But Santiago was pressured by the Penn defense and had to pitch the pigskin to Connolly. No matter, though because the junior split end encountered no Quaker defenders as he held the ball aloft and sauntered five yards into the endzone.
White was not suprised. "Robert did a great job because he got pressure from the strong safety, and Joe Connolly did a great job getting into the endzone," he sad. "The play just makes a lot of sense. It's great call and it worked."
Harvard, taking a 10-0 lead into the locker room at halftime, took Penn right out of their game. "I have to be pleased with the way we controlled the early part of the ballgame," Restic said.
The Quakers' strength all season has been its rushing game, but faced with a 10-point deficit, Penn had to take to the air. And Harvard stuffed the, coming up with three crucial interceptions.
"Our secondary is second to none," said Captain Brent Wilkinson, who picked off one of Penn quarterback Jim Crocicchia's passes himself.
And when White dove into the endzone late in the third period to give the Crimson an insurmountable 17-0 advantage, it was obvious that Harvard--which was the last Ivy team to beat Penn, shutting them out 28-0 in 1983--had stopped Penn's record-threatening Ivy League winning streak. Not even Penn Coach Jerry Berndt's Lou Carnesecca-style sweater was lucky enough to stop Harvard's eventual triumph.
The only real question left was whether the consistently tough Harvard defense would earn its first shutout of the season. The swarming Crimson defense whipped up a wild Harvard crowd, which actually cheered loudly enough to stop play on a key Penn fourth down attempt in the final period.
But the shutout was not to be, as eight consecutive Crocicchia passes resulted in a Quaker touchdown with 38 seconds left in the contest.
"We wanted to shut those guys out very bad," Wilkinson said afterwards. "we came up 38 seconds short. Doggone."
Shutout or not, the Crimson still beat Berndt, who is widely considered the best coach in the Ivy League. Despite winning three league crowns in his first four years--including his notorious 1982 title, when the Quakers beat Harvard, 23-21, in a controversial finish--Berndt has never won in the Stadium.
After the drama Saturday, the two locker rooms were a study in contrast. "It's morbid in there right now. They [the Penn players] know Harvard played better than they did," Berndt said after the game.
The Harvard resembled room, on the other hand, resembled a bigwig bash. Among the guests were President Derek C. Bok (who gave a postgame speech), Vice President Daniel Steiner '54, Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57, and former football Captain Steve Abbott.
When the celebration had ended, the Crimson knew that it was in control of its own destiny this season. And that destiny will be shaped next week, in the 102nd edition of The Game.