For UNH, Dartmouth remains an unknown

By rbrown
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Updated: September 15, 2025

FOOTNOTES

The University of New Hampshire has turned the page on Saturday’s 34-29 loss at Ball State and is now focused on its intra-state rivalry with Dartmouth. The Wildcats will play the Big Green in Hanover on Saturday (1 p.m.).

UNH is 2-1 overall. It will be the season-opener for Dartmouth, which makes preparing for Saturday’s matchup a mystery for the UNH coaches.

“Just try to figure out who they’re going to be,” UNH coach Rick Santos said. “Defensive-minded head coach, Coach (Sammy) McCorkle. Their defensive coordinator has been there for a long time and I think has called plays for the last decade, so we have a decent bead on what they’re going to be defensively. Offensively we’re trying to figure them out a little bit. New offensive coordinator (Shane Montgomery). A guy that’s well-traveled and done a phenomenal job at every single stop he’s been.

“Obviously we don’t know their personnel this year. You wish (Dartmouth) had one or two games their belt. … Obviously there’s no love lost between the two schools, so we have to have our guys ready to go.”

UNH has a 21-19-2 edge in the series with Dartmouth, and has won the last two meetings (2022 and 2023).

“They have the advantage in terms of we don’t know their personnel,” Santos said. “We’re not sure what type of new wrinkles and innovative stuff that they brought into the off-season. And then we have the advantage in terms of our guys have played games. The moment won’t be too big. Playing in an FBS stadium last week I think it gave us a lot of confidence. I know we didn’t finish, but we left there feeling like we’re a really good football team.”

— Santos on the UNH-Dartmouth rivalry: “I just think it’s our conference versus there’s. In-state. Obviously the state-school kids versus the Ivy League guys. I just think being part of it as a player, a student-athlete, an assistant coach and now the third time as the head coach I just think it’s a fun rivalry. … We know that we have to play our A-game to beat these guys.”

— Santos on the loss to Ball State: “We played hard. Played extremey hard and flew around. Obviously anytime you get in a game like that you’re outmatched physically at almost every single position. … Too many self-inflicted wounds. We had two dropped touchdowns, two missed field goals. Defensively in the first half we didn’t tackle well enough and I think we gave up 150 yards and three runs that were explosives for touchdowns.”

— Santos said quarterback Matt Vezza played the best game of his young college career against Ball State. Vezza was 25 of 44 for 259 yards and a touchdown, and also rushed for a team-high 78 yards on 16 attempts.