Saturday, November 08, 2025

Week Eight

Things that happen for your team when things are going great, and against your team when things are going poorly:



Harvard 31, Columbia 14

Leading just 7-0 after the first quarter, the Crimson scored three touchdowns in the second quarter, and a field goal in the third to move in front 31-0 before the Lions closed out the scoring with a pair of fourth-quarter TDs.


Jaden Craig threw for 213 yards and two touchdowns, and Xaviah Bascon ran for 94 yards and two touchdowns for Harvard, now 8-0 and 5-0 in the Ivy League. Chase Godwin had two TD throws for Columbia, now 1-7, 0-5. The nationally televised (unless you have YouTube TV) game drew 3,644 to to the northern tip of Manhattan.

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Elsewhere today:

Yale at Brown, Noon

Cornell at Penn, 1 p.m.


New Hampshire at Monmouth, Noon

Stonehill at Central Connecticut, Noon

Bucknell at Fordham, 1 p.m

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Incoming Dartmouth quarterback Jack Cannon threw six touchdown passes and had three more on the ground in a New Jersey state playoff game last night. He was 12-of-14 for 256 yards through the air and ran 12 times for 175 yards as he led Holmdel to a 65-42 win. Find a story HERE.

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EXTRA POINT

When I'm scrolling through the Vermont state online library for a book to read on my Kindle I'm often frustrated when I see a new title I'd like to borrow and click through only to find I'm 12th in line for a copy, and the estimated wait time is several months. I rarely get in the queue and when I do, I often forget about it.


Yesterday I got notification that my turn has come up for one of the few books I reserved and, of course, I'd completely forgotten I was in line. It felt like found money and I downloaded it immediately.


Maybe I should do a little more queueing in the future. ;-)

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Friday, November 07, 2025

Tiger Time

Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle looks briefly back at Harvard and ahead to Princeton in this short video from Dartmouth sports publicity:

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Per FanDuel Dartmouth is a 10½-point favorite over visiting Princeton. Also:

Harvard is a 27½-point favorite tonight at Columbia 

Yale is a 13½ -point favorite at Brown

Penn is a 10½-point favorite over visiting Cornell  

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Dartmouth defensive end Joshua Johnson quoted in a preview in The Dartmouth (LINK):

“The main thing that happened last year was exposing the offensive tackles with their lack of strength compared to our ends. I feel like that’s a similar thing we’re going to do. Up front we’re just gonna try to beat them, play our scheme and continue on with the fundamentals we’ve been building for years now. There’s no difference.”

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Be sure to visit BGA Overtime tonight for a game preview, and tomorrow night for the game story. BGA OT went up last night with predictions for this week and a recap of what was an historic performance by the Fearful Forecast last week.

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Game notes for tomorrow are up: 

Dartmouth game notes HERE
 
Click HERE for Princeton's notes.
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Did I miss something? Dartmouth is the Big Green, right?

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From an FCS Central story headlined FCS Football Playoff Picture (LINK):

IVY

Lock: None

Should Be In: None

Work To Do: Harvard, Yale, Penn, Dartmouth

Harvard took another step toward securing the Ivy League auto bid and potentially an undefeated season with a win over Dartmouth. They remain the only team in the conference with a realistic shot to earn a Top 8 seed. Yale and Penn remain in the auto bid race with only one conference loss, but neither team has played Harvard yet. At this point, Dartmouth has a difficult path forward, needing a ton of help to make the field.


A 9-1 Harvard or an 8-2 Dartmouth would have a shot at sneaking into the field as an at- large. The Big Green have out-of-conference wins over New Hampshire and potential NEC auto bid Central Connecticut State. All four of the teams in this section play the bottom half of the league, and cannot afford an upset this weekend.

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Ivy League players and their national ranking per a HERO Sports piece headlined, 2025 PFF Highest-Graded FCS Players By Position After Week 10 (LINK):

Quarterbacks

2. Jaden Craig, Harvard – 92.9


Wide Receivers

5. Nico Brown, Yale – 88.7


Tight Ends

3. Logan Reaska, Harvard – 80.1

4. Chris Corbo, Dartmouth – 78.4


Centers

4. Aidan Kilstrom, Harvard – 75.8


Tackles

3. Delby Lemieux, Dartmouth – 78.9

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EXTRA POINT

The Northern Lights were supposed to be visible in as many as two dozen states last night. I didn't even bother trying to see them. That's right. This time Charlie Brown didn't even try to kick the football.


