On the one side:

"Our defense is set up to stop the run," said captain and right tackle Brendan Bibro. "Their offensive line played hard, and we lost containment [too often]."

On the other:

"Their linebackers are big physical kids," said Bucknell sophomore quarterback Don McDowell. "We weren't going to push them back, but they commit so many men to the run that we knew there would be other openings."

Murphy has said that the difference in this year's team is speed, more than he's seen while at Harvard. It just makes you wonder why he isn't using it when the dam is breaking at the corner of the defense.

Harvard wasn't getting beat at the corner, it was simply caught up in the line. Asked to describe his 30-yard bootleg in the third quarter, McDowell said, "I just got to the outside, and there was no one there."

Big Pick

If you're looking for a turning point in the game, it may very well be Bucknell freshman safety Kevin Elben's interception in the endzone with 1:45 remaining in the first half.

At third-and-six from the Bucknell 22-yard-line, with Harvard leading 20-14, sophomore quarterback Rich Linden found Skelton in single coverage on the left sideline, and threw the ball to his top target on a slant route.

The Bucknell cornerback had good coverage, and the ball bounced off Skelton's pads into the waiting arms of Elben, who was still five yards late rotating over to help his cornerback.

The pass may have been a bit forced, but anytime a quarterback can find his most athletically gifted receiver in single coverage in the endzone, he likes his chances. Herman Moore and Michael Irvin make a living by winning jump-balls in the endzone. Only in bizarre situations-such as a deflection-should a well-thrown ball, as Linden's was, be intercepted. It just didn't work out for the Crimson.

"It was a big play [for Bucknell]," Murphy said. "But it was also a chance to put the game away, which we have stressed."

Pressured

After being sacked just once in the first two games, Rich Linden was taken down four times in Saturday's contest, and repeatedly found himself on his back after releasing the ball.

Bucknell's zone blitz defense, in which defensive lineman drop into coverage in place of a blitzing linebacker or defensive back, obviously confused a Harvard offensive line that in previous games had been gotten used to dominating the line of scrimmage.