No. 16 – Princeton 37, Dartmouth 7, on Sept. 10, 1964 at Memorial Field
No. 15 – Princeton 38, Dartmouth 21. Nov. 19, 2016 at Princeton Stadium
No. 9 – Princeton 34, Dartmouth 7. Nov. 23, 1957 at Palmer Stadium
No. 7 – Princeton 35, Dartmouth 7. Nov. 22, 1969 at Palmer Stadium
No. 1 – Princeton 14, Dartmouth 9. Nov. 3, 2018 at Princeton Stadium
Surprised? Don't be. Jay Greenberg writes of that epic matchup of unbeaten teams:
A Big Green team good enough to win the Ivy title in the vast majority of seasons settled for 9-1. Princeton, having won its hardest game under the most pressure in 64 formal Ivy League seasons, completed a perfect one with victories over Yale and Penn.
•
In a story posted on the Athlon site under the headline, Salvage a campaign or pull the plug? A flood of announcements are coming, Craig Haley refers to an image that I've been thinking about as we learn more about COVID-19 being transmitted through the air. Craig writes (LINK):
When we see those great old clips of games on the "frozen tundra," the players are breathing heavily out of their helmets.
Images like that make you ponder: How in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic can college football pull off a 2020 season?
•
The University of St. Thomas, the St. Paul, Minn., school that was booted from its conference essentially for having too much success on the football field, will be the first Division III program to transition directly to Division I since Buffalo in 1993 when it joins the Pioneer Football League in 2021. (LINK)
From a story about the move (LINK):
St. Thomas has won at least a share of seven of the last 10 MIAC football titles under coach Glenn Caruso. The D-III runners-up in 2012 and '15, the Tommies' .871 winning percentage during the decade was sixth among all 660-plus NCAA programs, trailing only Mount Union, Mary Hardin-Baylor, North Dakota State, UW-Whitewater and Alabama.
And this (LINK):
St. Thomas ranked third in Division III in attendance average last season at 5,577, which would have ranked second in the PFL.
Green Alert Take: Don't be surprised if St. Thomas shows up on the Dartmouth schedule before long. Too bad there are no more McManus boys to bring home for a game ;-)
Green Alert Take II: I can't help but think a little about what happened when UMass joined the FBS. The Minuteman losses went up with a 2-22 record in the program's first two years at the higher level and interest went down as rivalries against New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine were replaced with games against schools like Buffalo and Bowling Green. While the competitive leap won't be nearly that severe for St. Thomas against non-scholarship PFL schools, it's hard to imagine contests against Marist and Stetson are going to get the blood racing like the Tommie-Johnnie game with Saint John's.
Apart from football, St. Thomas will join the Summit League for 19 of its 22 sport and the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) women’s league.
•
Thanks to a loyal reader for sharing a link to a Golfworld story under the headline, Why Dartmouth's beloved and historic Hanover Country Club is suffering an unfortunate fate. The story quotes Ron Prichard, the golf course architect who reworked HCC (LINK):
“I just think they’ve stolen something from the town. They just shot an arrow in the heart of Hanover, and that’s what’s sad for me.”
•
EXTRA POINT
And now the unexpected part . . .
As the assistant sports information director at Dartmouth in the mid-1980s I was fortunate enough to win several writing awards sponsored by COSIDA, the college sports information directors national organization. It helped that then-SID Kathy Slattery entered my pieces in the writing contests before Jerry Price arrived at Princeton, because those national award certificates yellowing up in a drawer here in the BGA world headquarters would more than likely have had his name of them and not mine if he’d been entered.
Jerry’s a friend and I say this not to flatter him, but when he sits down to write a feature it’s game over. He’s that good.
You may be familiar with TigerBlog, where Jerry writes what my old boss would call “quick and dirty” daily pieces spun out of the Princeton sports scene. Those entertaining dispatches give only a hint at his way with words.
Like Jerry, I started working on a book long before COVID-19 took hold. Unlike Jerry, who is still employed by Princeton, I’m on my own and with BGA on the shelf because of the cancellation of the football season, I have too much time on my hands and too few excuses not to finish my own writing project.
While With You is a serious novel I have my doubts about whether I could carry that off. That being the case, I’m probably three-quarters through a sports-based mystery written for a middle-school audience.
Growing up I was a huge fan of the Mel Martin, Chip Hilton and Bronc Burnett books and feel comfortable patterning a book on that model. It was then-Dartmouth women’s basketball coach Chris Wielgus, whose sons had read the same books I had as a boy, who suggested using the sports mystery concept in a book for girls because there simply aren’t that many of them available. With a daughter who played Little League baseball with the boys, who could explain baseball’s double-switch at age 10 so even her mother could understand it, and who went on to earn 12 varsity letters in high school, I’m comfortable in my understanding of girls and sports. I have both a model to pattern my protagonist after and a sounding board who can straighten me out when I’m way off base.
I’m extremely confident I have come up a good story featuring intriguing plot twists and turns that lead to the right ending. The question remaining to be answered is whether I can bring that story to life. I’d like to think I can, and if ever there was a time to find out this is it.
Posting this today is another way to kick myself in the backside to get it done.
