The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘The Game’ features a role reversal
NEW HAVEN — A year ago this week, as Yale and Harvard prepared to meet in Boston, the ancient rivals were in very different positions.
Harvard needed victory to clinch a share of the Ivy League championship. Yale, coming off perhaps the most dismal loss of a season filled with them, was simply looking for something to anchor onto for next season.
The end result — Yale’s 21-14 victory was only its third of the year and spoiled the Crimson’s title hopes — became one of the most stunning upsets in the long history of “The Game.”
When the team’s kickoff today at the Yale Bowl (12:30 p.m., CNBC), the stakes will be similar, but the roles will be completely reversed.
This time Yale (9-1, 5-1) has the most at stake, a chance to claim its first outright Ivy League title since 1980. Harvard (5-4, 3-3) is coming off a gloomy loss of its own, a 23-6 defeat to Penn, the first time in eight years the Crimson failed to score at least 10 points in a game.
These Bulldogs can relate to Harvard’s current mentality.
“We were in their situation last year and we felt we had nothing to lose,” Yale sophomore quarterback Kurt Rawlings said. “We played loose and that helped us. We’ve got to keep that, we need to stay loose and play to our standards.”
If weather conditions are right, Yale officials expect in excess of 50,000 to fill the Bowl and, perhaps, witness the capper on what’s already been a historic season replete with milestones.
An October victory over Columbia was the 900th in Yale football history, joining Michigan and Notre Dame in an exclusive club. Zane Dudek, with a cushion of well over 300 yards, will become the first freshman ever to lead the Ivy League in rushing — he’s a lock to win the league’s rookie of the year and has a strong case as player of the year.
And last week at Prince- ton, after a furious comeback from a 24-7 secondquarter deficit, Yale ended its longest Ivy League title drought by clinching at least a share of the championship.
But the Bulldogs aren’t willing to settle for anything less than an outright title. The last time it happened, Rich Diana and Kevin Czinger starred on a Carm Cozza-coached team that included non-league wins over UConn and Air Force and a loss at Boston College.
Dartmouth and Columbia, both a game back at 4-2 in the Ivy League, could both lose on Saturday. The odds are long considering Columbia plays Brown, winless in
conference play.
Yale plans to leave nothing to chance, completing a year-long quest that started this week a year ago. It’s been a remarkable turnaround those inside the locker room saw coming.
“The seniors didn’t want to go out the same way the season went last year,” Yale captain Spencer Rymiszewski said. “I’m a firm believer that with hard work and dedication to your craft, and a goal you want to achieve, if you put in the work every single day, you’re going to achieve that goal. This team has embraced that mentality.”
Ravaged by injury in 2016, Yale has stayed relatively healthy this fall. There’s an intriguing combination of veteran experience mixed with young talent on both sides of the ball.
The Bulldogs, behind a dominant offensive line, are second only to Princeton in points scored and total offense this season. Those numbers, of course, could be much higher had coach Tony Reno not elected to take his foot off the gas early in the second half of blowout wins against Lehigh, Cornell, Fordham, Holy Cross and Brown.
Rawlings has emerged as an efficient quarterback, completing 67 percent of his passes for 2,143 yards and 18 touchdowns to just five interceptions. Yale’s bread-and-butter is its ground game, which didn’t miss a beat when Deshawn Salter was lost for the season with a broken collar bone in October. Dudek (1,069 yards, 14 touchdowns) is averaging 8.0 yards-per carry, on pace to set a league singleseason record.
Yale’s defense has also been the league’s stingiest, allowing the least amount of points with the most sacks. Though it struggled to contain Princeton quarterback Chad Kanoff last week, the Bulldogs surrendered only seven secondhalf points while coming up with big turnovers in crucial moments.
Reno, in his sixth season, holds this Yale team in the highest regard, and not just because of a remarkable turnaround.
“My expectation of this team had nothing to do with wins and losses,” Reno said. “It was about standards, the ones we set into place because of who my guys are and why they came to Yale. They came here to be a part of something. They came here to be a part of a football fam- ily that really and truly is a family. For me, the first and foremost thing was for them to be able to relate to each other and play together in a different way than they ever have. It may sound corny to some, but it’s what matters to us. It’s how Yale football is built.”