Capitalizing on several Cornell miscues and displaying a balanced offense not seen since its first game of the season, the football team downed the Big Red 28-7 in its homecoming game Saturday.
With the victory, Brown snapped a four-game skid while bolstering its record to 2-4 overall (1-2 Ivy League).
"I thought they executed today," said Head Coach Phil Estes. "The fact is we got together as a football team and talked about it and what our goals were going to be. We had our game goals for today in trying to trust each other and trust the game plan and they did that."
The Bears accumulated 403 total yards of offense despite having both Evan Barbosa '07 and AJ Tracey '08 - two regular members of the offensive line rotation - held out of the game due to injuries. Even without Barbosa and Tracey, the line opened lanes for the running backs and protected quarterback and tri-captain Joe DiGiacomo '07 all day.
"I was a lot more comfortable today (than last week)," DiGiacomo said. "Our line did a great job making sure everyone was taken care of. (Cornell was) bringing as much pressure as we saw last week, and (the line) did a good job of picking it up."
After Cornell missed a long field goal on its opening drive, the offense wasted little time getting on the scoreboard. On the fourth play of the drive, DiGiacomo found tight end Colin Cloherty '09 over the middle on a well-devised screen pass that Cloherty took 51 yards to the end zone. The score gave Brown a 7-0 lead at the 9:55 mark of the first quarter. It was also the first time in 2006 that the offense scored on its opening possession, which boded well for the rest of the afternoon.
"Last year we seemed to do it every game, and this week we really wanted to get on the board early," DiGiacomo said. "When you're able to do that it gives a lot of confidence to the team."
It was the start of a career day for Cloherty, who finished the afternoon with six catches for 94 yards and two touchdowns.
"Colin is a tight end but he's got speed like a receiver," DiGiacomo said. "When he had that 50-yard touchdown that helped get some of the pressure off the receivers."
The offense was not without its flaws. Upon briefly spelling DiGiacomo midway through the second quarter, Matt Nuzzo '09 threw an interception that gave Cornell the ball at Brown's 36-yard line. The Big Red capitalized on the mistake when Nathan Ford tossed a 12-yard strike to Jesse Baker to tie the game 7-7, a score that stood up going into halftime.
At the start of the third quarter, the Bears caught a huge break that permanently swung the game's momentum in their direction. On a Brown punt, the ball deflected off a Big Red player trying to block one of Bruno's gunners and Jake Powers '09 fell on it at the Cornell 42-yard line.
Bruno moved the ball to the Big Red 23-yard line before the drive stalled, and placekicker Steve Morgan '08 came on to boot a 40-yard field goal. Cornell, however, was called for roughing the snapper on the play, and Estes opted to take the field goal off the board in favor of a first-and-10 at the 11-yard line.
"I was going for it, and we needed to put points on the board," Estes said. "I just had confidence that we could make some plays there and put momentum in our favor one way or another."
DiGiacomo made his coach's gamble pay off in memorable fashion. On second down, he evaded the rush and shed several tackles before finding Cloherty in the back of the end zone from 13 yards out, making it 14-7 with 10:04 left in the quarter.
"The scramble drill is always fun because you don't know what you're going to do," DiGiacomo said. "You hear the crowd getting real loud, which kind of says that someone's open back there. I saw Colin put up his big hand in the back of the end zone and he made a nice catch."
Meanwhile, Brown's defense held Cornell's potent option attack in check. All-Ivy tailback Luke Siwula was held to just 49 rushing yards, and the entire Cornell offense was held to just 193 total yards.
"It was really fun just to fly around," said linebacker and tri-captain Zak DeOssie '07, who finished the day with 14 tackles. "We hunkered down and did what we had to do."
For the rest of the game, Brown controlled the line of scrimmage and gave the Big Red defense a healthy dose of tailback Dereck Knight '08. Knight was a big contributor to the 159 rushing yards Brown put up in the second half and finished with 96 yards on 11 carries.
"It's all the O-line," Knight said. "Matt Adkins ('09) and (Jimmy) Tull ('08) really stepped up."
The Bears scored two more touchdowns - one on a 3-yard quarterback sneak by DiGiacomo and the other on a fumble recovery by Tull in the end zone - to reach the final 28-7 margin. The win was just the morale booster Bruno needed after its four-game swoon and prior to a tough road test at Franklin Field against the University of Pennsylvania next Saturday.
"It's just a matter of believing and going out there," Estes said. "There's a lot of confidence in this football team right now, and it's exactly what we needed to get into the second half of the season."
