Yale Baffles Harvard in 28-0 Debacle, Earns Ivy Title Share With Dartmouth

NEW HAVEN, Conn.--For the third year in a row, Yale owns a share of the Ivy League football championship, and for the second year in a row, Harvard has nothing to show from The Game but a handful of missed opportunities and a lesson in Big Play defense.

"Sometimes you just have those days when it seems the harder you try the worse it gets," Harvard coach Joe Restic said at the post-game press conference. For once the score, 28-0, is a pretty good indicator of how bad it got. Sure, Harvard moved the ball on the Elis, but when things got tight a Yale defender was there to make the big play and turn the momentum around.

There was Fred Leone, the captain, bursting through a hand-made hole in the Crimson offensive line and canvassing Ron Cuccia for an eight-yard loss with Harvard moving the ball late in the third quarter and the score just 14-0.

There was Kevin Debasitis, the nose guard, reaching high to deflect a Cuccia pass with Harvard driving earlier in the quarter, and linebacker Jay Snyder, who grabbed the ball out of the air to complete, the interception and snuff another Crimson opportunity.

And there was Serge Mihaly, who combined with Leone to hotfoot the Harvard quarterbacks all afternoon, slithering past the blockers and crashing into the Crimson backfield to pester whoever was throwing the ball (Harvard passed out of the quarterback-in-motion formation all afternoon, back-up Don Allard launching 23 passes to starter Cuccia's seven).

Mihaly recorded two sacks, assisted on another and generally made things bothersome for the Harvard aerial attack. "I think we had a little trouble throwing," said Restic when asked why he didn't pass more. "You try to get the passing game going, you try to mix the formations, but they came on. They rushed very well."

And with a little scoring output from Yale's superstars (a John Rogan to Curt Grieve touchdown pass, a Rogan to Rich Diana connection for another score, and a five-yard Diana run to follow up a magnificent catch by Grieve that accounted for a third), a crowd of 75,300 saw the upset-minded Crimson dispatched with ease and Carm Cozza win his third straight crown.

That Yale had to share this one with Dartmouth, which whipped hapless Penn, 33-13, to earn a slice of the title, was no solace for Harvard, which lost to the 1981 co-champs by a combined score of 52-10. The gridders finish with a 5-4-1 mark wrapped around a 4-2-1 Ivy ledger, good enought for fourth place in the conference behind Princeton.

The surprising thing is that Harvard entered Saturday's game with a mathematical chance to win the title. If the Crimson had beaten Yale. Dartmouth had lost to Penn and Princeton had fallen to Cornell, the gridders would have been undisputed Ivy champions with a 5-1-1 mark.

While the early score from Philadelphia (the Yale Bowl announcer reported Dartmouth, 10-0, and nobody really believed it would get any better) dampened the already soiled Crimson title hopes, the squad looked as if it might at least deprive the Elis of their share of the crown.

It wasn't until the last minute of the first quarter that Rogan swung a pass to Diana in the right flat ("No, he wasn't the primary receiver"--Cozza), and the leading rusher in Yale history eluded three tacklers, sped by another and sprinted 32 yards down the right sideline for a 7-0 Yale lead.

Just 79 seconds later, Rogan struck again. He hit Grieve ("I'm not that fast, you know, but I can really leap") with a spiral on a post pattern just short of the goal line and the senior split end (by day's end the Yale record holder in single-season reception yardage, and touchdowns as well as career receptions) stepped into the end zone for the score. Tony Jones' PAT made it 14-0, and the Elis never looked back. They didn't have to, because nobody was really gaining on them.

Oh, Jim (60 yards on 21 carries for a new Harvard single-season mark of 1054) Callinan was able to move the ball with fair success on the ground, and Allard (11 for 23, 107 yards, all out of the quarterback-in-motion) had the finest passing day of his career, including five hook-ups with Cuccia for 57 yards.

But after punting from the Yale 40 and 32 on consecutive drives midway through the first quarter, Harvard didn't penetrate into field goal range until the game's closing seconds, when a last-ditch effort to end an eight-quarter scoring drought in The Game fell short, as time expired with the ball on the Eli seven.

Instead, Harvard punted ten times, fumbled five, and threw two interceptions. All of which combined to nullify the squad's 17 first downs (Yale had 15) and 245 yards in total offense (to Yale's 261).

The turnovers also wasted a sterling effort by the Crimson defense, which held Diana to less than 100 yards, limited Rogan to five completions in 15 attempts for just 126 yards and permitted no Eli run from scrimmage longer than 12 yards. Highlights included a pair of quarterback sacks each for Scott Murrer and Pat Fleming.

"I have to be pleased with what our defense did." Restic said. "They gave us field position and took the ball away at critical times, but we turned the ball over."

And so Cozza spoke to the press first after the game--a tradition for the winning coach--for the fifth time in six years as he savored his ninth Ivy crown in 17 seasons at Yale. And Restic, a loser in The Game for the seventh time since coming to Harvard in 1971, downplayed its importance when his turn came.

"You hate to lose this game, not because it's Yale, but because it's any game," he said. "A loss is a loss--it doesn't make any difference," he added later. "What's it come down to? You lose."

But Cozza, whose record at Yale is now a phenomenal 114-37-3, had this to say earlier: "This is The Game for a lot of people, especially for us here at Yale. We're always concerned about Harvard because they always play well, but we wanted this one, especially after losing [35-31 to Princeton] last week. I'm proud of the way my team came back and did it."