LSU, Nebraska, Florida State and the Ivies

This is little mind boggling. Three Ivy League football teams started transfer quarterbacks from big-time programs in Saturday's openers.

• Harvard started LSU transfer Andrew Hatch.
• Yale started Nebraska transfer Patrick Witt.
• Penn started Florida State transfer Ryan Becker.

All three were winners, although Becker was replaced by Billy Ragone at Penn early in the second half.

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Speaking of Hatch, Holy Cross coach Tim Gilmore was quoted this way in the Harvard Crimson after the 6-foot-4 quarterback completed 20-of-25 passes for 276 yards and three touchdowns with three of the incompletions being drops while also running for 39 yards:

“They lose their quarterback for a season, and their second-string kid is probably the best quarterback in the league, and potentially the best player in their league. I mean, that’s pretty scary. It speaks volumes to what Harvard has established here.”

The Worcester Telegram story has a little background on Hatch in case you need to catch up.

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Yale's Witt, by the way, threw for 407 yards and scored the winning TD with no time left in a wild win over Georgetown. There's a good look back on the Portal 31 blog.

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Keeping with a theme, Penn's Becker was 9-for-16 for 126 yards with one interception.

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In other quarterback news, Brown's Kyle Newhall-Caballero – the reigning first-team, All-Ivy League QB – missed Saturday's double-overtime win against scholarship-laden Stony Brook but is expected to be back for Saturday night's showdown with the Crimson according to the Brown Daily Herald.

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A story from the Tribune-Democrat in Western Pennsylvania details St. Francis' trashing of Sacred Heart Saturday. Befitting a 41-0 win by a team that was 0-2 coming in, there's not much about Sacred Heart, Dartmouth's next opponent, beyond the fact that the Pioneers hoisted up seven interceptions. Record-setting quarterback Dale Fink, in case you were wondering, was 13-for-32 for 72 yards and four interceptions. On the plus side for the Pioneers, the run game picked up again with Central Michigan transfer Marcel Archer carrying 17 times for 80 yards and Gregory Ive 11 for 79.

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Sagarin Ratings this week. Wins and losses elsewhere shifted Ivy League teams slightly. The number after the school name is last week's ranking:

96. Harvard (124 – beat Holy Cross)
131. Penn (128 – beat Lafayette)
158. Brown (155 – beat Stony Brook)
173. Dartmouth (210 – beat Bucknell)
177. Yale (154 – beat Georgetown)
208. Princeton (187 – lost to Lehigh)
224. Columbia (200 – lost to Fordham)
240. Cornell (202 – lost to Wagner)

128. New Hampshire (93 – lost to Rhode Island
171. Holy Cross (155 – lost to Harvard)
172. Colgate (176 – bye)
235. Bucknell (235 – lost to Dartmouth)
239. Sacred Heart (227 – lost to St. Francis)

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And yes, you-know-who will be there tonight when The Optimist and The Pessimist square off on Green Alert Premium.