HANOVER – With what many expect to be a renaissance season for Dartmouth football just around the corner, the official signup for the sixth year of Big Green Alert has kicked off.As always there will be a minimum of one newspaper-length story posted every day from the start of the cycle in early August through the end of the season. During the season there will once again be 10 or so full-length stories each week.
Every practice will be covered with same-day stories (including two on double-session days). Two stories will be filed on location the night of each game.
To subscribe or learn more about Big Green Alert, click here.
Here's a blurb from the site telling you who is behind this whole thing ;-)
Bruce Wood covered his first Dartmouth football game for the Valley News in 1979.Here's a sampling of a BGA game preview from last fall, followed by a game story Dartmouth fans might enjoy reading:
After two years, he left to become sports editor of a daily newspaper in Pennsylvania. He returned to the Upper Valley in 1983 to serve as Dartmouth's assistant sports information director.
In 1988 he rejoined the Valley News where the contacts he made were invaluable in his role as the Dartmouth beat writer through June of 2005.
Bruce has won numerous state and national awards for his writing from the College Sports Information Directors of America and Vermont and New Hampshire press associations. He has written for a wide range of magazines and is the author of the Ivy League chapter in the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, published in 2005.
Buckle Your SeatbeltsHere's the game story:
It Can Be a Wild Ride When Cornell and Dartmouth Get Together
By Bruce Wood
www.biggreenalert.com
HANOVER – It is safe to say that neither Dartmouth (1-6 overall, 1-3 Ivy League) nor Cornell (2-5, 1-3) has bullied its way up and down the field like a Hummer on the highway this fall.
The Big Green comes into Saturday’s game ranked 90th of 118 teams in the nation at 17.6 points per game. Factoring out defensive touchdowns from Charles Bay (fumble return against Columbia) and Michael Reilly (blocked punt return against Harvard), as well as Shawn Abuhoff’s two-point conversion return against Colgate, the Dartmouth offense is scoring 15.3 points per game.
Not counting the two defensive touchdowns, the offense has produced exactly 14 points per game over the past four contests.
The Big Red comes to Hanover scoring at a 19.1 clip, 79th nationally. But Cornell, like Dartmouth, has had two defensive touchdowns (Emani Fenton returned a fumble against Colgate and Brandon Lainhart brought back an interception against Brown). Take those out and the offensive output by the Big Red drops to 17.1 points per game.
When the defensive touchdown against Brown is deducted the Cornell offense has averaged 14.5 points per game over the past four contests.
So why bring up the kind of numbers that keep offensive coordinators awake at night? Because at least one of those fellas could be sleeping a lot better than the scoreboard operator when this one is over.
Reason No. 1: 32.6. That’s how many points Dartmouth’s defense has given up on average this fall.
Reason No. 2: 32.6. Ironically, that’s also how many points Cornell has surrendered on average during its current five-game slide. (Counting its wins over hapless Bucknell and Yale in the first two weeks, the Big Red’s average goes down to 26.3.)
Reason No. 3: Last year Cornell had its highest scoring game of the season in a 37-14 win over the Big Green.
Reason No. 4: The last time the teams played in Hanover Dartmouth had its highest scoring game since 1935 in a 59-31 win over the Big Red.
Reason No. 5: Cornell is prone to giving up big plays. The Big Red has allowed six pass plays of 45 or more yards in the past three games alone.
Reason No. 6: Dartmouth is prone to giving up big plays. Harvard had TD runs of 40 and 45 yards last week and the Big Green has given up at least one play of 40-plus yards in every game this fall – except the lone win against Columbia.
Reason No. 7: Dartmouth return man extraordinaire Shawn Abuhoff is a threat to break a long one at any time. He’s been as high as second in the nation in kickoff returns (he’s currently ninth) and has been 13th in punt returns.
Reason No. 8: Cornell return man extraordinaire Bryan Walters is the Ivy League’s all-time record holder for career kick return yardage and needs just five yards to break the Ivy League career punt return yardage record.
Reason No. 9: Kick blocking. Dartmouth is currently tied for seventh in the nation in blocked kicks with last week’s punt block against Harvard going for a touchdown, and a PAT block going for two points earlier this season.
Reason No. 10: Kick blocking. Cornell blocked two Dartmouth field goal attempts last year and returned one 69 yards for a touchdown.
