Cullen Schwigen called his own number with Rockridge knocking on the door late in a tie game at Princeton Friday night.

There was little doubt that he would.

The Rockets junior quarterback knew what to do, sneaking in from three yards out for the winning score to lift Rockridge to a 36-29 win over the Tigers in a Three Rivers Conference crossover at Bryant Field.

Schwigen said this was a game he was really looking forward to.

“This is on the calendar,” he said. “I know some of those kids down there. We see each other a lot. This is definitely a game on the calendar.

“We did rise to the occasion. We just need to come out and be tougher.”

Rockridge coach Sam Graves told his team it was a quarterfinal-like game that would only better prepare them for the postseason.

For Princeton coach Ryan Pearson, it was too much of a replay of last week’s season-opening 28-14 loss at Newman Central Catholic.

“Same story, different week. Way too many fundamental mistakes that you can’t make against good football teams,” he said. “I told our guys afterward, how many things did we practice, but did not come out and execute how we worked on it in practice. You can’t do that and win football games.

“How many times did we let receivers get behind our guys? And we worked on making sure we had guys over the the top all week. You can’t win football games when we make the mistakes.”

Princeton quarterback Gavin Lanham gave the Tigers a 22-15 halftime lead with a 42-yard TD run with 23 seconds left in the half.

The Tigers (0-2) stretched their lead to 29-15 with a 4-yard score by Casey Etheridge at 9:02 of the third quarter.

Schwigen set the Rockets on a winning comeback course.

He connected with Liam Steele for a 7-yard scoring strike with four minutes left in the third quarter.

Schwigen tied the game at 29 on an 8-yard TD run with 10:03 left in the game.

Just over nine minutes, Schwigen added the game-winner to send the Rockets to their second straight win to start the season.

“I think we took a big step forward in the second half,” Graves said.

The Rockets got on the board first with a 25-yard TD pass from Schwigen to Chase Wheatley just five minutes into the game.

The Rockridge cheerleaders hardly had time to finish off their cheers before Princeton’s Kaleb Caldwell returned the kickoff 80 yards to paydirt. Etheridge scored the 2-point conversion, and the Tigers led 8-7 with 6:37 left in the first quarter.

Etheridge had the honors for Princeton’s next score, streaking 65 yards for the Tiger touchdown. Braylon Clevenger’s PAT kick put the Tigers up 15-8 with 3:20 remaining in the first half.

“Hats off to Rockridge. They came out and executed better than we did. I think they played a heckuva football game,” Pearson said.

Schwigen finished the night with three TD passes, including a 17-yard strike to Steele, to tie the game at 15 late in the second quarter, and two TD runs.

He completed 13 of 23 pass attempts for 240 yards.

The Tigers will travel to Sherrard (0-2) next week for the Three Rivers Mississippi opener.

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Princeton's Kaleb Caldwell races for an 80 kickoff return touchdown in the first half of Friday's game at Bryant Field. The Tigers lost to Rockridge 36-29. (Mike Vaughn)