Reading Around The Ivy League

Even in disappointment, the Dartmouth players and coach Teevens honored their fans with a singing on the Alma Mater Saturday. (Click to enlarge)
The Colgate scoreboard told the story at game's end.

Lots of links this morning after Week One of Ivy League football, starting at Harvard where quarterback Chris Pizzotti was injured in a win over Holy Cross. "Everyone thought the drama was finally over for the Harvard football team." So starts a story in the Crimson. Said coach Tim Murphy of Pizzotti's prognosis in a story about the quarterback situation: "“He’s definitely out, we’re just hoping it’s not a really severe injury that requires surgery. They think it’s an MCL sprain, and he’ll have to get an MRI to see if it’s worse than that.”

Harvard and Brown meet up this week in a critical Ivy League matchup in Providence. The Bears are coming off a win against overmatched Georgetown. Said Brown coach Phil Estes in the Daily Herald: "Any win is a good win, but there's a lot of stuff that we have to clean up."

The third of what might be called the Ivy League's Big Three these days is Penn, and the Quakers opened with an impressive win at Lafayette that resulted in this lede in the Daily Pennsylvanian: "They're back. After a four-game losing streak that put last year's team under .500 in the Ivy League, the Quakers of old have seemingly returned."

Also making some noise in the first week was Princeton, which came from behind to beat Lehigh, a team it hadn't beaten since 1993 as this story in the Princetonian notes.

And how about Columbia? The Lions didn't just beat Fordham; they smoked them. One reason, according to new coach Norries Wilson in the Spectator: "We talk about it at practice, about being physical, about out-competing. I think our team was in better shape than the team we played today. Our kids competed all the way to the end."

While there were a lot of smiles around the rest of the Ivy League, they were in short supply in the Cornell locker room after a disappointing loss to Bucknell. The Sun covered the story.

Even more disappointing was Yale's blowout loss to surprising San Diego. The Yale Daily tells it like it is: It is safe to say Saturday's loss only leaves room for improvement

Dartmouth's final opponent had no trouble dispatching Stony Brook but star UNH receiver David Ball was upset with how he played and sounds as if he wants to make up for it Saturday in the closest game that he'll play to his home in Orange, Vt.. Said Ball in a Manchester Union Leader story: "(I)f you're a competitor and you play poorly, you're going to be upset and I'm very upset with the way I played. . . . It will aggravate me until I get on the field Saturday." Uh oh.

Later today on the premium Green Alert site: The Optimist and the Pessimist get after it in light of Dartmouth's opening loss to Colgate and the other Ivy results.