Friday, August 2, 2013

Getting to Know You...







My pre-Ivy Football media day 7-day series preparing everyone, (especially the members of the media, with what they need to know about every Ivy team other than Columbia), continues today with a look at Harvard:


2012 Record: 8-2 (5-2 Ivy, 2nd place)

Coach: Tim Murphy

Last Season in One Sentence: Something funny happened on the way to the 2012 Ivy title: Harvard's team filled with All Ivy players fell asleep in the last few minutes vs. Princeton and couldn't stop the Penn running game at Franklin Field. 

Returning Harvard Players You Need to Know: QB Michael Pruneau, RB Zach Boden, TE Cameron Brate, DL Zach Hodges, LB Joshua Boyd

Big Losses: QB Colton Chapple, H-Back/TE Kyle Juszczyk, RB Treavor Scales, 

Big Questions: How the HELL did this team NOT win the Ivy title last year? The folks putting together the list of the 2012 All Ivy team could have just written down "Harvard" and taken the rest of the day off! What did Murphy do wrong last season to allow these guys to lose focus when it really mattered? How will the highly-touted new QB Pruneau do as the starter? 

Jake’s Overall Take: Harvard is just reloading when it comes to talent. And with home games against key opponents Brown, Princeton and Penn this year, the Crimson have to be favored to win it all this time. But picking a team to win a title when its staring QB has never started a game is scary no matter what team you're talking about. So the QB play here will make the difference between a championship and another 2nd place year. 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jake- are you sure that Boden is playing this year for Harvard? He sat out last year (could have been the cheating scandal)).

Jake said...

He's playing.

Anonymous said...

In the entire history of college football, Harvard losing at Princeton after being ahead 34-10 was the second largest lead ever blown with less than twelve minutes to play.

That wasn't Harvard "falling asleep" at the end of the game. That was an act of God.

Our friends from Tigertown like to translate their school motto, "Dei Sub Numine Viget," as "God went to Princeton." I don't know about that, but He sure didn't go to Harvard.