DARTMOUTH 0, HOLY CROSS 0
A FIGHTING DARTMOUTH eleven opened its season by battling a favored Holy Cross team to a bruising tie, during which the Indians carried out no less than three heroic goal-line stands and hurled back the Crusaders on several other occasions from inside the twenty-yard line. This game followed the script established in so many other encounters between the Green and the Purple by turning into a jarring defensive battle, with neither side showing marked ability to penetrate the other's defense for any consistent progress into pay territory. These games have often been decided by a single score (last year's Dartmouth victory by a field goal being a representative case in point). This time neither aggregation was able to manufacture the decisive tally.
The gallant Dartmouth band was soundly outstatisticed by the rousing total of 13 first downs for Holy Cross against a meager 2 for the Green; gains by rushing were similarly uneven, with Holy Cross running up 122 yards and the Dartmouth offensive utterly unable to get going through the massive enemy line and coming up with a bare 52 yards from scrimmage. Despite these formidable disparities, the pay-off takes place behind the goal posts, a fabled nirvana neither side was able to reach. Time and again an embattled Dartmouth defense rose up and turned back the ponderous pachvderms from Holy Cross, who outweighed the Green by 30 pounds per man in the line and somewhat less in the backfield. Twice in the third period alone, the Crusaders had a first down on the Indians' 6 yard line and in the last quarter they were in a similar position on the 4 yard line. In each case, it seemed as though the sheer physical power of the Holy Cross eleven could not help but put the ball across. Each time the Green line held firm.
Outside of that (and that was plenty) there is not a great deal to be said about the game. The Dartmouth attack, as noted, was almost completely bottled up by the gargantuan Holy Cross forwards and the Indians got beyond the fifty-yard line only once during the afternoon. Hence they were unable to use their vaunted passing attack either to spread out the Crusader defense into manageable proportions or to turn out some actual gains through the air. The comparatively tiny hall-backs of the Green were unable to dart between the huge Purple linemen and even the bruising power of Carey and O'Brien at fullback could not do much against 250 pound guards and tackles. But for an opening game of a young and untried eleven, the defensive epic was glory enough. It was truly a moral victory for a courageous team.
