Sports
Burned at the Buzzer
A season unmade by 18 points
The big hit of the New York theater season in
1894 was William Gillette's Too Much Johnson. It was a farce,
but when it was revived at Yale Bowl on November 20, it played
out as tragedy for the Crimson faithful attending the 116th Harvard-Yale
football game. Yale flanker Eric Johnson, in the title role, set
an Ivy League record by catching 21 of the 42 passes completed
by Joe Walland, the league's top-rated quarterback. Walland, who
spent the afternoon fighting a fever and revising the record books,
put the ball in the air no fewer than 67 times. With 29 seconds
to play, and Harvard shielding a 21-17 lead, it had to be the
ubiquitous Johnson who made a diving pickup of a short, deflected
pass in the Crimson end zone, giving Yale its sixty-third victory
in the venerable series.
Adding another theatrical touch, Walland was revealed to have
slept in a hospital bed on the eve of The Game, with a 103-degree
fever ascribed to tonsillitis. The Boston Globe, in its account
of Yale's 24-21 triumph, did not resist the temptation to observe
that Walland "was at least that hot in the second half,"
when the irrepressible invalid clicked on 33 of 51 passes for
343 yards. The respective Ivy records for an entire game were/are
39, 64, and 501. (Walland's full-game passing yardage--437--did
not efface the last of those records, set by Princeton's Bob Holly
against Yale in 1981.)
Losing a lead with less than a minute to play was not a novelty
to this fall's luckless Harvard squad, which ended the season
with an Ivy record of 3-4 and an overall slate of 5-5. Seven of
those games were up for grabs until the very last play. In four
of them, John Harvard had his watch and his wallet lifted as time
expired.
In the season's third game, against Colgate, the team overcame
a two-touchdown deficit in the fourth quarter, tying the score
at 21-21 with 84 seconds remaining. But an 11-play drive took
the Red Raiders to Harvard's 16-yard line, and Erich Kutschke's
33-yard field goal gave Colgate a 24-21 decision at the final
tick of the clock.
At Cornell, Harvard held a 23-10 lead with less than three
minutes to play, but Big Red quarterback Ricky Rahne threw two
scoring passes to put Cornell up, 24-23. With three seconds left,
Harvard's Mike Giampaolo came on to try a 40-yard field goal,
but the kick was blocked.
In the last seven minutes at Brown, the Crimson offense twice
drove inside the Bruin 20, but came up empty each time, allowing
the eventual league cotitlists to preserve a 17-10 lead. Close,
but no cigar.
Against Pennsylvania, Harvard scored 17 fourth-quarter points
to take a 17-14 lead, but a fumble with three minutes to play
returned the ball to the Quakers. With 81 seconds left, quarterback
Gavin Hoffman's 50-yard desperation pass on fourth-and-10 enabled
Penn to pocket a 21-17 victory.
Not all the close ones ended in defeat. At Worcester, a last-second
Holy Cross score was averted when a fourth-down pass from the
11-yard line was caught out of the end zone, letting Harvard escape
with a 25-17 win. At Fordham, with six seconds remaining, safety
Ben Green snaffled Ram quarterback Matt Georgia's 64th pass of
the day at Harvard's 17-yard line, clinching a 37-30 victory.
And with two seconds left against Princeton, senior quarterback
Brad Wilford burrowed into the end zone from the one-foot line,
breaking a 6-6 tie and consigning the Tigers to their fourth consecutive
loss to Harvard, 13-6.
The Dartmouth game, played on the following weekend, wasn't
close at all. Scoring almost at will in a 63-21 rout, Harvard
broke or tied a dozen school and league records. Wilford threw
for three touchdowns and a school-record 398 yards, Giampaolo's
nine extra points broke the Ivy record, and the team set new school
and Ivy records for first downs (34) and points scored. Harvard's
unrelenting defense held the Dartmouth offense to 18 yards and
a single first down in the second half. With six catches, senior
split end Terence Patterson became Harvard's career reception
leader, supplanting Colby Skelton '98. Senior tailback Chris Menick
scored four times, and broke the career rushing-yardage record
of 3,073 set by Eion Hu '97.
The stinging loss to Penn, in the season's second-to-last contest,
saw the farewell appearance of Menick, who tore a knee ligament
in the third quarter. An average-sized back who could drag would-be
tacklers along as he drove for yardage, he had energized Harvard's
ground game for the better part of four seasons. Menick's slashing
running would have enhanced the team's prospects against Yale,
but what decisively shaped the outcome of the big game was Yale's
aerial prowess: too much Johnson, much too much Walland. Harvard's
rushing defense, ranked first in the league and sixth in the country,
left Yale no alternative but to go airborne. Clamping down on
the Eli running attack, the Crimson defensive unit yielded only
51 yards--42 of them on a single breakaway by tailback Rashad
Bartholomew--in the opening half. Yale's only scoring came on
an early field goal. The Eli defense, playing creditably, kept
Harvard off the scoreboard until late in the second period, when
senior Troy Jones, filling in for Menick, caught a short end-zone
pass that helped the Crimson to a 7-3 halftime lead.
