If you want to relive Columbia's win over Brown and you have ESPN+, you can see the archived game here.
But this is a busy week of excitement ahead for Ivy League Football!
-The biggest source of excitement is that we could get the first ever four-way tie for the Ivy football title. All that needs to happen is for Penn to beat Princeton at Princeton Stadium and Harvard to beat Yale at Harvard Stadium. For the record, my feeling is that what will really happen is that Princeton will win and Yale will not... which means I'm predicting the Tigers will take the title outright.
-Perhaps even more up in the air are the races for Ivy offensive and defensive player of the year. If you look at the Ivy individual leaders stat page, neither of these awards is going to be an obvious choice as of NOW. Yes, Harvard RB Aidan Bourget is a dominant leader in rushing stats. But if Yale beats Harvard Saturday and QB Nolan Grooms has another monster game, is Grooms not the POY? You get the picture that I suspect that the key stars of the games this Saturday will be in a good position to win the Bushnell awards.
-Columbia's Scott Valentas, who dominates a lot of the defensive leader boards, should be a strong contender for defensive POY. He should at least be named as a finalist. He was just named as the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Week for the second week in a row. While this Saturday's Columbia-Cornell game will not have championship connotations, how Valentas performs in that game could definitely help his case. I just worry that someone a little less deserving who stars in either the Penn-Princeton or Harvard-Yale game will get undue attention.
-Oh, and it's going to be COLD this weekend. Temps in NYC at game time for the Columbia-Cornell and Penn-Princeton games will be in the 30s, same goes for Cambridge at the Harvard-Yale game, and could be as low as the 20s for the Brown-Dartmouth game in New Hampshire.
23 comments:
I agree with Jake, that if Scott Valentas has another monster game on Saturday against Cornell, he should win the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year award. However, I have no idea how the Ivy Player of the Year in any category is selected. Does anyone know?
Valentas is the best defender in the league. He does it all: tackling machine, pass rush, pass defense, turnovers.
Valentas is from Kansas, as am I (just had to add a little geographical chauvinism to the commentary.)
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
The head coaches used to vote on POY; I imagine they still do; they cannot vote for any of their own players.
Valentas has been fantastic, and he’d certainly get my vote for DPOY. By the way (and this is a nice problem to have), I was having trouble deciding whom I would consider the MVP in the Brown game. Jake made a very good case for Bell, but obviously Valentas also had a monster game. However, I’d actually go with Libman, with his fantastic YAC on his first TD, along with his critical catch on third down in OT and of course his second TD.
I’m hoping we finish the season on a high note by beating Cornell. I’m happy the game is at home, as I think it’s going to be a dogfight. If we win, we’ll finish 6-4 (3-4), which, while a bit disappointing given our expectations prior to the season, would still be a major accomplishment after starting Ivy play 0-4.
If we lose to Cornell, the narrative will be a bit different. But either way, I’m not ready to give up on Al. It’s clear we need to make some changes in terms of the coaching of our offense, but I would keep Al (provided he wants to keep coaching). Not to get ahead of ourselves, but next year could be a breakthrough for us, especially if Bell returns and we open up the offense (and ditch the two-yard terror). As another poster mentioned, it does seem possible Green wasn’t 100 percent when he was playing. If he gets healthy and we have a Bell/Green platoon, we could be dangerous on offense and defense. Now we would just have to figure out special teams…
I was at the Brown game. If you hadn't been following our team, the play of the Special Teams gave little indication of the problems bedeviling those units earlier in the Ivy schedule--except Connor McFadden's compulsion to run back punts unnecessarily, which led to two fumbles, luckily both of which he recovered. He's no doubt a talented player and very fast, but he needs more experience in understanding the situation, reading the play and in positioning himself for making catches. Hopefully, with another year under his belt, those shortcomings will resolve themselves. If not, I'd vote for Giorgi to handle punt return duties. The blocking schemes on punting and field goal kicking seemed sharp and the new punter got off some great kicks including one that penned Brown inside its 5. Hats off to the Special Teams coach for righting the ship. If Special teams perform well against Cornell we should have a good chance to snag the W.
Valentas is a beast. Reminds me of a Dartmouth linebacker of my college days who tore up the Ivy League...and then the NFL. Name of Williams.
Last thoughts on Brown
Team Spirit- I thought the team played very hard and smart for 60 minutes; they played as a team and for each other, fought to the whistle, and kept the faith throughout and remained focused regardless of the circumstances. Credit the coaches for seeing that the team was well prepared in this aspect of the game. I also think the team leaders should take a bow. They didn’t let their mid-season woes affect their performance.
Special Teams-Fixing the punting was huge. Credit the coaches. Unfortunately, this begs the question of how the coaches permitted this to fester in the first place. There were times earlier on that we looked like a JV HS team trying to punt. Let’s hope the fix holds up. Felkins remains very reliable.
I thought the decision to forego 41 yd FG attempt with wind at Felkins back at end of game was a mistake. It would’ve meant that Brown would need a TD; a FG would fall short. ( BTW- I didn’t have a big issue with going for it on 4 th and 4, but trying to throw a 25 yd TD pass under very tight coverage on a short field was typical Fabish foolishness, especially when we only needed 4 yds.
