HANOVER – A pop quiz for you.
Coming into this season, only two Ivy League teams had a winning record against Dartmouth over their five previous meetings. Name them.
If Harvard was your first choice, congratulations, Captain Obvious. If you picked Cornell as the second one, give yourself a gold star.
Like Harvard, the Big Red comes into its 2025 game against Dartmouth with a 3-2 record over the previous five meetings. Unlike Harvard, Cornell hasn’t often been the favorite in the series.
• In 2019, a 2-6 Big Red team that had lost six of its previous seven games surprised Dartmouth in Hanover, 20-17.
• In 2022, a 4-4 Cornell team came to Memorial Field on a two-game losing streak and enjoyed a happy bus ride home after winning, 17-13.
• Last year, a 3-5 Big Red team that had given up 67 points to Penn the week before ruined Dartmouth’s ride home by dealing the Big Green a 39-22.
While Cornell has usually been struggling by the time the Dartmouth game rolled around, it’s different this year.
After limping out to a 0-4 start this fall, Cornell has caught fire. Last week’s 39-17 victory at Penn was the Big Red’s fourth in a row, its longest winning streak this century. At 4-4 overall, Cornell begins the day like Dartmouth, at 3-2 in the Ivy League, with an outside chance at a share of the conference championship.
Big Green coach Sammy McCorkle was impressed watching film of a team that has come to believe in itself under second-year head coach Dan Swanstrom. “They are playing with confidence,” McCorkle said. “You win four games in a row, and you should be confident, and that's why they're having success. They are a very good football team. Dan's done a great job getting his players to play hard and play fast in all three phases.”
Keying the Cornell turnaround has been the production it is getting from 6-foot-5, 231-pound junior quarterback Garrett-Bass Sulpizio, who moved into the starting role in a closer-than-it looks, 34-10 loss at Harvard on Oct. 10.
“When you watch them, the difference is when they settled in on their quarterback,” said McCorkle. “He’s playing well, and the confidence they have in him has helped the other guys play with confidence.”
A dual-threat quarterback, Bass-Sulpizio has completed 61.9 percent of his throws for 163.4 yards per game, and before sacks are subtracted, he's the Big Red’s leading rusher with 358 yards and seven touchdowns. In the win over Penn last week, he completed 24-of-31 passes for 265 yards and one touchdown, and he had 346 yards through the air against Brown. His biggest day on the ground came in a 91-yard effort against Colgate. He has run for a touchdown in his last six games, the first Cornell player to do that since Chad Levitt in 1996.
With his size, as well as his willingness to pull the ball down and run, Bass-Sulpizio reminds McCorkle a little of a couple of recent Dartmouth quarterbacks – Jared Gerbino and Nick Howard.
“I’d say he’s probably a combination of those two,” the coach said. “He’s huge, a physical guy who does a good job of throwing the ball and finding open receivers.”
Chief among those receivers is tight end Ryder Kurtz, a preseason All-America selection. A 6-5, 233 junior, Kurtz has helped fill the void left by a knee injury at sidelined wideout Samuel Musungu this fall by catching 32 passes for a team-high 411 yards and four touchdowns. Doryn Smith has 37 catches with three touchdowns, and Brendan Lee has 20 grabs for 200 yards. TJ Hamilton, a 6-4 sophomore, came out of nowhere last week to catch five passes for 123 yards against Penn.
Kurtz, in particular, has impressed McCorkle. “He’s a physical and very talented guy,” he said. “He does a good job blocking, and with his size, he can be a mismatch when it comes to one-on-one situations.”
Leading the ground game after Bass-Sulpizio is sophomore Jordan Triplett, whose move into the starting role coincided with the start of the Cornell win streak. The 5-10, 205 transfer from Air Force Academy has run for 341 yards and four touchdowns, averaging 4.5 yards per carry. John McAuliffe has averaged 58 yards while running for 181 yards this fall.
“It’s by committee,” McCorkle said of the Cornell run game. “They’ve got a number of guys, and they are physical. They have a big, physical offensive line that does a good job of opening holes, and their running backs hit them going downhill.”
If a solid group of receivers, running back by committee, and a dual-threat quarterback sounds familiar, it should. That’s the blend of talent that Penn tapped into in a 36-24 win over Dartmouth earlier this season.
McCorkle has stressed the importance of discipline to the Big Green during the week to avoid a replay of the Penn loss.
“Guys have got to take care of their responsibilities,” he said. “They have to be good with their eyes and be in the right spots. We have to trust each other and be very disciplined.”
Defensively, Cornell is fourth in the Ivy League in points allowed and yardage given up per game, one spot behind the Big Green in each category. Apart from allowing a 75-yard run, Cornell shut Penn out in the second half last week.
“They've done a good job of forcing teams to have to really work down the field,” McCorkle said. “They put you in situations where they get you in third downs, and that’s something we have to clean up. We want to put ourselves in good situations on first downs. Both offensively and defensively, we need to win first down.”
Free safety Damon Barnes leads the Big Red defense with 59 tackles, with linebacker Joey Cheshire right behind with 55 and fellow backer Keith Williams with 50. Williams leads the defense with three interceptions.
Strong safety Johnny Williamson has a team-high nine tackles for loss and defensive end James Reinbold had a team-best four sacks and seven quarterback hurries.
One safety leading the team in tackles for loss, and another leading the team in tackles speaks to the nature of the Cornell defense.
“They get their safeties involved against the run,” explained McCorkle. “They are aggressive and play downhill. Getting the safety down there gives them an extra hat who is the unblocked guy a lot of times.
“With the interceptions (at linebacker), it means they do a good job of getting to their spots and forcing quarterbacks to make bad decisions throwing the ball.”
NOTES
Like virtually all coaches, McCorkle plays the injury situation close to the vest. He wouldn’t go into his offensive line situation – two starting tackles and the blocking tight end have both missed the last several weeks – but what he would say is they are “getting a little healthier.”
The last time Cornell won four consecutive games came in 1999. The Big Red is bidding for five straight for the first time since 1994. . . . Cornell is on its first three-game Ivy win streak since 2017. … The 22-point victory margin last week was Cornell’s largest in an Ivy game since 1990. … The Big Red has not allowed a sack in its last two games.
Dartmouth is trying to finish off its first 5-0 home record since 2018. . . . When the pandemic canceled the 2020 season, it ended a streak of 101 consecutive years that the Big Green and Big Red had played. That was the second-longest streak in the FCS. … Dartmouth won 10 consecutive meetings in the series between 2009 and 2018, and the teams have alternated since then.
This is the 85th anniversary of the famous Fifth Down Game Dartmouth won, 3-0, after Cornell conceded the game when it was confirmed the Big Red scored what was thought at the time was the winning touchdown. (LINK)