Football Faces Deceptively Tough Dartmouth Tomorrow

As the Harvard football team has seen all season long, there's nothing more dangerous than an easy victory.

Tomorrow's match up against Dartmouth (1-5, 1-2 Ivy) marks the third straight week in which Harvard (4-2, 2-1 Ivy) will face an opponent with a losing record--and the third straight week when that opponent will be hungry to salvage a bit of pride from a seemingly lost season.

True, this is a Harvard team that hasn't lost to a sub-.500 team since Week Four of 1996.

But if recent history is any indication, tomorrow's match up against a weak Dartmouth squad may be anything but a cakewalk for the Crimson. It struggled to maintain a 34-3 halftime lead against Fordham, and eked out a 13-6 win over Princeton on a last-second touchdown plunge.

In fact, the Crimson has not held a commanding fourth quarter lead since its first game of the season, a 24-7 victory over Columbia all the way back on September 18th. And every game since then has been a nail-biter won or lost on the last series.

"If you look at college football right now, there's so much parity that very few games are blowouts," said Harvard Coach Tim Murphy. "You just have to take it one possession at a time and you may find yourself in the position of not having to win on the last series."

So tomorrow's face-off against a Dartmouth team that lost its first five games by a combined 110 points is anything but money in the bank.

The Big Green comes rolling into Harvard off its biggest victory of the past two years. Its 20-17 upset over Cornell last week knocked the Big Red from the ranks of the Ivy's unbeaten, and broke Dartmouth's 10-game losing streak.

"We've got to play real hard to get a win against a team that has demonstrated clearly that they're a good football team," Murphy said.

And with such tremendous momentum on its side, Dartmouth's 1-5 record may be quite deceiving.

"[Their record]'s definitely deceptive," said senior quarterback Brad Wilford. "They're real physical and aggressive on defense."

Dartmouth's defense is possibly its strongest suit--and the area which worries the Crimson the most. "Their defensive front is the strongest part of their team," said Murphy.

Last week the Big Green sacked Cornell quarterback Ricky Rahne seven times.

"We had a difficult time getting to [Rahne] and I think we've got a pretty solid defensive line," said Murphy.

The Crimson offensive line will have to play special attention to defensive standouts Steve Varney and Brad Eissler, who have 59 and 56 tackles, respectively. Varney has also notched two sacks this season.

But Harvard has allowed only three sacks in its last 87 passing attempts. And Varney and Eissler are pretty much the only bright spots for this struggling Dartmouth team.

Starting quarterback Brian Mann has thrown 10 interceptions and only two touchdowns all season. Tailback Reggie Belhomme is averaging a paltry 2.9 yards per carry. And Mann has yet to complete a touchdown pass to a wide receiver this season.

Harvard is also riding the momentum off a huge win of its own. Last week's victory over Princeton, combined with Cornell's loss, propelled the Crimson right back into the thick of the Ivy League race, leaving it tied for second place with Yale and Penn and only one-half game behind Cornell and Brown with three games remaining.

Tomorrow's game, then, could be easily written off by some as a final tune-up before the big three games against Penn, Brown and Yale end the season. But both Murphy and Wilford refuse to see it that way.

"We're going to have to play our best football to win our next four games," Wilford said.

Besides the motivation to move up in the standings, the Crimson has some additional incentive to notch an easy victory tomorrow. Senior tailback Chris Menick and senior wide receiver Terence Patterson are both closing in on huge team records.

Menick, who has 3,037 rushing yards over three and one half seasons, needs 37 more to break Harvard's all-time mark for career rushing yards, held by Eion Hu '97. He already holds the school record for most rushing yards in a season with 1,267 yards, which he set in 1997.

"I've been trying not think about it too much," said Menick. "This week I'm just trying to go out play hard and get a win and whatever happens happens."

Patterson, who has already notched 122 catches in his career, needs only seven more to break Harvard's record for career receptions, currently held by Colby Skelton '98.

"I'm just focusing on Dartmouth," he said. "Definitely I'm aware of the record, but right now I'm just trying to win the Ivy League title."

Menick is expected to break his record in the first half, while Patterson would need a big game to claim his spot in the books tomorrow.

But from here on out, the entire team has to wheel out its top game every Saturday if it wants to remain in the hunt, because it'll only get harder.

"We're just thinking about [Dartmouth] as a team that we have to beat to win the Ivy League," Wilford said. "We're going to have to play a great game to beat them."