Hanover
Nonleague games aren’t usually quite as intense, and the raised level of passion caught some of the Big Green’s less-experienced players off guard.
“We’ve won a lot of ball games the past few years but we had older guys who knew what game day was like,” said Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens, whose team visits 0-3 Yale today in what will be the teams’ 100th meeting.
“It was a night game at home and Penn was 0-2. Did we overlook them? I’d like to think not, but we didn’t match their energy and they beat us up front on both sides of the football.”
Yale may be struggling, but also has hauled in a lot of highly-regarded recruits the last three or four years under embattled coach Tony Reno. There’s a sense that if and when the Bulldogs fire on all cylinders, their opponent that day had better watch out.
“They’re looking at Dartmouth and thinking that Penn just smoked us and beat us up and they’re planning on doing the same thing,” Teevens said. “I’m sure they’re counting this as a win right now. I’m on edge.”
Teevens said he thought practice this week was conducted at a higher level and with more seriousness.
“We focused on details and physicality,” the coach said. “Hopefully it translates into better play this weekend.”
The Real Deal: Andrew Yohe heard the fire alarm blare in his first-floor room at Dartmouth College’s Morton Hall dormitory early last Saturday morning, and figured someone had either been smoking or burned popcorn in a microwave near a smoke detector. It wasn’t until he looked out the window and saw fellow students staring up at the building’s roof that he realized an actual fire had broken out.
“I was watching some TV and I went outside in my slippers and not much clothing,” said Yohe, a junior from Pennsylvania who occupied a single room while sharing a bathroom with a neighbor. “Then I went back inside to get more clothes because I could tell it was going to be a while.”
Roughly 70 students were displaced by the blaze, which took about six hours to fully extinguish. Drew Galbraith, a senior associate athletic director, said more than 20 Big Green athletes lived in the building, which will be closed for the foreseeable future. All, including Yohe and teammate Davaron Stockman, have been assigned or found other living spaces.
Yohe has moved into a house near the Hanover Co-op Food Store, becoming one of 10 football players living there. He shares the basement with safety Colin Boit. He spent the night of the fire in a local hotel, the cost of which he will be reimbursed for by the athletic department.
“Most of my time here has been an uphill battle,” said Yohe, who’s dealt with injuries to both shoulders and a knee. “I just let this one hit me in the cheek and I kept going.”
Muddy Track: Teevens recalls visiting the Yale Bowl in a rain storm during his own Dartmouth playing days and wading through water up to his calves. The coach is not a fan of the stadium’s natural grass surface, which is allowed to grow long on the sidelines and seems to tear up in a hurry when wet.
“It’s a wonderful old stadium but I know from in years past that it gets slick quickly,” said Teevens, who had his team practice on grass this week. “That’s a concern if there’s rain. We lost (former guard) Niko Mamula on a (2014 extra point) when his foot slid and he tore his groin.
“There have been a number of guys who have gone down, slipping and sliding over the years, and from both teams.”
The Bowl’s playing surface, which sits below sea level, has long been derided, and the Hartford Courant reported last year that the university would install artificial turf. However, Yale never confirmed that idea and then publicly denied it at the end of the season.
Yale and Brown are the only two Ivy League members with natural grass fields. Dartmouth offensive tackle David Morrison said he tends to wear longer, screw-in studs on the bottom of his shoes for those games and isn’t bothered by playing on the type of surface he competed on throughout high school, north of Albany, N.Y.
“When we played there two years ago, it was after some decent rainfall and I didn’t experience any problems whatsoever,” he said.
Storm Watcher: Occupying part of Teevens’ attention this week has been the upcoming fate of his family’s summer home on Florida’s Atlantic coast. A little south of Jacksonville, the house is two blocks from the ocean and the coach was not at all certain that it would survive the arrival of Hurricane Matthew intact.
The storm, which spared Central Florida a direct hit, nonetheless was rated a Category 3 hurricane, with winds of roughly 115 mph. On Friday afternoon, the New York Times reported the possibility of significant flooding for the Jacksonville metropolitan area and its 1.6 million residents.
“I may have oceanfront property when this is all over,” Teevens said with a wry chuckle.
Notes: Boit, a safety who has missed the last two games while recovering from having his appendix removed, should be available for today’s game. Less likely is cornerback Danny McManus, who’s been battling a wrist injury. … Freshman receiver Hunter Hagdorn didn’t practice this week for what Teevens said was a chance to rest his legs. … Dartmouth players have dealt with mid-terms this week. … Players who haven’t seen a lot of playing time but who might get into today’s game include freshman defensive backs Micah Croom, Michael Gordon, Ryan Roegge and Isiah Swann. … Former standout quarterback Dalyn Williams, who’s taking classes to finish his degree, is now a work-study student with the Big Green’s football athletic training staff. … Today’s game will be streamed live on ESPN3.