Yale Beats Columbia 26-8 as Hugo Djeumeni Kemeni Runs for 155 Yards

A week ago, Dante Reno threw four interceptions in a loss at Penn and Yale looked like a defending champion in free fall. On Saturday in Manhattan, Reno threw zero, Hugo Djeumeni Kemeni ran wild, and the Yale defense spent the afternoon making Columbia's passing game look ordinary.

Yale beat Columbia 26-8 at Robert K. Kraft Field at Lawrence A. Wien Stadium, snapping a two-game losing streak and keeping the Bulldogs alive in an Ivy League race that suddenly has a lot of bodies in it. Yale is now 4-3 overall and 2-2 in league play. Columbia, which started the season 4-1, has dropped two straight and falls to 4-3 and 1-3.

It was not always pretty. Yale punted nine times and Reno completed fewer than half his passes. But Yale scored the first 23 points, never let Columbia's quarterback find a rhythm, and closed the door twice inside its own 30 in the fourth quarter. That is a road win in the Ivy League, and nobody in New Haven is giving it back.

A slow start, then a flurry

The first quarter was a field position slog. Noah Piper missed a 50-yard field goal early, and neither offense could string together much of anything. Then the second quarter started and Yale scored nine points in what felt like a blink.

Reno hit Graham Smith for a 23-yard touchdown to open the scoring. On Columbia's very next possession, the Lions got pinned deep and Phoenix Grant dropped Brody McLaughlin in the end zone for a safety. Yale got the ball back after the free kick and kept rolling, and Reno found Lucius Anderson for a 34-yard touchdown. In the span of a few minutes, a scoreless game had become 16-0.

That was the score at halftime, and given how little room Columbia was finding, it felt bigger.

The turning point: 63 yards on the first drive of the half

If Columbia had any hope of a second-half comeback, it needed a stop to open the third quarter. It did not get one. Djeumeni Kemeni took a handoff, found a crease and outran everyone for a 63-yard touchdown. Piper's extra point made it 23-0, and the Lions were suddenly chasing three scores against a defense that had not let them sniff the end zone.

That run was the whole case for Djeumeni Kemeni in one play. He came in off a 107-yard night at Penn, and he finished Saturday with 155 yards on 23 carries. A week after Dartmouth ran for 247 yards against the Lions, Yale made a point of feeding him and letting him wear Columbia down.

Columbia did finally answer late in the third quarter. Chase Goodwin found freshman Bryce Coleman for an 11-yard touchdown, and the two connected again on the two-point conversion to make it 23-8. That was as close as it got.

Two stops that ended it

Columbia had real chances in the fourth quarter, and Yale's secondary took both away. On the first, the Lions drove into Yale territory and went for it on fourth down at the Yale 27. Goodwin went deep for Coleman, and Brandon Webster broke it up. Turnover on downs.

A few minutes later, Brandon Banks intercepted Goodwin, and Piper made up for his early miss with a 46-yard field goal to push the lead to 26-8 with just over four minutes left.

Columbia's final drive was a long, patient march, and it reached the Yale 10 inside the final 90 seconds. On fourth down, Goodwin looked for Coleman again. Webster again got there first. That sequence summed up the afternoon: Columbia moved the ball in spurts, and Yale took it away whenever it mattered.

The players who decided it

Djeumeni Kemeni is the headline, and deservedly so. His 155 yards accounted for most of Yale's 222 on the ground, and the 63-yard score broke the game open.

Reno did not need to be spectacular. He completed 14 of 31 passes for 134 yards and two touchdowns, and most importantly, he did not throw an interception one week after throwing four. Anderson caught five passes for 56 yards and a touchdown, and Reid Jones added three catches for 28 yards.

The defense was the real story. Zairion Jackson-Bass had two sacks and 2.5 tackles for loss. Webster finished with seven tackles and five pass breakups, including the two fourth-down plays. Billy Eastep added seven tackles, Osize Daniyan had five, and Grant had the safety and two pass breakups. As a unit, Yale held Columbia to 34 rushing yards on 21 carries.

Columbia's best player was Coleman, which is becoming a weekly sentence. The freshman caught 10 passes for 108 yards and the touchdown, then caught the two-point conversion too. Goodwin threw for more than 200 yards, but it took him 48 attempts to get there. Charlie Newton made 13 tackles for the Lions, and punter Tommy Sleeman was busy, averaging better than 43 yards on 10 punts.

The numbers that matter

Yale outgained Columbia 356 to 241 and held the ball for nearly 35 minutes. The rushing split was the real gap: 222 yards for Yale, 34 for Columbia. When an offense built around the pass cannot run at all, the defense gets to tee off, and Yale did.

The turnover column finished Yale 0, Columbia 1, plus two Columbia turnovers on downs in Yale territory. Both teams struggled on third down, with Yale converting 6 of 18 and Columbia 5 of 18. Columbia went 1 of 3 on fourth down. Goodwin is the other number worth sitting with. Coming into last week's Dartmouth game, he was leading the Ivy League in passing yards and averaging close to 300 a game. Over the last two Saturdays, he has run into two defenses that made every throw feel crowded, and the results have been two losses and a lot of punts. Yale sacked him twice, broke up nine passes as a team and never let Coleman beat it over the top. Columbia averaged well under 5 yards per pass attempt. Full numbers are in the box score (opens in a new tab).

What it means

For Yale, this was a necessary win. The Bulldogs shared the Ivy title last season and earned the league's first FCS playoff bid, then came into Saturday on a two-game skid that included a 41-23 home loss to Rhode Island and a 24-21 loss at Penn. At 2-2 in the league, Yale still needs help. But the Ivy standings are bunched at the top, and Yale still has Princeton on Nov. 14 and The Game against Harvard on Nov. 21. The math is simple enough: Harvard, Dartmouth and Princeton are all 3-1 in league play, and Yale has to keep winning and hope those three keep beating each other. Next up is a home game against Brown on Nov. 7.

For Columbia, the October slide continues. The Lions were 4-1 heading into last week's 38-18 homecoming loss to Dartmouth, and now they have lost two straight at home. The passing game with Goodwin and Coleman is real. The running game, at 34 yards on Saturday, is not, and that imbalance keeps showing up against the better defenses in this league. Next is a trip to Harvard on Nov. 7.

The last word

Yale did not play a perfect game. It punted nine times, missed a field goal and turned in a quarterback line that will not make anyone's highlight reel. It did not matter. The Bulldogs ran the ball, protected it, and trusted a secondary that kept making the last play. A week after a four-interception nightmare, that kind of boring was exactly what Yale needed.

Sources: ESPN box score and play-by-play, Undrafted's previous Ivy League coverage. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: Kenneth C. Zirkel/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0), stadium file photo.