"I'm on crutches now; but when I get off them I'll start rehabilitating the knee, working on it," St. John said yesterday. But just when that progress would come was uncertain.
And so the bomb fell.
The starting quarterback Harvard had searched so hard to find was gone--perhaps permanently. Down 3-0 at that point, Harvard looked to pick itself up and salvage the afternoon. In came Mike Buchanan, a sophomore with no varsity playing time and little Multiflex experience. At times it looked like this Alabama option specialist might pull off a miracle. But the reality of the afternoon was too overwhelming. The romantic finish would have to wait for another day.
Perhaps the first play of the game should have told everyone that this would be a day controlled by circumstance. UMass began its first series with an illegal procedure penalty. The menacing yellow handkerchief would go on to be the most familiar performer of the game. Eleven of 16 penalties would go against Harvard. The mistakes would cost the Crimson 141 yards, a total that stymied the offense and did its best to deflate a stubbornly stellar defense.
In truth, UMass was not very impressive. Rushing for just 79 yards on 49 carries (Harvard was 45-127), the Minutemen had to live with almost no ground game. The Harvard defense proved that its performance against Columbia was no fluke as it closed the holes opened by the behemoth UMass lineman.
But with St. John gone and the Crimson forced to look for a break--an interception, a fumble, or a handout--the defense had to press. The cornerbacks had to pull in tight, crowding the receivers early and facing one-on-one coverage deep. That, in the end, was a costly necessity.
"The Harvard secondary crowded us a little bit more than we expected," UMass coach Bob Pickett said after the game. "We felt we could hit on the long pass." And hit they did--though not always without the help of a penalty flag.
Harvard's first defensive break came with four minutes left in the opening quarter. UMass began a penalty-assisted scoring drive on a 32-yd. Mike McEvilly-to-Marty Paglione aerial. Crimson cornerback Terry Trusty, beaten by two steps, signalled the referee and then bumped Paglione as the ball was heading for the ground. The interference call gave UMass a first and ten on the Harvard 25.
Three more times in that drive the Harvard defense offended the officials--once for an eight-yd. pass interference call, once on an offsides violation, and once on a foul personal action. Harvard could not escape unscathed after handing UMass 46 yards in the 58-yd. drive. But the defense, after its four miscues dug in at the 1 1/2 and forced the Minutemen to settle for a 22-yd. field goal.
As St. John played out what may have been his final minutes as Harvard's varsity quarterback, the Crimson had trouble mustering an attack. Both teams were flat, and UMass carried its 3-0 lead through half of the second quarter.
After St. John quietly disappeared, Buchanan took control--but not without problems. On his first play, at midfield, Buchanan and Al Altieri missed on an exchange. Defensive end George Lewis recovered to give UMass the ball.
McEvilly wasted no time. He lofted a 54-yd. scoring pass to Kevin O'Connor, on the first play from scrimmage. The fleet-footed O'Connor, who caught six passes for 159 yards and two TDs, took the ball at the Harvard 14 and sneaked into the endzone untouched.
Following the ensuing kickoff, Buchanan missed again, this time on a handoff to Paul Connors. Cornerback Bob Manning's recovery again gave UMass the ball, but the Harvard defense asserted itself and he stalled the Minutemen, allowing the half to whimper away uneventfully.
When Harvard took the second-half kickoff and began moving downfield smoothly, visions of "Buchanan the Saviour" flashed through the stadium. Using the option from a power-I formation, Buchanan worked with his backs, almost perfectly.
Fifty seconds into the half Buchanan hit Chuck Marshall for a 14-yd. gain and his first varsity completion. (Buchanan finished at 6-13 for 86 yards on the day.) Working to the right on countless pitchouts to Connors, Harvard rolled to the UMass 16. Then the penalty flag appeared again. An inelligible receiver downfield sent Harvard back to the 34 and ended the drive.
From then on, it was first-down losses or penalties that stifled the Harvard attack, putting young Buchanan into an immediate hole with second and long on almost every drive.
With a lack of offense forcing the defense to carry the load, Harvard finally broke--though just for a moment. The lapse was long enough to let McEvilly (12-18 for 251 yards and two TDs) hit a wide-open Paglione in the flats. The burly tight end stretched out a 39-yd. gain before Scott MacLeod collared him to prevent a score.
UMass finished the four-play, 60-yd. touchdown drive in just 68 seconds as O'Connor took a McEvilly pass at the Harvard eight, eluded Trusty and stumbled into the endzone.
Adding insult to injury, UMass upped the score to 20-0 after a Harvard math breakdown left 12 men on the field during a UMass punt. The Minutemen took the free first down at the Harvard 47 and struggled to the 26. From there, ambidexterous Mike Vitiello boomed a 43-yd. field goal.
On the next drive, Harvard posted its only points of the day, but not before the Crimson offset a helpful UMass face-masking penalty with a clipping violation of its own. Nonetheless, the Crimson rumbled to the Minutemen's 18-yd. line sparked by a 52-yd. Buchanan-to-Horner fly pattern. Then Connors took on option play and lofted a pass into the endzone, where Horner ripped the ball from a UMass defender's fingers for the score.
Mystery kicker David Cody (not listed in the program and unknown to virtually all Harvard officials) added the extra point. After the game, Restic, asked about Cody and Harvard's uncertain kicking game, said, "I have 15 kickers out there. I don't know where they're from."
Four more Harvard penalties prevented the Crimson from mounting any threats in the waning minutes, and the afternoon fell into a grey-skyed depression.
After the game, Joe Restic seemed to reflect the spirit of the day. Depressed by his team's lowly nine first downs (5-18 third-down conversions), the injury to St. John, a possibly serious aggravation of a bad shoulder for stalwart offensive tackle Mike Durgin, and a defensive performance that was missing only the offensive complement, Restic struggled for optimism.
"Buchanan did a heck of a job under the conditions," he said. "The defense just couldn't do any better under those conditions. We hung right in there to the end."
Restic discredited his squad's heavy penalty total as the result of aggressive play. "I can't fault that," he said. But he was sorely depressed--almost crushed.
"It was just one of those games. You couldn't do much about it," he said.
His helplessness was agonizing. Scoring summary M--Vitiello 22 field goal M--O'Connor 54 pass from McEvilly (Vitiello kick) M--Connor 16 pass from McEvilly (Vitiello kick) M--Vitiello 43 field goal H--Horner 18 pass from Connors (Cody kick)
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