The Signature Win

By 1920 Rutgers had competed against Princeton in athletics for more than 50 years.  While the November 6, 1869 inaugural football came is well known, Rutgers first played the neighboring college three years earlier when eight students (not a team) foolishly took on Princeton's well established baseball club and suffered a predictable, but still ignominious 40-2 defeat.  Competition between the two schools actually dated back even earlier to 1864 when the state legislature chose Rutgers over Princeton as New Jersey's land grant college, the first step on the road to becoming the state university.  While Rutgers also won the first football game, the New Brunswick school had enjoyed no success for almost 50 years until graduation day in June of 1919 when the Rutgers baseball earned a 5-1 victory giving Paul Robeson his long desired win over Princeton in his last collegiate competition.

Daily Home News - February 12, 1920

Basketball competition between the two schools began only three years earlier with Princeton winning all four meetings including two in the 1918-19 season, the second a heart breaking two point overtime loss.  Clearly it was an important game and the Home News was scarcely overstating the case by observing that "even if the battle were a game of ping pong or marbles, the interest and spirit would run high."  The Targum more than agreed claiming that even if the Rutgers team lost every other game, but beat Princeton, students, alumni and fans would agree "there had never been a better season in the history of the college." So intense was the expected atmosphere that Princeton requested that Joe Deering one of the game's top referees work the game and Deering made a special trip from Washington D.C. to do so.  In a step unimaginable today,  on several occasions, Deering actually stopped the game and "explained and illustrated" foul calls against Rutgers that weren't received well by the home crowd.

Leland Taliaferro

To no one's surprise, ticket demand was high and all the seats were sold quickly including the 300 added just a few weeks earlier even though the prices had been doubled to an unprecedented $1.  Those in attendance were not disappointed as Harold O'Neil of the Home News, wrote that the "vast assemblage which packed Ballantine Gymnasium from floor to roof" saw a game that was "bitter and probably the greatest basketball struggle that has ever been played on the local court."  Princeton got off to a 3-1 lead before baskets by Meury and Hall put Rutgers ahead 5-3, a deficit the visitors quickly erased before Benzoni again tied the game at 7-7.  After a Princeton foul shot, three straight Rutgers baskets gave the Scarlet a 13-8 advantage and they still led 17-14 after the first 20 minutes.  Princeton wasted little time catching up and taking the lead in the second half and the game went back and forth until the visitors led 22-20.  At that point, Benzoni, "darting out of a welter of men," scored two straight baskets to put Rutgers up by two points.  After Princeton again regained the lead, a Walter French basket put Rutgers ahead by one point, but Stanley Netts of Princeton tied the game at 27-27 with a foul shot and just like a year earlier on the same court, the two teams headed for overtime.

Daily Home News - February 12, 1920

Without a moment's respite, Deering summoned the two teams for the center jump and Princeton scored to take a two point lead.  Taliaferro made a foul shot for Rutgers which was matched by Netts, but Taliaferro followed with a basket to tie the game again at 30-30.  With 30 seconds left, Rutgers was called for a foul sending Netts, Princeton's designated foul shooter to the line again.  He missed producing what the Targum, with masterful understatement, called a "heavy sigh of relief."  As time ran down, there was a wild scramble for the ball and just as the timekeeper blew his whistle to signal the end of the first overtime, Deering blew his to call a foul on Princeton, sending Taliaferro to the line.  The crowd, "on the verge of a nervous collapse," watched "the ball sailing towards the iron rim and then slip clearly through the net and then to the floor."  According to the Targum, "the ball had no more than emerged from the net" that the floor was full of " a mass of joyous, happy loyal followers of Rutgers"  Meanwhile, the Home News reported that the "chapel bell tolled in peals of victory" while the "undergraduate body rushed into the streets to let the whole world know a Princeton team had been defeated by Rutgers."  It was the Targum noted a "thoroughly satisfactory" result.

"Ring the bell of old Queens College,

Paint the town as ne'er before

Play the game, boys play together,

Score once more, oh score, once more."