It's finally over.
No more Colgate, Holy Cross or Bucknell.
No more Duquesne, no more Fordham and thankfully, no more Georgetown.
Just five weeks, eight teams and one trophy.
From this week forward, the meaningless games will be gone as four Ivy League games each week decide whether Yale can continue to surprise, whether Penn can hold on and whether Brown and Harvard can put their early losses behind them.
With Yale and Penn -- the league's only unbeatens -- meeting tomorrow in Philadelphia, for the rest of the league, it's all about avoiding that devastating second loss.
Only twice in the conference's 49-year history has a team with two losses won a share of the Ivy title.
Brown (4-1, 1-1) at Cornell (3-2, 1-1)
Taking the nation's leading rusher and an experienced team into Ithaca, N.Y., Brown will have one more thing on its side tomorrow -- short-term memory.
The Bears remember what the Big Red was able to do to Harvard's Clifton Dawson, who once appeared unstoppable. In the process, they saw what Cornell did to Harvard's title hopes.
And the Bears are determined not to suffer the same fate.
Brown is one late collapse against Harvard away from being undefeated, surely ranked and in control of the Ivy League race.
However hard it is to ignore that possibility, it is harder to ignore Nick Hartigan, who has torched opponents for 165.4 rushing yards per game -- the best in all of Division I-AA, bolstered by his 245-yard outburst last week against Princeton.
Cornell put up 57 last week on Georgetown, but then again, some intramural teams could put up 57 against the lowly Hoyas.
Brown's defense has been suspect in the last few weeks, and the Bears must not let Cornell's first half onslaught against Harvard repeat itself.
After all, Brown may have the league's leading rusher, but at 237 yards per game, the Big Red boasts the league's best team rushing attack.
Princeton (3-2, 1-1) at Harvard (3-2, 1-1)
While Harvard has had its struggles in the past few weeks, this matchup shapes up well for the Crimson.
Harvard's biggest weakness has been its passing defense, which has allowed a league-worst 1,213 yards in five games.
However, Princeton ranks ahead of only run-happy Cornell in passing offense, and quarterback Jeff Terrell has shown no signs of being able to take advantage. Terrell has thrown just three touchdowns in five games, compared to his six interceptions, and his completion percentage of 52.9 is the worst in the Ivies.
On the offensive side of the ball for the Crimson, quarterback Liam O'Hagan seems to have corrected some of his recent problems with a three-touchdown, no-interception performance last week in a win over Lafayette.
It took Dawson 28 carries last week to reach 100 yards, but he may not need to put in that kind of workload against the Tigers in Boston.
Columbia (2-3, 0-2) at Dartmouth (1-4, 0-2)
These two teams will have a hard time avoiding that second loss.
For the Lions, 0-2 came last week in a big way against the Quakers, while Dartmouth suffered its second league loss in a shutout against Yale the previous week.
Points could be hard to come by for these two teams, whose offensive statistics range from bad to worse to much worse.
In the category of the bad, neither has scored more than 16 points in any of its last three games.
Worse, Columbia and Dartmouth rank last and second-to-last in the Ivies in points, yards and first downs.
And even worse, their offensive struggles are significant at a national level. The Lions are last in the nation in rushing yards per game with 44, while Dartmouth is second to last with 50 per game.
Both rank in the bottom 10 in Division I-AA in total yards per contest.
Defensively, while neither team is stellar, give the slight edge to the Big Green, which has allowed 54 fewer yards per game.
