Today's paper: Thursday, Oct. 3 by The Daily Princetonian

Sports

Thursday october 3, 2013

page 6

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On Tap

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{ column } Stephen Wood sports editor

A year ago this week

CHRISTINE WANG ::MULTIMEDIA EDITOR

Sophomore running backs Dre Nelson (left) and DiAndre Atwater (right) have both contributed significantly to the football team’s running game.

On Tap with ... DiAndre Atwater and Dre Nelson

By Jack Rogers staff writer

iAndre Atwater and Dre Nelson are sophomore running backs on the football team. Hailing from Atlanta, Ga., Atwater and Nelson have combined for nearly 200 yards of rushing in the Tigers’ first two games of the season. The leaders of the Class of 2016’s rushing attack recently sat down with the ‘Prince’ to discuss the highs and lows of their careers, weather forecasting with their knees and who has better hair. The Daily Princetonian: Where are you from, and what’s the best part about being from there? DiAndre Atwater: I’m from just north of Atlanta. The

weather, in addition to the women, is a great part about being from there. Dre Nelson: I’m from Atlanta. The best part about being from Georgia is the weather. It’s a lot nicer than up here. I like the heat. DP: How has Atlanta affected your personalities? Do you have accents? DA: The thing that’s different in Atlanta is being around a lot of eccentric people down south. I’ve adopted that personality a bit. DN: I’d definitely say I have a lot of different kinds of friends. The area I’m from, Stone Mountain, there are a lot of kinds of people. DP: When did you both start playing football? DA: I’ve been playing since I

was six years old in rec-league football. DN: I started playing when I was in sixth grade, when I was 13. My parents didn’t want me getting hurt earlier on. But I was always into sports: I’d been playing baseball since I was three and basketball since I was four. DP: What led you two to play at Princeton? DA: We knew each other in high school. Dre came to the school I went to in eighth grade at Greater Atlanta Christian. I left for public school second semester of freshman year, but we kept in touch. Princeton was in the mix for both of us, along with other Ivy League schools when recruiting time came around. I knew for sure I wanted to come here after visiting.

Just over a year ago, on Sept. 29, 2012, I was pestering the football team’s head coach, Bob Surace ’90. We were in Columbia’s football complex at the northernmost tip of Manhattan, where Princeton had just put up 33 points, the most it had scored since the previous October, and won a road game, something it had not done since 2009. Less than a month into my sophomore year and new to the football beat, I was trying to get a quote from Surace, something along the lines of, “This is the biggest win of my career,” because nobody thought the Tigers’ offense would score so may points and that would have sounded good in my article. But Surace brushed the questions aside like it was no big deal. Looking back on the rest of the 2012 season, he was right. Compared to what was in store for the Tigers, that game was small potatoes, but I see it as the dawning of the Bob Surace Era (if you don’t count his first two seasons, which I’m sure he’d be as happy to overlook as I am). It was the first time junior quarterbacks Connor Michelsen and Quinn Epperly clicked as a duo, with both putting up over 100 passing yards and Epperly finally running the ball like the Tigers had hoped he would. The fact that receiver Tom Moak ’13 was credited with throwing a touchdown shows that this was by no means a perfectly clean game, but that botched field-goal-turned-touchdown foreshadowed the way the football team now runs. Plenty of weaknesses still exist, but Surace has learned to cover them up in a way that almost uses them to his advantage. We don’t have a clear No. 1 quarterback? Ok, let’s throw the two best guys on the field. Maybe even at the same time. Surace’s “ninja” formation — the one where he uses two See COLUMN page 5

RUNNING UP THE SCORE

WEB SPECIAL

dailyprincetonian.com

Watch the full interview online. DN: I was recruited by a lot of Ivy League schools. Some bigger schools were also looking at me for track. But I wanted to play football, and when I visited here I met guys up here on the football team who I liked, and I liked the community here. See ON TAP page 5

HANNAH MILLER :: DESIGN STAFF

Junior quarterbacks Connor Michelsen and Quinn Epperly have split time over the last two seasons under head coach Bob Surace ’90, with Michelsen doing damage primarily through the air and Epperly contributing to the running game in a big way.

HANNAH MILLER :: DESIGN STAFF

The football team’s highest score this year, 50 points, is already higher than its highest single-game total for the last 12 years.

Tweet of the day

Tomorrow

‘Delmon Young is being intentionally walked in the fourth inning of a playoff game. Delmon Young also happens to be an anagram of “Ungodly Omen.”’