Big Green Teams
Indians Let Up After Brilliant Victory Over Colgate And Run Into a 7-0 Defeat at Harvard
IF SOME SMART ALECK could but devise a system that would correctly indicate not how good a team is in any Ivy League sports event, but which of the opponents has the most determination, then said smart aleck could make a fortune predicting the outcome of athletic contests between the old line colleges.
Being just an aleck and not a smart one, we shall have to plod along making a living on the weekly pay check.
What we are trying to uncover for you readers is the answer to the question, how could the Dartmouth eleven be such a darn good team against Colgate and such a very poor one against Harvard?
The best analysis is this: For the Colgate encounter the Big Green wanted to win so much that every move they made, every tackle they unfolded, every block that was smashed at a Red Raider was an effort put forth for victory.
As early in the week as Monday of the Harvard classic it was apparent that the Indians would not bring into Harvard stadium the same spirit and desperation that had produced the upset win over Andy Kerr's extremely competent eleven.
And what is more, the coaching staff could do nothing about the situation. The attitude that the new grid mentors faced was something the players themselves were likewise helpless to overcome.
Let us look at the situation as intelligent observers. For seven years in a row Dartmouth teams took the trip to Cambridge and seven years in a row the Crimson was defeated. Was it not only natural that an air of over confidence concerning the Harvard eleven was bound to arise sooner or later?
Furthermore despite the fact that Tuss McLaughry warned his players that Harvard was pointing to the Dartmouth game as its No. I objective of the 1941 season and that the lickings Penn and Cornell administered to the Harlow forces could be disregarded, the boys, although they tried, could not take the whole affair seriously. Modern youth prides itself in its ability to spot propaganda a mile off and in its ability to form its own conclusions from the facts at hand, so whatever a football staff in this day and age says about an opponent who has been licked twice, the words fall on deaf ears unless the squad members can see eye to eye with the scouting reports.
That the players, suffering from the false sense of security that so many victories over Harvard produced and harboring the mistaken impression that the Crimson eleven wasn't any good no matter what the coaches said about them, put only half of their efforts into preparation for the game and only one quarter of their will-to-win into the contest itself is the one and only reason why Dartmouth met defeat on October 18.
This is not meant as any slur on the great game Harvard played. In fact all of the determination, all of the psychological factors that are so important in Ivy League football, were all in the Crimson's favor. Harvard backs ran hard. Harvard's line charged with a terrific defensive smash from end to end.
But Dartmouth playing with the attitude of the Colgate fray would have, and should have, defeated Harvard by a margin of three touchdowns.
You can take it from this that we still think that the 1941 eleven under Tuss McLaughry has the making of a better than good unit. It is a team with an attack that is the finest in all football. It is a team that when it wants to put out, can hit as hard and play as ruggedly as any in the nation. It is a team that if you scheduled a meeting with the top teams of the country and the players were given a very good reason why they should bring home a victory, Dartmouth could make a fight out of the encounter for 60 minutes and never at any point in the tilt would the Big Green be outclassed.
If this seems on the strong side as statements go, at least it is a sincere estimate of how we regard the current Indians.
Norwich was a good small college eleven. Fully as good as hailed before game time. The Greens were just too good, though, for the Cadets with the line playing alert and smashing football and the many Green backs running wild each time Norwich made the slightest mistake.
Amherst was less tough. The score of 47-7 was as low as the total could be kept. Once again, though, the Indians showed speed, aggressiveness and power, for the game served as a last warm-up for the Colgate affair.
The morning of the Colgate game broke into a brilliant red over Balch Hill and then retired into an overcast, gloomy day that more or less reflected the opinion the Dartmouth rooters had of what the great Colgate squad was going to do to the Indians.
The contest had not progressed many minutes before it was obvious that nothing of the kind was to develop.
Right from the opening kickoff Dartmouth played like a championship team. Even more like a championship team when Ray Wolfe fumbled a Colgate punt into the Green end-zone and the Indians trailed, 6-0. Without batting an eyelash the Indians took the slap on the puss and roared back at the Colgate foe with vicious football until the Red Raiders were actually hanging onto the ropes gasping for air. Little Ted Arico, still the people's favorite son, scored the first touchdown, sophomore Tommy Douglas scored the second, and another sophomore, Bud Troxell, slapped over the last score looking more like a tank than a human being.
