From Dartmouth football comes a quick look at how you do drills with only half the team on campus while adhering to rules about social distancing:
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Dartmouth wide receivers coach David Shula gets a nice mention in an SI Ram Digest story about his son, Chris. Check out Miami trip chance to honor family legacy for Rams assistant Chris Shula HERE.
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Yesterday's Woods Watch Party featured the 2015 Dartmouth-Yale game. Here's the BGA Premium story as it appeared on the site the night of the game, typos and all.
Only The Final Score Was In Question In Long And Impressive Win Over Yale
BGA Premium, Oct. 10, 2015
With apologies for sounding a little like Yogi Berra, a game that seemed like it would never end was over early.
Dartmouth jumped out to a 21-0 lead midway through the second quarter of Saturday’s showdown with Yale and then held serve the rest of the way as it posted a convincing 35-3 win over the Bulldogs. Between a plethora of TV commercials and a whopping 117 passes between the two teams, a game that kicked off at 1:30 didn’t finish until 5:18.
With the Homecoming win the Big Green improved to 4-0 overall and 2-0 in the Ivy League. Dartmouth now has won four games by at least 20 points this fall, the first time the school has accomplished that since the 1970 team turned the trip eight times in a 9-0 season.
Yale, which lost to Dartmouth for the fourth year in a row, is now 3-1 overall and 1-1 in the Ivies.
The Bulldogs came into the contest with a reputation as comeback kids after erasing 14-point and 19-point deficits in victories over Colgate and Cornell in their first two games of the season and outscoring those two by a 42-7 count in the second half.
Dartmouth quarterback Dalyn Williams completed 29-of-53 passes for a school-record 435 yards and four touchdowns to make sure Yale would need a huge comeback to win.
A Big Green defense that allowed just 276 yards of total offense while holding the Bulldogs without a touchdown made sure a comeback wasn’t in the offing, sending the Dartmouth faithful in the sellout crowd of 11,086 home happy.
“A nice win certainly at Homecoming,” said Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens, who has now seen the Big Green win 15 of its last 17 games dating back to 2013. “I’m happy for my team. I’m happy for my seniors. It was a well-played ballgame.”
By Dartmouth at least.
With David Caldwell picking off two passes, breaking up three others and tying Will McNamara with a team-high seven tackles, the Dartmouth defense had its best day against Yale since a tough, 3-0 loss in 1979, and its most successful day against the Bulldogs since a 3-0 win in 1977.
Yale quarterback Morgan Roberts was 29-for-58 for 229 yards and three interceptions. Tailback Deshawn Salter, who exploded for 233 yards in last week’s win over Lehigh managed just 45 on 19 carries, with a long of seven and a 2.4-yard average. Counting lost yardage, Yale ran 26 times for 32 yards.
The Bulldogs were missing Candler Rich, their starting tailback, North Carolina State transfer receiver Bo Hines and one offensive lineman among seven injured starters who sat the game out.
“In the last whatever, 14 games, offensively this is very uncharacteristic for us,” said Yale coach Tony Reno. “We had a lack of execution all over the place. I mean, you name it, it happened.
“Dartmouth, give them a lot of credit. They made a lot of plays. But we equally made as many mistakes, which cost us a lot of plays. We dropped more balls than we ever have. We didn’t read coverage the way we usually do. We missed some blocks that we normally don’t miss. Dartmouth, on their side, they have a great defense. You can’t do that against a great defense. If there’s an opportunity to make a play you’ve got to make it. We didn’t do that today.”
Yale’s only points came on a 35-yard field with with three seconds remaining in the opening half to send the teams into the break with Dartmouth ahead, 28-3.
The Big Green ended the day giving up the fewest points since a 56-0 win over Columbia on Oct. 26, 2013, but Caldwell still wasn’t satisfied.
“With three points on the board you can play better,” the senior safety said. “It’s as simple as that. But you’ve got to like the way we are running around.”
And the way they are running around on the other side of the ball as well.
In his second game back after offseason knee surgery senior Kyle Bramble ran for 85 yards on just eight carries – bolstered by a 54-yard pop up the middle – as the Big Green put up 143 yards on the ground.
Still, most of the damage was done through the air with Ryan McManus, back from an injury that sidelined him since the opener, catching six passes for 116 yards, Jon Marc Carrier having a breakout game with six receptions for 103 yards and Victor Williams making five catches for 91 yards.
Sophomore tight end Cameron Skaff caught three balls, with two going for touchdowns.
The star of the day, however, was Williams, whose 36-yard touchdown pass to Houston Brown late in the fourth quarter pushed him past the old school record of 419 passing yards set by Fiedler against Yale in 1992.
“He’s a very talented guy,” Teevens said of his senior quarterback. “(With) what they did defensively we knew we were going to throw the football. There was a big challenge to our offensive line to throw it successfully. We needed time.
“We feel confident in our wide receivers and having Ryan back was a big help. (Williams) spreads it around a bunch. As he’ll say, he missed a couple of throws today. The fourth quarter and the latter third we were not as productive as we would like to have been. But he just makes so many plays.”
That’s no surprise to Reno.
“I won’t be sad to see Dalyn Williams go,” the coach said. “I am sure the other seven (sic) coaches in the Ivy League would say the same thing. He’s an extremely talented kid.”
Although he enjoyed a record-setting day – the Dartmouth quarterback broke his own school record for total yards in a game with 453 and Fiedler’s career total offense record of 7,249 – Williams did not get off to a great start.
After hitting Carrier for 12 yards on his first attempt he misfired on his next three balls, more than he missed all of last week when he was 23-for-25 against Penn. As a result, Dartmouth’s first drive started at its own 14 and finished four plays later at its own 8.