Offense: I won’t repeat my view of Fabish. Suffice it to say—How in the world did it take 9 games this year for Fabish to understand that the rules of football permit you to throw over the middle. And the results were overwhelmingly positive. Go to the videotape! Crucial catches for first downs, TDS too. And the 3rd down completion in OT for 1st down too! I hope the Brown game was his Saul of Tarsus moment. If so, our entire offensive attack should benefit greatly.
On the other hand, Fabish gets an F for his play calling on our last 2 drives of the 2Q. He single-handedly let Brown, which was on the ropes, back into the game. His zeal for throwing even when it is counterproductive continues uncontrolled. Instead of trying to run and using the clock as our ally, he had to throw. And he did this on both series. The result —Our last 2 drives took 1.36 and 1.52 minutes respectively. We should’ve been bleeding the clock. It gave Brown both life and the opportunity to start a comeback. Am I missing something here?
Does anyone understand why when we have 2nd and 3 or 4, Fabish always passes. His fantasy of gloriously throwing downfield overcomes the importance of grinding out first downs to help out with field position and maintain possession of the ball. And when we have 2nd and 10and should throw, we seem to always run our usual slow developing play up the middle for nought.
Fortunately, Fabish seems to have abandoned his muddle huddle and wildcat. Unfortunately, his high risk, largely unsuccessful horizontal passing game remains in the mix.
I’m at a loss as to why Young, a 230 lb HM all Ivy RB has done so little - even though he now shares the load with Georgi. I suspect it’s the plays he is called upon to run as well as the down in which he is called upon to run has a lot to do with it. I would think a good OC would find a way to get him going. Only 7 Runs against Brown. He’s too good not to be used more.
Defense-I won’t repeat my view of our defensive system. I will point out, however, that the plain vanilla D employed on Brown’s last 2 drives of the 4Q ( and entire game) almost cost us the game. Here are the stats for Browns last 2 drives: 12 plays for 96 yds and 12 plays for 71 yds! Blaming it on the long bus ride doesn’t quite hold water. Rather, It was that we sat back in our predictable semi prevent D that was the issue. BTW- I fully understand that this “ bend don’t break “ approach has its place, but our DC has taken this approach to a new undesirable level.
When all is said and done, with a win this week against a good Cornell team, the era of good feelings achieved under Bags will carry over to next season.
Let’s go Lions!
I concur with NJ Lion and Peter Stevens... Both are voices that should be listened too. Simply stated FABISH MUST GO.
Not a big fan of McFadden. Not experienced enough. Makes bad decisions. Needs much more seasoning before being the returner..Princeton game was a prime example. Georgi more sure handed.. What you give away in some speed you make up in safety.
Brown runs about 15-20 more plays than any other IL team on average. That exhausts the defense. so the way to slow that down is to keep the ball out of the Brown Offense’s hands as long as possible.As a former HS DB it’s hard to understand how exhausting it is to play defense when the offense can keep running fresh skill players pinto the field.
It is true the program has had great improvements :still we are number 7 in the league in points scored per game ... with the fewest touchdowns in league play.. We have fine running backs and a strong offensive line and great receivers and have had fine QB play ...we are of course a great world ranked university ..and should attract and do attract great athletes.. I still don't understand how we have a 6' 6" tight end weighing 270 pounds and haven't used him much though he did score the winning touchdown for us at Harvard...salute to him and his teammates and the great pass to him .. and the time to pass - Defense has improved each game.
Ryan Young is an incredible talent and can catch the ball ..in the last game he was open for passes as you all may have noticed ..
I am pleased with the direction of the program.
Mid Pack forever! Losing Ivy record .. I can see why you are so pleased
Ok. I'm falling for the click-bait. If we can win this weekend, three in a row would be a strong accomplishment following that string of four Ivy losses, several of which were nightmares. Having, like some of us here, gone through many 0-10, 1-9, and 2-8 years, I'm also like where the program is going. As noted in another post, other Lion teams that started at 0-4 would inevitably have gone 0-7, perhaps 1-6. The players and coaches turned things around. Of course, improvements can be made and mistakes/miscues reduced. But this season's narrative (and grousing) is probably similar in most of the other Ivy programs other than Yale and Princeton.
What hurt about the losses is that we played well enough to win some of those games were it not for some reason uncharacteristic mistakes atypical of a Bagnoli team.
Dad is upset again about juniors playing time
Two words to answer your question: Stone Hands
Sounds like you should be coaching
Let's keep padding that out of conference schedule but what about the Ivies?
Well, I had to weigh in as relates to "padding". Do Stetson, VMI, Valpo, Central CT, Bryant, Howard and even Merrimack (a program seemingly on the rise) constitute padding by our Ivy counterparts? Bucknell, Lafayette, Lehigh and even Colgate are on leaner years. Fordham stands out but not on any Ivy schedules. Yes, we don't have Holy Cross, UNH, URI. Georgetown is and has been on other Ivy schedules, and rather meaningful given the Lou Little Trophy. Yeah, Marist and Wagner would seem like the padding you're referring to, but really not much different from their fellow Pioneer and NEC schools listed above and on Ivy schedules.
Would Al be even close to .500 here after 7 years without the Gimmes?
No question about that. And in his early years here, even those weren't gimmes. Point is that nearly all Ivy schools now have what most would consider "gimmes". Perhaps it's time to bring back our more traditional opponents from the Patriot League.
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