The Captain and His Two-Way Big Man

We open this week's notebook with a look at the performance of Harvard Captain Scott Collins in Saturday afternoon's 31-19 loss to Brown--a defeat that mathematically eliminated the gridders from Ivy League contention.

The senior linebacker added 11 more tackles (and five assists) to his team-leading total of 64. In addition, Collins recorded two sacks which cost the Bruins 16 yards.

Collins, who seemed to be everywhere all day long, is also the recipient of this week's Most Notable Un-noted Play of the Week Award. The 6-ft., 1-in. Collins forced a Brown fumble on just the Bruins third play from scrimmage of the game.

After tackling Brown signal-caller Mark Donovan, Collins got back up and raced for the ball, losing the ensuing battle to teammate Clifton Tidwell.

That turned out to be Harvard's only take-away of the afternoon--an afternoon in which the Crimson turned the ball over five times itself (four fumbles, one interception).

Big Man on Offense: The Offensive Player of the Week award goes to senior running back Brian O'Neil, who despite missing several weeks because of an injury racked up 132 yards on the ground Saturday--the highest single-game rushing total by a Harvard player this season.

With those 132 yards, O'Neil overtook running back George Sorbara for the team lead in rushing with an even 300 yards (on 63 carries). Sorbara is now second with 196 yards (on 59 attempts).

O'Neil's effort--overshadowed by the Brown victory--is all the more impressive when one considers that only four players (including O'Neil) had more cumulative rushing yardage in the Crimson's six previous games to date than O'Neil had in this one contest.

Big Man on Special Teams: Brian O'Neil the punter had a tremendous afternoon, too, getting away six punts for 246 yards, a 41-yd. average. He also had one blocked in the third quarter, however, which led to a Brown touchdown six plays later.

Saturday's loss to the Bruins dropped the Crimson to 2-3 in the Ivies (2-5 overall) and knocked the squad out of Ivy contention for the third straight year.

The gridders are now tied with Princeton for fourth place in the Ancient Eight behind still unbeaten Penn (5-0) and Cornell (4-0) and the Bruins (3-2). Yale and Dartmouth both stand at 1-3 and Columbia brings up the rear at 0-4.

Get Out the Record Books: At 2-5, the Crimson has already assured itself of its biggest loss total of the decade and its first non-winning campaign of the decade. If the gridders fail to win another game this year, they would finish the year at 2-8, which would mean the following:

.Harvard's worst record in the Restic era (previous worst was 3-6 in 1979)

.Harvard's lowest victory total for a single season since 1956 (when it went 2-6)

.Harvard's worst winning perecentage since 1950

.Harvard's most number of losses for a single season since 1949 (when it was 1-8)

All of that is merely speculation. The Crimson must now set its sights on the University of Massachusetts.

Same time, last year: In last year's Harvard-UMass contest, the gridders followed up its opening day comeback win over Columbia by knocking off the Minutemen, 10-3, in their home-opener at the Stadium.

The Crimson, which began the season with two straight wins for the first time in three years, did all of its scoring in the second quarter. A 60-yd. TD pass from Brian White to Terry Denson (his only catch of the year) and a 43-yd. Rob Steinberg field goal enabled Harvard to overcome a 3-0 deficit and triumph 10-3.

UMass was destroyed by Holy Cross this past weekend, 41-7, dropping the Minutemen to 6-2 on the season. It was just another day at the office for a pair of Crusaders who burned the Crimson at the Stadium a few weeks back.

Tailback Gordon Lockbaum gained a career-best 260 total yards and scored three touchdowns and QB Jeff Wiley went 16-for-28 for 310 yards. Holy Cross also set a team record for interceptions with three in the game and 27 on the season.

The Notebook's Notebook: Harvard was four-for-seven in third down conversions in the first half but finished the game by converting only seven of 19 opportunities...The Crimson had ball possession for 14 seconds more than the Bruins Saturday (30:07 to 29:53)...Harvard's four sacks tied a team high for the season...Landau now has 10 interceptions and zero (0) touchdown passes on the year.