Crimson Crossed Up

Holy Cross football coach Mark Duffner has come under a lot of fire recently.

Critics claim he is running up scores on opponents. The facts seem to bear out the claims. Holy Cross, the top team in Division I-AA, has beaten its rivals by a collective 432-97 score.

Saturday, Holy Cross destroyed the Crimson, 41-6. It was Harvard's worst loss of the season. However, Holy Cross has scored at least 41 points against all its opponents, save Army. The Crusaders scored only 34 points against the Cadets.

Lehigh suffered the worst defeat--a 63-6 drubbing September 26.

Late in the Cross' game against Brown two weeks ago, the Crusaders went into a hurry-up offense. The team scored on the last play of the game to pull out a 41-0 victory.

Saturday against the Crimson, Holy Cross was leading 34-6 and had the ball at the 20 yard line with less than four minutes left in the game. Holy Cross quarterback Jeff Wiley dumped a screen pass out to Gordie Lockbaum, who raced 75 yards down the sideline before he was tackled from behind by Harvard safety Jim Smith.

After the next play--a run up the middle--was negated by a penalty, the Cross elected to try a halfback option pass. Lockbaum, the Cross' Heisman Trophy candidate, raced right with a Wiley pitch and then hit Crusader tight end Randy Pedro in the endzone.

After the game, Duffner expounded gleefully on the play. But a reporter from the Boston Herald was dubious. He wanted to know if having Lockbaum throw a option pass in the game's waning moments would give credence to the views of Duffner's critics. It certainly looked like Duffner was trying to run up the score.

"We had a big run to get down there," Duffner said. "We're not going to tell everyone to fall down."

The Herald reporter shot back, "I grew up seeing [former Alabama Coach] Bear Bryant have his players fall down on the ball."

Duffner responded, after a pause, "There's a great coach." And then, he added, "All we're trying to do is play the best we can."

Brian's Song: Even in defeat, Harvard wideout Brian Barringer shone. Saturday, Barringer caught 11 passes for 119 yards. His 11 catches tied Wally Grant '64 for the third best receiving day in Harvard history. The record is shared by Pat McInally '73 and Jim Curry '77, both of whom caught 13 passes.

Barringer now has 42 catches for the season, which moves him to the number four spot on Harvard's top 10 one-season receiving chart. McInally leads that department, too, with 56 catches in the 1973 season.

If Barringer grabs seven catches each in the Crimson's last two games against Penn and Yale, he will tie McInally.

Heisman Hype: Gordie Lockbaum, Holy Cross' Heisman Trophy candidate, threw for a touchdown and ran for one Saturday.

As a Crusader, he is accustomed to winning by large margins. So when the Crimson stayed close at halftime--Holy Cross held a 14-0 lead--Lockbaum was surprised.

"You have dreams and you make plans," Lockbaum said, "and sometimes they don't work out how you want them to. You just have to adapt and that's the same way with a ball game. We wanted to be up 30 or 40 by halftime, but we weren't."