YALE 23, DARTMOUTH 14
The honeymoon (consisting of a winning streak of two games) came to an abrupt end in the Yale Bowl, as Dartmouth honeymoons have the unfortunate habit of doing. After their splendid effort at Harvard, the Green slipped back into the deplorable habit of falling on its face for the first half and then coming storming back the second half—too late to do much about it. This time, Yale scored 7 points in the first quarter, 10 in the second, and 6 in the third, and then sat complacently back while the Green knocked themselves and their loyal followers out by staging a tremendous fourth-period comeback to score two touchdowns and almost score a couple of others. Dartmouth has recently had some lean years in the Bowl, with the 20-6 victory of the great lend-lease 1943 team the only one since 1941 and only the second since 1939. With all the steam generated in an apparently lost cause, the game might have had a happier outcome for the Green if the fires had been lit in the boilers a bit sooner.
Yale opened the game in crafty fashion by passing from deep in their own territory, the purpose being both to gain ground and to open up the rugged Dartmouth defense. They were eminently successful in this maneuver and ate up the yardage in great chunks before the clients were well settled (there were 65,000 of them, incidentally) in their seats. These initial efforts were climaxed by the first Yale TD, which was followed by the aforementioned additional scoring efforts so that the Blue apparently had the game on ice by the middle of the third quarter.
Then the Dartmouth attack, which had heretofore spluttered and stumbled from fumbles and pass interceptions, started to function with a vengeance. The last 20 minutes were spent deep in Yale territory, with the home forces yielding two Green touchdowns and holding twice within the 15-yard line on other occasions. Little Eddie Williams was the most dangerous back on the field during these heady goings-on, breaking loose for long runs (one for 40 yards on one of the occasions when Dartmouth did not score), catching passes for additional gains, and finally crashing into pay dirt himself after a short jaunt around the Yale right end. The other Green touchdown was personally negotiated by Herb Carey on a short buck from the 2-yard line, following a flurry of passes from Sullivan to Rowe and Pensavalle. Carey exercised his educated toe to score both points after touchdown, a department in which Dartmouth has been more than usually proficient this year.
By the time Dartmouth had scored their last touchdown, time had almost run out and Yale very wisely sat on the ball the remaining minutes. In their valiant effort to redeem a lost cause, Dartmouth soundly outstatisticed the Blue, with a total of 16 first downs against 14 for Yale and 143 yards gained from scrimmage against 116 for the enemy. The air was full of flying footballs, with the Green completing 11 passes out of 20 for 139 yards and Yale connecting with 10 out of 15 for 148 yards. Yale intercepted two of the vagrant tosses of the Green, both at crucial moments, while Dartmouth was unable to lay hostile hands on a single one of the Yale forwards. Two fumbles, both by Fran O'Brien, did the Dartmouth cause no good, one bobble interrupting a promising offensive effort of the Green and the other directly leading to a Yale touchdown. Such opportunism has long been a by-word for Yale, and this time they were, to coin a phrase, right on the ball. For all their gallantry, Dartmouth was once again too little and too late.
DARTMOUTH'S FIRST SCORE AGAINST HARVARD was tallied by Hal Fitkin (11) on a lateral from Sullivan (20) shown at far right. Hit on the two-yard line, the Toledo speedster plunged over for the score.
