Moving up the charts

With 135 yards in Saturday's win at Dartmouth, Mike McLeod moved past former Cornell star Derrick Harmon and ex-Princeton great Judd Garrett and into sixth place on the career rushing list in Ivy League games. McLeod has 2,504 with five league games remaining in his brilliant Yale career. He would have to average 177.4 yards the rest of the way to catch the record holder, Cornell's Ed Marinaro who accomplished the feat in the days when freshmen were not eligible to play varsity football in the Ivy League.

McLeod did move into second place in the Ivy League record books with rushing attempts in all games. He trails Harvard's Clifton Dawson by 33. McLeod's TD run allowed him to move past Marinaro and into sole possession of third place on the rushing touchdown list (in all games). McLeod has 51 career rushing scores.

With six tackles, senior linebacker Bobby Abare moved into the top 20 on Yale's career list. Abare is 19th with 226 career stops. He also moved into a tie for 10th with his ninth career interception. Senior safety Steve Santoro appeared to intercept his 11th career pass but it was nullified because of a roughing the pass penalty.

Abare is currently fifth in the Football Championship Subdivision stats with an average of 0.75 interceptions a game, the highest ranking of any Yale player. Joe Hathaway should be fifth in sacks with four in four games but one of his three sacks in a season-opening win over Georgetown was incorrectly credited to another player. Although the error was corrected in the Yale statistics, the NCAA database has not made the change. As a result, he is 22nd with an average of 0.75 sacks a game.

While we are on the stat correction subject, look for the forced fumble on Saturday - originally credited to Larry Abare - to be given to Paul Rice. I watched a replay of the play and it was clearly Rice who put his helmet on the ball on a Milan Williams running play.

Mike McLeod (100.25 rushing yards/game) and Ryan Fodor (143.0 passing efficiency) are ranked 20th and 25th respectively in the NCAA database.

In the NCAA team stats Yale is in the top 10 in seven defensive categories:
4th in scoring defense (14.8 points)
4th in red zone defense (7 scores allowed in 12 trips to the red zone)
6th in rushing defense (66 yards/game)
9th in turnover margin (12 turnovers forced/7 turnovers lost for average of 1.25/game)
9th in interceptions (10)
9th in passing efficiency defense (101.14)
10th in total defense (278 yards/game)