I had a great telephone conversation with Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens yesterday and learned a lot about what's happening this fall, what will/may happen in the spring, and a few things about the fall of 2021. Check back in this space Monday for a Q&A with Teevens that will provide a few nuggets that are going to surprise you. Promise.
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The next edition of the Woods Watch Party is a video stream of the 2015 game at Penn, scheduled to kick off at 1:30 this afternoon. Because of a scheduling conflict there won't be a Zoom component to this game but it will instead feature the original game call. Find the Dartmouth Sports Publicity release about today's Watch Party HERE, and tune in the game HERE.
As has been the case each week this fall, BGA Daily is reposting the Woods Watch game preview as it appeared on BGA Premium prior to the contest. As I've said before, I'm tempted occasionally to rework the story/preview and re-reading the lede this is one of those times. But in the interest of making this as genuine a replay of that day five years ago as it can be, here's what was on the site, warts and all ;-)
The game story will appear here tomorrow.
Ivy League Opener Has A Different Feel After What Happened Last Week In Philly
BGA, Oct. 2, 2015
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – Even if what took place a week ago hadn’t happened, everyone around the Dartmouth football team would probably be saying what they are saying now.
They might even have believed some of it.
Penn’s win over No. 4 Villanova on Sept. 24 changed everything.
Coming into the season Penn seemed to be a shadow of the teams that ran roughshod over the Ivy League the way the city’s Broad Street Bullies did over the NHL in the 1970s.
The winners of six Ivy titles since 2000 were just 2-8 last year and had dropped 13 of 15 games prior to the Villanova upset.
One of those 13 losses losses was a 31-13 thumping last fall in Hanover. Penn, which had won 15 of the previous 16 meetings with Dartmouth, had to hoist the ball up 58 times to have any chance in the game because 27 rushes were able to net just 33 yards on the ground.
At the conclusion of the 2014 season longtime coach Al Bagnoli, owner of a remarkable112-49 Ivy League record, stepped down before resurfacing as the head coach at Columbia. Taking over for Bagnoli was Ray Priore, who spent 29 years as a Penn assistant only to see the Quakers suffer a 42-21 beatdown at Lehigh in his first game as head coach.
Add it all up and it’s easy see why Penn, coming off its worst on-field performance since 1991, was picked sixth in the preseason media poll. Only woebegone Cornell and Columbia got less respect from the voters.
But then came the 24-13 win at Villanova.
Granted, the Wildcats were playing without All-America quarterback John Robertson and several starters on the offensive line, but that doesn’t explain Penn outgaining the Wildcats in the first half, 219 yards to 29, building a 17-0 lead in the third quarter, and posting its first win over its city rival since 1911.
Keying the Penn turnaround has been quarterback Alex Torgersen, who completed 40 passes for 350 yards against Dartmouth last year. He was an efficient 14-of-22 for 171 yards with two touchdowns and one interception against Nova and is completing 68.8 percent of his throws for 253.5 yards per game with four touchdowns and two interceptions.
“Torgersen does a good job controlling the ball,” said Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens. “He doesn’t throw it up for grabs. He is good on his feet. He keeps plays alive and he is an accurate passer. He is completing almost 70 percent right now, so that’s a great challenge to us defensively.
“We’ve got to pressure him. We’ve got to get our hands in the air. We’ve got to break on the ball. We can’t play soft. And we need to force some turnovers.”
Jordan Watson, a 6-foot-3 sophomore, caught a pair of touchdown passes in the first half against Villanova but left the game with an injury and did not play in the second half. He’s Penn’s leading receiver with 15 catches for 230 yards and three touchdowns while averaging 115 yards per game.
Sophomore Tre Solomon heads up the ground attack with 70 yards per game and a solid 5.4-yard average carry. Junior Brian Schoenauer adds 42 yards per game with a 4.7 average.
The Quakers also boast a talented tight end in Ryan O’Malley, and a veteran offensive line.
"Field position and time of possession will be important against them,” said Teevens. “That’s one of the things they executed so well against Villanova. They held onto the ball for 40 minutes. We have to get them off the field.”
Defensively it’s hard to do much better than the Quakers did against Villanova, holding the Wildcats to two first downs and 5 minutes, 35 seconds of possession time in the opening half. Villanova came alive in the second half but still finished with just 281 yards of total offense.
Penn had been a lot less impressive against Lehigh, giving up 495 yards and 25 first downs. The Mountain Hawks ran for 245 yards and passed for 250, completing 24-of-34 throws.
Looking to prove the Lehigh game was the outlier and the Villanova game the real deal will be a defense led by linebacker Colton Moskal, a transfer from Syracuse. He leads his new team with 17 tackles. Fellow linebacker Donald Panciello was selected the national defensive player of the week by one publication after returning a fumble 90 yards for the insurance touchdown against Villanova and posting eight tackles.
“They are a physical group,” said Teevens. “They have a good-sized defensive front with big, wide-body kids. Their linebackers are running around and they’ve got some cover guys that can play.”
With Priore serving as the Quakers’ defensive coordinator for the past 16 years Teevens feels like he has a pretty good idea what his offense will see.
“I think there has been a continuation,” he said. “Priore is a defensive-minded guy and he’ll have an impact in terms of strategy and the way the game is played. But by and large they have maintained with they have always done. They are running the things that they know and feel comfortable with, and are doing a good job with it.”
A good enough job that no one is confusing this year’s edition of the Quakers from the one that struggled mightily a year ago.
“It is a solid football team,” said Teevens. “They had a bunch of injuries last year. They were a better team than their record would indicate.
“They always play hard. All my guys who have played three years against them know what to expect. They are a tough, physical, aggressive team. We’re playing away and that has been a challenge for us, although we do travel well and play well on the road.”
While Dartmouth hasn’t won at Penn since 1997 the last two visits to Franklin Field both saw the Quakers need overtime to win. Only a blocked chip-shot field goal at the end of regulation allowed Penn to pull out a 37-31 victory in 2013 in a thriller that went four overtimes, the longest game in Ivy League history.
Teevens doesn’t expect this one to challenge that one for length, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just as dramatic and knows it is just as important.
“This is a huge game,” he said. “They are right in the hunt. It should be a heckuva game.”
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EXTRA POINT
Sometimes you don't notice things right in front of you. In this case, it's to my side here at the BGA World Headquarters. The first photo shows the bookshelf and wall directly to my left. The second photo is a closeup of what I noticed for the first time in a long while yesterday:
Pretty much tells the story, huh?