I was thinking about that this morning as I watched the sun put on a show climbing above Mount Moosilauke. Maybe I'll think about it again tonight as the sun puts on another show slipping behind Wright's Mountain.


I may never see the Northern Lights from here at our Vermont hillside home, but I can't imagine they would be anywhere near as dramatic as the show that is put on right outside our windows both in the morning and the evening throughout the year. This shot, which appeared on this site a while back, accurately depicts what we've seen time and time again. Take that, Northern Lights!



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Thursday, November 06, 2025

Notes On A Quiet Thursday

No idea how long it will be up because of rights issues, but for those of us who have YouTube TV and might not have been able to watch the Dartmouth-Harvard game, here's the full broadcast (with former Crimson coach Tim Murphy on color commentary):


On a very quiet day in the blogosphere, here are a few comments from Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle from yesterday's weekly media call. First he addresses part of what went wrong Saturday, and then he goes on to talk about the fix. (Comments are gently edited for clarity):
"Obviously you don't want to fall down 17 points against a team of the caliber of Harvard. I thought our guys did a good job coming out at halftime and really battled and put ourselves right back in the game, in a situation to make some noise.

"But they just out-executed us, and we just didn't make enough plays. When we did get that momentum going, unfortunately we couldn't keep the momentum. We just weren't able to keep that going. I just think it was just a couple plays here and there. Every time we got it going, something (happened and we) couldn't keep it. We couldn't execute well enough."

And on the response in practice this week:

"Good energy, really good energy. The guys came out, and I think that's the one thing we talked about on Sunday, was just execution. We want to make sure we go out and execute at our best. You don't want to be in a situation where that your opponent executes better than you. That's been our biggest message this week. And I tell you what our guys have responded. We tell them, 'Hey, take one snap at a time and let's lock in and focus and execute that.' And they've done a good job to date."

I'll be at practice later today and will have a Dartmouth-Princeton preview on BGA Overtime tomorrow.

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Here's something most of us would have paid no attention to a year ago:

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With the rankings out, HERO Sports posted its playoff predictions again and the good news for those who follow Dartmouth is the Big Green got a mention. The bad news is where. From the column (LINK):

Bubble Teams Left Out
Ordered from the best chance to make the bracket out of this group to the worst chance.

25. Northern Arizona
26. Dartmouth
27. William & Mary
28. Presbyterian
29. Austin Peay
30. Southern Illinois

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Former Brown standout Michael Hoecht did the Ivy League proud with his response after an Achilles injury during the Buffalo Bills' win over the Kansas City Chiefs:

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EXTRA POINT

Hiked in a drizzle late yesterday afternoon and woke this morning to a little more rain, which is a good thing. After a very dry summer, wells and ponds in Northern New England are starting to slowly recover. The Dartmouth today has a story headlined New Hampshire lifts statewide fire ban (which actually happened last week).


I've got to admit, this line in the story made me snicker:

While citizens can make fires after 5 p.m., Hanover fire chief Michael Gilbert said students should still be “really cautious of when and where (they are) burning. You don’t want to be too close to anything combustible  … or too close to your home."

I'm just not sure a fire chief would need to warn students at Harvard or Columbia about when and whereto do their burning. On second thought, I'm not really sure he needed to warn Dartmouth students  ;-)

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Wednesday, November 05, 2025

Another Look Back

Dartmouth highlights drawn from the TV broadcast of Saturday's game at Harvard:


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SI veteran Dick Friedman takes a look at last week's game in Cambridge in Harvard Magazine HERE:


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The Big Green drops in Jake Novak's Ivy League Power Rankings:

1 Harvard 

2 Yale 

3 Dartmouth 

4 Penn 

5 Cornell 

6 Princeton 

7 Brown 

8 Columbia 

Listen to Jake's reasoning HERE. 

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This week's Sagarin Ratings among all DI teams with last week's rating in parentheses:

91 Harvard (96)

138 Yale (131)

152 Dartmouth (140)

177 Penn (172)

196 Princeton (190)

213 Brown (213)

220 Cornell (224)

234 Columbia (241)


165 New Hampshire (164)

212 Central Connecticut (211)

239 Fordham (244)

Sagarin has Dartmouth favored over Princeton by 10 points.

