Luck or Skill?

It's hard to decipher exactly what is up with both the men and the women right now.

The men last week clearly had their struggles against Harvard - at least, they did for the last 110 minutes of game time against the Crimson, as their offense that has been strong all season seemed to disappear for long stretches of time.

Then, they utterly dominated Dartmouth on the road, but it was a Dartmouth team that had lost by almost as much the previous night. How much of that was Dartmouth struggling as opposed to RPI getting back into the groove?

The women had a dumbfounding weekend as well. A day after knocking off the #7 team in the nation in Harvard, they lost to an 0-3-0 Dartmouth team that had just fallen to Union the previous night in somewhat decisive fashion.

Will the real RPI Engineers please stand up?

We'll find out more about what's real and what's not this weekend. The women travel to #3 Cornell, a team that's missing some of its top guns to the Olympics in much the same way as Harvard, but a team that is still doing extremely well nonetheless. The men also host the Big Red, a nationally ranked team that should help provide an answer as to whether the Engineers are "back" from their Harvard mishaps.

Colgate lies in wait tomorrow, and those teams are much more crystal in terms of what we need to be expecting - RPI should be able to pick up points in both contests.

And if it isn't skill that gets the job done tonight and tomorrow, hopefully there's just a little bit of luck involved. That never hurt anyone.