Penn fans might best remember Norries Wilson for his "11-on-18" rant about the officiating during Penn's 16-0 victory over the Lions two years ago. But this weekend, when a penalty flag went flying during a Fordham punt, Wilson knew the blame lay 100 percent with him.
As the Lions clung to a 22-14 lead in the third quarter, they seemed set to get possession once again. But during the Rams' punt, a referee whistled Columbia for having too many men on the field.
Wilson had tried to sub out punt returner Mike Stephens for Austin Knowlin, but he cut it too close.
"There was a chance that if I didn't try to switch returners, we would have gotten that ball and run some time off the clock and try to take the ball down and score," Wilson told The Columbia Spectator.
"And there is a demoralizing aspect knowing that you just got stopped and then all of a sudden you have to go back out and play again."
A Fordham touchdown and two-point conversion on that possession tied the game, and the Rams would go on to win, 29-22.
While the Lions' offense didn't muster a second-half score, there's no denying that Wilson's blunder gave the Rams the boost they needed.
"That [penalty] turned the game around for us, I know that," Fordham coach Tom Masella told the Spectator. "It gave us a little bit of life and our offense took off from there."
Not so special. It was a rough day for Ryan Coyle.
Strangely enough, the Princeton punter was in the thick of two of the deciding plays in the Tigers' 37-24 loss to The Citadel on Saturday.
The first was a blocked punt in the third quarter by the Bulldogs' Reggie Rice, who had 16 blocks on special teams in high school. Rice picked up the ball and returned it 25 yards for the score.
In the fourth quarter, it was punt returner Andre Roberts who did the damage, taking a Coyle kick down to the Princeton 11-yard line to set up another Citadel touchdown.
"The blocked punt and punt return - those were the two mitigating factors that gave them momentum, got us back on our heels a little bit, and we started playing a little too tentative," Hughes told The Daily Princetonian.
On the block. Cornell linebacker Graham Rihn knows that extra points shouldn't be gimmes.
The senior co-captain preserved a thin margin and saved the game for his team this weekend, as his blocked PAT in the fourth quarter helped down Bucknell, 21-20.
It was the Big Red's first victory in the battle of the 'nells since 1992. Chalk it up to the extra reps in practice.
"We stress it every week - [special teams] could win us a game," Rihn told the The Ithaca Journal. "And tonight, it did."
