Looking Ahead

Leave it to Princeton's weekly Town Topic newspaper to bring us the first thoughts out of New Jersey about Saturday's showdown for the Ivy League lead. From last week's Princeton game story (LINK):

With Princeton hosting Dartmouth (4-3 overall, 3-1 Ivy), the Tigers will need an incredible effort to overcome the Big Green.

“You want to control your own ability (in the league race) and we do but we are facing another good team,” said Surace. “The Cornell team was terrific — they beat the crap out of Lehigh and they beat the crap out of Yale. Dartmouth looked good on Friday (in a 24-14 win over Harvard). Every team is capable in every single game. If you play like we did in the first half, you are going to have a hard time winning. We settled down and played better in the second half and gave ourselves a chance but that wasn’t great.”

(Receiver Josh) Smith, for his part, is confident that Princeton will play well against Dartmouth.

“We are just going to take it one game at a time; hopefully we can keep building on this win,” said Smith. “It was good to see Dartmouth go out there and play well, that should be a really good game. We will go into tomorrow in our meetings and figure out some things. There is a lot we still have to work on. We are going to have fun tonight and think about the win tonight but tomorrow right after the meetings it is over and we are on to next week.”

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Flo Football has a piece headlined What We Learned About FCS Football In Week 9: Scores, Highlights & More that includes this (LINK):

(T)he battle for this year’s Ivy League title and automatic playoff berth took an unexpected turn Friday when Dartmouth went on the road and handed Harvard its first loss in 2026.

OK, maybe it’s not as far-fetched as it feels, considering Harvard and Dartmouth were picked to finished second and third in the league’s preseason poll, but there’s now a three-team deadlock at the top of the standings.

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The Sagarin Ratings awards the home team three points and that's enough for the service to have Princeton as a two-point favorite Saturday. Here's where Sagarin has Ivy League teams (and Dartmouth's nonconference opponents) in the full DI landscape:

128 Harvard
167 Dartmouth
168 Yale
175 Princeton
176 Brown
178 Cornell
211 Penn
225 Columbia

157 Monmouth
159 Lehigh 
231 Merrimack

Massey, meanwhile, ranks only FCS teams and has them this way:

17 Harvard
35 Dartmouth
39 Yale
40 Princeton
50 Brown
58 Cornell
68 Penn
71 Columbia

22 Monmouth
25 Lehigh
78 Merrimack

Not only do the two services have the teams in the same order, they see this week playing out the same way:

• Massey has Dartmouth losing at Princeton, 21-20, with 51 percent confidence

• As noted above, with Princeton getting the three points, Sagarin has the Tigers as a two-point favorite Saturday.

Massey Three-Week Projection
• Dartmouth rebounds from a loss at Princeton to win at Cornell (28-27, 52 percent) before closing out with a victory over Brown (27-21, 71 percent) to finish 5-2 in the Ivy League

• Harvard sweeps its final three games against Columbia (37-14, 96 percent), at Penn (27-17, 81 percent) and against Yale at Fenway (27-24, 57 percent) to win the Ivies with a 6-1 mark.

• After Dartmouth, Massey has Princeton losing at Yale (28-18, 81 percent) and defeating Penn (23-17, 70 percent) to finish 5-2 in conference.

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EXTRA POINT
While we were visiting That Certain Dartmouth '14 and That Certain Fellow at their new house in Ellsworth, Maine outside of Acadia National Park, Mrs. BGA and I went just a couple miles up the road to check out Momo's Cheesecakes. In addition to the usual varieties, Momo's offers pumpkin chocolate chip, lemon blueberry, Reese's Pieces, Confetti and Kit Kat cheesecakes, and dozens and dozens more. Want a Biscoff or Nutella cheesecake? This is the place for you. Momo's home page

And here's the thing. Momo's is a self-service operation. Reach into one of the  refrigerated cases and grab what you want. There's no one in the converted garage when you go inside. You make your choice, slide your money into the red, metal box and make your own change if need be. So you know, this is serious stuff. An Andes Cheesecake will set you back $58 and a single slice to go is $7.50.

While one of the fridges was being restocked were learned that in the last 10 years they've only had four cases of being ripped off.

We were amazed just walking through the door and even more amazed when we signed the guest book. Lo and behold, only two or three names above us in the book was someone else from our tiny town of Newbury, Vt. What were the chances?