NOTEBOOK: Physical Play in Crimson Rout

HANOVER, N.H.—Harvard coach Tim Murphy may be a lifelong friend of Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens, but on game day their teams don’t hold back. Though the Crimson’s 35-7 drubbing of the Big Green came as little surprise, the physicality of Saturday’s game was palpable.

“We got a bunch of guys banged up,” Murphy said. “I’ll tell you, Dartmouth, they were very, very physical. Even though we ran for a lot of yards, they were very physical on both sides of the ball.”

The physical play did occasionally cross the line. Harvard incurred four penalties for 40 yards and Dartmouth racked up eight penalties accounting for 89 yards.

“I’ll have to take a look at a couple of them,” Teevens said of the penalties. “In terms of calls, I disagreed with a couple of them, and I’ll have to figure out if I’m right or I’m wrong. There were a lot of flags out there today, some deserved and some, I guess, in question.”

One such questionable call came when Dartmouth’s Spencer Hood laid into senior quarterback Chris Pizzotti on a QB scramble. A flag was thrown for a helmet-to-helmet hit, a 15-yard personal foul.

“That one hit on the QB, the head-to-head call, it was not by malicious intent, it was just a physical play,” Teevens said. “At least that was my perspective on it. He wasn’t trying to do anything injurious to a player.”

Of course, down 35-0 going into the fourth quarter, it’s not that much of a surprise that Dartmouth’s intensity was cranked up.

“The guys are playing hard,” Teevens said. “Can we play a little smarter? Yes. There’s a steep learning curve, and we’re playing the best in the league and one of the best in the country. We need to play our best, and we can’t help them with penalties or missed opportunities, and we did that throughout the game.”

SCOUTING REPORT

With a comfortable 20-0 lead at halftime, the Crimson took the chance to try out some new setups on both sides of the ball. Senior Liam O’Hagan came out at quarterback at the beginning of the second half and continued to hold down the post throughout the third quarter.

“I’ve got two fifth-year quarterbacks. My second string quarterback could start for anybody in the league,” Murphy said.

Though O’Hagan only had two pass attempts, neither successful, he did contribute to the Crimson offense with other beneficial attributes: speed and agility.

On the third play of his opening drive, he dodged Big Green tacklers to rush for 28 yards. O’Hagan finished the day third among Crimson rushers with 66 yards.

In the fourth quarter, he gave way to sophomore Matt Simpson, whose prior experience was limited to brief action in last year’s game against Cornell. Simpson never took to the air on Saturday, but tallied 20 yards rushing. The primary reason for Simpson getting snaps was that classmate Collier Winters, who looked to be the third-string quarterback in his few appearances in his rookie campaign, got injured a couple of weeks back.

“Collier got banged up in practice,” Murphy said. “You know, it probably wasn’t a great move on our part, but we were banged up with so many receivers that he volunteered to play some, and he pulled his groin muscle pretty severely, so he’s out for the season. That was a couple weeks back, and we just haven’t said anything about it, but yeah, that was the reason for Matt getting some third-string snaps.”

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