“Pure happenstance,’’ alleged the junior from Bonita, Calif., after his two touchdown bursts powered the Crimson to a 34-14 conquest of Columbia yesterday at Kraft Field.

“We have a great running attack on this team,’’ said Gordon. “Any one of our other guys could have done what I did. It just happened to be my turn.’’

Gordon carried a dozen times for 63 yards and scores of 6 yards in the first quarter and 3 yards in the third as the Crimson raced to a 21-0 lead in the first 10 minutes and a 34-0 advantage three minutes into the fourth, before Columbia finally scored twice in the final seven minutes.

“Gino is just one of those guys you can always depend on,’’ said Harvard coach Tim Murphy. “When you saw him on high school film, you knew he was a very skilled athlete. But you don’t really get an appreciation of him until you’ve hung around him for a while, how tough he is, how resilient he is, what a great leader he is.

“He’s exactly what we need right now.’’

These were teams heading in opposite directions. As Harvard (6-2, 5-0 Ivy) won its third straight since a loss to Lafayette, and stayed on a collision course with Penn for the league lead (they clash Saturday at the Stadium), Columbia (2-6, 1-4) lurched to its fifth consecutive defeat since its stunning 38-0 rout of Princeton.

It was the Crimson’s sixth straight victory over the Lions, by a combined 220-68, and just two of those margins were as slim as two touchdowns.

With regular quarterback M.A. Olawale and top running back Ray Rangel out with injuries, the Lions were subpar and subdued.

“Mission accomplished,’’ said Murphy. “We are where we want to be. We’ve had a lot of off-and-on injuries, we’ve had guys we’ve thrown in there, we didn’t know if they were ready. But this is a resilient team. We’re playing awfully well.’’

“You have to play 60 minutes of football just to give yourself an opportunity to win the game, and we didn’t,’’ said Columbia coach Norries Wilson. “We are, unfortunately, still growing into that and haven’t learned enough to overcome mistakes, turning the ball over, and not tackling well.’’

Freshman Treavor Scales (who shared time with Gordon) bulled over from a yard to cap a 59-yard march after the opening kickoff, and when Columbia punter Thomas Hull fumbed the ball away to the Crimson’s Nick Hasselberg and quarterback Collier Winters hit Kyle Juszczyk with a 12-yard scoring pass, the Crimson were ahead, 14-0, in just over five minutes.

“We got some good breaks, frankly, like that,’’ said Murphy. “From a psychological standpoint, a team can get emotionally fragile, and maybe that happened to Columbia. They’ve had little or no luck this year. We were able to jump on those breaks, made a few breaks of our own, and we were in good position from there on.’’

Gordon’s 6-yarder then capped a 79-yard march and it was 21-0 late in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, the Lions were self-destructing. One apparent Columbia score was erased by an offside penalty, and a march to the Harvard 4-yard line ended with a fumble on fourth down.

Patrick Long added a 28-yard field goal in the closing seconds of the first half; Gordon scored from the 3 in the third; Long booted a 29-yarder early in the fourth, and it was 34-0.

Columbia - with freshman Sean Brackett and sophomore Jerry Bell filling in for Olawale - took until midway through the fourth quarter to get going.

After Harvard wide receiver Marco Iannuzzi fumbled at the Crimson 12, Columbia at last got on the board with 6:49 left, Zack Kourouma running it in from the 1. And with a little more than a minute to go, Bell hit Andrew Kennedy for a 10-yard score.

While Harvard is guaranteed its ninth straight winning record, and takes aim at its third consecutive Ivy crown, Columbia is assured of its third consecutive losing record and 12th in the last 13 years.

The only consolation, perhaps, for Columbia were the eight catches for 64 yards by senior Austin Knowlin, giving him the Lions’ all-time record with 2,417 receiving yards.