Reason No. 11: Steven Liuzza. Cornell’s Mr. Excitement is officially listed as a 6-foot, 178-pound backup wide receiver, but he had runs of 54 and 55 yards against Fordham, had a 65-yarder against Bucknell and last year had an 81-yarder against Dartmouth. Two years ago he stepped in at quarterback against the Big Green and, though not practicing at the position since the preseason, ran for 131 yards and threw for 292 more.
Reason No. 12: Timmy McManus, Dartmouth’s own Mr. Excitement and pretty much a Liuzza clone who is listed as a wide receiver but also plays quarterback. (OK, the parallels fall apart here because McManus isn’t actually playing. He’s still out with the broken leg he suffered in late August, but just imagine. And for the record, he had a career-best 10 catches for 122 yards against Cornell last year and a 75-yard TD catch against the Big Red two years ago.)
If McManus and Liuzza were both out there this game would really be something. Actually, it still might be. Take it from Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens.
“It could be a wild one,” he said. “They’ve given up some big plays but they’ve got some big-play capabilities as well. The key is eliminating big plays – one team or the other.”
Cornell opened opened the season with a 33-9 win over struggling Bucknell and then won a bizarre game at Yale, 14-12, when it managed only three first downs. The Big Red is coming off a 17-13 loss at Princeton in which it ran for 229 yards against a defense that held Colgate’s vaunted running game to 143 yards.
Marcus Hendren led Cornell in rushing against Princeton with 76 yards and is averaging a solid 5.8 yards per carry. Randy Barbour, the Big Red’s leading rusher the past two years, is the leading pure tailback with 226 yards this fall but is averaging just 2.9 yards per carry. The X-factor is Liuzza, who has run for a team-high 269 yards and a 6.4-yard average largely out of the Wildcat formation.
Senior Ben Ganter was expected to be a steady presence at quarterback, but he’s completing just 51.6 percent of his passes with four touchdowns and eight interceptions. Backup Adam Currie hasn’t fared much better, completing 53.6 percent with one touchdown and four interceptions. The X-factor once again is Liuzza, who has completed 15-of-24 passes (62.5 percent) with one touchdown and no interceptions and a passing efficiency rating of 171.10 that dwarfs that of Ganter (93.55) and Currie (98.89).
Walters leads the Cornell receiving corps with 36 catches for 617 yards, a 17.1-yard average and three touchdowns. All are team-highs. Surprisingly, though listed as a receiver Liuzza has just four catches for 21 yards with a long of six.
Liuzza started at wide receiver for the first four games and then ran 14 times for 166 yards against Fordham in Week Five. One week later he was at quarterback against Brown and completed 10-of-13 passes for 124 yards.
“I have no idea,” Teevens said when asked how he expected Cornell to use its jack-of-all-trades. “Every year it's something different. He's a very gifted athlete who can throw the ball, who can run the football. He ripped us a year ago and put a bunch of yards in. They throw him the ball outside, he catches it and he can make a lot of people look very bad. We've got to be aware of where he is on the field and what they are asking him to do because he can hurt you in many ways.”
Defensively, Cornell is 89th nationally against the run and 102nd in the nation in yards allowed playing an unorthodox scheme.
“They are wild,” said Teevens. “Everyone plays a four-down front, they play a 3-5-3 where they stack their backers, so it takes some time strategically for our guys to understand what they are doing and how they are doing it. They've been productive against most people, not letting a whole lot of points up. But it has been the big play that has hurt them. They shut down, shut down, shut down and then all of a sudden they give up a big one, and that's been consistent in most ballgames.
“They've done some decent things on occasion, but consistency is the issue. We certainly understand that from our end. That's what we are looking for. It's an interesting combination of teams. It will be a colorful one.”
And he wasn’t just talking about the team names.
One for the Record Books
Freshman QB Patton Snaps Rushing Mark in 2-OT Win Over Cornell
By Bruce Wood
www.biggreenalert.com
HANOVER – You can’t make this stuff up for one simple reason.
No one would believe it.
Freshman quarterback Greg Patton, who hadn’t played a single varsity down in the first seven games of his college career, rushed for a school-record 243 yards and two touchdowns in the eighth to lift Dartmouth to an improbable 20-17 double-overtime victory against Cornell.