No one who saw the game could say otherwise than that the Indians, playing their first major test under McLaughry, were little short of terrific. The line held every time the goal line was threatened. The backs benefitted time after time from blocks that hurt when they landed.
On the land, in the air, the Big Green outclassed Colgate and had the clock run on three or four minutes more, Dartmouth appeared to be capable of two more touchdowns so great was the supremacy of the home team at the end of the game.
There are some who believe that the victory went to the heads of the Dartmouths. With this opinion we do not agree. We believe as we mentioned at the outset of this article, that it was the outlook taken on the Harvard game that was responsible for the lapse of the Indians and not any conceit over ability shown against Colgate.
Just what may be expected against Yale, William and Mary, Princeton, Cornell and Georgia?
We think the Dartmouth team is capable of playing as it did against Colgate for the rest of the year. It goes without saying that the defeat by Harvard was a stunning blow. Perhaps no Dartmouth team of recent years has ever taken a setback so hard. The Indians took the licking with tears in their eyes because it took the defeat to make them realize that to underestimate an opponent is to court defeat. The lessons learned will be of help from here to the finish and will be of help next year and for years to come. Certainly the juniors and sophomores on the squad will never forget what can happen when a team loses its spark because it could find no outstanding reason for having one.
And this Dartmouth team is good when it has spark. It is a team with fast backs led by Ray Wolfe, Ted Arico, Tommy Douglas, Bill Wierman, Bud Kast, Meryll Frost and Dale Bartholomew paced by blocking backs John Krol, Walt Anderson and Bob Liming. It is a team with a line that can be good when it plays on its toes and not on its heels as it did against the Crimson. Perhaps no two men ever suffered more disappointment and bewilderment than did Bill Bevan and George Barclay when they saw a Dartmouth line they had taught all spring and all fall to be aggressive and rugged demonstrate the exact reverse of all these things on the Harvard playing field.
Nevertheless these two young men discovered something as coaches that will stand them in good use hereafter, i.e., that unlike Minnesota and North Carolina teams that they played on, the big trick of teaching football in the Ivy League is coming up with an incentive for the boys to work on. Just where to find an incentive is not easy as every man who has coached in this silly old league of ours will admit, but it is the key to success no matter how you slice it, and it is the reason why in 1940 Dartmouth lost to Franklin and Marshall and defeated Cornell, why year after year and for years to come there should never be any such animal in our language as an underdog.
One other item concerning the football squad to date concerns the sophomores. Many of them should have been of real service to the team, and few of them have been so far. Douglas and Frost have come through as backs to the limit of expectations and even beyond these limits. Others have disappointed and very much so.
Not that they haven't the ability and not that they aren't potentially some of the best prospects Dartmouth has had in years. What they needed to find out as a group was that the jump from freshman to varsity football is still a gap a mile wide and two miles long. This year's sophomore group received too much publicity, too much praise for being good football players before they ever proved it where it counts. The defeat from Harvard will do the sophomores more good than the rest of the squad combined.
Perhaps now they will settle down and contribute the measure they owe the squad.
If so there is a lot of talent that is still inexperienced, still in the raw that can be tapped for future games.
In ends Joe McDevitt and Roger Arnold, tackles Nick Daukas and Gus Clucas, guards Johnny Peacock and Roger Antaya, and center Russ Isner there stand the makings of a second line of size and strength. Fullback Troxell is another sophomore of unusual ability who will be valuable when he catches on to the varsity way of doing things.
Undoubtedly the sophomores started to really put out on Monday after the Harvard contest. If they will continue the pace they will give the squad depth that is needed.
And finally the Dartmouth 1941 football squad must never again forget that its greatest asset in victory was its desire to win and that if it has recaptured this desire in defeat it has the potentialities to knock each of its remaining foes right out of the ball park.
SCORING PLAY THAT DEFEATED COLGATE With the contest tied at 6-all and Colgate's defenders ganging up to stop Troxell, whohad faked a line plunge, Tom Douglas, sophomore halfback, slanted through tackle toscore standing up in the final quarter. Arrow shows Douglas crossing the goal line.
TOUCHDOWN PLAY THAT GAVE HARVARD VICTORY Capt. Fran Lee (directly behind No. 30) shown going over from the 3-yard line at thestart of the fourth quarter in Cambridge. It was Harvard's first touchdown of the seasonand enough to defeat the Big Green, 7-0.
STANDOUT IN GREEN LINE Charlie Camp, senior tackle from Longmeadow, Mass., whose line play has beenconsistently fine this season.
