Game of the Year Runner-Up: Football 43, Princeton 40 (OT)

It was high time a kicker not wearing a Harvard jersey cost his team dearly.

With the score knotted at 37 and just 22 ticks remaining on the clock, Princeton’s Derek Javarone trudged onto the field, the weight of seven straight Tiger losses to the Crimson and two timeouts noticeably slowing his gait as he advanced to the 33-yard line. Moments later the hold was down, his leg swung forward, the crowd fell silent.

Wide left. Not even close.

“How hard is it to swallow?” asked Princeton coach Roger Hughes. “I can’t think of any taste in my mouth that would be worse than this. I can think of putting a skunk in my mouth, of putting anything in my mouth, and I’m telling you the feeling I have right now [would] be worse.”

Trailing by three in the second period of the first overtime, Garrett Schires made sure that Harvard wouldn’t have the opportunity to tack on the game’s fifth missed kick.

After two ineffective rushes brought up third-and-goal from the four, the Crimson sent five wide, hoping Brian Edwards would draw double coverage, thereby freeing up Rodney Byrnes for the game-winning score. But the Princeton secondary played Edwards one-on-one, sandwiching Byrnes between two defensive backs.

Didn’t matter.

Schires threaded a pass through traffic at the goal line to the back of the end zone and Byrnes did the rest, shaking his coverage just in time to turn and sprint into position to haul in the deciding touchdown.

“It wasn’t a great call,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “It was just a great play by those guys.”

Just one of many of “those guys” had turned in with starting quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick sidelined for the second straight week by a broken hand.

Schires shook off a poor first period and an early deficit to account single-handedly for 299 yards of total offense—261 and three touchdowns courtesy of his arm, 38 and one score on the ground—preternaturally hitting both Edwards and Byrnes in stride just one step behind the secondary.

Aiding in that enterprise was Dawson, who announced his arrival with 40 bruising carries—tied for second most in school history—three touchdowns and 183 yards.

The win also secured the possibility of the perfect season, if only for a week.

“We’d come back to beat two teams without a really outstanding quarterback in Ryan Fitzpatrick,” Murphy said. “It gave us tremendous confidence. That’s why the next couple of games were such a mystery.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.