Football Team Begins Ivy Competition

HAVARD'S embarrassing 22-17 loss to Lehigh last week has gone the way of all bygones in an educated community, and as second Saturday of the football season rolls around, Crimson fans welcome a new day and a fresh start -- the beginning of 1961 Ivy competition.

Tomorrow's Cornell game does not mark the official beginning of the Ivy schedule, however Saturday Columbia opened the Ivy season with an astounding 50-0 victory over Brown in Providence.

For the rest of the Ivies last week it was warm-up time, and not a bad showing. In addition to Harvard and Brown, Princeton was the only Ivy squad to lose, dropping its contest with Rutgers, 16-13.

Yale, quarterbacked by Bill Leckonby, son Lehigh coach, showed well in its 18-0 victory over Connecticut. The Bulldogs have been title favorites, along with Dartmouth and Cornell. Dartmouth came through as expected last Saturday, wolloping New Hampshire 28-3, and Cornell looked even more impressive in its 34-0 suppression of Colgate.

Penn came back from its crippling loss of tailback Porter Shreve and downed Lafayette, 14-7.

Judging from last week's results, it looks like Ivy league will finish something like this: Columbia, Dartmouth, Yale, Penn, Princeton, and Brown. That's about the pre-season experts picked, with the exception of Columbia, which sat much lower as a "dark horse."

The Harvard coaches who scouted Cornell last week came back with nothing but praise for the Big Red. End coach Paul McKee, for example, called them "absolutely terrific." When asked about the personnel of the Big Red, he merely pointed out that halfback Pat Pennucci, the team's leading ground-gainer and pass receiver last year, is now playing third string. Depth is so strong that Cornell was able to use three teams in its victory against Colgate.

Rookie coach Tom Harp has successfully introduced the "lonely end" T formation attack, which features senior end Ken Hoffman 20 yards out from the tackle on the strong side of an unbalanced line. Halfback George Telesh, the team's old reliable, lines up on the side opposite Hoffman.

Hoffman freezes the defensive halfback and corner man on his side of the line and thus gives quarterback Dave McKelvey the option of either passing to him or handing off to Telesh, who slants off the strong-side tackle on the inside belly play.

Cornell favors inside and outside belly plays starting with dives by fullback Ken Kavensky. Also, it likes to use men in motion.

IN the all-senior backfield with McKelvey, Telesh, and Kavensky is Marcy Tino, co-captain with Telesh. But it's Telesh who dominates the running attack. Last week he ran the ball 18 times for 93 yards and an average of 5.2 per carry. He scored 18 points by way of three touchdowns.

Any way you look at it, Cornell's loaded. Even on kickoffs they'll stand out. Pete Gogolak, who kicks with his instep, hit the goalpost on the opening kickoff against Colgate, and on the next two he split the uprights. Only two out of his seven kickoffs last Saturday could be returned; the others went out of the end zone.

Harvard will probably continue a tradition it revived last Saturday by using fullback Bill Grana as a runner. In the past, Crimson fullbacks have primarily been used only for blocking, as happened last year when they carried the ball an average of just six times per game. Last Saturday Grana took the ball 15 times for 89 yards, an average of 5.9 per carry, and one touchdown.

Crimson fans are hoping that Harvard will match its defensive performance of last week, which allowed Lehigh only 73 yards on the ground.

It is curious to note that Cornell, despite its overwhelming victory over Colgate, failed to equal the number of yards gained by Harvard in total offense against Lehigh. The Crimson covered 268 on the ground and 40 in the air for a total of 308 yards; Cornell gained 264 and 39 for 303. But then again, Cornell won and Harvard lost.

One can sit around and fool with statistics or comparative scores, but that doesn't really solve anything -- especially in the Ivy League, where anything goes, and usually does.

Harvard men will just have to wait and see, and hope that the breaks become theirs.

On other fronts tomorrow, the soccer and cross country teams compete against Cornell in Cambridge.

In other Ivy football games tomorrow Columbia plays Princeton in New York, Dart- mouth plays Penn at Franklin Field, Yale plays Brown at New Haven. How the Ivy games predicted to finish? According to the updated Ivy speculations, the top teams are playing the bottom four.

So if Penn, Harvard, Princeton, Brown should win tomorrow, we'll be reading about another upset in the Ivy League morning. That's not an uncommon experience