The League

It's a Harvard/Dartmouth weekend for both the men and the women as both get their league schedules underway this weekend (save for the RPI/Harvard game from Tuesday, which was rescheduled from January as mentioned before).

For the women tonight, it's a big challenge in a Harvard team without its coach, without its star players, and seemingly without problems as the Crimson handily defeated Quinnipiac and Princeton in Boston last weekend. With the exception of last Saturday's game at UConn, the Engineers have been "in" every game they've played. Hopefully their return home will give them a bit of an edge over Harvard, who are hitting the road for the first time this season.

The men also take on the Crimson tonight, just three days removed from Tuesday's game, easily the worst showing of the young season as RPI blew a 3-0 lead that they racked up in the first 15 minutes and had to settle for a 3-3 tie. Technically, tonight's game is for first place in the ECAC, since the winner will have 3 points to a maximum of 2 points for the rest of the league. Hey, it's the little things. Expect some lineup changes after the Engineers' lethargic showing on Tuesday.

Then on Saturday, it's Dartmouth. In the afternoon in Troy, the Engineers welcome a short-handed Dartmouth team that was rocked in its first three outings (but, one would expect, is likely to be coming off their first win of the season against perennial cellar-dwellers Union). RPI would do well to take advantage of its longer bench on Saturday to get themselves a leg-up in the ECAC chase early.

Dartmouth's men are off to a tough start, too, after falling to Princeton and Brown in New Jersey last weekend at the Liberty Invitational, but they'll be at home for the first time this season (not counting their exhibition blowout of Ontario Institute of Technology), and RPI is going to have to be sharp, especially on the road. This is still expected to be a pretty solid Big Green team.

Anyway... we've got a few features coming out next week that just didn't fit in well with the awkward schedule the men have this week. Keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime...

Let's drop some bombs this weekend.