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Massey Ratings of only FCS teams:

7 Harvard 

27 Yale

28 Dartmouth 

39 Penn 

68 Princeton 

71 Brown 

74 Cornell 

89 Columbia 

Looking ahead, Massey sees:

Dartmouth 28, Princeton 20 with 76 percent confidence

Dartmouth 31, Cornell 17 with 88 percent confidence

Dartmouth 31 at Brown 24 with 72 percent confidence

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EXTRA POINT

Unfortunately, the internet here at our Vermont hillside home is delivered via DSL and as you can see from this screenshot from yesterday's upgrade of my Mac system, it's not particularly fast. ;-)



For what it's worth, it did not take 11-plus hours to finish the rest of the 14.32 GB upload, but it did take a very l-o-n-g time, finishing sometime after I hit the sack.

The good news is fiber-optic finally came up our dirt road last spring. The bad news is the end user is required to "pull a string" through the conduit that runs from the street to the house before the company will install the fiber. The worse news is that yours truly isn't equipped to do the groundwork for the fiber-optic folks and they couldn't recommend someone who we could pay to do it.


We could always try Starlink, but that's just not going to happen.

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Tuesday, November 04, 2025

A Quiet Tuesday

Week Seven of the Ivy League season marks the first time Dartmouth has not had anyone chosen even to the conference's weekly honor roll. Without benefit of seeing the game film, my nominees would have been wide receiver Ky’Dric Fisher with a career-high five catches for 51 yards – including four that brought first downs – and Zyion Freer-Brown, who matched his career high with 12 tackles for the second week in a row.

Not surprisingly, Harvard quarterback Jaden Craig's was named the Ivy League offensive player of the week. (LINK)

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BGA Overtime went up last night with a few thoughts and observations coming out of the Harvard game (LINK). The Optimist and The Pessimist will be stopping by the site tonight. It will be interesting to get their take.

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Dartmouth is still getting some love in the FCS Coaches Poll:


FCS Coaches

W-L

Pts

Prev

1

North Dakota St. (25)

9-0

625

1

2

Montana

9-0

598

3

3

Montana St.

7-2

567

4

4

Lehigh

9-0

521

7

5

Tennessee Tech

9-0

488

8

6

Monmouth (N.J.)

8-1

485

9

7

Tarleton St.

9-1

474

2

8

Villanova

6-2

417

11

9

South Dakota St.

7-2

389

5

T10

Mercer

7-1

378

13

T10

Rhode Island

7-2

378

12

12

UC Davis

6-2

367

6

13

HARVARD

7-0

310

15

14

Southeastern Louisiana

7-2

298

16

15

North Dakota

6-3

263

10

16

Southern Illinois

6-3

243

17

17

Illinois St.

6-3

240

18

18

Lamar

7-2

173

14

19

Jackson St.

6-2

157

20

20

ACU

5-4

156

25

21

Stephen F. Austin

7-2

148

23

22

Youngstown St.

5-4

120

19

23

Presbyterian

8-1

115

22

24

Western Carolina

6-3

51

NR

25

South Dakota

6-4

36

NR


Dropped Out:  None





Others Receiving Votes: Lafayette, 29; West Georgia, 27; Alabama St., 12; Sacramento St., 12; Northern Arizona, 10; UT Rio Grande Valley, 10; DARTMOUTH, 8; Gardner-Webb, 7; North Carolina Central, 4; Austin Peay, 3; South Carolina St., 2; YALE, 2; Central Connecticut St., 1; Delaware St., 1.





Stats Perform

W-L

Pts

Prev

1

North Dakota State

9-0

1400

1

2

Montana

9-0

1336

3

3

Montana State

7-2

1289

T4

4

Lehigh

9-0

1183

7

5

Tennessee Tech

9-0

1141

9

6

Tarleton State

9-1

1118

2

7

Monmouth

8-1

1062

10

8

South Dakota State

7-2

879

T4

9

HARVARD

7-0

854

12

10

Villanova

6-2

798

11

11

UC Davis

6-2

794

6

12

Mercer

7-1

759

15

13

North Dakota

6-3

758

8

14

Rhode Island

7-2

728

13

15

Southern Illinois

6-3

580

16

16

Illinois State

6-3

552

17

17

Stephen F. Austin

7-2

463

20

18

Abilene Christian

5-4

459

24

19

Southeastern Louisiana

7-2

441

21

20

Lamar

7-2

317

14

21

Youngstown State

5-4

303

18

22

South Dakota

6-4

259

NR

23

Jackson State

6-2

212

23

24

Western Carolina

6-3

174

NR

25

Presbyterian

8-1

113

25


Dropped Out of Top 25: Northern Arizona (19), Austin Peay (22)





