Harvard To Open Season Against Rhode Island

The last time that Harvard football locked horns with the Rhode Island Rams, the result was lopsided.

Beneath early October skies, the Crimson opened its season with a commanding performance. Captain and All-American Charles J. Hubbard Jr. patrolled the line of scrimmage, fifth-year coach Robert Fisher maintained a perfect opening-day record, and Harvard ended the day with a 35-0 win.

That game was in 1923.

Ninety-two years later, Rhode Island will have a shot at revenge when Harvard travels to Kingston, R.I. for a Saturday matchup with the Rams.

Much has changed since that long-ago contest. For one the goalposts are no longer at the front of the end zone.

But one constant has remained, and that is the expected dominance of the Crimson squad. In 1923 Harvard entered on the heels of a 7-2 season; in 2015 the team will kick off the Rhode Island contest .nd. with a 14-game winning streak on the line, not to mention the lingering memories of last year’s Ivy League title.

“It’s our first game,” said captain and linebacker Matt Koran. “We’re definitely looking to get a win, but we want to come together as a group.”

The same could be said for the Rams, which started the season with a pair of defeats against Syracuse and Albany.

Both those games, which Rhode Island lost by a combined score of 82-7, took place at away venues; Saturday will mark the Rams’ home opener.

Home or away, Rhode Island found precious little shelter during the 2014 season.

Opening with a 48-7 loss to Marshall, the Rams played nearly three months of football without a victory. Then, in the last week of the season, the team pulled out a 13-7 win over Towson to avoid a winless season.

What Rhode Island lacks in proven experience, it makes up for in youth.

Junior quarterback Paul Mroz had never started a game before this season, and in his first four quarters of play, he received a baptism by fire at the hands of the Syracuse defense. Held to just 60 yards of passing in that contest, Mroz rebounded a week later with 180 yards and a touchdown on a 17-of-38 showing.

The team’s top wide receiver, freshman Khayri Denny, also lacked game experience before this September. But Denny has emerged as a legitimate target for the Rams, racking up over 100 yards of combined offense and totaling the squad’s lone touchdown across both games.

Mroz and Denny share the offensive workload with sophomore running back Harold Cooper, who averaged 41.7 yards per game during last year’s 1-11 campaign.

The Rams will face a stout test against Harvard’s defense, which topped the FCS in several defensive categories last year. Although the Crimson lost stalwarts Zack Hodges ’15 and Obum Obukwelu ’15 upfront, the team returns a deep corps of linebackers and defensive backs.

“We hope to be very fundamentally sound in this game,” defensive back Chris Evans said. “Looking at our second inter-squad scrimmage, we had some things we needed to clean up…. Things have been progressing pretty well this whole preseason.”

Harvard’s efforts received a vote of confidence when the team was placed at No. 25 in the FCS polls heading into the season. The Rams have lost 14 straight games against ranked opponents.

However, one potential wrinkle in Harvard’s plans for dominance is the nature of the playing surface.

Like most other college teams, the Crimson typically practices and competes on artificial turf. But Rhode Island’s Meade Stadium is all grass, posing a challenge of novelty for Harvard players.

In response the Crimson has held sessions on the natural grass at Cumnock Field. This preparation, and all other sessions that Harvard has undergone this preseason, will come to a head at 1pm on Saturday afternoon.

“It’s great to be able to start with game one,” quarterback Scott Hosch said. “We’re just ready to play. We’re ready to get out there in a game scenario and really show the country…what we can do.”