Patton, recruited as a defensive back and pressed into service as a quarterback only because of injuries and the defection of another recruit, split time at QB Saturday and had touchdown runs of 52 yards in the fourth quarter and 13 yards in the first extra session as Dartmouth won for the second time in three weeks. The Big Green, which erased a 10-0 fourth-quarter deficit, is now 2-6 overall and 2-3 in the Ivy League.
Cornell, which dropped its sixth consecutive game, is 2-6 overall, 1-4 in the conference.
Senior safety Peter Pidermann blocked Cornell’s 35-yard field goal attempt on the final play of regulation and Foley Schmidt provided the winning points in the second overtime on a 40-yard field goal, but on a day when Dartmouth had more heroes than a comic book convention it was the 6-foot, 190-pound Patton who was wearing the cape.
Patton’s stunning day meant Al Rosier’s Dartmouth rushing record of 229 yards that stood from 1991 until this fall has been broken twice in a span of three weeks this fall. Sophomore tailback Nick Schwieger ran for 242 yards against Columbia on Oct. 24 only to have Patton come out of a virtual telephone booth to top him by one yard.
“I don’t know where they were hiding him,” said Cornell coach Jim Knowles.
The answer: on the junior varsity team.
Patton carried three times for 22 yards in the jayvee game at Harvard a week ago before starting to get a few snaps with the varsity first team during practice for Cornell. With Schwieger out because of a broken hand, coach Buddy Teevens planned to rotate Patton into the game in relief of starter Conner Kempe on occasion in the Wildcat formation, but even in his wildest dreams he couldn’t have foreseen how successfully that would play out.
Asked what he would have thought if someone had told him the night before that Patton was going to break Schwieger’s record, Teevens chuckled. “I probably would have said, ‘Man, I don’t think he’s going to have enough carries to do that.’ ”
With that, Teevens glanced at the stat sheet in front of him. “Twenty-nine,” he said. “I would never have guessed that last night. We didn’t know. How is he going to respond? We hoped it would go well.”
Patton carried three times for 16 yards in the first quarter and while he was at 10 carries for 99 yard by the half he tacked on only 11 more in the third quarter. He exploded for 133 yards in the final period and overtime.
“Coach said that he’d get me in the first couple series and see how it went from there,” Patton said. “I honestly wasn’t sure I would play a whole lot.”
Sitting next to Patton and listening to in the postgame press conference, Pidermann had to stifle a laugh at his modesty even before before the soft-spoken freshman answered a question about his feelings in the aftermath of his historic debut.
“I’m glad we won,” Patton said. “I’m happy.”
If Patton was unduly modest, Pidermann was more than happy to heap praise on him. “His locker is right in front of mine,” the senior co-captain said. “I’ve told him the entire year it’s ridiculous the amount of improvements he’s made from day one until now. He made our defense better. I don’t think our defense goes out there and plays like that today if we are not going against quarterbacks like Timmy (McManus) and Greg on a daily basis. Great mobile quarterbacks running around, they really put a stress on the defense and it makes things a lot easier on Saturday when you go against great athletes like that.”
Not that anything was really easy on Saturday.
With both teams missing field goals, the only points of the first half came when Ben Ganter hit Ben Moody with a 16-yard pass to cap a 78-yard drive that gave Cornell a 7-0 lead heading into the locker room.
A 25-yard Brad Greenway field goal late in the third quarter stretched the Big Red’s lead to 10-0 heading into the final period.
Dartmouth appeared to be in deep trouble when a Cornell punt early in the fourth quarter clipped the back of a Big Green player and was recovered by the Big Red at the 29-yard line. But two plays later, it was sophomore linebacker Diego Fernandez-Soto – who has been staying after practice to work on his hands for several weeks after dropping an interception – picking off Ganter and returning the interception to the 43. A delay-of-game penalty against the Big Red for a sideline infraction advanced the ball to the 48.
Perhaps stunned by the sudden change of fortune, the Big Red was reeling one snap later as Patton took advantage of a hole up front, cut to the left sideline and won a 52-yard race to the end zone. Schmidt added the PAT to make it 10-7 with 12:04 left in regulation.
While Patton was getting congratulations on the sideline from Dartmouth president Jim Yong Kim – suitably dressed in a Dartmouth football windbreaker – the Big Green defense was surrendering just one first down and forcing a punt that returned the ball to the home team at its own 12 with 9:53 left.
