BGA Overtime last night posted six (or seven?) observations coming out of the Lehigh game in a column called Your Mileage May Vary. Tonight the curmudgeons visit the site.
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Dartmouth placekicker Owen Zalc was chosen the Ivy League Special Teams Player of the Week yesterday after booting field goals of 49 and 50 yards and hitting both of his extra points in the season-opening loss at Lehigh. It's the seventh such honor for the senior from Cary, N.C.
A post on the Dartmouth sports website notes that, "Zalc is the FCS active career leader in field goals made-per-game (1.32) and ranks second among active players in made field goals (41)." (LINK)
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A post on the unfortunately named website brobible goes into detail about the interception that sealed Lehigh's win Saturday. (LINK)
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The Dartmouth recruiting class has grown again with the addition of Nolin Lewis, a 6-foot-1, 185-pound defensive back from Notre Dame High School and Sherman Oaks, Calif. Per his Xwitter account he camped at a bunch of Ivies but Dartmouth was his first Division I offer.
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Here are the Sagarin Ratings for Ivy League teams (and Dartmouth's nonconference opponents) this week followed by their rating prior to the start of the season in parentheses:
120 Harvard (141)
136 Yale (140)
157 Penn (191)
161 Dartmouth (173)
192 Brown (219)
194 Columbia (218)
207 Princeton (197)
225 Cornell (223)
135 Lehigh (132)
161 Monmouth (185)
230 Merrimack (244)
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| FCS Coaches | W-L* | Pts | Prev* |
1 | Montana State (25) | 4-0 | 649 | 1 |
2 | South Dakota State | 3-1 | 598 | 3 |
3 | Tarleton State | 4-0 | 566 | 5 |
4 | Illinois State (1) | 4-0 | 561 | 4 |
4 | Montana | 3-1 | 561 | 2 |
6 | Stephen F. Austin | 4-0 | 480 | 8 |
7 | LEHIGH | 4-0 | 461 | 7 |
8 | North Dakota | 3-1 | 459 | 6 |
9 | UC Davis | 3-1 | 439 | 11 |
10 | Tennessee Tech | 3-0 | 415 | 10 |
11 | Austin Peay | 3-1 | 378 | 14 |
12 | South Dakota | 3-1 | 366 | 12 |
13 | Youngstown State | 2-2 | 363 | 9 |
14 | South Carolina State | 4-0 | 303 | 16 |
15 | Lamar | 2-1 | 296 | 15 |
16 | Idaho State | 3-0 | 273 | 18 |
17 | Northern Arizona | 3-1 | 228 | 19 |
18 | YALE | 1-0 | 188 | 20 |
19 | Richmond | 3-1 | 104 | NR |
20 | West Florida | 2-1 | 97 | 17 |
21 | Rhode Island | 2-2 | 93 | 13 |
22 | Villanova | 2-2 | 85 | 23 |
23 | Colgate | 3-1 | 71 | NR |
23 | Mercer | 2-2 | 71 | 22 |
25 | HARVARD | 1-0 | 50 | NR |
| Dropped Out: William & Mary (21), Furman (24), Southern Illinois (25) |
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| Others Receiving Votes: Southern Illinois (45), Campbell (41), Jackson State (39), Elon (38), Furman (37), Alabama State (14), Prairie View A&M (12), Stony Brook (12), Bryant (7), Central Connecticut State (6), DARTMOUTH (6), Incarnate Word (6), William & Mary (6), Abilene Christian (5), MONMOUTH (5), Southeastern Louisiana (4), Southeast Missouri State (3), UT Rio Grande Valley (3), Robert Morris (PA) (2), San Diego (2), Chattanooga (1), St. Thomas (Minn.) (1) |
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| STATS | W-L* | Pts | Prev* |
1 | Montana State (46) | 4-0 | 1414 | 1 |
2 | South Dakota State (10) | 3-1 | 1363 | 2 |
3 | Illinois State (1) | 4-0 | 1261 | 5 |
4 | Tarleton State | 4-0 | 1254 | 4 |
5 | Montana | 3-1 | 1204 | 3 |
6 | LEHIGH | 4-0 | 1042 | 7 |
7 | North Dakota | 3-1 | 1041 | 6 |
8 | South Dakota | 3-1 | 987 | 10 |
9 | Stephen F. Austin | 4-0 | 965 | 12 |
10 | UC Davis | 3-1 | 919 | 11 |
11 | Youngstown State | 2-2 | 853 | 9 |
12 | Tennessee Tech | 3-0 | 842 | 13 |
13 | Austin Peay | 3-1 | 769 | T14 |
14 | Idaho State | 3-0 | 671 | 15 |
15 | Lamar | 2-1 | 627 | T14 |
16 | South Carolina State | 4-0 | 550 | 18 |
