Coming Through in the Clutch

If every Harvard football opponent were like Brown, Columbia or Penn, Crimson Coach Joe Restic would have a lot more than 100 career victories.

Saturday's 27-14 win over Brown pushed Restic into the century club and marked his 13th career victory over the Bruins. Restic's mark against the Bruins, Lions and Quakers, in 19 years at the helm of the Crimson, is 44-12, an average of 2.3 wins per year. Take his games against those three Ivy League rivals away and Restic's record is a less-than-astounding 56-61-5.

Speaking about the difficulty of playing a Restic-coached team, Brown Coach John Rosenberg noted "the variety of formations that they present and the capacity to run the same plays from several different formations."

"You can prepare for some basic things, but in your practice and your preparation, you really have to take a guess at what will be the formation of the day," said Rosenberg, who has lost five of six games to Restic's Harvard squads. "Usually, the different formations that they come out with in a given game takes you out of your defensive plan."

Saturday's win was Harvard's ninth victory over Brown in the 10 games between the two squads this decade. Brown's record against its other opponents in the 1980s: 39-44-4.

Clutch Play I: Harvard was forced to punt on its first possession just five minutes into the game, but Derek Lewis' high, spiralling kick was muffed by Brown's Greg Giardi and recovered by Harvard defensive lineman Barry Littman at the Brown 43.

Eight plays later, quarterback Tim Perry hit Silas Myers on a slant pattern for a 11-yd. touchdown pass and a 7-0 lead.

Clutch Play II: With four minutes remaining in the first quarter, Brown took over on its own 24-yd. line following a botched field goal attempt. But Harvard cornerback Greg Belsher turned in the Crimson's second consecutive interception and returned the ball to the 11-yd. line. Three plays later, Mark Bianchi scored the squad's second touchdown on a 19-yd. split end reverse.

"I think that was the difference," Restic said. "Our defense gave us the ball in pretty good field position and we were able to do something with it."

Clutch Play III: Trailing, 14-7, Brown had driven to the Harvard 11-yd. line with 9:31 remaining in the second quarter. Rosenberg decided to pull out a trick play he had utilized successfully in the Holy Cross game the week before when QB Mike Lenkaitis handed off to Danny Clark running right and then slipped out into the left flat for an easy touchdown reception.

But against the Crimson, the play broke down when Clark--playing quarterback this time--was unable to break clear after handing off to running back Jeff Abler. Without Clark as an option to throw to, Abler tried to force a pass into double coverage into the end zone and was intercepted by cornerback Jim Smith.

"It's tough on a running back who doesn't have many opportunities [to throw] to have the judgment to be able to see that maybe you should throw it away so that it won't result in a turnover," Rosenberg said. "I think a lot of times, somebody with some-what less experience like that is hoping that a great catch will be made or maybe the interference call, but I think it's a credit to Harvard players. They made the defensive play."

"That was a great call," Restic said. "You try something, you execute it well, it's a great call. But there are a lot of great calls that don't work. You don't try to make lousy calls but sometimes they turn out to be lousy calls because they break down."

Series of Clutch Plays: Bianchi finished second on the team in rushing with 42 yards on four end-arounds, including the 19-yd. touchdown run. What was most surprising was the consistent success of the same trick play--two of Bianchi's runs came on thesame drive.

"What we usually do is concentrate on what our opponents have done against the teams they just played," Perry explained, "but what we concentrated on was films of last year's game against Brown and this year's scrimmage becuase they do totally different things against us."

"They seemed to be really overconscious of our outside stuff," Perry added. "What we see is every time we set predominantly to one side, the linebackers kick over so there's only three people on the weak side. You just can't cover that type of pursuit, especially when I'm running one direction and we run so many plays off that action and I just hand the ball to Mark going the other direction and he has four blockers out there."