Safety School

A couple of profiles of Dartmouth safeties you might have missed: Allen Lessels wrote this very nice program story on senior Ian Wilson. I freelanced this shorter Big Green Sports News piece on senior John Pircon. ...

Today's Daily Dartmouth has an interesting story about Josh Drake, Dartmouth Superfan. The story suggests, "Drake is an island in a largely apathetic sea of spectators." If that's a little less so these days he's one reason why. ...

The Ivy League has posted its weekly game previews. Dartmouth-Harvard is here. Once again, the preview touches quickly on the childhood friendship of Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens and Harvard coach Tim Murphy. ...

The Daily Pennsylvanian has a roundup of sorts from the Ivy football weekend. Of the Dartmouth game is says, "One pass into the game, Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens had seen enough." In fact, it wasn't anything Tom Bennewitz did wrong in the first series but what Alex Jenny did right in the second that played into the decision to keep Jenny on the field according to Teevens. The quarterbacks had been slated to split the first two series all week.

A 5-11, 205 New Hampshire high school running back is on Dartmouth's radar according to this story. He's also getting interest from Bowdoin but the story says nothing about UNH. ... Speaking of the state university, quarterback Ricky Santos (remember him?) is the College Sporting News Offensive Player of the Week nationally. The CSN story reports that Santos was, "devastatingly effective against the No. 10 team in the nation, connecting on 19 of 23 passes for 282 yards in two and a half quarters of work and connecting on a 47 yard bomb to put up the final points on the afternoon. Santos is currently ranked third nationally in the FCS in completion percentage at 73.63%." Nothing new there. ...

A writer for the Columbia Spectator is handing out his X-factor awards. I particularly like how he chooses the winners. He writes: "The criterion to receive one of these illustrious distinctions is that the recipient must play Ivy League football and catch my attention."

And finally, did you see that Elon knocked off No. 7 Wofford last Saturday? I'll bet a few people down in Bethlehem, Pa., took notice. See, Elon is coached by Pete Lembo, the onetime Dartmouth assistant who had a 44-14 record at Lehigh from 2001-05. While Lembo's Phoenix (5-2) was rising to No. 16 in the Sports Network poll his old school was dropping to 0-2 in the Patriot League and 3-4 overall with a 59-10 loss to Holy Cross.

Out of curiosity, I went back to see how the Elon and Lehigh records compared with and without Lembo:

2001: Elon 2-9; Lehigh (11-1 in Lembo's first year)
2002: Elon 4-7; Lehigh 8-4 (Lembo)
2003: Elon 2-10; Lehigh 8-3 (Lembo)
2004: Elon 3-8; Lehigh 9-3 (Lembo)
2005: Elon 3-8; Lehigh 8-3 (Lembo)
2006: Elon 5-6 (Lembo); Lehigh 5-6
2006: Elon 5-2 (Lembo); Lehigh 3-4

A final note: I spoke with Lembo a while back and he expressed an interest in perhaps playing Dartmouth at some point.