Cozza Subdued, Restic Happy After Tight Defensive Contest

By now the Elis Are beginning to realize. Ogden Nash '24

After two straight last minute defeats by Harvard in the Ivy championship game, Yale coach Carmen Cozza was in no mood to talk.

Last year Cozza spent most of The post-Game press conference staring at the ceiling of Harvard's Dillon Field House after the Crimson came from behind to win, 21-16, in the final 15 seconds.

On Saturday the object of interest was not the ceiling, but the floor of Yale's Lapham Field House, as Cozza again could only wonder why the heavens had deserted him in waning moments of the Harvard-Yale game.

After he mumbled a few words how Yale had missed its big play (an interception by Crimson cornerback Jon Judge on the Harvard five-yard line) and how Harvard made theirs (a 21 yard fourth-down pass to Bob McDermott down to the Yale 14), the Eli mentor slipped quietly out of the building.

Meanwhile Harvard coach Joe Restic was just beginning to feel the pains of notoriety in the winners' locker room.

"We were very fortunate," was the way Restic began his victory speech. "It could have gone either way. They are a well-coached football team."

But the compliments for Cozza were not what the crowd was waiting for. As the yelling, chanting crowd quieted, Restic moved to the middle of the room, stepped up on a bench and said simply, "We delivered."

Later, after the pandemonium died down, Restic finally commented on his own good fortune: 'Tonight and tomorrow will be Thanksgiving for me." But not for Carmen Cozza.