Some weekly notes heading into Yale’s showdown with Colgate Saturday at the Yale Bowl at 1 p.m.

Tony Reno called Saturday’s loss to Dartmouth the toughest in his three years as Bulldogs head coach. Yale led by as many as 14 in the second quarter and missed opportunities to close out a win against the Big Green. Yale managed just one touchdown in the second half.

“The Dartmouth game was a tough one for all of us,” Reno said. “I felt like we let one slip away. We had two or three opportunities in the second half to throw the knockout punch and finish them off and we didn’t do. We had another in the fourth and we didn’t do it. We let them hang around and hang around and in the end, they make the play on third-and-12 and we don’t. That’s the difference. Hopefully we learn from it. This one probably hurts the most since we’ve been here, because this is the one we should have won.”

RUSHING WOES

Yale could not get its rushing attack going in the second half. Dartmouth held the Bulldogs to just 55 yards on the ground after halftime.

“They had odd fronts that tried to beat us with movement and blitzing,” RT Ben Carberry said. “And Dartmouth had big, stout d-linemen. They played a four-down front. It’s the best defense we’ve faced this year and one of best on our schedule.”

Reno added, Yale didn’t run the option as much as it would have liked because of the wet and slippery field conditions.

HILLHOUSE-WEST HAVEN RIVALRY

The Yale Bowl hosted the high school rivalry between Hillhouse and West Haven from 1939-1957. The game drew 40,504 in 1948, still the largest crowd for a high school game in the state.

As part of the 100th anniversary for the Yale Bowl, players from the rivalry will be recognized after the first quarter of Saturday’s game. Around 20 to 25 former players are expected to attend.

YALE AMONG TOP TIER?

Yale held its own with Dartmouth, who, coming into the season, could make a case for being the top team in the Ivy.

So have the Bulldogs turned the corner and deserve to be in conversation among that top-tier group in the Ivy?

“I’m not where we want us to be,” Reno said. “At the end of year, we’ll sit back and see if we’re at the upper level yet. I think we still have to prove that we’re at that upper level. I feel we have ability to compete with those teams, but we have to prove it.”

THIS WEEK’S IVY SCHEDULE…

Saturday, October 18
*Columbia at Penn, 1 pm [ILDN]
Lafayette at Harvard, 1 pm [NESN, LSN/ESPN3]
Colgate at Yale, 1 pm [ILDN]
Holy Cross at Dartmouth, 1:30 pm [ILDN]
Lehigh at Cornell, 3 pm [ILDN]
*Brown at Princeton, 3:30 pm [NBC RSN]