An opportunistic Dartmouth J.V. football team defeated the Harvard J.V. squad 23-0 yesterday as the Big Green offense took advantage of costly Crimson errors throughout the game.

Harvard received the opening kickoff and soon marched into Dartmouth territory. But a holding penalty nullified a touchdown pass from Doug Gordon to Dave Dobbs and set the pattern for the rest of the game.

After a Dartmouth fumble on its first possession, the Crimson offense drove from its 39-yard line to the Dartmouth 1 on a drive featuring several good runs by backs Jay Richter and John Balko. However, a fumble ended the scoring chance and Dartmouth's defense soon stiffened.

Later in the first period, Dartmouth scored the first touchdown of the day on a 45-yard drive in four plays. An eight-yard run by halfback Charlie Potts gave Dartmouth the lead, 7-0.

In the second period, another bad break ended a Harvard scoring opportunity as a holding penalty halted the offense at the 50-yard line.

Again the Dartmouth offense struck as the Green moved 70 yards, doing most of the damage on runs up the middle by Potts and fullback Tom Bienia. Bienia scored the touchdown on a third-down draw play from the Harvard 11-yard line to make the score 13-0.

The rest of the half was scoreless as the teams exchanged turnovers; Paul Tosetti and Bob McDonald intercepted Dartmouth passes. McDonald's catch at the Harvard goal line came with only 40 seconds left in the half.

Both defenses controlled the game in the third period as several good runs by Harvard halfback Balko and a pass from Mike Lynch to Dave Dobbs produced Harvard's only big gains of the quarter.

The Harvard defense played well in the second half as it closed off Dartmouth's inside running game that had worked well in the opening half.

Explaining the improvement, defensive end Bill O'Neill said, "We had a lot of guys in at new positions. At the beginning we were inexperienced as a unit, but we improved as the game wore on."

Dartmouth Moved Early

However, Dartmouth's offense moved again early in the fourth period as quarterback Bob Amundsen passed to backs Blair Dickerson and Jay Hambrick for consecutive first downs in Harvard territory.

When the Harvard defense stiffened, Dartmouth increased its lead to 16-0 in a 24-yard field goal by Shoun Kerbaugh. Later in the period Dartmouth closed the scoring on a six-yard touchdown run by Potts.

The Harvard loss was attributable to an offense that was plagued by turnovers, and that moved well but could not score.

"Bad breaks will stop any team," quarterback Gordon said after the game. "We moved the ball well but could not put it together."

"We came up with the big plays," Dartmouth coach John Curtis commented, and that made the difference in the 23-0 win for his team.