"They did a good job on Rich," Mur- phy said. "They blitzed a lot."

"Harvard stopped themselves with penalties [total of eight flags]," Gadd said. "We also started getting after Linden better, and got them into third-and-long situations."

Indeed, the Crimson was forced to punt away its first possession of the second half from deep in its own territory due to two costly penalties. Bucknell wasted little time.

McDowell passed for 26 yards to fullback Jeremy Myers, capitalizing on blown coverage by the Harvard cornerbacks.

While Compas saved the touchdown with an alert tackle, Peer put the Bisons ahead two plays later on a 16-yard race to the left corner of the end-zone.

After the Crimson took over on its own 34-yard line, a tremendous moment for the Harvard faithful transpired. Colby Skelton caught a nine-yard pass in traffic to break Pat McInnaly's '75 school record of 108 career receptions. Skelton finished with five catches for 106 yards to pace the Crimson.

"The record is nice, but the most important thing is winning the game. We didn't do that today," Skelton said.

Six plays later, Bucknell's corner Nate Musselman intercepted a Linden pass on a broken play and ran it back to midfield. Just over a minute later, McDowell avoided a sack to sprint 30 yards before being tackled by alert junior Derek Yankoff.

"I just got outside and there was nobody there," said McDowell.

The Crimson defense held Bucknell to a field goal, but with a 24-20 deficit and loss of momentum, it was obvious that Harvard was facing a tough road ahead.

Paced by standouts Willie Hill and Steve Burman, who combined for 19 tackles and three sacks, Bucknell flexed its defensive muscle.

The Bisons proceeded to hammer Linden on every pass play, and stuffed the running game by penetrating past an outmatched Crimson offensive line.

Bucknell could have added another score at the beginning of the fourth quarter, but the aptly-named junior Ron Rockett was ruled out-of-bounds on a great catch at the Harvard one-yard line, forcing Bucknell to punt.

In the course of the next 10 minutes, thrice the Crimson went on offense. Yet, Harvard gained only one first down and each time was forced to punt almost immediately.

The final realistic opportunity came when the Crimson began a drive on the Bucknell 45-yard line with just under two minutes left and all timeouts remaining. But a sack and two in completions gave the ball back to the Bisons, who ran the clock down to ten seconds.

"We haven't been behind at all this year," Murphy said. "That may have hurt us."