Not since 1968, when Al Gore was best known as Tommy Lee Jones's roommate, has The Game been set up this way: Both Harvard and Yale unbeaten in the Ivy League and playing winner-take-all for the title in the Yale Bowl Saturday.
"We're just happy to be in this position," Crimson coach Tim Murphy said yesterday afternoon, after his businesslike football team put a chokehold on Pennsylvania and walked off with a 23-7 victory in its home finale before a chilled 10,116 at the Stadium. "People pretty much left us for dead at 1-2."
That was in September, when Harvard (7-2, 6-0) lost two nonleague games in the final 30 seconds. Since then, Murphy's resurgent tutees have run off half a dozen wins, spurred by an athletic and aggressive defense and by quarterback Chris Pizzotti, the redheaded Reading native who stepped up when Liam O'Hagan went down for the season five weeks ago.
Pizzotti threw touchdown passes to Corey Mazza and Matt Luft on either side of halftime and the defense stopped Penn cold for most of the day.
"We put a lot of emphasis on getting off the field," said Murphy, after the Crimson had stifled Penn on its final 14 third-down plays. "That means trying to get three-and-out."
Harvard's challenge was in trying to keep its offense on the field against a Quaker defense that had shut out Princeton and held Yale to one touchdown in regulation. After the first quarter, the hosts had possessed the ball for less than five minutes and had gained only 16 yards.
It wasn't until the final minutes of the half, when sophomore tailback Cheng Ho busted 37 yards on first down from his 12, that the Crimson offense began to move. But once it did, Harvard did a day's work in little more than a dozen plays.
After finding Mike Cook for 23 yards on third and 10, Pizzotti hooked up with Mazza going crossfield for a 20-yard score with 43 seconds on the clock.
"Getting a touchdown on that last possession was huge," said Pizzotti, who was 14 of 31 for 232 yards. "Up until that point, we hadn't done anything on offense."
It was Mazza's 28th career touchdown catch, tying him with Carl Morris atop the all-time Harvard list, and it was the jump-start his mates needed. When they returned from the field house, Pizzotti went to Luft, Mazza's old high school teammate, for a quick 29 yards, then back to him again on the run for a 30-yard touchdown that put the Quakers on their backs.
When Penn fumbled the kickoff on its 29, the Crimson got a 30-yard field goal from Patrick Long and it was 17-0 and all but over.
"We knew we were going to have our hands full," acknowledged Penn coach Al Bagnoli, whose squad (3-6, 2-4) has dropped three of four. "We knew they'd make some plays because they've made plays against everybody."
And the Quakers, whose only touchdown (a 2-yard run by freshman Michael DiMaggio) was enabled by consecutive pass interferences and a personal foul on Harvard, couldn't make enough plays to climb back into it.
Having running back Joe Sandberg, who gained 212 yards against Princeton, hurt his knee on the first play didn't help. Nor did losing fullback Nick Cisler in the second quarter.
Still, Penn, which had the ball for nearly 33 minutes, couldn't turn possession into points and every turnover was punishing, including the blown punt that set up Ho's 20-yard fourth-quarter run that locked the door.
"We squandered numerous opportunities," Bagnoli conceded.
In September, when Harvard was letting victories slip away, the Quakers might have been able to grab one. But this Crimson bunch has tightened up markedly, with its defense taking a page from the 1968 varsity, the "Boston Stranglers," who held six teams to 7 points or fewer.
Pizzotti, who watched for a year, was hurt for a year, and split the job for a year, now has his hands firmly on the wheel of a balanced offense that has had 10 players score touchdowns. It's no accident that the Crimson will be playing for their third Ivy crown in seven years come Saturday in New Haven.
"There's no better way to go out your senior year," said captain Brad Bagdis. "Unbeaten in the league, winning at home, and going to Yale to play for basically everything."
