treavor scales 24 football

By RICKY LIU

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

With its season already halfway over, the Harvard football team will look to kick things into high gear when it delves into the meat of its conference season beginning this weekend.

Having wrapped up its final non-conference game last weekend against Lehigh, the Crimson (3-2, 1-1 Ivy) will head down to Powers Field on Saturday at 1 p.m. to take on Princeton (1-4, 0-2), as the race for the Ivy League crown begins to pick up in intensity.

When league-only play starts this weekend, every Ancient Eight squad, including the two aforementioned teams, has the opportunity to gain some ground in the conference standings and make a run for this year’s Ivy League title.

“Our kids are excited, always excited to play Princeton,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “Every game when you only have 10 is a big game on your schedule…but the Princeton game is one of the big ones marked on the schedule. Everybody wants to be Harvard’s rival. Princeton is our rival.”

The Crimson hopes that the outcome of this game remains true to recent history. Harvard has taken 11 of the last 13 meetings between these two teams, including the last three.

Meanwhile, the Tigers are looking to end their three-game losing streak with their first Ivy League win of the season.

After coming off of disappointing Week-5 losses, both teams are looking for a momentum swing going into the rest of the conference schedule with a victory this weekend. Each team saw substantial halftime leads disappear due to lack of offensive production in the second halves of their respective games.

Going into halftime last weekend, Princeton led Brown by 13 points but fell to the Bears in the end by a score of 17-13.

Similarly, the Crimson held a 17-0 halftime lead over visiting Lehigh but was unable to produce on offense or hold back the Mountain Hawks on defense, resulting in a 21-19 loss for Harvard.

The Tigers surrendered 338 yards of total offense to Brown last weekend, including 153 yards on the ground.

This matchup could prove to be a big opportunity for the Crimson running back trio of senior Gino Gordon and sophomores Treavor Scales and Rich Zajeski. The three head the Ivy League’s second-leading rushing offense.

In the past three games, Harvard has rushed for an average of 280 yards, gaining an average of over six yards per carry.

The three tailbacks are looking forward to taking advantage of Princeton’s rushing defense, which has given up an average of 207 yards on the ground per game this season and is ranked second-to-last in the Ivy League.