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Surprisingly, perhaps, The Dartmouth Homecoming issue does not have a football preview and the lone mention of the game shows up in a Thursday capsule look at all of the weekend's athletic events, starting with volleyball. Fortunately, there's a preview in the Harvard Crimson that includes this:“I don’t want to harp too much on last year, but the way that ended for them, they’re definitely going to have a sour taste in their mouth,” (Harvard) captain Sean Ahern said.And this:
“The team we know we’re going to face is the team that has beaten three scholarship schools,” coach Tim Murphy said. “The team that beat a UNH team that’s undefeated in the CAA. The team that beat Towson that three years ago played in the national championship game.”(Actually, UNH lost to James Madison, but you get the idea.)
Murphy also had this to say in The Crimson:
This is the biggest weekend on the calendar in Hanover N.H. every other year. It's going to be the Alamo for them.”Or, as former Harvard coach Joe Restic once famously said of Dartmouth at Homecoming, "They secrete something up there."
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Murphy in the Boston Globe preview:“We both graduated a bunch of players, so two teams that are very good football teams, but still a work in progress.”
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Craig Haley of the STATS website picks the Crimson:X-No. 24 Harvard (5-1, 3-0 Ivy) at Dartmouth (3-3, 0-3), 1:30 p.m. - The Crimson are a different team when quarterback Joe Viviano is in the lineup.
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The weekly Roar Lion crystal ball has Harvard by a touchdown.
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Tonight's World Series game will have a Dartmouth connection, of course, as Kyle Hendricks '12 takes the mound for the Chicago Cubs. Also hoping to help the Cubbies win it all for the first time since 1908 will be outfielder Jason Heyward, son of former Dartmouth basketball standout Eugene Heyward '81 and Laura Benjamin Heyward '79.Football fans who watched the Pitt-Virginia Tech game last night got a glimpse at another son of a onetime Dartmouth standout.
Brian O'Neill, a 6-foot-6, 300-pound offensive tackle is the son of Brendan O'Neill '72, who ran for 859 yards and seven touchdowns, and caught 27 passes for 288 yards on three Ivy League championship teams.
The younger O'Neill, a converted tight end, probably won't score as many touchdowns as his old man, but he's off to a good start with two in the last three weeks. As an offensive tackle!
Here's his tackle-around TD last night:
And his TD against Georgia Tech, a throwback that went in the books as a 24-yard rush:
Here's his dad's bio from his senior year at Dartmouth:
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Don Brown, who started his coaching career at nearby Hartford (Vt.) High School and did two stints on the Dartmouth staff, has the Michigan Wolverine defense reaching new heights. MLive has a terrific story about Brown (LINK), a former Yale assistant who very nearly became the Bulldog head coach. Check out THIS VIDEO where he tells the media about something very important he learned from legendary Yale coach Carm Cozza.
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And finally, have you entered the NexTitle Guess The Attendance contest for a chance to win a $100 gift certificate to Pine? Scroll down (or click HERE) to learn more and enter the contest.
