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Harvard Still in the Hunt for the Ivy League Title

So even though Dartmouth is coming into the weekend off of a lopsided win and Harvard may have some self-esteem issues after losing to Princeton and snapping a 15-game home streak, expect a tight game.

Because the Big Green lost to Holy Cross, a game that the Crimson also took to triple overtime—though this one ended with a W—I’m taking Harvard in a close one.

Prediction: Harvard 38, Dartmouth 34

COLUMBIA (0-6, 0-3 Ivy) AT YALE (3-3, 1-2 Ivy)

This game is being televised on the YES network, but if you’re looking for the answer to whether you should watch this game, it’s NO (also, please let me know if you have any idea a) what the YES network is and b) why they’re showing this game).

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Yale’s lone Ivy win comes at the expense of one of the two Ivy teams without a single league win—Cornell. The other team with a grand total of zero Ancient Eight victories halfway through the season? Columbia.

This week’s matchup between last season’s bottom finishers may be made even less interesting by the absence of Yale tailback Tyler Varga (apparently so good he has his own tab on the Yale football website), who was injured two weeks ago, and starting quarterback Henry Furman.

But even if the Elis are without Furman and Varga come Saturday, it’s still Columbia, which through three games has been outscored by its Ivy opponents by 93 points.

Prediction: Yale 28, Columbia 7

CORNELL (1-5, 0-3 Ivy) AT PRINCETON (5-1, 3-0 Ivy)

If the Ivy League title race is the USS Enterprise, Princeton is Captain Kirk—in the driver’s seat, in control of its own destiny. With arguably its hardest game—Harvard— out of the way, winning out the season will give the Tigers the title for the first time since 2006.

But Princeton’s been in this position before—last year, the 2012 fourth-quarter meltdown of the Harvard football team gave the Tigers a 3-0 Ivy record.

They finished the season 4-3, tied for third in the league. Perhaps the shock of beating Harvard last year was too much to handle.

However, this year’s Princeton spaceship looks too polished to get tripped up by a Big Red asteroid again. It seems to have overcome its problem of slow starts, something that troubles Cornell. Jeff Mathews and—wait, just kidding, that’s Cornell’s entire team—his NFL-caliber arm won’t be enough to stop a rolling Tigers team back home at Princeton Stadium.

Prediction:  Princeton 52, Cornell 24

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