Another day, another scramble for material . . .
Today, the longest winning streaks in the Ivy League since the start of formal conference competition in 1956:
|
No. |
Team |
Dates |
Ended |
|
24 |
Penn |
Nov. 14, 1992-Oct. 7, 1995 |
at Columbia, 14-24 |
|
22 |
Harvard |
Nov. 2, 2013-Nov. 14, 2015 |
Penn, 25-35 |
|
17 |
Princeton |
Sept. 26, 1994-Nov. 20, 1965 |
Dartmouth, 14-28 |
|
17 |
Penn |
Oct. 19, 2002-Sept. 25, 2004 |
Villanova, 13-16 |
|
17 |
Princeton |
Sept. 15, 2018-Nov. 9, 2019 |
Dartmouth, 10-27* |
|
16 |
Yale |
Oct. 7, 1967-Nov. 23, 1968 |
at Harvard, 29-29 |
|
15 |
Dartmouth |
Nov. 18, 1961-Oct. 26, 1963 |
at Harvard, 13-17 |
|
15 |
Dartmouth |
Sept. 26, 1970-Nov. 6, 1971 |
at Columbia, 31-29 |
|
15 |
Dartmouth |
Sept. 21, 1996-Oct. 25, 1997 |
Lehigh, 26-46 |
Elsewhere, for those who wish the Ivy League had chosen to play football this spring, there's more than a little craziness and we don't have to look far to find it. Consider this from the Ivy's (former?) sister conference:
Last week Holy Cross defeated Lehigh, 20-3, in Patriot League action. Holy Cross was scheduled to host Fordham this week and Lehigh was headed to Colgate.
When both the Holy Cross and Lehigh games slated for tomorrow were postponed because of positive COVID tests, the Crusaders and Mountain Hawks called an audible and decided to play each other. For the second week in a row.
Now that game has been called off.
All totaled, nine FCS games – a season-high – have been taken off this week's schedule.
•
Of note out of the state of Vermont is a story by the CBS TV station in Burlington under the headline, Vt. school sports team spreads COVID to another school (LINK)
•
And there's this from the Yale Daily News (LINK):
Since March 12, there have been 44 new positive cases of COVID-19 at Yale, 21 of which are undergraduate students enrolled in New Haven both on and off campus — the highest positivity rate since the start of the spring semester.
•
Headline for a story posted by NBC out of Boston (LINK):
NH Colleges Plan for a Full Year Back on Campus; Some of New Hampshire's colleges are telling students to prepare for a full reopening in the fall, with in-person classes and even sporting events
Only a passing reference to Dartmouth but the story does include this:
At Plymouth State University, there are about 3,400 students attending in-person classes, but that's about all they can do on campus.
By next fall, school leaders say they just might be able to enjoy a football game.
Dartmouth, meanwhile, posted video of another "Community Conversation," and the college news service included this in its report (LINK):
(Provost Joseph) Helble said summer term will likely be "a term of transition"—a hybrid of remote and in-person learning, but with expanded opportunities for students and faculty to gather. And he expects fall term to be a return to a more typical in-person residential experience.
•
With the NCAA Tournament (sans an Ivy League team) getting going former Ivy players are making their mark. The AP has a story HERE that begins this way:
Three years ago, Mike Smith and Seth Towns were playing against each other in the Ivy League. Last week, those two made quite an impression on quarterfinal day in the Big Ten Tournament.
Smith, a transfer from Columbia, had 18 points and 15 assists to lead Michigan over Maryland. Then Towns, a former Harvard star, made a big 3-pointer in overtime to help Ohio State outlast Purdue.
“A lot of people in the Ivy League get looked down on. You’re quote-unquote only there for academics. But we have players that can play,” Smith said that day. “Not only today but throughout the season, we’ve shown that Ivy League guys can play.”
The Yale Daily has a piece on the same subject HERE and the Daily Pennsylvanian chimes in HERE.
•
EXTRA POINT
Mrs. BGA and I didn't watch one second of the Grammys, in part because we had never heard any of the songs up for awards this year and might recognize one or two performers by name. That's not unusual.
What is unusual is that when the Oscars are awarded next month we won't have seen any of the movies in contention. At least we wouldn't have until yesterday.
With Mrs. BGA enjoying a week's stay-cation and me having too much time on my hands as a result of the pandemic, we took out a free Hulu trial subscription specifically to watch the movie Nomadland, which I had heard a bit about listening to a podcast while hiking. It was probably a little darker – figuratively and literally – than I expected but Frances McDormand was terrific and it had exactly the artsy touch that the voters may like.
While I enjoyed the flick, the best part of the Hulu trial was discovering the full catalogue of The Wonder Year shows. Although there may have been a better big brother-little brother dynamic in TV it's hard to imagine. This is from the episode we watched after the movie:
