The weekend's Fearful Forest is up on BGA Overtime. Find predictions and flippant comments HERE. Appearing on the site on successive days will be the Dartmouth-Penn preview, the game story, What They Did & What They Said, Your Mileage May Vary and The Optimist-The Pessimist.
#
The Daily Pennsylvanian newspaper has its predictions up for Saturday's game. Three of five staff members pick the Quakers while two pick Dartmouth. Here's how they see the game finishing (LINK):
Penn 31, Dartmouth 28
Penn 27, Dartmouth 24
Penn 31, Dartmouth 28
Dartmouth 35, Penn 24
Dartmouth 31, Penn 10
#
The DP also has a game preview up under the headline 'We’re about the future': Penn football prepares for home and Ivy opener against Dartmouth HERE.
#
TEAM3rd Down Conversion Pct (1st, 0.625)Sacks Allowed (1st, 0)Winning Percentage (1st, 1)Passing Offense (3rd, 325.5)3rd Down Conversion Pct Defense (4th, 0.238)Fewest Penalty Yards (4th, 88)Rushing Defense (4th, 77)Fewest Penalties Per Game (8th, 4)Total Offense (8th, 478)Completion Percentage (9th, 0.703)INDIVIDUALGrayson SaunierPassing Yards Per Game (2nd, 325.5)Total Offense (2nd, 354.5)Completions Per Game (3rd, 26)Completion Percentage (10th, 0.703)DJ CrowtherScoring (2nd, 15)Rushing Yards Per Game (8th, 114.5)All Purpose (9th, 141)Grayson O’BaraReceiving Yards Per Game (4th, 117)Receptions Per Game (10th, 6.5)
Green Alert Take: I've taken issue with this before, but for some reason the NCAA includes a few statistics that make no sense. Yes, it's impressive that Dartmouth has no sacks allowed, but the stat has to be sacks per game. Dartmouth has played two games. Others have played as many as five. Fewest penalty yards is another phony stat. Given the disparity in games played, the figure should be per game, not total.
#
Speaking of statistics, Success Rate is an advanced metric for grading offensive production. Here's the definition for Success Rate (LINK):
A play is "successful" if 50 percent of the yards needed are gained on first down, 70 percent are gained on second down, and 100 percent are gained on third or fourth down. The Average Success Rate for a college football program is about 40 percent, while closer to 50 percent is considered excellent, and anything under 30 percent is deemed poor.
The concept:
Success Rate removes many of the underlying factors of a game and strictly tells you how well a team played down-to-down. While outliers can swing an individual game, success rate can be a better indicator of what future performance will be.
Per the story, here are teams that won the Success Rate battle last week but lost the game:
Lamar 35, Central Arkansas 32 (UCA 49.4%, Lamar 36%)
Charleston Southern 31, South Carolina State 24 (SCSU 48.6%, CSU 40.4%)
Lehigh 44, Penn 30 (Penn 48.3%, Lehigh 46.8%)
Towson 26, Bryant 24 (Bryant 47.8%, Towson 44.3%)
Mercer 38, ETSU 34 (ETSU 47.4%, Mercer 46.5%)
From the column:
Lehigh and Penn played one of the most entertaining games of the season in a 44-30 shootout. The Mountain Hawks took advantage of three turnovers, while also capitalizing on some explosive plays offensively. Lehigh finished with 539 total yards on 7.1 yards per play. Luke Yoder and Jaden Green had five carries of 15 yards or more, combining for 268 yards on 6.9 yards per carry and two scores. Jared Richardson was excellent for Penn, collecting 12 catches on 15 targets for 141 yards and two touchdowns.
The piece ends this way:
The closest success rate battles of the week were Princeton (52.1%) vs Lafayette (52.2%) and Dartmouth (51.4%) vs Central Connecticut State (52.3%).
Speaking of that game, here's a close-up look at Ky'Dric Fisher's game winning catch Saturday, which certainly didn't hurt Dartmouth's success rate. ;-)
From a HERO Sports column (LINK):
It’s too bad the Ivy League starts play a few weeks after everyone else. To set itself up better for playoff positioning, the conference has to address this. Playing 10 games while everyone else is playing 12 will set you back in the seeds. Playing better opponents will also be important for a national gauge. Harvard got some preseason buzz after going 8-2 last year and returning key players. But the Crimson fell off the radar early this season while other teams were grabbing quality wins. Now that they are playing, it’s a team to pay attention to. Harvard is 2-0 with two dominating wins over Stetson and Brown. Jaden Craig is one of the best quarterbacks in the FCS and is on the NFL radar. In two games, he is completing 77.3% of his passes for 525 yards, six TDs, and zero interceptions.
#
EXTRA POINT
Another morning without a cloud in the sky. Given how consistent the weather has been, we could be in San Diego. Except, of course, I don't think it was 32.7 degrees in San Diego this morning. ;-)
Per weather.com the best chance we have for rain over in the 10-day forecast comes next Wednesday, and that's just a 59 percent chance of showers.
