From Dartmouth sports information:
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Today's Woods Watch Party features the 2017 slugfest against Princeton from Memorial Field. Find a Dartmouth release about the Watch Party HERE or go straight to the video HERE.
Once again this week you can find the BGA Premium preview of the game below. A reminder that the story is posted as it ran on the site the day before the game. The story posted after the game will be on this page tomorrow:
Nov. 17 – Dartmouth Has To Take Care Of Business
BGA Premium Nov. 16, 2017
HANOVER – This is it.
“It” being the last game of the season.
“It” being the final game for the Dartmouth seniors
“It” being the last time the Big Green closes a year against traditional Week 10 rival Princeton.
“It” being the chance to put the finishing touch on a storybook worst-to-first season.
Princeton-Dartmouth is always important but this one has a little special sauce on top of it, which is why Big Green coach Buddy Teevens’ message to his team this week has been about as basic as it can be.
“The biggest thing is just take care of your business,” he said. “I keep saying it, but we’re looking for a team game, offense, defense and special teams, for four quarters.
“They are all important but to have a shot at the championship we have to beat Princeton, so it is a critical game, a championship game for us. We can’t control what happens at Yale, but you never know what is going to happen in the Harvard-Yale game.”
(A refresher: Dartmouth needs a win over the Tigers and Harvard [5-4, 3-3 Ivy League] to upset Yale [8-1, 5-1 Ivy] to grab a share of the championship. Should Yale lose, Columbia also can earn a piece with a win over Brown.)
While Princeton (5-4, 2-4 Ivy League) comes to Hanover on a three-game skid the Tigers are still a dangerous and highly explosive team. Their losses have been by four points last week against Ivy League-leading Yale in a back and forth game, by three points a week earlier against a rejuvenated Penn team in a game where the officials badly missed a call that would have given Princeton the win, and by one point against Cornell on a field goal at the end.
Prior to the Cornell loss Princeton had scored at least 50 points in back-to-back wins over Georgetown and Brown before crushing Harvard in Cambridge, 52-17.
The Tigers lead the Ivy League with 37.6 points per game. They are second in the nation in third-down conversion percentage, third in total offense and fourth in passing offense.
Leading the way is senior quarterback Chad Kanoff, a onetime Vanderbilt commit who last week threw for 454 yards and four touchdowns against a Yale defense that is statistically in a dead heat with Dartmouth’s for the best in the Ivy League. He had 351 yards and three touchdowns a week earlier against Penn and in the Harvard game hit his first 21 passes before finishing 31-of-35 for 421 yards. On the season he’s completing a ridiculous 72.2 percent of his attempts with 26 touchdowns and eight interceptions.
Kanoff’s favorite target is baseball-football standout Jesper Horsted, a big target at 6-foot-4, 215 pounds. He’s caught 80 passes and 12 touchdowns this fall. To put those numbers in perspective, the Dartmouth record for catches in a season is 83 (Jay Barnard in 2002) and the record for touchdown catches is 10 (Craig Morton in 1986 and Mike Bobo in 1991). He leads Penn all-time great Justin Watson by 12 catches and with 1,057 in receiving yards has 166 yards on the All-American as well. And it’s not all dink-and-dunk from a quarterback who likes to go down the field. A week Horsted hauled in an 88-yarder against the Quakers.
But Kanoff isn’t the only 6-4 receiving standout on the team. Fellow junior Stephen Carlson has 61 catches for 797 yards and 10 touchdowns with a long of 63. Shifty Tiger Bech adds in 38 catches for 585 yards and a team-best 15.4 yards per reception, including a long of 58.
It’s not all Air-Kanoff, however. Tailback Charlie Volker – who won the New Jersey Meet of Champions 100 meters as a high school senior and captured the 2016 Ivy League indoor championship in the 60 – is second in the conference with 11 rushing touchdowns. He has run for 560 yards including a 96-yarder against Brown.
Freshman Collin Eady has run for 376 yards and at 6.0 yards per carry actually averages more per try than Volker (6.0).
The Achilles’ heel for Princeton this fall has been injuries in the defensive lineup. The starting front from the season-opening win over San Diego has been entirely wiped out by injury, including Kurt Holuba, perhaps the top defensive player in the league. The standout D-end was lost three games ago, the second time in his career he’s failed to finish a season. Princeton is 16-3 in games he’s started in his career and just 2-8 in games he hasn’t.
Princeton was allowing 84.6 yards per game on the ground after seven games and has allowed 263 yards per game since losing Holuba.
Two of the four starting linebackers from the opener are also gone, although the best one will be patrolling the middle of the field. Junior Tom Johnson is third in the Ivy League in tackles with 86.
“Their middle linebacker is as good as there is in the league,” said Teevens.
A couple of players to watch would be starting corner Chance Melancon, a senior whose brother Tyler played at Dartmouth, and tEddie Rudinski, widely thought to be headed to be switching from Washington State to Dartmouth as a three-star recruit before ending up at Princeton. A natural linebacker forced into action at defensive end because of injuries, he made six tackles in his first start against Cornell and leads healthy Tiger players with three sacks. (Injured linebacker Mike Wagner had 6.5 in just five games and Holuba four in seven games.)
