The names and shade of red on the uniforms changed, but to a casual onlooker, the football team’s 28-10 loss to Harvard on Saturday might have seemed like a repeat of the prior week’s game. For the second game in a row, Cornell was physically outmatched on both sides of the ball and gave up more than 200 rushing yards while struggling to get its own ground game in sync. Crimson junior running back Gino Gordon, who led his team with 137 rushing yards and a touchdown, summed up the reason behind his team’s success on the ground.

“The holes were wide open, and I just ran through them,” he said.

Gordon gave most of the credit to the offensive line. The Crimson (3-1, 2-0 Ivy) line powered the team to 226 rushing yards and a touchdown in a win over Lehigh on Oct. 3, and 251 yards and four touchdowns against the Red (2-2, 1-1). On the other side of the ball, Harvard clogged up running lanes and held Cornell to 62 yards on 24 carries. The Red tried six different rushers, including sophomore wideout Abdul Taylor, who has also seen time in the defensive backfield this season.

“There’s no doubt who was the better team on the field today, that was Harvard,” said head coach Jim Knowles ’87. “If you can’t stop the run and you can’t run the ball effectively, it makes for a tough game, a very tough game. ... Their front guys on that o-line and tight ends pushed our d-line and linebackers around and moved the ball effectively.”

A week after he missed a game due to his grandmother’s death, Harvard freshman running back Treavor Scales racked up 92 yards and two touchdowns, the kind of performance that Crimson fans were led to believe would be commonplace from the rookie.Not what they were hoping for: Despite it being Fall Break, a good-sized crowd showed up at Schoellkopf Field on Saturday to watch Cornell take on Ivy rival Harvard.

“I dedicated this game to her,” Scales said. “It helped coming back to a wonderful support group, which is my team. You play off of emotion in this game and that’s all you can do.”

Cornell’s only points in the first half came off a career-long 47-yard field goal by junior Brad Greenway. Senior quarterback Ben Ganter went 15-for-31 for 120 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions, both picked off by Harvard’s freshman cornerback Brian Owusu in his first start. Senior Bryan Walters was Ganter’s favorite target once again, catching six passes for 50 yards. Sophomore wideout Shane Savage caught his second career touchdown pass, a 17-yard strike from Ganter that was set up by a boneheaded penalty called on the Crimson. With less than four minutes left in the third quarter, Cornell’s drive stalled after two incomplete passes from Ganter, and Knowles sent out the punting unit on a fourth-and-six. Junior punter Drew Alston booted one 43 yards for a touchback, but Harvard, with 12 men on the field, was flagged for a 15-yard illegal participation penalty. The penalty moved Cornell to the Harvard 29-yard line, and Ganter completed his next four passes, including the touchdown to Savage, to draw the team within four, 14-10.

“We practice those adverse situations all the time,” said Harvard coach Tim Murphy, who coached to his 100th victory on Saturday. “We coach it. Not that we know anything about anything, but the way that we coach it is to embrace it.”

The Crimson bounced back three possessions later, scoring on a three-yard rush by Scales. Cornell nearly stopped that drive, forcing Harvard to a third-and-10 on the Cornell 37-yard line, but Gordon scrambled for 15 yards and the first down.

“It hurt,” Knowles said of the third down conversion. “Third-and-10, we had our d-line prepared and coached all week for that. They just got man-on-man and beat us. I don’t know if it’s a defining moment but it’s kind of indicative of the game. We were fighting hard to get back in it and you can’t give that up. You’ve got to make those plays.”