The Big Green’s second drive started at its 20 and despite a 13-yard completion lasted just four plays again, and netted just six yards.
Both times Yale brought heavy pressure, sending extra players to rush Williams. While the strategy worked on the first two Dartmouth possessions the Big Green went on to score touchdowns on three of the next four, before the offense dipped again for a bit in the second half.
“They were basically trying to get the ball out of my hands,” explained Williams. “It was just adjustments on how they were playing us (that turned things around). We were going out there and I was seeing a couple of things. The receivers were seeing things differently – or maybe the same. We just wanted to get on the same page. We got on the same page. We connected.
“It’s the same thing that happened when we stalled later. It was just a little bit of miscommunication. Obviously we worked it out. We had a pretty good game offensively and passing.”
Dartmouth finished the afternoon with 592 yards of offense, highlighted by scoring drives of 80, 93, 73 and 80 yards before a two-play, 45-yarder at the end.
It was Skaff’s eight-yard catch with 29 seconds remaining in the first quarter that gave Dartmouth a lead it would not relinquish.
Victor Williams wrestled a Yale defender for 42-yard reception to set up a four-yard Brian Grove run for a 14-0 lead early in the second quarter.
Then it was McManus matching Victor Williams by wrestling away a 41-yard completion to set up a perfectly timed 17-yard shovel pass against pressure that Bramble ran in for a 21-0 lead at 6:28 of the second quarter.
Although Yale got a stop on Dartmouth’s first possession of the second half, the Big Green came right back on its next drive, aided by Bramble’s 54-yard gallop. Once again it was Williams finding Skaff, this time from the 4, to make it 28-3.
Yale had two good scoring chances ended by Dartmouth interceptions at the Big Green 2. Vernon Harris had the first one with 3:15 left in the opening half.
Caldwell had the second with 6:41 left in the game. Dartmouth closed out the scoring two possessions later when Brown caught his third touchdown pass in the last two games.
Dartmouth will bid for a 5-0 record Saturday with its final nonconference game at 2-4 Central Connecticut, a team whose only win before an upset of Bryant was over a Division II opponent. Teevens isn’t concerned about a letdown, even after a big Homecoming win over a traditional opponent. He’s confident the next game will bring more of the same.
“Strip (the) name off their helmet,” said Teevens. “It’s, we’ve got a game next week and it’s important to the guys. We’ve been pretty even keel. I can’t say we spiked or we dipped on anything this year. It’s been pretty much, just go out and play hard.”
Which is exactly what they did, for 3 hours and 43 minutes, a game that was just six minutes shorter than the four-overtime loss at Penn in 2013 – but a lot more rewarding.
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EXTRA POINT
Do you know what time it is?
Admit it. When you woke up this morning and looked at the clock you wondered for at least a few seconds whether the time was correct, or if it was an hour earlier than the clock showed. Or maybe, if you were really confused, if it was an hour later.
It used to be labor intensive – but easy – each year to "fall back." You'd wander around the house taking your index finger and spinning the hands of the clock back one hour. Or flipping it over and spinning the little gear doohickey.
And what did we have before the digital revolution? Three or four clocks?
As is often the case, "progress" made things easier while it made things harder.
Now it seems as if everything has a clock, but the good news is some change themselves. The bad news is we're not always sure which do and which don't. The clock radio in our bedroom did, although I have to admit I wasn't sure until the fog in my brain cleared and I realized it was relatively light at 6 this morning while it was close to pitch black at that hour yesterday.
The clock on the little weather station is described as being "atomic," which sounds kind of scary, but I think all it means is it will adjust itself. At least I hope that's all it means.
The digital clock on the oven? That one did not change itself and we'll either have to experiment with the buttons or search out the instruction manual. That's exactly what I did with the robot vacuum.
Now on to the microwave. It has a timer, of course, but does it even have a clock? Good question.
Let's see. We no longer use our old VCR and it looks as if the DVR the satellite provider installed changes the time on its own. That's good because the VCR was the all-time champion for clock issues, which is why we'd end up sometimes recording an infomercial for Thigh Master instead of the latest 60 Minutes. Ah, but the TVs also have clocks. Have they changed themselves? Time to grab the remote and start pecking away at the buttons.
What else? Our fancy furnace has a clock, something I didn't realize the first six months we lived here. And then all of a sudden last fall the hot water heater was kicking in too late for morning showers. I thought we'd be in for a big repair bill until I figured that one out.
My computer and iPod Touch have adjusted themselves but our cordless telephone is staring me down and I've got no clue about how to change it. Or if it matters. Of course, the thing only rings a couple of times a week and the hard-to-understand voice on the other end is almost always someone telling me I have issues with my PC. I'm a Mac guy and usually hang up, but maybe when my friend from overseas calls this week I'll see if he can help me with my phone.
I haven't really used my watch since the pandemic hit, except for when we were on vacation. (I know. I know it's lame to have a watch on vacation but sleeping in the VW it's nice to know what time it is when you wake in the middle of the night.) The watch is analog, thank goodness, so it should be easy to adjust. Unless I end up changing the date by mistake. Then I'll be flirting with carpal tunnel syndrome before I get everything honky dory.
There must be a few more. Oh yeah, there are clocks in both of the upstairs bathrooms. I think the battery has run down on one, so it has kind of adjusted itself. What am I forgetting? I guess we'll change 'em when we stumble across 'em.
OK, enough wasting time (or writing about it). I've got to grab my car keys and head out.
Argh!
There's a clock in my little Honda Fit, of course. I seem to remember it's either very easy or very hard to change but fortunately, Mrs. BGA has a way with the clocks in both of our cars.
Good thing, otherwise I might be an hour early everywhere I go for the next six months. But come to think of it, there's a bright side to leaving it as it is. I wouldn't have to try to change it again in the spring.
