Harvard Suffers Last-Minute Loss at Lehigh

Harvard suffered its second last-minute defeat of the season Saturday, falling to Lehigh, 20-13, in front of 9,103 fans in Bethlehem, Pa.

“To be perfectly honest, it doesn’t get more gut-wrenching than that,” head coach Tim Murphy said.

After the Crimson (1-2, 1-0 Ivy) missed every opportunity to put the game away in the fourth quarter—including a blocked 26-yard field-goal attempt that sophomore Patrick Long simply kicked too low—senior quarterback Chris Pizzotti lined Harvard up at its own 17 with 48 seconds to go and the score tied at 13.

He started off strong, completing his first pass to senior wideout Corey Mazza for 27 yards. Pizzotti, who finished 18-of-28 with 252 passing yards in roughly a quarter and a half of action, looked to be continuing to have his way with the Mountain Hawks (3-1) defense. The Crimson had plenty of time to get into field-goal range before time expired—at worst the game would go to overtime.

But on the next play, bad luck struck. With Lehigh blitzing, the offensive line folded and multiple brown jerseys pounced on Pizzotti. He tried to throw the ball away, only to fumble and have the ball recovered by Hawks defensive tackle Paul Bode, who ran it back 27 yards for a touchdown.

Just two weeks before, Holy Cross quarterback Dominic Randolph stunned the Crimson with a 40-yard touchdown strike with 19 seconds left that gave the Crusaders a 31-28 victory.

“Anytime you lose it’s frustrating,” Murphy said. “We’re two plays away from being 3-0, and I’ve never been through that at an early stage of the game in 20 years as a head coach.”

And it is not as if the teams were evenly matched throughout. After Lehigh took an early lead, Harvard dominated much of regulation.

The Mountain Hawks jumped out to a 7-0 lead on a 54-yard punt return by Brannan Thomas 3:47 into the game. This would be just the first special teams blunder for the Crimson on the day.

The teams then traded two field goals each: Long put Harvard on the board with 5:08 left in the first on a 27-yarder after a run-heavy drive that consisted of 14 plays for just 49 yards.

The rushing attack improved in terms of consistency this week, with freshman Gino Gordon getting the bulk of the carries—20 for 69 yards. But the ground game also turned out to be a sore spot for the Crimson, as senior quarterback Liam O’Hagan’s 11th rush of the day in the third quarter led to a shoulder injury that may force him out of the starting lineup on Saturday.

The first quarter ended with Lehigh on top, 10-3, and the Mountain Hawks went into the break leading by the same margin, 13-6. Lehigh kicker Jason Leo’s 40-yard field goal with 11:41 left in the second was the last offensive scoring the Mountain Hawks would produce.

Much of Harvard’s defensive success was due to the pressure the squad put on quarterback Sedale Threatt, known for his arsenal of weapons.

“[Threatt is a] really, really good quarterback, really good scrambler, so going in we were just kind of thinking to keep the pressure on him, contain him because he’s so good at getting outside of the pocket and running the scramble drill and making something happen,” junior linebacker Eric Schultz said. “We had early success getting to him.”

But the Crimson saved its best football for after halftime.

With Pizzotti in for O’Hagan, the squad put together an eight-play, 96-yard touchdown drive, capped by a 37-yard pass to sophomore receiver Matt Luft in the endzone. It was the only offensive touchdown in the game for either team.

The offense started to control the game right as the ‘D’ stepped in to shut down the Lehigh attack. The Crimson possessed the ball for nearly 21 minutes in the second half. In the fourth, the defense did not allow a single first down, and the Mountain Hawks did not convert a single third down all day. In total Lehigh posted only 232 total yards of offense, less than half of the Harvard’s 465.

To say the least, the numbers did not tell the whole story. In the end the team that made the bigger play emerged with the win.

“To come out of there with a 38 minute possession time, 13 third-down conversions to zero, you say to yourself, ‘What do you have to do to win the game?’” Murphy said. “That’s why, in the end, it’s not about statistics.”

—Staff writer Madeleine I. Shapiro can be reached at mshapiro@fas.harvard.edu.