Gridders Stay Alive With 17-16 Win Over Brown

As an icy wind transformed Harvard Stadium from a pleasant, breezy place for a football game into a freezing prelude to winter, the Harvard football season came down to a single play.

Brown had just driven 88 yds. in ten plays, Steve Curtin's two-yd. run with 1:53 remaining bringing the Bruins to within a single point of the Crimson, 17-16.

Brown coach John Anderson--as everyone knew he would--decided to go for the victory. Two years ago the same strategy had resulted in a 31-30 Bruin victory.

This time, quarterback Larry Carbone rolled left, appeared ready to run for the score, then saw his tight end wide open in the endzone.

"If I were playing my responsibilities the way I was taught," safety Mike Jacobs--the man assigned to cover Jordan--said afterwards, "I wouldn't have come up.

But once he committed to chase Carbone, "I had to keep coming." And when Carbone threw to Jordan, Jacobs batted the pass down, saving the ballgame.

Harvard then survived a superb onsides kick and clung to the narrow victory which kept the team's hopes for the Ivy title alive.

These hopes were dealt a strong blow, however, when Yale thrashed Dartmouth in Hanover Saturday, 35-7. Yale now stands 4-0 in the league, with Harvard, Princeton and Brown tied for second at 3-2.

A Glimmer

So, for Harvard to have any chance of sharing the championship, either Princeton (4-3 overall) or Cornell (2-5, 2-2 Ivy) must beat the Elis in the next two weeks. Not impossible, but not terribly likely, either.

For this Harvard team--particularly this defense--playing a meaningless Yale game would be a terrible shame because Soldiers Field has not lately seen a squad of this caliber.

Consider the job Harvard did on Brown quarterback Larry Carbone, the Ivies' top-rated quarterback in passing and total offense. Carbone struggled to complete 11 of 29 passes Saturday for 120 yds. with three interceptions, two of which resulted in Harvard scores.

Every week a different Harvard defender seems to take a particularly outstanding role; this week it was Brad Stinn, the junior linebacker whose 11 tackles led the Crimson and whose second-quarter interception set up Harvard's first touchdown.

And it was the almost obligatory Rocky Delgadillo interception--the junior cornerback now has an Ivy League-leading six--that set up the game's first score, a 42-yd. Dave Cody field goal 6:25 into the first quarter.

The Return

Saturday marked the return of Brian Buckley to Crimson signal-calling duties, and though the performance was not his best, the senior's mere presence in the lineup makes Harvard a very different football team from the one that lost two straight.

After the opening kickoff, Buckley led Harvard on an impressive 11-play, 54-yd. drive, but the Crimson couldn't get any points out of it. With the drive stalled just out of field goal range, a repeat of the Princeton Syndrome seemed possible--Harvard marching up and down the field without managing to put any points on the board, as it did in the frustrating 7-3 loss to the Tigers last week.

But Delgadillo's interception and the resulting Cody field goal dispelled notions of a repeat. And even though Buckley fumbled and threw an interception deep in Brown territory, the Crimson seemed in control.

Buckley finally got six when, one play after Stinn's interception at the Brown 27, he found Paul Connors on a screen pass and the senior broke a pair of tackles along the left sideline en route to a 10-3 Harvard lead, 10:09 into the second quarter.

Both offenses flailed around to little success until Brown got a big break midway through the third quarter. Connors fumbled at the Harvard 19 and, five plays later, Curtin bulled over from the seven.

But Harvard came back early in the fourth quarter. A superb Steve Flach punt was downed at the seven, and the Harvard defense forced a punt out of the Bruin endzone.

On the Up

With the consequent good field position, Buckley directed a six-play scoring drive, the highlight a crucial 18-yd. run by seldom-used halfback Jim Acheson. With 10:40 left in the game, Buckley hit Tom Beatrice with a screen pass off the shotgun and the steady halfback went 13 yds. with the score that put Harvard up, 17-10.

That was it until Brown's surprising final 88-yd. drive. "We fell apart, to say the least," linebacker Bob Woolway, who had seven tackles on the day, said.