Brown Bears host Dartmouth Big Green
Brown Stadium (Providence, R.I.), 12:30 pm

The Game Dartmouth and Brown are meeting for the 81st time with the Big Green holding a 52-24-4 series advantage, but Brown has won the last five meetings, including last year's 21-18 decision in Hanover ... Brown QB Kyle Slager (Columbus, Ohio) had a big game -- throwing for 270 yards on 32-of-42 passing ... Today's matchup will feature a pair of hot Buckeyes ... Big Green QB Charlie Rittgers (Lebanon, Ohio) has completed 58 percent of his passes for more than 260 yards a game with eight TDs and just four interceptions in Dartmouth's four-game win streak ... Slager has averaged nearly 350 passing yards and three TDs in the last two weekend for the Bears ... When the League was formed, Dartmouth allowed Brown just seven points in the first seven matchups (1956-62), outscoring the Bears 164-7 ... Among the series highlights were the 1969 game when there were three breakaway plays of more than 83 yards in a 38-13 Green win, the 1991 game in which Dartmouth's Al Rosier ran for a school-record 229 yards and James Perry ... Perry, the Ivies all-time top passer, threw for more than 1,300 yards in three games against Dartmouth ... Another unique feature of the series is that Hall of Famer 'Tuss' McLaughry not only coached each program, he coached a son at each program (John at Brown and Bob at Dartmouth) ... In the 1905 matchup in Springfield, Mass., the bear made its first appearance as the Brown mascot ... The radio broadcasts can be heard in New Hampshire on WFDR (99.3 FM) with Rick Adams, Wayne Young and Bob Lipman and in Providence on WSKO: The Score (790 AM) with Scott Cordischi and Mike Wall.

The Coaches Dartmouth Coach John Lyons (Penn '74) has his Big Green on the verge of something unprecedented since the official formation of the Ivy League ... Since then (1956), no team has ever opened the season 0-4 and wound up with a winning record ... Before the formation it happened once, when the 1954 Cornell squad went from 0-4 to 5-4 for Coach Lefty James ... Last week's win over Cornell evened Lyons' career record at 58-58-1 ... Brown Coach Phil Estes (New Hampshire '80) likes the cold weather as much as the Tampa Bay Bucs despise it ... In Estes' tenure in Providence, the Bears are 15-3 in November, including 7-2 at Brown Stadium ... The loss were a four-pointer to Yale last year and a three-pointer to Penn this season ... Only three coaches in Brown history have more victories than Estes -- Edward North Robinson (140 from 1898-25); Tuss McLaughry (76 from 1926-40) and John Anderson (60 from 1973-83).

The Incidentals The Big Green has won four straight -- the best streak since 1997 -- to improve its record to 4-4 ... Senior All-America tight end Casey Cramer (Middleton, Wis.) jumped from fourth to second on Dartmouth's all-time receiving yardage leaderboard with 109 yards against Cornell ... Cramer, who currently has 2,293 yards, passed Jack Daly '84 for third place ... He also passed teammate Jay Barnard (Dallas, Texas) for second place, at least for the moment ... Barnard, with 2,287 yards, is six yards behind Cramer ... Both players have a shot at the top spot, but would need a big finish to catch Craig Morton '89 ... Morton holds the record with 2,605 yards ... More realistically than reaching Morton, both could get to 2,500 yards ... Only nine players in Ivy history have reached that plateau ... Barnard, with 206 career catches, is sixth all-time in the Ivy League and ranks fourth nationally this year at 7.5 catches per game ... During Dartmouth's winning streak, Cramer and Barnard have each caught 22 passes from sophomore quarterback Charlie Rittgers (Lebanon, Ohio) ... Against Cornell, Rittgers had another big day for the Big Green ... A week after winning the Boston Globe Gold Helmet Award, Rittgers completed 17-of-29 passes for 207 yards and a career-high four touchdowns ... Senior fullback Scott Wedum (Fort Collins, Colo.) had a strong day rushing the ball, going for 55 yards on only 11 carries ... Sophomore Mike Ribero (Palo Alto, Calif.) and senior Phil Frost (Westfield, Mass.) both had interceptions that led to Dartmouth touchdowns en route to the record-evening victory ... The Ivy League has had some great kickers, including the Gogolaks (Pete and Charley) and Nick Lowery, but the only kicker to ever boot three 50-yard field goals in his career is Dartmouth junior Tyler Lavin (Potomac, Md.) ... He hit his third -- a 50-yarder -- in the second quarter against Harvard, moving himself out of the small group that had previously booted two (Penn's Tim Mazzetti, Harvard's Mark Hall and Princeton's Taylor Northrop) ... Lavin nailed a 51-yarder against Columbia last year and then connected on a 52-yard field goal in the season opener against Colgate ... After scoring no more than 21 points in the first seven games of the season, Brown finally had the offensive outburst that Ivy League followers expect ... The Bears racked up 55 points and 547 yards of offense in a surprising 55-44 victory over Yale in New Haven ... The game also featured eight lead changes and more than 1,000 yards of total offense as the two teams scored nine touchdowns in the second half ... The heroes were plentiful as senior quarterback Kyle Slager (Columbus, Ohio) completed 32-of-48 passes for 376 yards and five touchdowns, just one short of the Brown record for TDs in a game ... Trailing 44-41 with 1:38 remaining, Slager drove the Bears 64 yards in six plays, tossing a 17-yard touchdown pass to wideout Lonnie Hill (Salem, Mass.) for the game-winning score with just 26 seconds remaining ... It was Hill's fourth TD catch of the game, which matches the all-time record in an Ivy League game ... Michael Lerch of Princeton did it in 1991 against Brown and then the Bears' Stephen Campbell matched it against Penn in 1999 ... With 25 catches for 351 yards in the last two weeks, Hill has taken over the League lead with 64 catches (8.0 a game) ... He is third nationally ... The third hero was sophomore running back Nick Hartigan (Fairfax, Va.), who rushed for 166 yards and two scores in 33 attempts ... Both Hartigan and Penn's Sam Mathews are in a run for the records ... Hartigan needs 307 yards in the last two games to surpass Ed Marinaro's Ivy sophomore record of 1,409 rushing yards in all games, but Mathews has a 49-yard lead in the Ivy only race ... Now with 1,103 yards in eight games, Hartigan is the third Brown rusher to top 1,000 yards in a season and needs just 111 yards to break Mike Malan's school record, set in 2000 ... After Slager hit Hill with the go-ahead score in the last minutes, the Bears put an exclamation point on the victory when sophomore safety Jamie Gasparella (New Hudson, Mich.) picked off a Yale pass with nine seconds remaining and returned it 32 yards for a touchdown ... While it wasn't a game for defense, senior cornerback Darren Carmon (New Orleans, La.) led the Bears with 12 tackles, including two for a loss ... Senior Nick Mellors (Doylestown, Pa.) made eight tackles, while senior defensive end Jessie Hawkins (Ojai, Calif.) continued his strong play with two quarterback sacks.