The left-handed Walland, who had looked for most of two periods
like a man who should not have signed out of sick bay, got his
groove back in the second half. Bartholomew ran for short yardage
on the first play from scrimmage, but from then on it was all
Walland. Mostly he threw, often deploying five receivers. When
he couldn't find anyone open, he ran. Harvard rover back Mike
Brooks's 66-yard runback of a blocked field goal enlarged the
Crimson lead to 14-3, but Walland came back with two scoring passes
to put Yale ahead, 17-14, as the final period began. Harvard then
quickly recaptured the lead with a drive that was climaxed by
Jones's 18-yard dash to the end zone, and the defense stopped
Yale on its next two possessions. But with less than three minutes
to play, a fumbled pitchout set Harvard back and the Crimson was
forced to punt. With three pinpoint passes, Walland moved his
team 40 yards downfield. His running advanced the ball to the
Harvard 10-yard line, and a short pass to Johnson put it four
yards from the end zone. Then came the not-so-immaculate reception.
Walland's second-down pass attempt, tipped by Harvard tackle Chris
Nowinski, wobbled into the end zone and was scooped up by Johnson.
Nowinski--and others--thought the ball had hit the turf. Grinning
broadly, Johnson averred at a postgame press conference that it
hadn't. "Let it be known," he said, "I caught that
ball." Too much, Johnson? Harvard coach Tim Murphy, whose
demeanor seemed to become more equable with each agonizing loss,
was dubious. But "it's a moot point," he tactfully conceded.
"They win the football game. They made the plays, and it's
ancient history."
Tidbits: Yale's win gave it part ownership of the Ivy title,
shared with Brown. What was surely the best ever 5-5 team
in Harvard annals wound up fifth in the league standings....The
Yale Bowl crowd of 55,484 was the largest since 1989, when Yale
last won Ivy laurels....Harvard's special teams excelled in The
Game. The punting unit downed two kicks on Yale's one-yard line.
Terence Patterson, not only a record-setting receiver but also
a running and throwing threat, had kickoff returns of 42 and 34
yards....Until Mr. Johnson showed up, no one had caught more than
11 passes in a Harvard-Yale game.
For the record: Chris Menick's final career totals included
3,330 rushing yards and 724 carries, both Harvard records; 29
touchdowns; and 16 100-yard-or-more rushing efforts....Inside
linebacker Isaiah Kacyvenski, who won the team's most valuable
player award, was the first Harvard player to start 40 games in
a collegiate career. He set new tackling records for game (20),
season (133), and career (395). Outside linebacker Aron Natale
ranks number two in career stops, with 276.....Mike Giampaolo's
146 points made him Harvard's all-time scoring leader by kicking.
He punted 205 times, another record....With 164 pass completions
in a season, Brad Wilford tied a Harvard record. It was set in
1997 by Rich Linden, whom Wilford displaced as starting quarterback
in preseason practice. Linden owns the record for career completions
(372), and he shares the record for passing touchdowns (17). Had
his three-year role as starter been extended, he would most likely
have set new records for career passing, total offense, and touchdown
passes....All of the above are seniors. Eight defensive and six
offensive starters are scheduled to graduate in June.
Aerial circuses: Stronger rushing defenses and a clutch of
rifle-armed quarterbacks are making Ivy football increasingly
like the pro game. Joe Walland's 42-for-67 day against Harvard
was one startling example. The previous weekend, Brown's James
Perry made good on 41 of 54 passing attempts, while Cornell's
Ricky Rahne completed 28 of 40....Testifying to an unusual parity
in the league, a total of 15 points separated the winners and
losers in four Ivy games played that day.
Summa cum laude: First team all-Ivy recognition went to tight
end and captain Chris Eitzmann, offensive tackle Mike Clare, Kacyvenski,
Menick, and cornerback Kane Waller....Clare, of Rutherford, New
Jersey, and Adams House, will captain the 2000 Harvard team. A
two-year starter at left tackle, the six-foot-four, 315-pounder
is the biggest lineman to play at Harvard in Tim Murphy's six
seasons of coaching.
See you next year: ...when, for the first time in 25 seasons,
Columbia will not be the opening-day opponent. Holy Cross reclaims
the first entry on Harvard's dance card; Brown, defending its
Ivy cochampionship, will follow. Harvard won't beard the Lions
until November.
