Sunday, November 19, 2017

Saturday Wrap

Yale 24, Harvard 3
After Harvard opened the scoring with a 29-yard field goal Yale ran off the next 24 points including 17 in the second quarter to claim the outright Ivy League championship. The Bulldogs overcame 11 penalties, two interceptions and an embarrassingly bad Yale Bowl field to defeat their archrival for the second year in a row. They held Harvard to 164 yards of total offense with help from six sacks. As an emailer pointed out, The Game drew 51,426 while Dartmouth drew 27,559 for its entire home schedule. Taking it one step further, if you take out the Brown game at Fenway Park, The Game outdrew Dartmouth's other nine games combined by 697.

Columbia 24, Brown  6
Like Dartmouth, Columbia can play the "what if" game but has to feel pretty good after winning an odd finale against Brown and finishing tied for second in the Ivy League in front of 5,341. Seeking to avoid going winless in the conference, the Bears actually outgained the Lions (324 yards to 275) but gave up touchdowns on a run, a pass and a blocked punt. Columbia blocked three kicks.

Penn 29, Cornell 22
Trailing by a point, the Quakers began what would be the winning drive at their own three, got a key first down reception by Justin Watson on what the Penn website said might be "the most spectacular of his Penn-record 286 career catches," and then scored the winning points on a three-yard Tre Solomon run with 2:06 remaining. Penn, which closed out the season with a four-game winning streak, lost its three Ivy League games by a combined 11 points. Just 3,861 turned out at Franklin Field for the thriller.

Wagner 28, Sacred Heart 15
The Pioneers outgained Wagner 439-296 and had 20 first downs to 12 but lost three fumbles in front of 1,848 in Fairfield.

Before sitting down at the keyboard to try to explain/understand Dartmouth's 54-44 win over Princeton Saturday I watched a recording of Penn State's 56-44 win over Nebraska. The former was in doubt until the final five seconds and the latter (42-10 at the half) was over early, but I'm pretty sure I'll never sit through back-to-back games with 98 and 100 points going up on the board ;-)