Big Crowd Shows for Primetime Game

By all accounts, the first night game in Harvard history was a tremendous success.

18,898 fans filled Harvard Stadium, blanketing the home side of the field to the curve of the horseshoe and occupying a large portion of the visiting side as well. The attendance surpassed any non-Yale game dating back as far as 2002. The highest non-Yale attendance for a Harvard game during that span was the Nov. 16, 2002 contest at Penn, which attracted 18,630 fans and the ESPN “College Gameday” show to Franklin Field. The 2005 home opener against Brown, a 38-35 double-overtime win for the Crimson and the only blemish on the Bears’ Ivy championship campaign that season, drew 11,134 to Harvard Stadium.

“It was certainly a very electric atmosphere,” said senior fullback Noah Van Niel, “just walking out onto the field and seeing the stands more full than ever before except for the Harvard-Yale games, and the fans were going wild and enjoying it, and that was one of the things that made it easier to not get down and come out of the hard times of the game.”

Harvard coach Tim Murphy reported that the players, seasoned by a spring game under the lights and a series of night practices this week, had no problems handling the change in lighting. The players themselves felt taken back in time.

“Before the game, I told the guys coming out, ‘If you’re playing college football, you were somewhat of a star in high school, and a lot of guys played under the lights in this kind of environment,’” senior cornerback Steven Williams said. “This is our star treatment. This is a treat, it’s a blessing.”

COMMITTEE MEETING

The lights didn’t help Harvard’s running game. The Crimson mustered 113 yards on 41 carries, an average of 2.8 per play, but nearly half those yards came from scrambles and designed runs by senior quarterback Liam O’Hagan, who picked up 58 yards on 12 carries. The two tailbacks, sophomore Cheng Ho and freshman Gino Gordon, combined for just 37 yards on 18 carries, an average of 2.1 yards per carry.

“I think it just comes down to preparation,” Brown linebacker Eric Brewer said. “We watched a lot of film this week. We knew what they were going to come with on the run. We shut them down—we made them pretty one-dimensional.”

“It’s still a work in progress, both schematically and personnel,” Murphy said. “The biggest thing is, we knew they wouldn’t give us many looks to run the football. We saw a lot of man coverage, a lot of nine-man fronts—typical Brown. To some extent, you have to throw to beat these guys.”

Late in the game, Murphy turned to Van Niel, a player with zero career carries coming into the game, to try to ground out first-down yardage in both third-and-short situations and on the game’s final drive. Van Niel finished with 16 yards on six carries.

“It’s a great honor,” Van Niel said. “We’re still sort of mixing and matching and working things out so that we can figure out where we can get the best people on the field the whole time. I was lucky enough to have Coach call my number for the short-yardage stuff. It’s one of those things where we say, ‘Just hold the ball, keep your legs moving, and fall forward until you get the first down.’”

The Bears did not fare any running the football: an injury to starting running back Dereck Knight led to Brown accumulating just 49 yards on 25 carries.

EXTRA POINTS

Harvard allowed two 100-yard receivers in the same game for the first time since 2003, when Dartmouth achieved the feat. Buddy Farnham and Paul Raymond each had over 100 yards receiving for Brown...Sophomore kicker Patrick Long missed a field goal, a 45-yarder in the third quarter, for the second straight week before nailing a 23-yard kick with 3:08 to play in the fourth. Long is 1-of-3 on the year...Senior Matt Schindel and sophomore Thomas Hull split the punting duties, with Hull punting twice for a 40.5-yard average and Schindel adding four punts with an average of 35.2 yards...The Crimson attempted 45 passes and ran 41 times...Harvard possessed the ball for 10:42 in the fourth quarter.

—Staff writer Brad Hinshelwood can be reached at bhinshel@fas.harvard.edu.