Connecticut connections

With the season starting for all eight Ivy League teams tomorrow, I went through the rosters and depth charts to see how the Connecticut products are doing.

By my count, there are 29 Connecticut natives on Ivy League rosters and four are listed as starters (actually five are listed starters but Jordan Farrell and not Ansonia's Alex Thomas is the starting tailback at Yale).

Columbia leads the way with two starters. Newington's Austin Knowlin in on the program's career receiving records and will start again at one receiving spot while former Staples star Andrew Kennedy is the starting tight end.

Junior Alex Priestley, who played scholastically at Hall of West Hartford, is the starting tight end at Brown while former Greenwich High star Tom Brown is the top fullback at Dartmouth.

Yale and Columbia lead the way with eight Connecticut natives while Harvard is the only school without a native Nutmegger on its roster. The Crimson make up for that with two coaches (Joel Lamb and Tony Reno) who coached at Yale and another (Joe Villapiano) who played and then coached at UConn.

The biggest omissions are former Greenwich High star Jonathan Meyers, whose decision to pass on playing football at a Bowl Championship Series power like Florida to head to Princeton generated quite a bit of buzz, is opting to focus on lacrosse and former Amity High star Ricky Ballou, who had nine tackles including a sack as a junior. Ballou is still on the roster just not on the two-deep as a defensive lineman.