After a sluggish performance against Brown last week, Dartmouth Rugby suddenly had a lot of question marks heading into today’s matchup against Princeton, who like The Big Green were still undefeated in Ivy Rugby Conference play. Thankfully for the large home crowd at Brophy Field, the team provided the desired answers and then some, dominating the Tigers in route to a 53-21 victory. Dartmouth is now the only unbeaten team in the conference, with two games left to play.

Unlike last week in Providence, Dartmouth came out firing early. After keeping the ball mostly in Princeton territory from the kickoff, the team finally got on the scoreboard about 8 minutes in with a try from wing Kevin Clark ’14, which made the score 5-0. Captain and No. 8 Paul Jarvis ’12 would be next five minutes later to increase the lead to 10-0. Clark would add another try a few minutes later to make the score 15-0.

It was then that the Big Green began to run into a little trouble. First off, starting prop Jessie Peltier ’14 was knocked out of the game with an injury only a quarter of the way through the game. And then only a minute later Princeton exploited the weakness in Dartmouth’s personal for a try to bring the score to 15-7.

However, The Big Green bounced back quickly. Fullback Madison Hughes ‘15 had a fantastic solo effort and then Clark added another of his five total tries on the day right before half. Taken together these two scores made the lead 29-7 heading into the break, giving Dartmouth a large margin to work from in the 2nd half.

Hughes and Clark would continue to rack up points in the second half, as they scored one and two tries respectively after the intermission. As a result of their efforts, Dartmouth found itself with a 46-7 lead 15 minutes after halftime, the biggest on the day. Princeton would chip away at with a try to make it 46-14, but center Michael Burbank ’13 would respond with one of his own, increasing the lead to 53-14 after a successful conversion by wing Justin Ciambella, who in total made four on the day. Ultimately, Princeton would still manage to get some amount of consolation, putting in one more try before full time to bring the final score to 53-21.

Dartmouth won’t have much time to celebrate their win however, as they’ll need be back on the pitch again tomorrow for a matchup against the Penn Quakers. The match will begin at noon at the Corey Ford Rugby Clubhouse, which is located at 9 Reservoir Road in Hanover, 1.8 miles north of the Hanover Inn, off of Lyme Road. Directions can be found here.