Sagarin Ratings has Dartmouth as a 24-point favorite against Cornell Saturday afternoon. Elsewhere, the algorithm has:
Princeton over Yale by 10
Harvard over Penn by 21.5
Columbia over Brown by 13
Massey sees Dartmouth topping Cornell, 31-14, with 92 percent confidence. Elsewhere, Massey has:
Princeton defeating Yale, 27-24, with 60 percent confidence
Harvard defeating Penn, 27-10, with 92 percent confidence
Columbia defeating Brown, 35-28, with 68 percent confidence
Worth noting is that two years ago, Massey had undefeated Dartmouth defeating Cornell, 35-3, with 100 percent confidence.The Offshore Wise guys had Dartmouth as a 28.5-point favorite. The final score? Cornell 20, Dartmouth 17.
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From the Twitter account of quarterback-turned-commentator Robert Griffin III:
“It was a challenge from a standpoint, there are no excuses, said Princeton head coach Bob Surace. “Dartmouth was great.”
And . . .
While the Tigers created enough opportunities to stay in the game, they didn’t convert when they got inside the 20-yard line.
“That is one of the best defenses, if not the best defense, in the country,” said Surace, whose team rushed for 161 yards and passed for 189 in the loss.
“I don’t think anyone has had more than 15 first downs on them, we had 24. It wasn’t effort. If you don’t have effort, you have bigger issues.” (Editor's note: He wasn't far off. Yale actually had 18, Sacred Heart 17 and Columbia 16.)
And . . .
Our situational football has to tighten up, that was evident. Defensively it was a lot of errors, they run a great offense. There is a lot of deception. We have been really good against deception for the majority of the year, other than the Brown game. We struggled with some of it, that was something we have got to fix.”
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There are just two weeks left in the Ivy League football season and if anyone needed a reminder that it's no time to let your guard down, the postponement of the Cal-USC football game because of COVID-19 on the Cal campus should serve as a reminder. (LINK) Another reminder: Vermont's St. Michael's College had an outbreak last week that saw 71 cases of COVID. (LINK)
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EXTRA POINT
There are no leaves left on the towering sugar maple lining the east side of our Vermont hillside property. But if you look just at the field you would swear it is spring. It is as green as it has been all year. And yesterday I hiked in shorts.
It's hard to reconcile the weather right now with the idea that Dartmouth never played at home in the final week of the football season until 1991 because it was considered too cold in Hanover to play or watch safely at this time of year.
On the final Saturday of the 1956 season the low temperature in Hanover was 5 degrees and Dartmouth played at Princeton. On the final weekend of the 1957 season the low in Hanover was 0 degrees and the Big Green was in New Jersey.
By way of contrast, the forecast for Saturday's Memorial Field finale is 54 degrees with a chance of showers.
