BGA Overtime is the successor to BGA Premium, a site that covered Dartmouth football with daily stories starting in 2005. The OT is written and edited by Bruce Wood, a former beat writer who has covered Dartmouth sports since the early 1980s. It is not affiliated with Dartmouth College and is supported by your generous donations..
HANOVER – The concept was sound against a team that a week earlier had scored touchdowns on 60- and 46-yard passes. Stop the big play and see if a Monmouth team seemingly not built to play ball control can beat you with extended drives.
Turns out they could.
HANOVER – Sammy McCorkle answered the way you’d probably expect him to answer.
The question: Are you one of those coaches who believes a team’s biggest improvement is between the first game and the second?
HANOVER – There is something satisfying about picking upsets. That said, it’s certainly a high-risk, high-reward endeavor. Get an upset right, and you are a genius. But pick too many underdogs and you come across as a dolt.
Hello friends, dolt here.
HANOVER – For the second week in a row the old guys show up at their meeting place at exactly the same time. That’s a little out of the ordinary. Usually the happy one comes through the door and finds their table first.
The Optimist: Kind of like coach, I’m not into moral victories, but for a first game against a seasoned, undefeated and nationally ranked team, that was a pretty good day.
Here's your weekly half dozen observations between the Lehigh and Monmouth games.
1) The value of a talented, veteran quarterback was on full display Saturday, and never so much as on third down. Dartmouth was 9-of-14 on third down conversions and as you would expect, Grayson Saunier was a big reason why. His third down completions that brought a new set of downs:
• eight yards (on 3rd and 5)Saunier also ran for first downs on 3rd and 1, and for 10 yards on a must-have 4th and 10 at the end.
• 15 yards (3rd and 14)
• 19 yards (3rd and 9)
• 28 yards (3rd and 10)
• 30 yards (3rd and 11).
HANOVER – Given how monumental a win it would have been knocking off the No. 7 team in the nation on its home field, and how crushing the last-second loss ended up being, you might wonder how Dartmouth quarterback Grayson Saunier will bounce back from his game-sealing interception at the end.
But while you might wonder, his fellow co-captain Harrison Keith wouldn't.
BETHLEHEM, Pa. – In 1997, Lehigh rolled into Hanover and handed Dartmouth a loss that snapped the longest unbeaten streak in the nation at 23 games. Twenty-nine years later, the Big Green was on the cusp of returning the favor and ending the nation’s longest regular-season winning streak on the Mountain Hawks’ home field.
Taking over at his own 20 with 1:38 left in regulation and his team down four points, Dartmouth’s Grayson Saunier surgically picked apart the Lehigh defense, completing four of five throws while driving the Big Green to the Lehigh 26. There were only 19 seconds remaining, but the way Saunier was running the two-minute drill, it felt like it would take a Herculean play for the Mountain Hawks to hold on.
That’s exactly what they got.
BETHLEHEM, Pa. – If Dartmouth needs proof that an Ivy League team playing its opener can knock off a nationally ranked team that already has three games under its belt, it doesn’t have to look back very far.
Or very far away.
Just 364 days ago, the Big Green opened its season on Memorial Field with a 27-20 win over No. 23 New Hampshire.