In his first start of the season, senior tailback Cheng Ho rushed for 132 yards and scored twice as Harvard dispatched Lehigh, 28-14, on a warm Saturday afternoon in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The nonleague victory brought Harvard’s overall record to 2-1 (1-0 Ivy League). Lehigh remains winless (0-4, 0-0 Patriot League).
Harvard defenders stymied the Mountain Hawk offense for much of the game, forcing five turnovers: four interceptions and a fumble recovery. The defensive unit was also credited with four quarterback sacks, 10 quarterback hurries, and four pass breakups.
Lehigh scored on the first drive of the game and held a 7-0 lead for the rest of the quarter. But Harvard struck back with two second-period touchdowns, both set up by pass interceptions.
Ho scored the first touchdown on a 13-yard screen pass from quarterback Collier Winters ’11. The go-ahead score came on a three-yard pass from Winters to wide receiver Adam Chrissis ’12.
Ho scored again on a five-yard rush midway through the third period. With just under six minutes to play, senior linebacker Jon Takamura topped off Harvard’s scoring with a 60-yard interception return. A week earlier, Takamura had made a key interception against Brown and had batted down a last-gasp Bruin pass in the end zone.
Safety Collin Zych ’11 had two of Harvard’s four interceptions against Lehigh, with a 43-yard return on the second one.
After yielding 28 unanswered points, Lehigh mounted an 80-yard scoring drive with less than four minutes left in the game. The Hawks then tried an onside kick, but could not recover the ball.
Starting in place of junior Gino Gordon, who was nursing an injury, tailback Ho carried 21 times, averaging 6.3 yards per carry. He had touched the ball only once in the team’s first two games. Ho was an all-Ivy rusher in his sophomore year, accounting for 722 yards and eight touchdowns, but was hurt for much of last season and saw limited action. Against Lehigh his intensity and hard running galvanized the offense. “We certainly rode him today,” said coach Tim Murphy after the game. “Not just his productivity, but his emotion. He gave us a lot of juice on offense, a lot of leadership.”
After strong showings in the Holy Cross and Brown contests, quarterback Collier Winters completed just 15 of 34 pass attempts for 152 yards. He threw the first interception of his three-game varsity career, and was sacked six times.
Attendance at Lehigh’s picturesque Goodman Stadium was 5,547.
Harvard returns to Ivy League competition next weekend, playing its third road game at Cornell’s Schoellkopf Field. The previously unbeaten Big Red (now 2-1, 1-0 Ivy) took a 45-23 pounding from Colgate, the Patriot League front-runner, last weekend.
~"cleat"
Lehigh 7 0 0 7 - 14
Harvard 0 14 7 7 - 28
