A late-game dilemma for the Harvard football team Saturday: to score or not to score?

The Crimson began mauling Dartmouth early in the second quarter. The rout continued into the third. The moral question facing the Crimson: when are you supposed to stop? When is enough enough?

A 20 point lead? A 30 point lead?

Harvard Coach Joe Restic waited until the middle of the fourth quarter to pull his starting unit in favor of the second and third teams. By then, the Crimson led 42-3--a score that would stand until the gun went off at game's end--and the Big Green was pretty blue. Columbia blue.

Harvard found itself in a peculiar situation Saturday. It was too good. A little late-game restraint was in order because the starting unit--particularly Tony Hi and Tom Yohe on offense and Frank Caprio on defense--had rolled over Dartmouth as if it were a pee-wee team. Or Columbia.

The must-win turned into a dustin', and pushed Harvard (4-1 overall, 2-1 Ivy League) into a second-place Ivy logjam with Cornell, Penn and Princeton, all a half game behind Brown (3-1 Ivy). The Bruins climbed to the Ivy peak with a 23-15 upset Saturday of previously undefeated Cornell.

Meanwhile, Dartmouth fell to 0-2 in the league, 1-4 overall. The Green has company down in the valley--Columbia lost again (27-13 to Yale) and is 0-4.

For Dartmouth Coach Buddy Teevens, Saturday's game was a rude return to the Stadium. In 1978, Teevens was the Green quarterback who led Dartmouth to a 6-1 league record. The only loss was against Harvard at the Stadium. But it was a big loss: Dartmouth finished a half-game out of first place that year.

Dartmouth will not be contending for the league crown this year. If the Green players didn't know this before Saturday's game, they know it now.

Still, a loss is a loss. And a rout is rough.

"It wasn't a good loss," said Teevens.

No, Buddy, it was bad. Michael Jackson Bad.

And sad. Teevens is a good guy, trying to bring back respectability to a once powerful team. The going has been rough. Harvard made it rougher.

"I'm pleased with the way we've come along," Restic said. "We showed more aggressiveness than I've seen so far this year."

After the game, Teevens had a solemn discussion with his team. "I wanted to say a couple of things to the players to make them think about what was going on and where we were going from here," Teevens said.