UNH Game Day

It's overcast this morning and the forecast could be better, but as of this writing it's not raining. Not here on the mountain overlooking Hanover, at least.

The hourly forecast predicts that at noon there's a 20 percent chance of rain, at 1 p.m., it is 40 percent and at 2 p.m. it's 50 percent.

There's a preview of today's Granite Bowl game between Dartmouth and UNH on the Dartmouth football website. ... If you are curious how the game sounds from the UNH perspective, you can find the visitor's audio (along with links to live stats and game notes) here.

From today's Seacoast Online site:

For all the accolades the University of New Hampshire football team has received for beating four Division I-A teams since 2004, the flip side is that it's also done a pretty good job taking care of business against opponents it's expected to beat.

"It doesn't matter who we play, Division I-A or I-AA," said defensive back John Clements. "We come into every game thinking it's going to be a game. Out of conference, conference, it doesn't matter."

Which brings us to today's annual Granite Bowl game at Dartmouth College (noon, Ch. 9), which lately hasn't been much of a game.

Ouch.

The Nashua Telegraph quotes Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens this way:

"Our biggest challenge is to limit their big plays. Nobody has stopped them. We've just got to make them work for their points."

You might say he's got, well, a point ;-)

A Dartmouth note that I missed the first time around, courtesy of new SID Rick Bender's game notes: Against Colgate Alex Jenny "completed more passes (29) without an interception than anyone in Dartmouth history."

Being honored at halftime of today's game: The 1978 Dartmouth Ivy League championship football team quarterbacked by one Eugene F. Teevens.

Deadspin has picked up the story of Keggy's latest adventure, which came to a peaceful conclusion recently:

Order has only begun to be be restored to the peaceful tree-lined streets of Hanover, New Hampshire today after the shocking kidnapping ordeal suffered by Keggy, the popular Dartmouth College beer keg. The quasi-official school mascot was ruthlessly abducted and held for ransom over the weekend, and then rescued by campus police today.

Hofstra pummeled Stony Brook, 43-3, last night (link). That's the same Stony Brook team that destroyed Colgate (42-26) but lost to Brown (17-7). What does it all mean? Not much as you'll see if you keep reading ...

The next time you are playing a parlour game (love that expression) with fans of other Ivy League schools, you can tell them that while Dartmouth did not have as much success as it would have liked a year ago, at least it would have beaten Penn State. And then you can offer this from last fall as proof:

Dartmouth beat
Cornell who beat
Colgate who beat
Towson who beat
Richmond who beat
Wofford who beat
Appalachian St who beat
Michigan who beat
Penn State

What you don't want to do is share this website, which will show that Columbia would have beaten USC last year:

Columbia beat
Marist who beat
Georgetown who beat
Bucknell who beat
Fordham who beat
Rhode Island who beat
Massachusetts who beat
Villanova who beat
Delaware who beat
Navy who beat
Notre Dame who beat
Stanford who beat
Southern Cal

And finally, it was a tough first Homecoming for that certain Hanover High freshman fullback/linebacker as his team got whomped, 31-0, last night. He was flawless on the water bottles. ... That certain Hanover junior will be in Manchester, N.H., running at 12:30 or so today.