Thursday, October 21, 2010

Looking Ahead to Columbia

Dartmouth's notes for the Columbia game have been posted here. A few factoids from those notes:
  • Buddy Teevens is 9-1 against Columbia.
  • Dartmouth has won six of the last eight meetings with the Lions, but the series deadlocked at six wins apiece over the past 12 games.
  • The Big Green has six blocked kicks this year (at least one in every game) and has a block in nine of its past 10 games.
  • Dartmouth has trailed at the half in every game this year.
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Digging up the notes I stumbled across a posting of the story I freelanced on senior tri-captain Pat Scorah for the Dartmouth football program series. Find that story here, but do pick up a program when you are at the games. They are just $1.
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The latest Buddy Teevens TeleTeaser in the aftermath of the win over Holy Cross has been posted here.
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A few Columbia notes from the Roar Lions Roar blog:
  • With a win the Lions would have four consecutive victories at Wien Stadium, something that has never happened in the 26-plus years the facility has been open.
  • Columbia is bidding for its first Homecoming win in 10 years.
  • There hasn't been a missed field goal in a Columbia game this year with the Lions perfect in four attempts and their opponents perfect in six.
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If you want to watch the game Columbia offers a one-day pass for SideLion video service at $8.95, or a month at $12.95. Details here. ... Dartmouth's radio broadcast can be accessed here.
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From a Daily Pennsylvanian look around the Ivy League:
Dartmouth showed a surprising amount of pluck at the beginning of the fall, opening its season with consecutive victories for the first time in 13 years.

But the Big Green’s Ivy campaign has been comparatively disappointing. While the team currently has the highest scoring offense in the league at 27.8 points per game, Dartmouth has struggled to convert its statistical dominance into a victory.
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The Sports Network picks are up for the weekend and they look like this:
  • Columbia over Dartmouth
  • Penn over Yale
  • Brown over Cornell
  • Harvard over Princeton
Also ...
  • Colgate over Holy Cross
  • Lehigh over Bucknell
  • Georgetown over Sacred Heart
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A story in the Brown Daily Herald is headlined, Night football games may become a tradition. The hope is to play the Harvard game under the lights in years when that game is in Providence and the Rhode Island game at night in the other years. This year's game against Harvard drew a crowd of 17,360. Brown drew 3,988 for its opener against Stony Brook.

From the story:
The 10 light units cost roughly $50,000, a sum that the football association raised through e-mailing and calling alums.
Look for Dartmouth to have lights on Memorial Field by next fall. Coach Buddy Teevens has said publicly that the process is in the works. No word on night games at this point, but that's the only way the Big Green can practice in stadium over the final few weeks of the season.
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The latest Gridiron Power Index numbers have been posted and this synthesis of various polls and rankings has the Ivy League shaping up like this:
49. Penn
68. Yale
77. Brown
80. Harvard
82. Columbia
88. Dartmouth
109. Princeton
115. Cornell

Also of interest:
97. Holy Cross
113. Sacred Heart
118. Bucknell
124. Valparaiso

14. New Hampshire
43. Colgate
The Ivy League is ranked 10th of 15 FCS conferences with the Patriot League 14th, ahead of only the Pioneer Football League. The upstart Northeast Conference, of which Dartmouth opponent Sacred Heart is a member, is ranked eighth.

Green Alert Take: I distinctly remember some years ago talking to an Ivy League head coach who said his school would never schedule an opponent from the Northeast Conference because it was just glorified Division III college football. He said most NEC schools had a fulltime head coach and a few part-time assistants and volunteers back then. Times have changed, scholarships arrived and the NEC has soared past the Ivies and Patriots if the GPI is to be believed. I wonder what that head coach would be thinking now and oh, by the way, his school has since scheduled an NEC opponent.

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