Four consecutive Patton runs, highlighted by a 27-yarder brought the ball to the midfield stripe. But a four-yard Patton run and a couple of TJ Cameron carries left Dartmouth facing a fourth-and-one at the 41 with 6:33 left and Kempe under center.
The 6-foot-4, 210-pound sophomore, who completed 23-of-38 passes for 210 yards and one interception, bulled in behind Austen Fletcher and the center of the Dartmouth line to earn the first down and keep the drive alive. Kempe would make an even bigger play five snaps later.
With the Big Green facing a third-and-17, he fired a pass down the middle to junior Tanner Scott for 18 yards and a first.
When the drive bogged down Schmidt came on and booted a 26-yard field goal to knot the score at 10-10 with 2:10 remaining.
But the excitement was far from over.
Cornell took the ensuing kickoff and marched from its own 29 to the Dartmouth 17 in nine plays to set up a 35-yard Greenway field goal attempt to win the game at the buzzer.
After two Dartmouth timeouts to try to ice him, the Cornell kicker who had been 7-of-11 on the season before Saturday, trotted back onto the field. The Dartmouth defense, which was among the national leaders with six blocks of one sort or another this fall, was confident it could add to that total and send the game to overtime.
“We ran the regular block, but we had noticed the tight ends were trying to come out on me,” explained Pidermann. “So we just had to talk to Connor Phillips before the play. We went over that. Either they were going to get two hands on (Shawn) Abuhoff or the wing’s going try to come down on me. If he comes down on me, Abuhoff’s gonna get it. ‘Conner, just make sure you pull that tight end out of there. Whatever you do, just don’t let the tight end get to me and me and Abuhoff will block it. One of us will definitely get through there.’ ”
Pidermann ended up being the one, stabbing it – and Cornell hearts – with his left hand.
“I was just untouched,” he said. “I was just hoping I wouldn’t run past it.”
But the block only prolonged the drama.
Dartmouth won the coin toss for the overtime and elected, as teams always do, to let Cornell go first from the 25. The Big Red took the lead when Ganter hit standout receiver Bryan Walters with an eight-yard post pattern on a third-and-four play that made it 17-10.
The Big Green answered with four consecutive Patton runs, the last a 13-yard for a touchdown that made it 17-16.
Surprisingly, after a time out Teevens then sent Patton back out to try a two-point conversion to end the game – one way or another. With its kick-block team on the field, Cornell called its own time. The chess match extended when play resumed and Teevens thought better of his gambit, instead sending Schmidt out to tie the game.
The second overtime had its own drama after consecutive holding penalties backed Dartmouth up to the 43. After a couple of Kempe passes fell incomplete, the Big Green faced a third-and-28.
Once again, Kempe stepped up as his next throw found Michael Reilly for 20 yards to the Cornell 23.
Facing a fourth-and-eight, Teevens sent out Schmidt, who hadn’t kicked a field goal longer than 29 yards before Saturday and hadn’t had an attempt of any length in the previous four games.
Schmidt, a sophomore with 50-plus yard range, hit the ball solid but never saw what happened.
“I don’t know if I got hit or what,” he said, “but I ended up on the ground. I just saw all the people that moved from the side stands to the back stands jumping up and down going crazy so that kind of gave me the indication that it was through.”
Although Schmidt’s kick gave Dartmouth a three-point lead, the game wasn’t nearly over. Cornell could still force another overtime with a matching field goal, or win the contest with a touchdown in the bottom half of the inning.
But Phillips stopped Randy Barbour for a gain of one on first down. Abuhoff knocked down a pass intended for the dangerous Stephen Liuzza on second down and freshman Garrett Wymore stopped receiver Horatio Blackman three yards short of a first down on the next play. That brought about a fourth-and-three at the 18 and sent Greenway out for a 36-yard attempt to extend the game.
Perhaps unnerved by the Dartmouth rush, the Cornell kicker yanked a sidewinder left. With that the Big Green, which broke a 17-game losing streak two weeks ago, was celebrating once again.
“We said it at the half,” Teevens said later. “It’s a pivotal point programmatically and you have it in you. Sometimes you get close and you get nervous. The big thing is, ‘Hey, take a deep breath fellas, enjoy it, have some fun while you are out there. Do what you are supposed to do.’
"And they did.”
Especially one freshman did more who did a whole lot more.
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