Running to the Top

Yale's Tyler Varga may be even busier in 2013

100 Top Moments on the way…

As we approach the 100 day countdown to kickoff, I will be using each of the 100 days to describe the 100 top moments of the 2012 season.

I took a break from the 100 top moments feature last year to give new Head Coach Pete Mangurian a clean break from the previous coaching regime.

But I consider looking back at the 100 moments from the previous season to be the most informative tool for understanding what the team did last season and where it is coming into the fall.

Just as a reminder, the 100 top moments will not be listed in ascending or descending order, (doing that would unfairly straddle the readers with a bunch of less exciting moments all at the end or the beginning of the count). Instead, they will be listed in chronological order.

So, we’ll start he countdown this Thursday, when we are exactly 100 days before kickoff, but I just wanted to get everyone prepared for what to expect right now.

Top Running Backs Returning

Last week,  I wrote about the familiar rarity of top-level impact defensive tackles in the Ivy League.

The second big rarity are 1,000-yard running backs. And right on cue, the only 1,000-yard rusher from 2012  -- Harvard’s Treavor Scales – is gone to graduation.

But there is what I would call an unusual amount of potential 1,000-yard rushers returning this season.

Columbia’s Marcorus Garrett is one of the leaders of that group. A 1^st Team All Ivy selection last year, Garrett had a breakout season in 2012. Only Scales rushed for more yards overall and Garrett also had the longest run from scrimmage in all of the Ivies. Garrett’s impressive work in the weight room this offseason makes him even more dangerous.

Yale’s Tyler Varga, who played in only eight games last season in his first year with the Bulldogs, is the man most Ivy pundits are watching the closest. The Canadian college transfer averaged 117 yards per game and scored eight TD’s. Varga was pretty much all of Yale’s offense last year, and he can’t logically be expected to continue to shoulder that entire load… but maybe “logic” isn’t what we think it is in Varga’s case. He still averaged fewer than 25 carries per game last year and he shared a lot of the running duties with the now-graduated Mordecai Cargill. So, one could argue that Varga will be asked to do even MORE in 2013. And in that case, he looks like a good bet to get to the 1,000 yard mark.

Another big contender who failed to play in all 10 games last season is Dartmouth senior Dominic Pierre. Pierre netted 830 rushing yards in nine games played, but he really only was healthy for eight full contests. He averaged five yards per carry and scored nine TD’s. He was basically a 20-carry-a-game back in 2012, and would give the Big Green a big push if he could be durable enough to up that to the 25 carry area.

If the three players mentioned above all get to the 1,000 yard mark, it would be a very rare achievement league-wide to have more than two thousand yarders. I consider them to be the top three contenders for the mark. But don’t sleep on some of the other players who I think could do it this season.

-Penn’s 5^th year senior Lyle Marsh certainly has the ability to be a top runner, but injuries have really slowed him down since he burst onto the scene in early 2009. Another factor running against him is his QB and fellow 5^th year player Bill Ragone is likely to take his usual big share of the carries away from him.  Another issue is the return of another 5^th year senior in Brandon Colavita. All three of these Quakers are talented, but too injury prone for me to think that Penn won’t run the ball by committee in 2013… much as it did in 2012, 2011, 2010, etc.

-Princeton’s Will Powers had a very strong sophomore campaign in 2012 and may get a significant upgrade over his 11 carries per game average last year.   But don’t forget DiAndre Atwater, the explosive freshman Tiger who made a big impression in just four games played last season before his injury. Powers or Atwater could get to 1,000 yards, but I don’t think both will and it’s possible they’ll each take enough of the running load that they’ll both end up in the 800-yard neighborhood.

-Another player I’m not sleeping on is Cornell’s Luke Hagy, a very talented runner who isn’t likely to get a full chance to show his stuff while Jeff Mathews remains at QB for the Big Red. But new Head Coach David Archer is promising to use the run more this season and that’s good news for Hagy.