In a season when the Dartmouth football team has had a tough enough time picking on teams its own size, the University of New Hampshire represents a somewhat daunting challenge.
The Wildcats are bigger, stronger, faster -- superlatives that generally confer a hefty advantage in any sports, let alone football.
But no one is counting Dartmouth out of Saturday's game, which kicks off at 1:30 p.m. at Memorial Field.
At the same time, no one is pretending it isn't going to be an uphill struggle for the 1-2 Big Green, who won their first game of the season against Bucknell last week in Lewisburg, Penn.
Although Dartmouth did a good deal many things right against Bucknell, the momentum advantage has to go to the Wildcats.
UNH (2-2) is a team packed with talent and on a roll. After losing its first two games on the road to William and Mary and the University of Connecticut, the Wildcats clawed back with a 31-20 win over Richmond and a 63-13 obliteration of Maine.
"UNH is the best team we will play all year," Coach John Lyons said. "It will be a real challenge for us to win this game. They are good on both sides of the ball and have some of the best skill players we will face all year."
Certainly, the 'Cats combination of Jim Stayer at quarterback and Avrom Smith in the backfield team up to be the most dangerous tandem at those positions the Big Green will see this year.
Stayer has connected on 61 percent of his passes this year, including seven for touchdowns.
Smith averages nearly 100 yards a game on the ground and has a propensity for eating up big chunks of yardage at a time.
But the most lethal weapon the Dartmouth defense will be in charge of stopping is split end David Gamble, a 6-foot-3, 210-pound junior that has made 24 catches, five of which went for touchdowns, and is averaging nearly fifteen yards a catch.
Indeed, it will be the most severe test of the season for the Big Green defense, which has thus far been the backbone of this Dartmouth team.
In addition to limiting some high-horsepower offenses to a total of 36 points after three games, the Big Green defense allowed an average of little more than 260 yards a game in total offense.
But the story of the Dartmouth defense goes beyond numbers. The unit has shut down opponents when called upon to do so.
In the team's 10-6 loss to Penn, Dartmouth continually defended the back field position, yet still managed to force the Quakers to go three and out on crucial drives late in the game to give the offense more chances to score.
Facing Holy Cross, the defense did not allow as much as a first down in the third quarter when Dartmouth was down by only a field goal.
Last week at Bucknell, the stingy squad shut the Bison down in the second quarter when the hosts were threatening to climb back into the game.
The defense will have to do without the services of starting tackle Gerry LaMontagne '94, who left last Saturday's game with a knee injury and won't return until next week.
And while Saturday's game could be decided in a large part by the effectiveness of the Dartmouth defense, the offense will still have its work cut out for it. Much of the game will be decided in the trenches, where UNH has the manpower to simply out-muscle the Big Green.
The obvious goal is for Dartmouth to establish its running game and then let quarterback Jay Fiedler '94 put his All-Ivy arm to work, but really, Lyons will be happy if the offense can just hang on to the football.
"The most important stat in football is turnover ratio," Lyons said.
Indeed, the series between the two teams support that supposition. In 1990, when the teams battled to a draw, Dartmouth forced the Wildcats to choke up six turnovers. Last year, when UNH handed the Big Green their only non-Ivy loss of the season, Dartmouth turned the ball over five times.
Still, Dartmouth goes into the game with nothing to lose -- it's UNH's ball to drop.
