots of ups and downs, and hopefully it’s going up from now on.”