Friday, November 16, 2007

Dartmouth-Princeton Pregame Pub

If bulletin board material is the goal, you have to love school newspapers. Both the Daily Princetonian and the Daily Dartmouth provided a little tepid bulletin board fodder this morning.

A Princetonian preview mentions a few injuries on the offensive side and suggests that Princeton, "may not need its full complement of players to run up the score against the Big Green. Dartmouth cedes nearly 37 points a game with the most porous defense in the Ivy League."

The Daily Dartmouth material is simply the headline: "Football should trounce Tigers."

The D column actually has a little misinformation in it, suggesting that third place is out of reach for Dartmouth. In fact, there's no tiebreaker in the Ivy League. If two teams have the same record they finished tied in the standings. That's true whether they are tied for third or tied for the Ivy League title. If Dartmouth and Brown win this weekend they will both finish 4-3, and tie for third in the league.

The Newark Star-Ledger Princeton game capsule picks Dartmouth by a 29-22 score. It has a mention of South Jersey's Justin Cottrell leading the Ivies in tackles for the Big Green and Dartmouth freshman tight end Kevin Gallagher playing against brother Pat, a Princeton defensive lineman.

Our friend Jake Novak over at the Roar Lions Roar Columbia football blog, gives the nod to Dartmouth by 10 points.

Boston.com says of the Dartmouth -Princeton game: "If you like scoring, Dartmouth games are the place to be. In the last two weeks, the Big Green and their opponents have combined for 181 points." The counter to that is the fact that Princeton's offense hasn't scored a touchdown in two weeks.

The Daily Pennsylvanian giveth and taketh away when it comes to complimenting Dartmouth. The giveth (with a backhand slap at the start):
"Perennial Ivy doormats for the past several years, the Big Green have cleaned up their act, and they have wins over Penn and Cornell to show for it."
The taketh (although it may be more harsh toward Penn than Dartmouth):
"Defense is a real problem for the Big Green, who have yet to concede fewer than 28 points to a team not named Penn."
Yale coach Jack Siedlecki is one of 16 coaches named as candidates for the Eddie Robinson Award as the FCS coach of the year. Former Dartmouth assistant Pete Lembo, who has done a remarkable job of quickly raising up the program at Elon after a successful run at Lehigh, is also a nominee.

Speaking of former Dartmouth assistants, there's a very nice story about Brud Bicknell, a Buddy Teevens assistant the first time around, in Virginia's Daily Progress. Brud has settled in as a very successful high school coach in Monticello, Va. He was with Teevens for all five years of his first tenure in Hanover and went with him to Tulane in 1992.

Already looking ahead to next season? The Providence Journal takes a sneak peek at the 2008 Brown offense, which looks potent.

And finally, snow! There wasn't much of it, but there was enough this morning to scrape a snowball off the windshield of the car and toss it at that certain 8th grader as he made his way down the driveway to the schoolbus. He caught it and, as expected, fired it right back.

One more thing: The forecast for gametime Saturday is partly cloudy with temperatures in the upper 30s.

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