Yale falls to Harvard in wild finish

NEW HAVEN — Wande Owens broke up the Harvard pass on first down from the Yale 12. Dathan Hickey denied Harvard’s Adam West the ball on second down. And Yale was two plays away from finishing off yet another comeback win against Harvard.

Third down? Third down turned this into yet another dramatic Yale-Harvard finish, and 22 seconds later, it sent another torrent of spectators onto the field at the Yale Bowl, delirious rather than defiant this time.

Harvard quarterback Luke Emge found Kym Wimberly in the back-left corner of the end zone on third down to lift the Crimson to a 34-31 win over Yale in front of a crowd of 49,500 in the teams’ 137th meeting.

Yale couldn’t have defended it any better, Harvard coach Tim Murphy said, but Wimberly still came down with it.

“They made a play at the end of the game. They made a play on third down in the corner of the end zone with no timeouts left, and that was the difference in the game,” Yale coach Tony Reno said.

“We had an opportunity to put the game away, get a first down, and we didn’t.”

That was with a minute to go. Harvard was out of timeouts, down four points. Yale faced fourth-and-1 at the Harvard 34, called timeout, and then turned over the ball on downs after an incomplete pass.

The calculus there involved going into the wind, so the Bulldogs knew they were out of Jack Bosman’s field-goal range. A Bosman punt might’ve gained a few yards, but Reno liked their chances to get the yard they needed with quarterback Nolan Grooms. Murphy said he wasn’t really surprised, that the analytics in a spot like that say the decision could go either way.

Either way, Emge and Wimberly connected three plays later for 42 yards to get to the Yale 12. Wimberly led Harvard in receptions coming in, but he’d only caught one ball going into the last series.

“He’s just the nicest kid, the toughest kid, the most resilient kid, and he was really banged up. We didn’t think he was going to play today,” Murphy said.

“For him to come down the stretch and make those clutch plays is something you won’t forget.”

It was another unforgettable finish, the second in a row in The Game. The Crimson led by 17 in the fourth quarter two years ago in a game delayed almost an hour by a protest at halftime, with students and others occupying the field at the Bowl. Yale came back to win at dusk in double overtime.

And when Grooms found David Pantelis for a 27-yard touchdown with 7:48 to play Saturday, taking Yale’s first lead since 7-0, it seemed the Bulldogs had recreated some magic, in daylight this time.

But Murphy exhorted his team not to quit, and they finished a season of whatmight-have-been with a bang.

Harvard was 5-0 before an overtime loss to Princeton in which the Ivy League admitted the officials erred in not allowing a two-point conversion to stand. It lost to Dartmouth the week after.

“Knowing what we know, our kids are actually one play away from a 10-0 season,” Murphy said.

“We couldn’t have asked for a better storybook, makethings-right ending. I’ve been in many wild and wooly Harvard-Yale games, and this might have been the most wild and wooliest.”

Dartmouth and Princeton shared the Ivy League title. Harvard (8-2, 5-2) finished third.

The Bulldogs (5-5, 4-3) tied Columbia for fourth.

The athleticism of Grooms, the sophomore who took over at quarterback at midseason, extended plays, Murphy and Harvard captain Jordan Hill both said. There were three interceptions, but there were also moments like his touchdown pass late in the first half, when Grooms spun away from pressure, ran to the left sideline and found J.J. Howland.

Running back Spencer Alston ran for 74 yards on 19 carries; on the go-ahead drive, he’d turned thirdand-18 into a 26-yard gain. And Zane Dudek, a big piece of the Bulldogs’ 2017 and 2019 championship teams, came back from injury with five rushes for 30 yards.

“There’s only two classes in Yale history in the last 40 years that have walked out of here with two Ivy championships,” Reno said, and the other was the class that graduated before this one.

“These guys did an amazing job of setting the program up for success, having success while they’re here and setting us for the future.”

When the final Yale attempt at a lateral ended, fans rushed from the visitors’ side to join the Crimson celebration. Several Yale players, including captain John Dean, lingered on the other side.

“For me, unfortunately, it’s my last time playing out there,” Dean said. “I just wanted a last few moments out there.

“My class had a lot of success here. It’s not all bad times. We’ve had good times here, too. By no means does this define what we’ve done over the past four years.”