But the Crimson got a lucky break when starting goalie Neary suffered a fractured big toe and had to be removed from the game. Brown's second string goalie, Mike Hampdon, was injured, so sub Barry Whittaker was forced to fill in. Harvard did little shooting to test the new goalie, however, and Brown continued to dominate play.
Brown's pressure was finally converted into a score as an indirect kick was shuffled around in front and in the scramble Frank Mancuso kicked the ball home through a screen of Harvard and Brown players to tie the score at 1-1 with 6-11 left in the half.
Harvard took the lead on Papagianis's first goal early in the second half as a pretty passing play from Dragan Vujovic to Brahman Mossavar Rahmani to Papa fooled the Brown goalie. Whittakar came out of the goal mouth and Papagianis floated a soft shot over his head for the score.
The game was a statistician's delight Brown outshot Harvard by a 2-1 margin (25-12), but the Crimson's first shots on goal in the first half, the second stanza and the second overtime all resulted in unassisted scores. Harvard goalie Steve Kidder was forced to make 11 saves while Brown goalie Barry Whittaker made only seven.
"They had the run of the play for much of the second half," head coach Bruce Munro said after the game, beaming after winning the last home game of the season in his 25th year of Harvard coaching "We lucked this one out," he added. Captain Scott thought that the Crimson's dreams of a return trip to the Orange Bowl might have affected the outcome "Having been to Miami once we had much more incentive to go again."
"We outplayed Harvard in both halves," a disconsolate Brown coach Cliff Stevenson said in the losers' lockrroom. "We played an excellent game, and had the opportunities, but couldn't put them in," he added. Sometimes, the ball bounces the other way.