•
The story revolves around a young basketball player in the 1990s named Cassie. I’m a little nervous about what I’m about to do, but keeping in mind the write-rewrite-rerewrite process is far from finished, here is a draft of the first chapter:
•
Cassie Carpenter had been playing H.O.R.S.E. on the basket in the driveway with her dad for about as long as she could remember. So long, in fact, that her kindergarten teacher, Miss McCoy, was stunned that when she showed her class a silhouette of a pony the green-eyed little girl with a dimple in just one cheek spelled out H.O.R.S.E., loud and proud. It had nothing to do with books and everything to do with basketball.
When she was younger Cassie would always win the nightly shooting games with her dad, Jake Carpenter. But about three years ago, just after she turned 12, she told Jake that to become a really good player she would have to be able to beat him fair and square, and so would he please stop letting her win?
Although she’d become pretty good at the game, playing travel team basketball during the summer and starting on the Abington High School freshman team, she hadn’t beaten her dad in H.O.R.S.E. ever since that day. There had been a couple of close calls, but each time her final shot would roll around the rim and Jake would saddle her with the last letter. Cassie could tell it pained her dad to beat her, but she respected him for honoring her wishes and making sure that her historic first win would be the real deal.
Losing to Jake Carpenter was certainly no disgrace. He had been an all-league player in high school and received recruiting letters from a lot of colleges. He probably would have warmed the bench at the U.S. Naval Academy if he hadn’t blown out his knee before the first game of states his senior year of high school. Although the knee never came all the way back it wasn’t enough to keep him from training as a helicopter pilot after graduating from Annapolis. And while he couldn’t dunk anymore, it sure didn’t hurt his shooting.
It seemed as if every time Jake pulled out a last-second H.O.R.S.E. victory by sinking some old-school hook shot or spinning in a goofy layup, Lynne Carpenter would crank open the kitchen window and lustily boo her husband for picking on their little girl and only child. Jake would drop his chin to his chest and stand there grim-faced until Lynne’s laugh finally let him off the hook.
Cassie loved everything about those carefree evenings with her dad in the driveway and her mom smiling through the kitchen window.
After her mom became sick and died when Cassie was 12 the games stopped. Jake would ask Cass if she wanted to play but she’d shake her head and quietly say no. Instead, she would double-tie her sneakers and take off on long runs around the town, the better to hide her tears.
When the rhythmic whap, whap, whap of the bouncing ball finally resumed one night about six months after Cassie lost her mother and Jake lost his wife, neighbors who had grown tired of the sound in the past were relieved to hear it once more.
Everything had changed but nothing had changed. Just as it was when Lynne was alive, whoever lost at H.O.R.S.E. had to do the dishes. And that, of course, was a pretty good deal for Jake.
Out in the driveway one steamy night in the middle of August, Cassie got the jump on her dad, making a 3-pointer from straight out and watching his shot to match kick off iron for an H. She then called “bank shot,” from the left elbow extended and knocked it down. Jake winked at her and put his shot up, but it was too strong and he had an O.
Ten minutes later father and daughter both had H.O.R.S. When Cassie’s stop-and-pop jumper rimmed out, Jake tried a windmill hook that reminded Cassie of the kind of shot she’d only ever seen on YouTube clips of Bill Bradley. It never had a chance.
After Jake passed her the rock Cassie hesitated for a second, thinking about her next move.
She’d been practicing a trick shot for weeks when her father wasn’t around and it had gotten to the point where she could make one out of every five or so. It wasn’t the kind of shot she would ever dream of putting up in a few months when tryouts began for the Abington varsity team, of course, but if ever a there was a time to try, this was it.
Cassie took a deep breath and dribbled down the right side of the lane. She cupped the ball at the top of her dribble and leaned forward so she could send it behind her back and up toward the rim.
The ball hit off the box, balanced on the front of the iron for a second that seemed like an hour to Cassie, and then dropped through the net. “Nice shot, Cassmeister,” Jake said, sounding a little like that announcer who makes up all those nicknames on ESPN.
While Cassie fought to hide a nervous smile, Jake’s face took on a look of determination. He made a show of walking up to the basket, measuring his steps back to the foul line and then standing there, eyeing the hoop. He pounded the ball into the blacktop a couple of times and took off down the right side. After three dribbles he cupped the ball pretty much the way Cassie had, and let it go behind his back.
The shot never had a chance, clanking iron on the way up.
Trying to make a show of his loss, Jake stood frozen in front of the basket staring at the rim for several seconds. When he turned to congratulate Cassie, she was nowhere to be seen.
Seconds later Jake heard the screen door on the back of the house slam and then saw a breathless Cassie almost skipping toward him with one hand behind her back.
Perhaps the only thing bigger than Cassie’s smile was the one on Jake’s face as he congratulated his 15-year-old daughter.
“Thanks, dad,” she said, bringing her hand from behind her back.
“These are for you.”
In her hand Cassie held two yellow rubber dishwashing gloves.
Jake’s smile glowed like the morning sun before suddenly dimming.
“Cass, there’s something we have to talk about.”
•
And here’s a short teaser of how the second chapter begins:
“No Daddy. No!” Cassie’s chest was heaving, a river of tears streaming down her face and onto the black-and-white checkered kitchen floor.
Cassie almost never called her father Daddy anymore. Much to his chagrin, sometime in the last year he’d evolved from being Daddy to just Dad. But the news that his National Guard unit had been activated and that he’d be flying helicopters in the Middle East brought out the little girl again.
•
The story goes on to introduce an overweight bassett hound named Dickens, has Cassie befriending a mysterious old man who owns an antiquarian bookstore and attending a new high school where she has to write a history paper on World War II that begins to unravel a secret. And of course there's the state basketball tournament. -)
