Tiger Tails

Your weekly Teevens Teleteaser from Dartmouth sports information:

 

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Dartmouth's game notes for the Princeton game are found HERE. If Princeton's notes are available I can't find them and neither can loyal BGA readers who have gone looking and asked about them.

Green Alert Take: With Ivy League football attendance continuing to slide the conference office should require schools to make their notes readily available online to keep those fans who actually want to follow the league from drifting away.

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Not surprisingly, The Analyst's Craig Haley, once a Princeton beat reporter, has the Big Green-Tigers game as one of his "must-see" games this week. Here's his capsule (LINK):

4. No. 20 Princeton (7-0, 4-0 Ivy) at Dartmouth (6-1, 3-1), 6 p.m. Friday (ESPNU)

This is the 100th all-time meeting between the most consistent Ivy League programs of recent years: Dartmouth is 32-5 since 2017, while Princeton has opened with a 7-0 record for the third straight season and is 25-2 since 2018. Since falling at Dartmouth in the 2017 finale, the Tigers have run off 12 straight road wins – the FCS’ longest active streak. While both teams have efficient QBs – Princeton’s Cole Smith and Dartmouth’s Derek Kyler/Nick Howard combo – the defenses are in the top six nationally in fewest yards allowed per game.

Green Alert Take: It's true Princeton has the longest current FCS streak with 12 consecutive road wins. Several emailers have brought up the point that the Dartmouth was the "home" team in the 27-10 win over the Tigers at Yankee Stadium in 2019. While that might have been technically true, the contest goes in the books not as a Princeton road game but as a "neutral site" game.

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The Daily Princetonian has a story headlined Princeton football looks to keep undefeated season alive against Dartmouth that is a little light on tomorrow night's game but finishes with this (LINK):

“Almost every year for the past five, six years — there’s always a lot at stake against Dartmouth,” (Princeton coach Bob) Surace said. “We have such tremendous respect for them. They have a tremendous program and coaching staff. It really challenges us to be our best.”

In 2018, Dartmouth settled for second place behind Princeton in the Ivy League standings. In 2019, Dartmouth claimed first place. 

Surace’s key to the game for the Tigers?

“We’re just going to have to play our best.”

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The wise guys have installed Princeton as a 1.5 point favorite over Dartmouth. In other games they have:

• Yale as an 11.5-point pick at Brown 

• Penn as a seven-point choice over Cornell in Philly

• Harvard favored by nine points at Columbia

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From the Go Figure department, a website out of South Africa just posted a blurb under this subhead: Ben Koldyke shifted from being a football coach and a high school English teacher in Chicago to acting. Most people know him as Don Frank from the CBS sitcom, How I Met Your Mother. From the piece (LINK):

Ben graduated from Dartmouth College, New Hemisphere, with an English degree in 1991. He was also a quarterback during his college years.

Green Alert Take: Dartmouth, of course, is in Hanover, New Hemisphere ;-) 

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When the local daily cut staff it lost not just a talented writer but a very good sports photographer in Tris Wykes. A frequent visitor to practice who also brings his camera to games when he can make them, Wykes has made his photos available on his Octopus Athletics website. Here are a couple of his pictures from a practice and a game (click pics to enlarge them):

Find several of Wykes' Dartmouth football albums HERE. He writes, "Those interested in purchasing prints may do so on the site. Digital images are available for purchase upon request."

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Updated yesterday, the Dartmouth COVID-19 Dashboard lists 10 undergrads and five faculty/staff as having "active cases." From the site (LINK):

On Oct. 29, Dartmouth identified one cluster of at least three people with COVID-19 in the student population. The state of New Hampshire defines a cluster as three or more individuals confirmed with COVID-19 who are part of a related group of individuals who had the potential to transmit infection to each other through close contact.

The site lists 22 positive tests over the last seven days. There were 18 the week before, four the week before that and 10 the week of Oct. 10.

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EXTRA POINT
Halloween is behind us but I got spooked a couple of times already today.

The first time came after looking out our bedroom window and seeing a light on in our large, detached garage. When I headed outside a couple of minutes later with Griff the Wonder Dog, I was surprised that the light was out. It's motion-activated so I just figured it might have come on if a breeze under the door blew something in front of the sensor and went out because that's what it is programmed to do a minute or two after the motion stops. After Griff and I got back inside and I fed him his breakfast I looked out the kitchen window and the garage light was back on again . . . and there's absolutely no wind out there. It's perfectly still. Creepy.

The second time I got a little spooked was sitting here at the keyboard after an abnormally heavy morning fog rolled up to our hillside home. I was looking out the window just as a huge bird – maybe a turkey vulture? – popped cleanly out of the fog directly in front of the BGA World Headquarters windows, flew maybe 30 yards and then popped right back into the fog. It was almost like a plane going in and out of the clouds . . . but it was a big bird appearing and disappearing right in front of me like an airborne Houdini.

The day is off to an interesting start . . .