Injury Bug Biting Ivy League Teams

Following Harvard football this season has been a little bit like watching my beloved Red Sox in 2010. Things started off well enough, although there were some early bumps in the road (the Crimson lost Collier Winters and was embarrassed at Brown, the Sox lost Jacoby Ellsbury and got swept by the Rays at home). And then the sporting gods decided that the team had experienced enough recent success and decided to dole out a plague of injuries.

Harvard has started its third-string quarterback in the last two games, is playing without two of its starting wideouts, and has seen its linebackers and secondary decimated by injury. Looking at the starting lineup from the Cornell game brought me back to the dark ages of July when a typical Sox lineup included Kevin Cash, Darnell McDonald, and Bill Hall.

The injury plague hasn’t just been limited to the Crimson, though. The Bears lost their starting quarterback for the rest of the season two weeks ago against Rhode Island when Kyle Newhall-Caballero went down with a broken wrist, and Princeton’s defense took a huge hit in Week 1 when co-captain and linebacker Steven Cody broke his leg.

Now the big question is how each team will respond. Who will step up and play like Victor Martinez in a contract year? Which young gun will be Ivy football’s version of Ryan Kalish? And who will pull a Josh Beckett and doom his team’s fans to a season of agony and thoughts of what could have been?

We won’t learn too much this week, as all eyes will rightly be on a matchup of Ivy unbeatens—Columbia and Penn—in Philadelphia. Which team will fall victim to the wrath of the sporting gods next? Maybe that’s the better question.

Let’s take a spin around the Ivies.

FORDHAM (2-4) at YALE (3-1, 2-0 Ivy)

Yale’s on a roll. Fordham...not so much. The Rams have lost three straight, including a pair to Patriot League foes Holy Cross and Lehigh. But Fordham does have a big positive on its resume: it’s the only team to beat Columbia this season with a 16-9 win way back on Sept. 18.

Meanwhile, the Bulldogs picked up a big road win at Dartmouth last week with a last-minute field goal. The jury’s still out about whether beating the Big Green is something to brag about or if Yale should be embarrassed that it almost lost to once-lowly Dartmouth. But regardless, quarterback Patrick Witt is averaging 277 yards per game, the Bulldogs have two established running backs, and the Rams are reeling. Seems like that decision to start awarding athletic scholarships hasn’t paid off for Fordham yet. Advantage Yale.

Prediction: Yale 31, Fordham 17.

COLGATE (3-2, 1-0 Patriot) at CORNELL (1-3, 0-2 Ivy)

Please. This is Cornell, the team that recovered a fumble on Harvard’s five-yard line last week and only got a field goal out of it. Is there even a question? The Raiders should roll to a second-straight Ivy win.

Prediction: Colgate 35, Cornell 10.

HOLY CROSS (3-3, 0-1 Patriot) at DARTMOUTH (2-2, 0-2 Ivy)

Ah, Dartmouth. How you toy with my emotions. After I raised a hullabaloo last week about how the Big Green was the dark horse of the Ivy League, the team went and lost to Yale. So much for that.

Meanwhile, Holy Cross has put together two straight wins to bring its record back to .500. That includes a 17-13 victory over Brown last weekend, when Ryan Taggart picked apart the Bears’ defense to the tune of 331 passing yards.

The Crusaders’ defense seems suspect, and Dartmouth tailback Nick Schwieger is a serious threat on the ground. This one should be close, but my faith in the Big Green is gone.

Prediction: Holy Cross 31, Dartmouth 28.

BROWN (2-2, 1-0 Ivy) at PRINCETON (1-3, 0-1 Ivy)

Brown is now a Newhall-Caballero-less team again, and that is good news for the rest of the Ivy League. The Bears had to turn to their third-string sophomore quarterback, Patrick Donnelly, last week (sound familiar?) after backup Joe Springer failed to get a first down in the opening quarter against Holy Cross, and Brown sputtered to a loss.

The Bears are still an undefeated Ivy team, but they will have trouble keeping that unblemished record intact without Newhall-Caballero. Still, that perfect record should remain standing after this Saturday. Princeton has been outscored, 86-24, over its last two contests. Depleted as they are, Brown should pick up another W.

Prediction: Brown 24, Princeton 10.

COLUMBIA (3-1, 1-0 Ivy) at No. 25 PENN (3-1, 1-0 Ivy)

If you’re going to pay attention to any Ivy football game this weekend, make it this clash in Philadelphia. Columbia is looking darn good, and its sophomore QB Sean Brackett has won two straight Ivy Offensive Player of the Week awards. Brackett has thrown for eight touchdowns in the last two games, and he added a rushing score of his own in a win over Lafayette last week.

But the Lions’ offense is coming up against the top defense in the Ivy League, a team that’s allowed an average of just 165 passing yards per game this season. Penn isn’t flashy—it’s just good. And the Quakers haven’t lost to Columbia since 1996.

Brown’s down for the count, and the Crimson has already picked up a league loss, so this game is going to determine who the rest of the Ancient Eight is going to be chasing. Call me crazy, but I’m putting my proverbial money on Brackett and his Lions.

Prediction: Columbia 24, Penn 22.

LEHIGH (3-2, 0-0 Patriot) at HARVARD (3-1, 1-1 Ivy)

Last year, Harvard rolled over Lehigh and Cornell before being handed its worst loss of the season at home at the hands of Lafayette. This year, the Crimson has steamrolled the Leopards and Big Red, and now it’s facing a bigger test in the visiting Mountain Hawks.

Lehigh is much better than the 4-7 team that Harvard dominated last year—its only two losses have been against nationally-ranked Villanova and New Hampshire. But the Mountain Hawks aren’t a great team, and they’re giving up an average of 427 yards of offense per game. This is a perfect test for the injury-battered Crimson to find out what it’s made of before plunging head-first into the rest of its Ivy schedule.

Prediction: Harvard 21, Lehigh 14.

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@college.harvard.edu.