Far From Perfect, Harvard Ends Impeccably Against Yale
By PETER MAYNOV. 22, 2014
BOSTON — With a brisk wind in his face, more than 30,000 chilled fans in thrall and an unblemished season on the line, Harvard quarterback Conner Hempel paid all of the above no heed. His right shoulder sore and wobbly, his team similarly shaken after surrendering a 17-point lead, Hempel coolly directed a winning drive Saturday in a wild finish.
Hempel led the Crimson 78 yards in eight plays, completing the drive with a 35-yard touchdown pass to Andrew Fischer with 55 seconds remaining. A late interception by Scott Peters preserved Harvard’s nerve-racking 31-24 victory over Yale. The win capped the Crimson’s 10-0 season and gave them the Ivy League title outright with a 7-0 conference mark. It is their third unbeaten season in the 21-year tenure of Coach Tim Murphy and the 17th undefeated season in university history.
Hempel, a senior, had missed the last three games with a shoulder injury and was listed as the backup on the team’s depth chart for the game. He had almost no practice time leading up to the game, and Murphy said he was “nowhere near 100 percent.” But Hempel insisted on playing.
“Conner was inspirational,” Murphy said. “He makes up his mind to do something, and he does it.”
The something in this case was the winning march against a 14-mile-per-hour wind into the closed end of Harvard Stadium. Yale, showing its resilience, had scored 17 unanswered points and tied the game at 24-24 on a 33-yard field goal by Kyle Cazzetta with 3 minutes 44 seconds to play.
But Hempel said that when Harvard took the ball back and he gathered his unit at its own 22-yard line, he had one thought in mind.
“We were definitely thinking touchdown,” he said. “That was my mind-set. That was the offense’s mind-set.”
Eight plays later, Fischer, who had also scored on a 40-yard reverse pass from wide receiver Seitu Smith, broke free, caught the ball at the Yale 5 and ran in for the touchdown.
“I was beginning to wonder if this was our day,” Murphy said, alluding to Harvard’s two lost fumbles, a dropped pass that looked like a certain touchdown reception on its first play from scrimmage, a blocked field-goal attempt and a penalty for having too many men on the field that helped set up a Yale touchdown.
“It was sheer willpower on our part,” Murphy said. “Our guys willed ourselves to the win.”
Harvard also got a 90-yard interception return for a touchdown from linebacker Connor Sheehan, who went the distance after wrestling the ball from wide receiver Robert Clemons. Sheehan sped down the right sideline nearly untouched for his third touchdown of the season, all on interceptions. The touchdown came with six seconds left in the third quarter, giving Harvard a 24-7 lead.
When the quarter ended, Yale Coach Tony Reno gathered his players and reminded them of their many comebacks this season. The Bulldogs (8-2, 5-2) were down by 21 points against Lehigh and won. They trailed Army by 14 points and won, for the Ivy League’s first victory over a Football Bowl Subdivision team since 1986.
“This team doesn’t quit,” Reno said.
Running back Tyler Varga, who scored all three of the Bulldogs’ touchdowns, said: “There was no doubt in our minds that we were going to come back. But the scoreboard is what it is. We have to live with that.”
Yale quarterback Morgan Roberts threw for 305 yards, but the Bulldogs’ offense, which had averaged more than 40 points a game, was held to its lowest point total of the season. Yale has lost eight straight to Harvard and 13 of their last 14 meetings.
The cold, breezy day featured two rarities for any Harvard football game: people seeking tickets and the presence of ESPN’s “College GameDay” crew at the north end of Harvard Stadium.
Passengers alighting at the Harvard Square subway station, a short walk to the stadium, were pressed for extra tickets. The requests continued down John F. Kennedy Street, across the Charles River and to the gates of the stadium.
A capacity crowd of 31,062 attended the game, more than double the previous high for the season (15,132 in the season opener against Holy Cross).
Even the educational elite of the country could not resist ESPN’s omnipresent reach, and a small but vocal and creative group gathered to watch “College GameDay.” Among the signs: “Yale Is the Eli of the Ivies,” which included a picture of Eli Manning, and “We Want ’Bama — in Chess.”
The 2014 edition of the Game, as this matchup is known — the 131st meeting between these teams and the 59th since the inception of the Ivy League — needed little hype to live up to its nickname. Harvard was seeking its first unbeaten season since 2004, when Ryan Fitzpatrick, now a peripatetic N.F.L. quarterback, was a senior and the Ivy League most valuable player for the Crimson.
Yale was seeking a share of the Ivy title and an end to its distressing losing streak against its rival. This was the 27th time these teams had played for a share of the league title. Of the previous 26, the most memorable was the 29-29 tie in 1968, when Harvard rallied from a 16-point deficit in the final minute, getting a tying 2-point conversion after time had run out.
For a time Saturday, it looked as if Yale might be making its own memorable comeback. But Hempel instead engineered what may now be remembered as Harvard’s version of the Drive.
“I couldn’t have drawn it up any better,” he said. “This game makes my career.”
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