Doggin' It

Yale's materials for the Dartmouth game have been posted. Find the weekly release out of New Haven here, and a PDF of the Yale game notes here. ...

The Yale Daily has a follow today about the Bulldogs' overtime victory against Holy Cross Saturday. In the aftermath of the first breakout game of the fall by record-setting tailback Mike McLeod, Yale head coach Jack Siedlecki says:

“I don’t know if we spent so much time on the things that we thought we had to do to get the pressure off of (McLeod) that we forgot to put the emphasis on who our best player is and make sure he was getting the opportunities.”

It certainly looked that way from here. There wasn't much to crow about in reviewing the Big Green Alert's picks last week, but here's an excerpt from the look at Yale-Holy Cross:

The Bulldogs have to get tailback Mike McLeod going and the guess is they will.

Unfortunately, the prediction didn't stop there. It went on:

But it won't be enough. The Pick: Holy Cross 35, Yale 31

Hey, it was close. The final was Yale 31, Holy Cross 28 in ot.

If you missed the Dartmouth home opener against New Hampshire and didn't see my freelance story about Big Green linebacker Andrew Dete in the program, you can find it here. ...

There was an interesting note in the Morning Call's story about Harvard's win over Lafayette Saturday. The story included this explanation of Harvard coach Tim Murphy's preparation for the Leopards:

To make sure his guys knew he meant business, the veteran coach took what he admitted was ''absolutely a risk.'' He put his No. 1 offense against his No. 1 defense for the entire full-contact part of Tuesday's practice and for half the Wednesday session.

''It gave us a good physical test,'' Murphy said. ''We figured if we could run against our own guys, we could run against anybody."

If you read the Big Green Alert premium coverage of Tuesday's Dartmouth practice you saw that coach Buddy Teevens experimented with the same thing. Will the result be the same? Tune in Saturday to find out.

The Columbia Spectator takes a look around the Ivy League after three weeks and comes to a disheartening conclusion. From the story:

Though it is too early to see what the Ivy standings will look like at the end of the season, Dartmouth and Columbia appear to be set for a race to the bottom. Both teams have opened their seasons 0-3 and statistically are the league’s two worst defenses.

Though winless, the Lions have come closer to victories than the Big Green this season. Columbia ranks third in scoring offense and has kept all three of its games close, but it has been hindered by a defense that is allowing 29 points per game.

Meanwhile Dartmouth has been outscored 99-36 in three games, and it not only ranks last in the Ivy League in offense, but in defense as well.

The first Gridiron Power Index is out. (Think of the GPI as a BCS-like synthesis of polls and computer rankings.) Here's how it ranks Dartmouth and its opponents:

2. New Hampshire
31. Cornell
32. Harvard
35. Yale
47 (t) Holy Cross
49. Brown
50. Colgate
58 (t) Princeton
62. Penn
96. Dartmouth
97. Columbia

The Ivy League is No. 7 of 14 FCS conferences. The CAA, in which UNH plays, is No. 1. The Patriot, which claims Colgate and Holy Cross, is No. 9.

The Patriot League has made it official. The Colgate-Georgetown game has gone from postponed to cancelled. From an AP story:

The game will be listed as an unplayed game in league standings and overall school records for the season. A tie in the final standings will exist if the teams have the same number of losses.

If I have one loss at the end of the season and Colgate has one loss at the end of the season, I'm going to be unhappy about sharing the title because the Raiders might have lost to Georgetown. But I can't be too unhappy. It's un-PC to say it, but at home, with Jordan Scott in the lineup, Colgate simply wasn't going to lose that game. Period.

The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine had Five to Watch, a story a handful of tremendously accomplished students at Boston-area colleges. One of them is Harvard defensive back Andrew Berry. From the story:

BERRY, 21, IS IN HIS fourth season as a starting cornerback on the Harvard Crimson defense - and holds a 3.8 grade point average. In June, he'll receive both his bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in computer science. He's twice been named a preseason All-American and twice been chosen as a First Team All-Ivy selection.

Dartmouth sophomore Spencer Hood had three tackles, including one for a loss, Saturday at Penn. Twin brother Gordon isn't doing badly either, as this Brown Daily Herald profile of the Brown water polo player attests.

Not that my full attention won't be on Memorial Field Saturday, but I'll be waiting to hear what happens down in New York City where that certain Hanover High School junior and her cross country team will be competing in the top-level Eastern State race at the Manhattan College Cross Country Invitational. Along with most of the other runners she was held out of yesterday's home race to be ready for Saturday when Hanover will be joined by 24 other teams including schools from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and even one from California. Hanover finished third a year ago, but after taking serious graduation losses has already accomplished something special simply by making it into the Eastern States. ... As for that certain Hanover freshman fullback, his jayvee football team played Monday afternoon against Plymouth, which showed up with 30 jayvee players. (Hanover has about that number in the varsity and junior varsity combined.) The kids put up a good fight, losing by a touchdown. That certain seriously undersized fullback had one carry for about three yards ;-)