Football: Harvard 34, Georgetown 3

The Crimson beat the Hoyas in their first meeting, extending Harvard’s 2015 record to 3-0.

In his second straight start, quarterback Scott Hosch was 20-of-25 passing. The ever-efficient junior made use of all of his receivers, including running back Andrew Casten (28) on a 43-yard catch-and run.
In rambling for 139 and four touchdowns, Andrew Casten '15 was often untouchable behind bulldozing blockers such as center Nick Easton '15 (57). Casten has already scored seven touchdowns this season.
Junior prom: Three members of the class of ’16, defensive back Sean Ahern (6), Scott Peters (in the middle), and linebacker Matt Koran (59), halted Hoyas receiver Jake DeCicco in his tracks.
Hoya destroya: Sophomore defensive end Davon Robertson got his first sack of the season when he took down Georgetown quarterback Kyle Nolan.

In gridiron lore, Notre Dame has the Four Horsemen. Fordham boasts the Seven Blocks of Granite. Now, Harvard has the Five Road Graders.

From tackle to tackle on the offensive line, left to right they are: Adam Redmond ’16, Mic Mancinelli ’15, Nic Easton ’15, Anthony Fabiano ’15, and Cole Toner ’16. With bulldozing ferocity, they flatten every would-be tackler hapless enough to appear in their path and provide a wall behind which a quarterback can operate without fear of being pummeled. In the first three games of the 2014 season they have helped make a star of previously little-used running back Andrew Casten ’15. On Saturday at Georgetown, the Graders cleared the way for Casten to run for 139 yards and four touchdowns in a methodical 34-3 defeat of the Hoyas that ran Harvard’s record to 3-0. Moreover, they did not permit a sack, enabling quarterback Scott Hosch ’16 to complete 20 of 25 passes. All told, the ultra-balanced Crimson racked up 558 yards of offense: 265 on the ground, 293 in the air. Georgetown, now 2-4 in the Patriot League, came in leading the Football Championship Subdivision in turnover margin, but on this day the Hoyas did not have a takeaway. It was the first time the two colleges had played football, and the game, held in the nation’s capital, belonged to the Crimson.

The Road Graders’ dominance in no way minimizes Casten. His emergence is one of the two most remarkable developments of the early season. (Hosch’s capability is the other.) In Casten’s first career start, on September 19 against Holy Cross, he ran for three touchdowns. On Saturday he ran over, around, and (when necessary) through Hoyas. His four touchdowns were the second most in a game in school history, surpassed only by the five rushing touchdowns of Tom Ossman ’52 against Brown in 1951. As marvelous as Casten was, the kid from Red Bank, New Jersey, modestly and graciously tipped his helmet to the Road Graders. Casten says he is told to “press it—run right on their heels.” Good idea! “They made holes three and four yards wide,” he marveled afterwards.

Two injured first-teamers, quarterback Connor Hempel ’15 (back spasms) and running back Paul Stanton Jr. ’16 (ailing leg), did not even travel south. Hosch made his second straight start and again impressed with efficiency and decisionmaking. Almost effortlessly, he directed the Crimson to their first score only 2:43 into the game. Andrew Fischer ’16 took the opening kickoff and wove his way to the Harvard 45. From there, Hosch mixed rushes by Casten and completions to Fischer and tight ends Ben Braunecker ’16 and Anthony Firkser ’17 to move the ball down to the Hoyas’ two. From there, Casten blasted over.

Georgetown retaliated with its only points of the day on a 36-yard field goal by Henry Darmstadter. The Crimson faithful among the crowd of 2,502 at Multi-Sport Field (a facility fairly crying for a wealthy alum to provide a less generic name) might well have been wondering if the pattern set against Holy Cross and Brown—lead early, then sleepwalk until the third quarter—would repeat itself. Not on this day. Hosch led Harvard on a 10-play, 79-yard drive that culminated in Casten’s sailing untouched for 22 yards to the end zone, running through a hole opened by the Five Road Graders that could have accommodated an Abrams tank. Casten says that on the play there was a sixth Road Grader: “Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the referee block a linebacker.” Alas, Ben Falloon ’15 missed the extra point, leaving it 13-3 Crimson with 10:47 gone.

