Cornell's Marinaro Rates Taut Defense

Cornell has several valuable drawing cards for promising jocks. There is the School of Agriculture, where the Canadian hockey players can feel at home, and Lynah Rink, a snake pit where the goal judges are not known for their impartiality. There are over fifty fraternities (more than any other Ivy school) for the jocks to play in. And there is the School of Hotel Administration, which brought Ed Marinaro to Cornell.

The trail of broken tackles that has made Marinaro a Heisman Trophy contender began in earnest two years ago in a game that still stands as Marinaro's most devastating one man show. An almost unknown sophomore, Marinaro cruised through Harvard's defenses for 281 yards and five touchdowns, sending the Crimson back to Cambridge with their fifth loss in the last six trips to Ithaca.

Today, Harvard is back in Ithaca to try again, but this time John Yovicsin won't be standing on the sideline scratching his head as Marinaro races up and down the field. The burden has fallen on Joe Restic, and not surprisingly, he has a variety of defenses to throw at the wonder boy from New Milford, Conn. Instead of keying one man on Marinaro, as Yovicsin did last year with some success. Restic plans to key "about five" men on Marinaro in "different defenses at different times."

Restic hopes to keep Marinaro from breaking a long touchdown run. In order to hold Marinaro to short gains, Harvard will have to prevent him from playing his favorite trick--cutting back across the flow of the play.

Marinaro is given the ball about four yards behing the line of scrimmage, so that he has the option to abandon the designated hole and look for daylight elsewhere in the line.

Probably the best thing the defense can do is pray for rain. Marinaro slipped at least six times on wet Polyturf while making his cuts behind the line of scrimmage against Princeton, and his limited mobility held him to a mere 144 yards and one touchdown.

Offensively, Restic says that Harvard will start out by throwing the ball, and Foster's passing game may well revive against the Red. Cornell's secondary has proved vulnerable to short passes, the only kind Foster has been able to complete over the past two seasons.

If Foster starts firing Interceptions again, the Crimson will stick to its ground game. But if the runners fail to duplicate their performance against Columbia and Northeastern, then Restic will finally have to go with a new quarterback. Frank Guerra will get the nod if the situation calls for a drop-back passer, and Jim Stoekel will go in if Restic wants a rollout quarterback.

As one of the two remaining unbeaten teams in the Ivy League, Cornell is obviously going to be tough. But Princeton, a winless team, murdered Cornell in total offense last Saturday and only lost because of fumbles and interceptions. Cornell is a slight favorite on paper, but the game should be rated a toss-up. Ivy Standings   W  L Cornell  1  0 Dartmouth  1  0 Harvard  1  0 Yale  1  0 Columbia  1  1 Penn  1  1 Brown  0  2 Princeton  0  2

Today's Schedule

Harvard at Cornell

Dartmouth at Brown

Yale at Columbia

Lafayette at Penn

Colgate at Princeton

Today's Schedule

Harvard at Cornell

Dartmouth at Brown

Yale at Columbia

Lafayette at Penn

Colgate at Princeton