After Ivy frontrunner Princeton chivvied the Crimson grapplers 31-8 on Friday, Harvard's matmen evened the road trip Saturday when they came away from a grabfest at Penn with a 20-16 win.

Coach John Lee called the Princeton squad "as strong an Ivy league wrestling team as I've seen in eight years." The Tigers were, in short, an assortment of notoriously tough eggs bordering on fiends in human form, kowtowing the Crimson in all but two matches.

The Tigers' Dutch bad boy Dennis Underkauffer clipped George Baker 3-0. Steve Grubman followed suit flattening Jon Franklin who hobbled away from the forfeit with torn ligaments.

Princeton's Mike Knockles and Keith Ely supplied additional bold strokes of brushwork to the Jadwin Gymnasium canvas, pasting the somewhat plastic torsos of freshmen Bill Mulvihill and captain Jim Strathmeyer to the mats.

"I think the team was ready to wrestle after catching it on the chin Friday," heavyweight Kip Smith said, and it was a revamped Crimson squad that spilled into the Palestra, Saturday.

The Crimson's fortunes improved as an ailing Jim Corcoran toyed with his Quaker opponent, racking up a third round cradle. "Corcoran deserves all the credit for turning the whole match around," said Smith.

Harvard's bench showered captain Jim Strathmeyer with ebullient support as he took to the mats while a hyped-up partisan crowd cheered on the Quakers. The Crimson was trailing 16-13 when Strathmeyer knifed in for the deciding take-down. "He hit a guy with a fireman's carry and went on to clobber him," said Smith.

The Crimson was now nursing a 17-16 lead when Smith tussled with a shock of sinew named Steve Glasgow. "Last year he had a lot of baby fat on him," Smith said as his voice trailed away ominously, but he proved up to the occasion, clawing to a 3-1 win over Glasgow.