Editor's Note: Each day while Team BGA is soaking up some warm weather this site will repost game stories that appeared on the BGA Premium site last fall. Typos have been fixed and minor editing has cleaned up what was deadline writing ;-)
HANOVER — While he was pleased with Saturday’s 24-21 win over Holy Cross, don’t for a second think that Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens was happy with the way the Homecoming game over Holy Cross finished.
That said, there was a certain utility to the hard-luck Crusaders (2-6) battling back to turn a solid Big Green (4-1) win into a nailbiter.
“The way the game ended up today, our guys are not going to feel good about that,” said Teevens. “… When you win like this, sometimes it’s almost a blessing in disguise. You are happy that you won, but there’s a lot of things that you can use to really drive points home.”
Such as letting a game that the Big Green could have put away in the third quarter turn into something that had Dartmouth fans with heart issues reaching for their nitroglycerin pills.
Clinging to a 10-6 halftime lead thanks to a 27-yard Alex Gakenheimer field goal and an 8-yard Ryan McManus touchdown reception, Dartmouth went three-and-out to start the second half. But the Big Green did get a little breathing room when Dalyn Williams hit tailback Kyle Bramble with a seven-yard touchdown pass on the ensuing 81-yard drive.
After a couple of penalties sabotaged a Holy Cross possession, the Big Green took advantage of a short field to march 48 yards for another score, with Brian Grove going in untouched from the 6 for an 18-point lead.
Then things got interesting.
Sophomore quarterback Peter Pujals ran and passed the Crusaders 93 yards in a marathon 17-play march for a touchdown that made it 24-13 with 8:30 left on the clock.
Dartmouth came right back and drove to the Holy Cross 42 where Teevens opted for what would have been the kill shot, going for it on a fourth-and-short-three at the Crusaders’ 42. The decision backfired when Holy Cross stopped Williams one yard short, and Dartmouth was tagged with a 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalty on the play.
Instead of the Big Green icing the game, the Crusaders were back in business at the Dartmouth 45 with 3:48 remaining.
After Pujals completions of 25, 14 and six yards moved the Crusaders to the 7, the Holy Cross quarterback hit Brendan Flaherty for a touchdown to make it 24-19 with 2:15 left.
Needing a two-point conversion to be able to force overtime with a field goal, Pujals gave the ball to Flaherty sweeping the right side. A step or less from the sideline and a solid wall of green in front of him, Flaherty stopped, started back toward the middle of the field and then turned and burrowed through the Dartmouth defense for the two points.
Holy Cross coach Tom Gilmore would say later that the play was botched, but it didn’t matter because suddenly the Crusaders were an onside kick away from really making things interesting.
Hanover High School graduate Daniel Gorman recovered the Holy Cross kick but still the game wasn’t over. Two Crusader timeouts and a run that went out of bounds later, Dartmouth was punting from the Holy Cross 42.
Ben Kepley, who has turned punting inside the 20 into an art form, lobbed his kick to the Holy Cross 8 where it was fair caught with 1:25 remaining.
Stung by the back-to-back Crusader scoring drives, the Dartmouth defense finally slammed the door. Cody Fulleton and Corbin Stall sacked Pujals for a loss of three on first down. On second down heavy pressure forced Pujals to throw the ball away from his own end zone.
Kalif Raymond was open for a first down on the next snap but Pujals missed him and when the quarterback’s fourth-down pass was off target all Dartmouth had to do was run out the final 45 seconds to claim the win.
Although Dartmouth fans in the crowd of 7,335 were celebrating, Holy Cross still wasn’t giving up.
In their opener at Albany, the Crusaders lost the ball while running out the clock, with the Great Danes returning the fumble 79 yards for the winning touchdown. They knew the game wasn’t over.
Unlike Holy Cross, which handed the ball off at the end of its opener, Dartmouth was in a victory formation with Williams needing only to kneel twice to seal the win.
As it turned out, he had to kneel once and Kyle Bramble had to fall on the ball the other time to keep a Crusader from recovering it.
“It wasn’t a fumble,” said center Sean Ronan of the loose ball. “They actually slapped the ball out of my hand. I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be a penalty on that. But it wasn’t called.”
It didn’t matter because a week after Dartmouth struggled to run the ball, Ronan and his mates up front paved the way for the Big Green to pile up 196 yards on the ground –a point of emphasis coming into the contest. Kyle Bramble led the way with 113 yards on 23 carries, his second 100-yard game of the season and third of his career.
Williams carried 14 times for 64 yards and hit 15-of-23 passes for 156 yards and two touchdowns. McManus again led the receiving corps with eight catches for 89 yards and the touchdown late in the first half.
Pujlas ran for 82 yards and completed 24-of-38 passes for 208 yards for Holy Cross but was intercepted by Frankie Hernandez and Troy Donahue.
For the fifth time in as many games this fall, the opposition outgained the Big Green (396 yards to 352) but for the fourth time in five games Dartmouth came out ahead anyway.
The Big Green evened the all-time series at 37-37-4 with a win that paid the Crusaders back for beating them on a last-minute field goal a year ago, 31-28.
“That one left a really bad taste in our mouth,” said Donahue,“especially as a defense. That was one of our worst games of the year and we blew it at the end.
“We were kind of put back in that same situation – (stopping the) two-minute offense and this year we were able to get the stop. And as a result get the win. It’s a little bit of redemption because ever since I’ve been here we have had trouble with Holy Cross.”
Now it’s on to winless Columbia before returning to Hanover for a showdown with Harvard, which improved to 5-0 Saturday with a win over Lafayette.
Ronan isn’t concerned about a letdown in New York City Saturday against a team that has lost 16 consecutive games and the Big Green defeated a year ago, 56-0.
“It’s going to be a cliché, but that’s in the past,” he said. “We move on to the future. We’re going to prepare for every team as hard as we can, each and every week. It doesn’t matter if they are on a losing streak on a winning streak. We are going to come out there with 110 percent.”