Running Strong

EASTON, Penn.—There’s no better cure for a heartbreaking defeat than a perfectly executed victory.

With the painful loss to Brown last weekend, Harvard football (2-1, 0-1 Ivy) returned to the gridiron at Lafayette (3-1, 1-0 Patriot) to notch a 27-13 win—the eighth consecutive Crimson victory over the Leopards.

“We’ve won eight in a row against these guys, but it seems like they’re the hardest team to game plan for every year,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “And we’ve just been very, very fortunate with big plays. What we needed to do in this game was eliminate turnovers, which we did, run the football, and then take them out of any big play opportunities.”

And that is precisely what the Crimson did at Lafayette’s Fisher Stadium.

Despite allowing the Leopards to get down into the red zone on the opening drive, the Crimson defense stopped Lafayette at the 4-yard line, holding them to a field goal.

But the Leopards’s lead was short-lived.

Harvard quickly struck back, driving down field on the shoulders of junior Cheng Ho’s stellar rushing. Ho—who after topping the depth chart last season seemingly dropped to third behind classmate Ben Jenkins and sophomore Gino Gordon—finished the day with 108 rushing yards. His 23 yards on the Crimson’s opening drive ended with a 1-yard rush into the end zone, giving Harvard a 7-3 lead.

“[Cheng is] such an unbelievable competitor,” Murphy said. “He came through today when we needed him most, and he’s going to have to do that the rest of the season.”

With ball security having played such a crucial role in the Crimson’s first two games—Harvard committed three turnovers against the Bears and four against Holy Cross—Ho’s ability to hold on to the ball and make big plays bodes well for the Crimson offense.

“I don’t think anyone in America works more on ball security than we do,” Murphy said. “It’s our only goal offensively, there’s nothing else. I don’t really have an answer to why we didn’t do a great job protecting the football in the last two games. Hopefully that was an aberration and we can continue the way we did today.”

The Crimson tacked on an extra three points with the help of Patrick Long’s foot. From 41 yards out, the junior kicker dropped the football squarely between the uprights, giving him a new career-long—which he then topped later in the game with a 45-yarder.

The second quarter was the Chris Pizzotti show. After senior cornerback Andrew Berry made an acrobatic around-the-wideout interception, fifth-year senior quarterback Pizzotti, who finished the day 15-of-28 for 231 yards, launched a pass complete to sophomore Chris Lorditch for 67 yards and a touchdown, giving Harvard a 17-3 lead. Lorditch led the receivers with 106 yards on the day.

On the Crimson’s next possession, Pizzotti showed previously unseen mobility. Seeing no open receivers from the Lafayette 28-yard line, Pizzotti found a hole and ran it for seven yards and a first down. Then, down on the three-yard line, Pizzotti executed a perfect option left, dishing it off to Gordon at the most opportune moment for yet another Crimson touchdown and a 24-10 lead.

“When you have a quarterback that’s a little more mobile, it takes a little of the pressure off the offensive line and the running backs,” Pizzotti said. “The offensive line did an unbelievable job. Those guys open up holes and protect them. I know the first two games they were itching to get a little run going so today was their present.”

Harvard again ran a successful option late in the fourth quarter, with a dish to Ho for 10 yards. But on the play, Lorditch got caught up in the tackle and came down hard on his ankle.

“At worst, it’s a broken ankle,” Murphy said. “At best, it’s a high ankle sprain, which he’s out for at least a month, four to five weeks.”

Losing junior Mike Cook to a torn pectoral in the preseason, sophomore Marco Iannuzzi to a broken collarbone last weekend, and now Lorditch, the Crimson’s wide receiving corps has, according to Murphy, “been crushed.”

“We’ll do what we have to do,” Murphy said. “That’s the resiliency of this team. Chris [Lorditch] is a terrific young player...and he gives us a great big speed element. But now we’ll have to adjust.”

Despite the adjustments that will need to be made, Harvard looked as if it had put the Brown loss behind it.

“Harvard got all their mistakes out in the first two games,” Lafayette coach Frank Tavani said. “Played perfect against us.”

—Staff writer Dixon McPhillips can be reached at fmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.