CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Team 149 is Ivy League champions!
Jackson Hawes' 5-yard touchdown reception midway through the fourth quarter gave Yale the lead, and the defense stopped Harvard three times in the final six minutes to secure a thrilling 19-14 victory on a chilly afternoon before a packed house of 30,006 at Harvard Stadium.
The Ivy championship is the third in the last five seasons for the Bulldogs and the 17th in the illustrious history of the program. Team 149 finishes with an 8-2 overall record and a 6-1 Ivy mark. By virtue of Penn's last-second win over Princeton, Yale is the outright Ivy champion.
"When we met last November, we said our goal was to be an elite football team, and we accomplished it," said
Tony Reno, the Joel E. Smilow '54 Head Coach of the Bulldogs. "The credit goes to the players, the assistant coaches who have done an amazing job, our support staff, our trainers, our sports performance coaches, our AD, our President. Everyone takes a piece of this. This is our third championship in five years, and we take a lot of pride in that."
As has so often been the case this season, the victory wasn't secured until the final minute. Yale had a 13-7 lead entering the fourth quarter, but the Crimson quickly went ahead on Tyler Neville's 24-yard touchdown reception less than two minutes into the fourth.
The Bulldogs answered with a championship drive that covered 75 yards in 13 plays and used 7:07 of the clock. It ended with Hawes' touchdown catch. The two-point conversion failed, but Yale had a lead it would not relinquish.
The Bulldogs' defense, stellar throughout the game, limited the Crimson to just one first down the remainder of the way.
Harvard's final drive started with 42 seconds remaining at its own 25-yard line but was quickly thwarted when
Hamilton Moore intercepted a desperation heave from quarterback Charlie Dean, who was about to be sacked, with 24 seconds left.
Yale ran one more play from victory formation and the celebration was on.
"This was a heavyweight battle," Reno said. "It came down to the last few punches and we were very fortunate that we were able to throw the last one and be able to finish it off. I'm proud of my team."
The Bulldogs held Harvard's Aidan Borguet, who entered the day leading the Ivy League in rushing, to just 62 yards.
Yale intercepted Dean four times – two by Moore and one each from
Sean Guyton and
Da'Quan Gonzales – and had two sacks – from
Clay Patterson and
Reid Nickerson.
Yale's offense, meanwhile, controlled the ball for more than 40 of the game's 60 minutes. The Bulldogs rushed for 219 yards, led by the trio of
Joshua Pitsenberger (82 yards),
Tre Peterson (74 yards) and
Nolan Grooms (63 yards) running behind a stout offensive line of
Kiran Amegadjie, Cubby Schuller, Nick Gargiulo, Jack Karhu, Patrick Nauert and
Aaron Session.
"I'm incredibly proud of the team and I'm proud of my senior class," said Gargiulo, the team captain. "We set out to accomplish this goal, and we've worked at it for the last 12 months."
