Two for the show: Harvard and Penn stayed unbeaten in Ivy League play on Saturday, as the Crimson bashed Princeton, 37-3, and Penn held off Yale, 9-0.
Harvard (3-0 Ivy, 4-2 overall) must engage Dartmouth and Columbia before facing Penn (3-0, 4-2) on November 14 for what could be a showdown for Ivy supremacy.
Played out in an intermittent drizzle at the Stadium, Harvard’s 102nd football match with Princeton (0-3, 1-5) devolved into a runaway after the opening quarter. Harvard led at halftime, 24-3.
Junior quarterback Collier Winters threw for two touchdowns and ran for another. Kicker Patrick Long ’10 and running backs Gino Gordon ’11 and Cheng Ho ’10 did the rest of the Crimson scoring.
The defense held the all-but-toothless Tiger attack to 38 net yards rushing. All told, Harvard outgained Princeton 457-157.
Harvard started fast. On the game’s third play from scrimmage, Winters hoisted a long pass to wide receiver Chris Lorditch ’11 at the left sideline. Outrunning two Tiger defenders, Lorditch went in for a 77-yard touchdown.
Princeton rebounded, driving 58 yards to the Harvard two-yard line. With a short-yardage fourth down at hand, the Tigers opted for a 19-yard field goal.
Until the last play of the opening quarter, a typical Ivy League nail-biter seemed to be in the making. But on that play a Princeton punt snap went awry, and linebacker Nick Hasselberg ’10 sent the ball skidding downfield. Harvard took over at the Princeton three-yard line, and Winters promptly drilled an end-zone pass to Kyle Juszczyk, a big freshman back-of-all-work. Harvard was off to the races. Two more second-period scores — a three-yard rush by Winters and a 23-yard field goal by Long — fattened the Crimson lead to 24-3.
With backs Gino Gordon and Treavor Scales ’13 churning out rushing yardage, Harvard scored again on a three-yard carry by Gordon late in the third period. From then on the offense stuck to the ground game, with Cheng Ho doing most of the work. The team’s leading rusher in 2007, Ho has seen limited playing time this year, but when he gets it, he capitalizes. Three weeks ago, in his only start of the season, he rushed for 132 yards and two touchdowns at Lehigh. On Saturday he racked up 73 yards and a fourth-period touchdown on 12 late-game carries.
The team's rushing total of 267 yards against Princeton was its best of the season. The 33-point spread was the Crimson’s biggest margin of victory since the inception of the 133-year-old H-P series. Harvard has won 12 of the last 14 matchups.
Princeton’s loss, coupled with Dartmouth’s first Ivy win since 2007, left the Tigers in last place in the league standings. They must now take the field without tailback Jordan Culbreath, last year’s top Ivy rusher, and linebacker Scott Britton, their leading tackler. Britton sustained a season-ending knee injury against Brown a week ago. Culbreath is being treated for a rare bone-marrow disease.
The score by quarters:
Princeton 3 0 0 3 -- 3
Harvard 7 17 7 6 -- 37
Attendance: 13,565
Elsewhere in the league: Brown, still alive in the hunt for the Ivy title, came from behind to down Cornell, 34-14. Dartmouth ended a 17-game losing streak with a 28-6 win over Columbia.…Harvard now plays the resurgent Big Green (1-2 Ivy, 1-5 overall) and the arguably resurgent Lions (1-2, 2-4) before squaring off against Penn at the Stadium. Penn travels to Brown (2-1, 4-2), arguably the league’s most troublesome contender, for a critical game next Saturday.
And in the NFL: Making his first start at quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05 threw a scoring pass for a second (and decisive) touchdown as the Bills tamed the favored Carolina Panthers, 20-9.…Fitzpatrick has stepped in for starter Trent Edwards, who suffered a concussion in the Bills' previous game. He's scheduled to make his first home start against the Houston Texans on Sunday.
THE SEASON SO FAR
Holy Cross 27, Harvard 20
Harvard 24, Brown 21
Harvard 28, Lehigh 14
Harvard 28, Cornell 10
Lafayette 35, Harvard 18
Harvard 37, Princeton 3
