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 – Late in the second quarter of Dartmouth’s 44-21 win over Brown Saturday afternoon the visitors had the ball at the Dartmouth 48 with the score tied at 14.
On a second-down play quarterback Marcus Fuller hit Alex Jette with a five-yard completion.
The Bears’ previous possession had ended when they came up short on a fourth-and-two at the Dartmouth 7 with a chance to take the lead, and Brown coach Phil Estes felt that was a key play in the game. He was right. It was big.
But the second-down completion by Fuller might have been even bigger because just as he got rid of the ball he took a crushing body blow from Dartmouth defensive end Cody Fulleton. The Brown quarterback had engineered two long scoring drives to that point, but after being flattened by Fulleton he would never be the same. In fact, after the big hit the Bears would have harmless drives of just three, four, three, three and seven plays before their starting quarterback took a seat – in part for his own safety.
“We couldn’t protect him,” admitted Estes. “We tried to move the pocket and the launch point a little bit and we still were taking hits.”
Was there a point when Fulleton could see in the visitors’ eyes that they knew they were in for a long afternoon?
“Absolutely,” he said. “After I hit the quarterback the first time.”
Dartmouth quarterback Dalyn Williams had no such problems as he completed 25-of-33 passes for 248 yards and three touchdowns while also running for 100 yards.
Ryan McManus hauled in a career-high 13 passes for 154 yards and three touchdowns for the Big Green and freshman tailback Ryder Stone, who came on when Kyle Bramble left the game with an injury early in the second quarter, exploded on the scene with 114 yards and three touchdowns on just 10 carries.
Dartmouth (7-2) improved to 5-1 in the Ivy League with a shot at the Ivy League title on the line at Princeton next week. Brown is now 4-5 overall and 2-4 in the Ivies with a visit from Columbia on tap.
While Dartmouth was beating Brown, Harvard was coming from behind to post a hard-fought 34-24 victory at Penn Saturday that brought the Crimson a share of the championship. A Dartmouth win combined with a Yale win in The Game next week would bring about a three-way tie for the crown with Dartmouth, Yale and Harvard each having a share.
The Big Green kept its title hopes alive despite losing Bramble to a knee injury, with Abrm McQuarters – playing in place of Brian Grove – going out with an injury, and with starting lineman Ben Spiritos being carted off the field all in the second quarter.
“A&I,” head coach Buddy Teevens said. “Adjust and improvise. It’s kind of a saying on the team. Whatever happens, don’t worry about it. Adjust and improvise and move forward.
“We’re just very, very resilient. We had a couple of guys, a couple of backs go down and Ryder pops up and we didn’t miss a beat. An offensive lineman goes down, Ben Spiritos, and Josh Clark comes in. We don’t skip a beat. That’s what you need.”
Brown came out like a house afire on Dartmouth’s Senior Day, holding the ball for 14 plays and driving 75 yards for a 7-0 lead on its first possession.
The Big Green answered with a lengthy march of its own as Williams completed all seven of his passes on an 11-play, 81-yard drive that culminated with a 25-yard rainbow to a wide-open McManus to knot the score.
Brown came right back with a seven-play, 62-yard drive that saw Fuller go 4-for-4, including a 15-yard TD throw that made it 14-7 four seconds into the second quarter.
Once again, Dartmouth held serve. Once again it was Williams hitting an open McManus, this time from 10 yards out to tie the score at 14.
Brown then drove from its own 14 to the Dartmouth 7 in a bid to make it three touchdowns in its first three possessions. But on fourth down with a long one yard to go AJ Zuttah, Zach Slafsky and the middle of the Big Green defense rose up and stopped Brian Strachan one yard shot of a first.
“I thought we had a chance in the first half,” said Estes. “I thought we played pretty well offensively. We moved the ball and did some nice things. I think it hurt when we went for it on fourth-and-one and didn’t come away with points.”
Dartmouth finally went in front after taking over at its own 11 with 2:14 remaining in the first half. The Big Green drove to the Brown 13 before Alex Gakenheimer came on to boot a 30-yard field goal that made it 17-14 at the half.
The key play in the drive was a weaving 25-yard run by Williams that ended with the usually reserved quarterback pumping his fist like Tigers Woods after a clinching birdie at the Masters.
“We got a big dose of Williams,” said Estes. “That was tough. We didn’t handle that very well. Not that most teams have. He can beat you with his arm. He can beat you with his feet. But he beat us with his feet, and he did a great job.”
Still, it was just a three-point game at the break.
“In the locker room definitely guys were a little disappointed with how we were playing,” said McManus. “We just felt like we had to keep the ball rolling. Going into the second half once we made a couple plays we just felt the momentum shift in our direction and snowball out of control.”
It did exactly that as Dartmouth reeled off 27 consecutive points in the second half.
It didn’t take long for the onslaught to begin. On Brown’s third play after taking the second-half kickoff linebacker Will McNamara picked off the harried Fuller at the 28 and returned it to the Brown 9.
Once again it was Williams hooking up with McManus from four yards out for the Big Green senior’s third touchdown catch of the day. McManus became the first Dartmouth receiver to have the hat trick since Tom Parker caught four in a 1989 win over Boston University.
Stone scored the next two Big Green touchdowns on runs of one and four yards to make it 37-14 after three quarters.
The freshman from Calgary, who had just two carries for two yards coming into the game, wrapped up his storybook day by breaking through the Brown defensive front and winning a footrace to the end zone for a 63-yard touchdown with 7:51 remaining.
Brown finally ended the 30-0 Dartmouth run on an 18-yard touchdown pass with 3:21 left after recovering a fumble at the Big Green 18.
With the win over Brown well in hand attention at Memorial Field turned to Philadelphia, where Penn was giving Harvard fits. The Quakers held a 24-20 lead almost five minutes into the fourth quarter and were down just three points with seven minutes left.
While Teevens’ attention was on what was happening in front of him even he had a hard time ignoring what was happening behind him as Dartmouth fans responded to regular PA announcements of Harvard’s difficulty putting Penn away.
“I heard screams and yells and I wasn’t quite sure what was going on,” Teevens said with a laugh. “I kind of zone out a little bit. At the end of the day we will figure out where it is.
“The big thing is, we control what we can control. We talked about it for this ballgame. They came out and they played hard. And whatever happens, we control next week. We’ve got to go out and play well against a good Princeton team.”
Which is exactly what they did to win the Tussle in The Woods on the final afternoon of football ever played in front of the historic home stands at Memorial Field, which will be torn down at season’s end and replaced in time for the 2015 campaign.