The end of the first half brought the backbreaker. With four minutes left, Harvard drove 87 yards to a touchdown. The key plays included a reverse to Fischer for 26 yards, a 10-yard bolt by Casten in which he nimbly dodged blitzing linebacker Nick Alfieri, and a 24-yard completion to the Georgetown six by Hosch to Braunecker, who juggled the ball and held on despite being popped by a Hoyas defender. Casten then charged right through the Road-Graded middle for his third score, which gave the Crimson a 20-3 lead.

The second half was one of frustration for the Hoyas. Quarterback Kyle Nolan kept moving the ball; one drive included 15 plays and chewed up 6:43. But Georgetown got no points as Harvard’s defense, led particularly by the sideline-to-sideline marauding of defensive back Scott Peters ’16 (a team-high 7.0 tackles), tightened when it had to. Spying on Nolan, linebacker Matt Koran ’16 nailed the quarterback on a blitz for a key sack. Getting the ball back, the Crimson applied the crusher when Casten, showing he also has good hands, took a pass from Hosch on a wheel route (in which a back circles out of the backfield and into the flat) and rambled 43 yards. Eventually Casten would run through a Hoya on the goal line for his fourth TD.

The final Crimson score came with 10:22 left when Hosch, flushed from the pocket, flipped a 27-yard touchdown pass to a wide-open Joseph Foster, who caught the ball on the five and walked into the end zone. The sophomore from nearby Fredericksburg, Virginia, was one of many subs who got playing time in a game in which the virtually even time of possession—31:03 for Harvard, 28:57 for Georgetown, a result of the Hoyas' several long, fruitless drives—somehow seemed meaningless.

Want to quibble? The missed point after touchdown was an astonishing fourth in three games. The low-risk offense has meant that Hosch has not had an excuse to show that he can throw deep downfield. The defense did not force a turnover. And defensive end Zack Hodges ’15, shut out on sacks for the second straight game, is stuck on 20.5 career sacks, tied with Chris Smith ’98 for the Crimson career record.

 

Weekend roundup: All Ivy teams now have played one league game. The biggest surprise so far: Yale. If you haven’t yet bought your tickets for The Game…you might want to.

Princeton 38, Columbia 6
Yale 51, Cornell 13
Dartmouth 31, Penn 13
Brown 20, Rhode Island 13

 

Coming up: Next Saturday at 1 p.m. Harvard (1-0 in Ivy League play) takes on Ivy rival Cornell at the Stadium. After losing to Yale, the Big Red is 0-3 and 0-1 in the league. So far, there are no common opponents.

For better or worse, the buildup to Saturday’s game will not match that of Cornell’s visit to the Stadium in 1915. That game had national championship implications, as we might say today. Both teams were unbeaten and the Crimson was riding a 33-game unbeaten streak, having not lost in four seasons (31 wins, two ties). Traveling with the Cornell party to Cambridge was their mascot, a live bear named Touchdown, who was expected to appear on the sidelines with his keepers.

A crowd of 25,000 turned out. As the game began, Touchdown the Bear was nowhere to be seen. Apparently, he had been kidnapped! Even as the Big Red asserted its dominance, Cornellians were frantically searching for their beloved bruin. Happily, by the time Fritz Shiverick kicked the field goal that sent the Crimson to a 10-0 defeat—its first loss in 1,442 days—Touchdown was cavorting by the bench. “According to all accounts,” reported the Boston Globe, “some detective work on the part of the Cornell football supporters resulted in the discovery of the bear’s place of imprisonment”—the Harvard baseball cage—“and his rescue was effected early enough for his appearance in the Stadium during the game.”

Thankfully, we are way too civilized to pull a stunt like this today…aren’t we?

 

Score by Quarters                         

Harvard                 13               7                7       7                34
Georgetown            3               0                0           0                  3    

Attendance: 2,502

Read more articles by: Dick Friedman

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