Recruiting Class Rounding Out

Note: The stadium poll (right) is closing tomorrow, so if you haven't voted yet, time to jump in. Look for a new poll that will incite a few folks (in a nice way, I hope) tomorrow afternoon.

More help from a reader brings the name of another recruit heading to Hanover. Add 6-foot-5, 235-pound lineman John O'Sullivan of Calhoun H.S., in Merrick, N.Y., to the list according to this Newsday recruiting update, which labels him a Dartmouth football recruit. (This Long Island Express lacrosse site lists a John O'Sullivan as a Dartmouth lacrosse recruit, so go figure.)

Here's what we know for sure: O'Sullivan was a Wendy's High School Heisman nominee, captained the Calhoun football team and throws the shot put. There's a brief story about him here (with a picture that suggests he's got the frame to put on some weight).

For a Q&A with Coach Buddy Teevens that I freelanced for a special edition of the publication Dartmouth Life, click here. The piece starts off with a question that I had been pondering for some time: After posting just four wins in your first two years, has your sense changed of the challenge you faced coming back to Dartmouth?

Teevens' answer:

I think I was pretty accurate in my early assessment that this was not a quick fix situation. There aren't any quick fixes in the Ivies. There are really no transfer or junior college players. Obviously, we were 2-8 the past two seasons. On paper, that's no change, but if you look more deeply at our program we as coaches have great confidence about where it is headed. Our talent pool is increasing and that has been the critical point. We have been playing a number of young players and with that comes inexperience and errors they won't make as they get older. Those young players are getting bigger, stronger, and more mature.

For the full Dartmouth Life issue, which is all about athletics at the college, click here. (Keep an eye out for a short piece I wrote on Dartmouth basketball captain John Ball, who is both a very good player and the Ivy League's representative to the NCAA Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. As an aside, he'd look awfully good at defensive end ;-)

Finally, for those of you who can't believe a proud program like Dartmouth football was able to slip the way it has, this winter shows it can happen to anyone. With its loss to Yale last night, the Princeton men's basketball team clinched last place in the Ivy League for the first time since the league was formalized in 1955-56. The Tigers are 2-11 with a Tuesday night finale set against Ivy champion Penn. Princeton had never even had a losing record in the Ivy League until two years ago. Dartmouth swept the Tigers this year for the first time since 1945-46. I haven't confirmed this, but I've read that Princeton had never been swept by two teams other than Penn in the same year and this winter four teams turned the trick. All that said, I suspect that like Dartmouth football, Princeton will be back.