Kicker Tavish Rice is 8-for-11 on field goal attempts but with a long of just 40. Kanoff handles most of the punting with a 36.4-yard average. Blech is a dangerous returner with a long on kickoffs of 51 and 21 on punts. He is second in the league in kickoff return average at 23.9.
Add it up and Teevens is rightfully wary against a team that scored 31 points in less than 20 minutes last week.
“We need to pressure the quarterback,” he said. “They do have a very experienced offensive line so that will be a challenge. To get him out of rhythm we have got to disrupt them and contest some of the balls down the field.
“But the big thing is keep them off the field. That certainly will be a charge on the offense, to put a four quarter football game together. Control the football. Control the clock. They do score quick. Defensively, the charge is to eliminate big plays”
NOTES
Jack Heneghan is bidding to become just the second Big Green quarterback to throw at least one TD pass in every game of a season. The other? Jay Fiedler in 1992. With a TD throw against the Tigers he would also tie Fiedler’s school record of 11 games in a row with a scoring pass – thanks to having one in last year’s finale against Princeton. … Ryder Stone needs one more rushing touchdown to become the 10th player in school history to collect 20 touchdowns on the ground in a career. … Dartmouth has given up exactly twice as many points in the first two quarters this year (100) as it has in the second two (50). The offensive scoring has been more balanced with 98 points in the first two quarters and 115 in the second two.
Princeton and Harvard were voted Ivy League favorites in the annual preseason media poll with Penn a close third. The Tigers collected six first-place votes while Harvard and Penn had five apiece, and one (clueless) individual voted for Brown. Ivy League champion Yale was predicted to finish fourth with potential champions Dartmouth (fifth) and Columbia (seventh) also putting the lie to the poll.
Princeton hasn’t won in Hanover since 2009. … Kanoff needs 225 yards to pass James Perry for second on the single-season Ivy League list for passing yards. He comes into the game with 3,030 yards. He needs 382 yards to surpass the Ivy record of 3,412 yards set by Cornell’s Jeff Mathews in 2011. His completion percentage easily tops the school record 66.5 set by current Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett in 1988, albeit a different offensive era. A year ago Kanoff shared time with Ivy League offensive player of the year John Lovett, who missed this year with an injury but is expected back next fall.
Dartmouth leads the all-time series with Princeton, 48-44-4. It has been a series of streaks in recent years with the Big Green winning six in a row before last year’s 34-21 loss, and the Tigers winning the six previous to the Dartmouth streak. … Since the start of formal Ivy League play Dartmouth has twice scored a high of 43 points against Princeton (a 43-20 win in 1982 and a 43-37 win in 2000). The Tigers’ top point total came in 2002 when they won, 38-30. The most lopsided Dartmouth victory since ’56 came in a 38-0 win in 1970 and the most lopside Princeton win was 31 points in 1987 (34-3). Dartmouth’s last shutout in the series was in 2010 (30-0) and Princeton’s last whitewashing was in 2005 (30-0).
The 1992 Dartmouth team that won the Big Green’s third consecutive Ivy League championship is being celebrated Saturday. Captained by Greg Hoffmeister, George Neos and Mike Phillips, the ’92 squad finished 8-2 overall and 6-1 in the Ivy League. With Jay Fiedler throwing 25 touchdown passes and running for six more the Big Green scored 364 points that fall, still a school record. Matt Brzica led the receiving corps with 53 caatches for 965 yards and eight touchdowns and Hoffmeister topped the ground attack with 650 yards. Josh Bloom had 98 tackles and Phillips 95 with Jim McGeehan picking off three passes. Dennis Durkin was a perfect 13-for-13 on field goal attempts.
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First Santa Claus won't be coming to Macy's this year (LINK) and now the The Army-Navy football game in December has been moved from Philadelphia to West Point for the first time since 1943 (LINK) so the Cadets and Midshipmen can attend the game. (Pennsylvania's attendance limits wouldn't have allowed that.)
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Following up on yesterday's note about COVID and a hockey arena in New Hampshire, this is from the Associated Press about a similar issue in Vermont (LINK):
A coronavirus outbreak connected to recreational hockey and broomball at an indoor ice rink in Montpelier has grown to 43 cases, including cases at seven schools in various counties, seven workplaces, two colleges and two hospitals, Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine said Friday.
Green Alert Take: Winter sports, you are on the clock.
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EXTRA POINT
One of the reasons it made sense for us to put in a solar tracker is we have an unimpeded view of the sun from the moment it rises above the White Mountains until it sinks below the ridge to our west. As a result, as fall advances I can see the sunrise shifting farther south each morning when I walk Griff the Wonder Dog.
It was overcast this morning and so the sun wasn't taunting me today with the message that winter is on the way.
Ah, but there was still a reminder. Each night as the sun goes down the solar tracker resets itself to be ready for sunrise, quietly and slowly turning to face the precise direction of the sun as it sneaks over the horizon.
It's pretty neat technology but seeing where the tracker is aiming each morning is a constant reminder that shorter (and a lot colder) days are coming, even when the sun isn't visible.
