Navy at Pittsburgh

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  Evening star, District of Columbia, October 31, 1961, page 12

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  HardinCertain Navy Eleven Will Rebound Wayne Hardin, the Navy coach, figures that if Pitts burgh brought out the worst in his football team, Notre Dame very easily could bring out the best. We’ll do well against Notre Dame” Hardin vowed. II Just have that feeling” The Middies play game No. IS of college footballs longest continuous intersectional rival ry Saturday at South Bend, and it’s certain that they’ll need: (a) not only all their spirit, but (b) a more flawleSs effort than last week to make it close against the Irish. The Middies lost the ball six times on fumbles and intercept tions in their 28–⁠14 upset by Pitt. I’VE simply played Sophomore football” Hardin said. Pitt brought out a lot of mistakes in US. We did things we feared would happen all year. |” Oddly enough, Navy had lost only four fumbles during the first half of its season, then almost matched that total with three against Pitt. But it wasn’t the law of averages catching up. Jared the Ball Loose I’VE checked the films, I” Hardin said, “and every tumble was due to Pitts hitting hard. Some guy just popped his head gear in there and knocked the ball loose” The Middies, Hardin claims, probably take more precautions against fumbles than anybody. Because they work endlessly on perfection and timing, they haven’t missed connections yet on a snapback or quarterback handoff. They instruct their ball-carriers that it’s better not to use the straight-arm than to switch the ball from one side to the other. And they even try to eliminate the fumbled punt by having only one man, a Specialist, do the receiving. Most clubs drop two players deep on lpunting situations. If Hardin regards the rash of fumbles as a sometime thing he undoubtedly wishes he could find extenuating circumstances, like a tripped-up receiver or something, for three intercept tionS. Two Klemick Passes Stolen Johnny Sal. not normally a paSSer, had one on the Pitt eight when his halfback- option / throw was too soft. Ron Klemick suffered the other two. one on an extra long heave that was picked off 35 yards down. ! field. the other on a pass into the flat that set up Pitts final score. The Middies now have had l3 passes intercepted in six games. That’s two more than they had all last season. Although Klemick didn’t exactly have a stand-up-andcheer day. Hardin isn’t about to bump him for Bob Hecht, the late-game touchdown max er. “Klemick has proven him. self over a period Of time, “ Hardin said.

Public-domain newspapers from the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America, found through the American Stories dataset (Dell and Harvard, CC BY 4.0). The text is the machine reading of the page, mistakes and all.

Pittsburgh leads 22–⁠15–⁠3 in 40 meetings, counting the 30 since this game.