Others Receiving Votes (schools listed on two or more ballots):  Northern Arizona (5-4, 2-3 Big Sky), 70;  Alabama State (6-2, 4-1 SWAC), 48; Delaware State (6-3, 2-0 MEAC), 23; Austin Peay (5-4, 3-3 UAC), 19; West Georgia (6-3, 3-3 UAC), 18; Lafayette (6-3, 4-0 Patriot), 15; YALE (5-2, 3-1 Ivy), 8; Sacramento State (5-4, 3-2 Big Sky), 7; New Hampshire (5-4, 3-2 CAA), 6      





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With yesterday's addition of safety Kiyanté Ingram, the list of publicly committed Dartmouth football recruits now stands at 22:


• WR Blake Betette, 5-1, 185, Richard Northeast HS/South Carolina

• LB JJ Bolz, 6-2, 220, Bishop Verot HS/Florida

• DB Taiga Briskey, 6-1, 180, West Boca Raton HS/Florida

• DB David Brown III, 6-1, 162, Cypress Woods HS/Texas

• QB Jack Cannon, 6-2, 210, Holmdel HS/New Jersey 

• OL Tim Church, 6-5, 300, Buckingham Browne & Nichols/Massachusetts

• LB/WR George Duggins, 6-3, 200, Mona Shores HS/ Michigan

• DL August Dupree, 6-3, 215/Folson HS/California

• DE/TE Quinn Enguita, 6-4, 215, Bishop Verot HS/Florida.

• WR Kareem Fisher, 6-2, 180, St. Vincent Pallotti/Maryland

• RB/DB Jacob Henry, 5-11, 190, Maumelle HS/Arkansas

• S Kiyanté Ingram, 6-0, 195, McEachem HS/Georgia

• LB Gavin King, 6-4, 230, Loyola Academy/Illinois

• DL/TE Will Maloof, 6-5, 210, St. Peter's Prep/New Jersey

• WR George Loop, 5-11, 170, Isidore Newman/Louisiana

• LB Parker Maiers, 6-1, 220, Brebeuf Jesuit HS/Indianapolis

• OL Brody McLeod, 6-4, 280, Ponte Vedra HS/Florida

• OL Mikey McMahon, 6-4, 290, Bergen Catholic HS/New Jersey

• OL Jake Namnum, 6-2, 292, St. Josephs Prep/Pennsylvania

• K/P Tanner Pidwell, 6-2, 175, Park City HS/Utah

• OL Nick Schenkel, 6-4, 270, Liberty HS/Pennsylvania

• DL Roman Sosnovyy, 6-3, 245, Lyons Township HS/Illinois


Green Alert Take: It could get a little confusing next year with Dartmouth having wide receivers named Ky'Dric Fisher and Kareem Fisher. And how many times do you think Nick Schenkel's name will be confused with that of Nico Schwikal, the current Dartmouth linebacker?


As always, additions and corrections to the list are encouraged using the contact form over there to the right. ;-)

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From The Analyst in a story headlined FCS Football: With Something to Prove, These Postseason Hopefuls Demand a Closer Look (LINK):
Something to Prove (Ivy): Harvard is rolling at 7-0 overall and 4-0 in the Ivy League. Yale and Penn are tied for second place, but Yale won the head-to-head meeting 35-13, so the best-case scenario for the new (but old) kid on the block to gain multiple playoff bids is for the Bulldogs (5-2, 3-1) to win out and claim the automatic bid in a two-team tie for first place with Harvard, and the Crimson remaining unbeaten until that final rivalry game. They will probably have done enough by then to secure an at-large bid.

Green Alert Take: Amazing how things can change in one week. Beat Harvard and Dartmouth is in the driver's seat for the postseason. Lose to Harvard and the drum is beating for a Yale team the Big Green defeated.

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EXTRA POINT

For at least the 25th year in a row we had no trick-or-treaters at our house. It's completely understandable, of course. There's just not enough bang for the buck for kids to hit up houses spread far apart on dirt roads.


But as we do each year, we had candy ready – just in case. The pick this year was peanut M&M's because, well, because if you are going to lay in candy knowing there weren't going to be any trick-or-treaters you might as well lay in something you like.


So we had two bags of the M&M's that each contained four little "fun size" bags.


Let me ask you, how many times have you put together a child's toy or a bookcase or something else and when you finish the package was missing that last nut or bolt? Frustrating, right?


Last night we opened the bag containing the four "fun size" bags and nope, there weren't four bags of M&M's. Nor were there three. There were five. He shoots, he scores!


It doesn't make up for those missing nuts and bolts, but it did make me smile.


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