17 | YALE | 1-0 | 448 | 19 |
18 | Northern Arizona | 3-1 | 437 | 20 |
19 | Rhode Island | 2-2 | 390 | 8 |
20 | West Florida | 2-1 | 260 | 17 |
21 | HARVARD | 1-0 | 248 | 25 |
22 | Campbell | 3-1 | 195 | NR |
23 | Villanova | 2-2 | 169 | 22 |
24 | Southern Illinois | 2-2 | 116 | 24 |
25 | Mercer | 2-2 | 102 | 23 |
| Dropped Out: William & Mary (21) |
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| Others Receiving Votes (schools listed on two or more ballots): Alabama State (2-1): 72; Jackson State (3-0): 60; Colgate (3-1, 2-0 Patriot): 48; Richmond (3-1, 2-0 Patriot): 44; Elon (3-1, 1-1 CAA): 35; Stony Brook (2-2, 1-0 CAA): 29; Furman (2-2, 1-0 Southern): 19; William & Mary (2-2, 1-2 Patriot): 16; Southeastern Louisiana (2-2, 0-1 Southland): 14; Incarnate Word (2-1, 1-0 Southland): 14; Houston Christian (2-2, 1-1 Southland): 9; MONMOUTH (2-2, 2-0 CAA): 9; Morgan State (3-1): 5; Southeast Missouri (2-2): 4 |
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Green Alert Take: Good on the coaches for crediting Dartmouth for its effort at Lehigh. As for the STATS poll, it is hard to fathom how Lehigh can be rewarded by moving up a slot for beating a Dartmouth team that somehow doesn't earn the two votes necessary to be in the ORV category by pushing Lehigh to the edge.
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It's Homecoming this week at Penn State and upwards of 108,000 people will fill Beaver Stadium for the game against Wisconsin. Why mention that here? Thanks for asking.
Penn State's very first Homecoming game was against Dartmouth. The Nittany Lions escaped with a 14-7 win over the Big Green in the game on Oct. 9, 1920. Some reports list the game as drawing 6,000 spectators while others say the new Beaver Field game attracted 12,000. (LINK)
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The NESCAC (New England Small College Athletic Conference) is made up of elite Division III colleges, and is sometimes referred to as the Little Ivy. Like the Ivies, the NESCAC plays fewer games than other DIII schools. Like the Ivies, the NESCAC held out against postseason play for football while its other sports were allowed to go on.
And like the Ivies, which did so last year, the NESCAC finally relented and will allow its football teams to go to the playoffs this year.
FootballScoop has picked up on another issue where the NESCAC treats football unlike the rest of its sports. From the post (LINK):
This fall marks the first season NESCAC teams are eligible for the NCAA Division III playoffs, ending a long stretch in which the league sat out the national tournament by choice. The conference champion earns an automatic bid, and other NESCAC teams can now land at-large spots in the 40-team bracket. Programs finally get to chase a national title, and they are being told to send players home to do it.
Football is the lone NESCAC sport subject to a conference-wide mandatory limit, while the other 22 sports let individual schools set their own roster sizes.
And . . .
The math is just part of the problem, there's also the basic human element of it that gets ignored. An 84-man roster in a physical fall sport means depth disappears fast once injuries hit, and it means telling walk-ons and developmental players who did nothing wrong that there is no spot for them.
Green Alert Take: Sound familiar?
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EXTRA POINT
The autumnal equinox will occur at 8:05 tonight. The
BBC explains that the autumnal equinox "is a precise moment in time when the Sun crosses the celestial equator and neither hemisphere is tilted towards or away from the Sun, meaning day and night are roughly equal in length across the world."
I'm not a fan of the autumnal equinox.
For what it's worth, the definition of the vernal equinox is exactly the same thing, and I'm a huge fan of it. ;-)
