Crimson Gridders Zap Minutemen, 10-0

They came in from Amherst Saturday hell-bent on victory, the UMass Minutemen did, laughing and sneering at the undersized, underdog Crimson. But when the time came to march back from the Harvard Stadium turf to Dillon Field House, the visitors walked in a dazed retreat, as the Harvard football team had outmuscled, outhustled and basically outclassed the Minutemen by a score of 10-0.

The Crimson (now 1-1) did it with good, old-fashioned, take-it-to-'em football. The offense ground out 210 yards on 54 carries out of a rarely seen power I formation, while the defense--playing a variety of stacked line sets--shut down the vaunted UMass running attack. The Minutemen, who had scored 61 points in their first two contests, managed nary a one against Harvard Saturday.

"I'm telling you," head coach Joe Restic said after the game, "this is a very, very good football team."

There's no denying that. In a game that the bookies had stopped taking bets on because UMass was so heavily favored, the Crimson took charge early and then stayed in control by handing UMass pitiful field position everytime it touched the ball.

Except for a first-quarter fumble recovery at the Harvard 39 (which UMass turned around and fumbled back three plays later), the Minutemen never had field position outside their own 34-yd. line for the entire game.

The story behind that bad field position lies in the rugged way Harvard played on both sides of the football.

UMass managed only 26 yards offensively on three possessions in the first quarter, as linebackers Craig Beling and Bob Woolway stacked up behind the five-man front and shut off the visitor's power running game.

New Look

In the meantime, quarterback Larry Brown was skillfully directing a new-look Harvard offense, one that had received a drastic facelift at the hands of Dr. Joe Restic during the previous week's practice sessions.

With fullback Matt Granger leading the backs out of the I, and with the offensive line of Joe Kross, Mike Clark, Dave Scheper. Mac DeCamp and Mike Durgin busting holes like a quintet of bucking broncos, the Crimson danced through and around UMass's aggressive but over-reacting linebackers.

"We wanted to go in there to hang up their linebackers, to set up the option or the play-pass," Restic said.

And on Harvard's first drive of the game, that's just what happened. The trailing backs picked up two or three touch yards running inside every other play, but the Crimson really tore upfield on the plays the running set up.

Ralph Polillio and Wayne Moore took left-end sweeps for 12 and 14 yards, and then Moore galloped 19 yards with a screen pass on a play where Brown froze the Minuteman defense with a nifty fake. An incomplete pass to John MacLeod on third-and-14 killed the drive, but kickmeister Gary Bosnic popped a 33-yard field goal through the posts for a 3-0 Harvard lead, just 5:48 into the game.

Harvard threatened to score again in the quarter, but a Chuck Marshall fumble on a third-down, double-reverse play at the UMass 19-yd. line aborted a 57-yd. drive.

UMass broke loose and put together two long drives in the second stanza, but the combination of bad field position (Al MacMurray averaged 35.5 yards per punt for the Crimson) and a stingy Harvard defense inside the 30-yd. line kept the score three-zip at the half.

The Minutemen took a gamble in the third quarter, electing to have the 20 mile-per-hour wind at their backs in hopes of blowing the Crimson out right then and there. The strategy failed.

Strong Elastic

After the UMass defense stopped a Harvard surge on fourth-and-one at the Minuteman 3, the Crimson matched the effort by bending but not breaking on UMass's longest drive of the day.

The Minutemen marched 73 yards on 14 plays over a seven-minute span, but the Harvard defense quashed the rallying visitors by gang-tackling halfback Cliff Pedrow on a fourth-and-two at the Harvard 25.

After an exchange of possessions and a switch of direction for the fourth quarter, Larry Brown put UMass's victory hopes to sleep.

Taking possession of the ball at the visitors' 49-yd. line, Brown handed off for three straight five-yard gains, then threw incomplete over the middle to tight end Paul Sablock.

On the next play, Brown drew in the overreacting Minutemen linebackers by faking Polillio into the line, then quickly striking to Sablock 10 yards downfield. Sablock held onto the ball despite a fierce pop from linebacker Joe McLaughlin, broke loose and--running like a wild horse in a corral--dragged two UMass defensive backs the last five yards into the endzone.

The whole Crimson team exploded in an ecstatic, 100-man modern dance routine at that point, and the ground-based UMass attack failed to play any kind of respectable catch-up ball as the clock ran out.

"I just have to be very pleased," Restic said afterward. When you think about it, that's all there was to say.